| |
| Qt 3.2 introduces new features as well as many improvements over the |
| 3.1.x series. This file gives an overview of the main changes since |
| version 3.1.2. For more details, see the online documentation which |
| is included in this distribution. The documentation is also available |
| at http://qt.nokia.com/doc/ |
| |
| The Qt version 3.2 series is binary compatible with the 3.1.x series. |
| Applications compiled for 3.1 will continue to run with 3.2. |
| |
| **************************************************************************** |
| * General * |
| **************************************************************************** |
| |
| Qt library |
| ---------- |
| |
| New classes have been added to the Qt Library including a |
| class to add splash screens to applications (QSplashScreen), a toolbox |
| widget that provides a column of tabbed widgets (QToolBox), and a |
| class to manage per-thread data storage (QThreadStorage). |
| |
| The SQL module received a fair bit of attention this time. The most |
| notable improvements include a native IBM DB2 driver, complete support |
| for stored procedures including the possibility to access |
| out-parameters, and native support for 64 bit fields without having to |
| convert to or from strings. We also added support for setting |
| connection parameters. This way you can, for example, conveniently |
| open an SSL connection to a MySQL or PostgreSQL database. If you need |
| even more customization, e.g. for an Oracle database, you can set up |
| the connection yourself and instantiate a Qt driver object on top of |
| it. An extended SQL cursor class has been added that makes it more |
| convenient to display result sets from general SQL queries |
| (QSqlSelectCursor). QSqlDatabase::tables() is now capable to return |
| tables, views and/or system tables. In addition, you can add custom |
| database drivers without compiling them as plugins |
| (see QSqlDatabase::registerSqlDriver()). |
| |
| QLineEdit, the one-line text editor, now supports validation input |
| masks. The feature complements the previous QValidator concept and |
| allows e.g. restriction of input to the IP address format (mask |
| "990.990.990.990;_"), or to ISO date format (mask "0000-90-90;0"). |
| |
| Qt's unicode code support has been extended. Most notably, full |
| support for Indic scripts has been added, covering writing systems |
| such as Devanagari, Tamil and Bengali. The group of right to left |
| writing systems has been extended with support for Syriac. Both |
| improvements are available on both Windows with Uniscribe installed, |
| and on Unix/X11 when using XFT with OpenType fonts. |
| |
| All tool classes that support STL-like iterators with begin() and |
| end(), contain two extra functions constBegin() and constEnd(). The |
| const versions always return const iterators, and thus can be a little |
| bit faster with Qt's implicitly shared containers. |
| |
| QPainter's complex drawText() function has been highly |
| optimized. Despite its support for complex unicode scripts, it now |
| performs better than its less unicode-capable counterpart in Qt 2.3. |
| |
| QPixmap now supports pixmaps with alpha channel (semi transparency) on |
| all Windows versions except Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0. |
| |
| The print dialog now supports "selection" as a print range as well as |
| the possibility to enable/disable all different printer options |
| individually. |
| |
| On Windows, the Qt installation includes a toolbar for Visual Studio.NET |
| that provides an integration of the Qt tools (ie. Qt Designer) with the |
| IDE. |
| |
| Many classes were improved; see the detailed overview that follows. |
| |
| Qt Motif Extension |
| ------------------ |
| |
| Dialog handling has matured and has been extended since the |
| extension's introduction in Qt 3.1. The documentation and code |
| examples have been improved, including a walkthrough that covers the |
| complete migration of a real-world Motif example to Qt. The process |
| contains four intermediate steps where the application utilizes both |
| toolkits. |
| |
| ActiveQt Extension |
| ------------------ |
| |
| Type handling has been extended on both the container and the server |
| side. The new supported types are byte arrays and 64bit integers. The |
| QAxServer module supports aggregation, as well as QObject subclasses as |
| return and parameter types of slots, and allows error reporting through |
| COM exceptions. |
| The Designer integration has been extended to support property dialogs |
| implemented by the control server. |
| Controls developed with ActiveQt support aggregation, which makes it |
| possible to use them in containers that require this form of containment to |
| be supported. ActiveQt also supports masked controls in containers that |
| support this for window'ed controls. |
| |
| Qt Designer |
| ----------- |
| |
| The popup menu editor has been rewritten. The new editor provides the |
| the ability to add, edit and remove menus and menu items directly in |
| the menubar and in the popup menu. Navigation and editing can be done |
| using either the mouse or the keyboard. |
| |
| The property editor now allows editing of properties with or'd values |
| (sets). |
| |
| Designer also supports the new QToolBox widget in a similar fashion to |
| QTabWidget, etc. |
| |
| Qt Assistant |
| ------------ |
| |
| Profiles have been introduced to allow applications to extend the use |
| of Qt Assistant as a help system. Profiles describe the documentation |
| to use so that only application specific documentation will be |
| referenced in an end user installation. Profiles also allow some |
| customization of the look in Qt Assistant. For detailed information, |
| see the helpdemo example in $QTDIR/examples/helpdemo. |
| |
| Profiles replace the content files and categories system. The |
| following command line options are removed since they no longer serve |
| any purpose: addContentFile, removeContentFile, category, and |
| disableFirstRun. |
| |
| Qt Assistant has multiple tabs for browsing, therefore enabling |
| multiple pages to be browsed without opening a new window. |
| |
| It is possible to specify a default home page. |
| |
| It is possible to specify a PDF reader so that urls to PDF files can |
| be opened from Qt Assistant. |
| |
| Compilers |
| --------- |
| |
| Note: Qt 3.2 is the last version to officially support IRIX MIPSpro |
| o32 and Sun CC 5.0. A script, $QTDIR/bin/qt32castcompat, is provided |
| for 3.2 which needs to be run for these compilers. |
| |
| Miscellaneous |
| ------------- |
| |
| Users of the 3.2.0 beta releases please note: The QWidgetContainerPlugin |
| interfaces was removed from the final release due to some serious issues. |
| |
| **************************************************************************** |
| * Library * |
| **************************************************************************** |
| |
| - QAction / QActionGroup |
| Simplified constructors so that it is no longer necessary to |
| specify texts for buttons and menu items separately. |
| For action groups, we fixed the enable/disable behavior. If |
| an action inside an action group is explicitly disabled, it is |
| no longer implicitly enabled together with the group. |
| This is identical to enabling/disabling widgets and their |
| children. |
| |
| - QApplication |
| Added the aboutQt() slot for convenience. |
| |
| - QAssistantClient |
| Added the new function, setArguments(), that invokes Qt |
| Assistant in different modes. |
| |
| - QAxBase |
| Added the new function, asVariant(), that passes a COM |
| object through dynamicCall(). |
| |
| - QAxBindable |
| Added the new function, reportError(), that sends error |
| information to the ActiveX client. |
| |
| - QColor |
| Added the new static function, colorNames(), that retrieves a |
| list of all color names known to Qt. |
| |
| - QDeepCopy |
| Now also supports QDir, QFileInfo, and QStringList. |
| |
| - QDom |
| Now has long and ulong support for setAttribute() and |
| setAttributeNS(). |
| |
| - QFont |
| Added the new properties: stretch and overline. Added the new |
| function, resolve(), that copies unspecified attributes from |
| one font to another. |
| |
| - QFontDataBase |
| Added a new overload for families() that restricts the |
| returned list to fonts supporting a specific QFont::Script, |
| e.g. QFont::Greek, QFont::Devanagari or QFont::Arabic. |
| |
| - QFontInfo / QFontMetrics |
| Added new constructors that force the info and metrics objects |
| to use a given QFont::Script. |
| |
| - QGLWidget |
| Added a new constructor that takes a QGLContext |
| parameter. Makes the undocumented setContext() obsolete. |
| |
| - QHeader |
| Added getters for the sort indicator (sortIndicatorSection() |
| and sortIndicatorOrder() ). |
| |
| - QImage |
| Added a new overload for save() that writes to a given |
| QIODevice*. |
| |
| - QListView |
| Added tristate support to check list items |
| (QCheckListItem::setTristate()). Added the new function, |
| setSelectionAnchor(), to set the list view's selection anchor |
| explicitly. |
| |
| - QLineEdit |
| Added input masks: setInputMask(), inputMask(), and |
| hasAcceptableInput(). Added new function selectionStart() |
| which returns the index of the first selected character in the |
| line edit. |
| |
| - QMacStyle |
| Added customizable focus rectangle policy. |
| |
| - QMessageBox |
| Added the new static function, question(), that complements |
| the existing information(), warning() and fatal() functions. |
| |
| - QMotifDialog [Qt Motif Extension] |
| Now has two distinct modes of operation: 1) it allows a Motif |
| dialog to have a Qt parent, and 2) it allows a Qt dialog to have |
| a Motif parent. |
| |
| - QMYSQLDriver |
| Better support for MySQL/embedded. |
| |
| - QPixmapCache |
| Added the new function, remove(), to explicitly remove a |
| pixmap from the cache. |
| |
| - QPrinter |
| Added the new functions: setPrintRange(), printRange(), |
| setOptionEnabled(), and optionEnabled(). For Windows only, |
| added the new function, setWinPageSize(), that allows setting |
| DEVMODE.dmPaperSize directly. |
| |
| - QPtrList |
| Added STL-like iterators with begin(), end(), and erase(). |
| |
| - QScrollBar |
| Maintains a user defined size policy when the direction |
| changes. |
| |
| - QSplashScreen [new] |
| This new widget class provides a splash screen to be shown |
| during application startup. |
| |
| - QSplitter |
| Added the new properties: opaqueResize, childrenCollapsible, |
| and handleWidth. |
| |
| - QSqlError |
| Added a couple of convenience functions: text(), which returns |
| the concatenated database and driver texts. showMessage(), |
| which will pop up a QMessageBox with the text that text() |
| returns. |
| |
| - QSqlQuery |
| Added overloads for the bindValue() call which makes it |
| possible to specifiy what role a bound value should have: In, |
| Out or InOut. |
| |
| - QSqlSelectCursor [new] |
| This new QSqlCursor subclass provides browsing of general SQL |
| SELECT statements. |
| |
| - QSqlDatabase |
| Added overloaded tables() call which can return tables, views |
| and/or system tables. |
| |
| - QPSQLDriver |
| Calling tables() with no arguments will only return table names, |
| instead of table and view names as in Qt 3.1. |
| The new tables() call in QSqlDatabase can be used to get |
| table and/or view names. |
| |
| - QString |
| Added 64 bit support. Added the new functions: multiArg(), |
| reserve(), capacity(), squeeze(). Added case insensitive |
| overloads for startsWith() and endsWidth(). |
| |
| - QStringList |
| Added the new function gres(). |
| |
| - QStyle |
| Added support for toolbox, header, MDI frame, table grid line |
| color, line edit password character, and message box question. |
| |
| - QSyntaxHighlighter |
| Added the new function, currentParagraph(). |
| |
| - QTabWidget |
| Added support for custom widgets to be placed beside |
| the tab bar: setCornerWidget() and cornerWidget(). |
| |
| - QTextEdit |
| In Log mode, added the new functions: setMaxLogLines() and |
| maxLogLines(). Implemented insertAt() for LogText mode. |
| |
| - QThreadStorage [new] |
| This new tool class provides per-thread data storage, also |
| referred to as thread local storage or TLS. |
| |
| - QToolBox [new] |
| This new widget class provides a column of tabbed widgets, one |
| above the other, with the current page displayed below the |
| current tab. |
| |
| - QVariant |
| Added support for LongLong and ULongLong. |
| |
| - QWidget |
| Added a new widget flag, WNoAutoErase, that combines the now |
| obsolete WResizeNoErase and WRepaintNoErase flags. |
