Announce: Win32::GUI V1.04

I am please to announce that v1.04 of Win32::GUI is available for
download from SourceForge and CPAN.

Win32::GUI is a Perl extension allowing creation of native Win32 GUI
applications.

MORE INFORMATION

Project Homepage:
http://perl-win32-gui.sourceforge.net/

Project summary:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/perl-win32-gui/

Downloads:
- Source and ActiveState Perl PPM distributions:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=16572
- Source only:
http://search.cpan.org/~robertmay/Win32-GUI-1.04/

Release notes:
https://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=455 710

RELEASE NOTES AND CHANGES

NAME
Win32::GUI::ReleaseNotes::RN_1_04 - This is the release notes for
Version 1.04 of Win32::GUI

Release Date
15th October, 2006.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION
This section details issues that are essential to understand when
upgrading from earlier versions of Win32::GUI.

Exported Constants
The way that Win32::GUI exports constants has changed. Ensure that you
read the "Deprecated feature status" section of this document so that
you understand the backwards compatibility issues.

Dual-life modules
This version of Win32::GUI includes the modules Win32::GUI::AxWindow,
Win32::GUI::DIBitmap, Win32::GUI::Grid, and Win32::GUI::Scintilla
(originally by Laurent Rocher: ).

Please uninstall any previous versions of these modules that you may
have installed before installing this version of Win32::GUI.

Summary of Changes
This is a summary of changes between V1.03 and V1.04 See the CHANGELOG
file in the distribution for the full detail.

New Features
New Packages
Win32::GUI::AxWindow
Win32::GUI::Constants
Win32::GUI::DIBitmap
Win32::GUI::DropFiles
Win32::GUI::Grid
Win32::GUI::Scintilla
Win32::GUI::ReleaseNotes

New Methods
Win32::GUI
Acceptfiles (Tracker: 1323988), Animate (Tracker: 1266930),
ClassData, GetKeyState, SetWindowPos (Tracker: 1469648).

Win32::GUI::Region
ExtCreateRegion (Tracker: 1469648), GetRegionData.

Win32::GUI::Tooltip
AdjustRect, GetBubbleSize, SetTitle.

New Events
For all Windows
DropFiles (Tracker: 1323988).

New Documentation
Win32::GUI::ListBox
Better documentation for the differences between SetCurSel and
SetSel (Tracker: 1177898).

Win32::GUI::Textfield
Correct documentation for -autohscroll and -autovscroll.

Win32::GUI::Tooltip
Complete documentation for the Win32::GUI::Tooltip class

Other Features
Better dialog navigation for Textfields
can now be used to move out of a multi-line Textfield when
using the -dialogui option on a Window.

A -wantreturn option has been added to stop the key firing
the default Click event for a multi-line Textfield when using the
-dialogui option on a Window. This replaces the previous use of
"-addstyle => ES_WANTRETURN".

Ballon tooltips for NotifyIcon
The Win32::GUI::NotifyIcon package has been re-worked. There is now
no need to use the -id option, and balloon tooltips are
supported on
Win2k and above. (Tracker: 1065072)

More options for Win32::GUI::DoEvents()
It is now possible to select which messages you want to process
with
DoEvents.

More ways to create cursors, icons and bitmaps
The Cursor, Icon and Bitmap constructors have been enhanced to
allow
creation from resources, including the "standard" windows
resources.
See the standard_images.pl sample to browse the standard resources.

Easier way to browse and run the demos
A new script win32-gui-demos will be installed in your perl bin
directory. You should be able to get a full list of the sample code
distributed with Win32::GUI, view the source and run the demos by
typing "win32-gui-demos" at your command prompt.

Better Splitter implementation
The Win32::GUI::Splitter implementation has been re-written to
provide more robust operation. The splitter bar can no longer be
moved outside the parent window, which used to result in drawing
problems, and the bar itself is now more nicely drawn.
(Tracker:1363141)

The -background option now works for splitter windows.

Better behaviour from LoadLibrary
The Win32::GUI::LoadLibrary() function has been enhanced so that it
converts any passed path to a Win32 representation before trying to
use it. Specifically this means that slashes are canonicalised to
'"\"', and under Cygwin, cygwin style paths are converted to Win32
paths.

Complete re-work of Tooltip class
The Win32::GUI::Tooltip implementation has been re-worked to allow
all the features to be used, and now there should be no crashes
with
many of the methods which had been incorrectly implemented. The new
implementation should be backwards compatible with what was there
before, but read the documentation to find out about all the new
features you can use.

The constructor has some new options "-nofade", "-noamimate"
and the
"-balloon" option is documented. "-balloon" option along with the
new SetTitle method allows you to make use of balloon tooltips.

The events (NeedText, Pop, Show) now have a second parameter
allowing you to correctly determine if the first parameter is a
window handle or a tool id.

Bug Fixes
Reported Bugs
Fix some crashes (Trackers 1243378 and 1248578)
Fix some memory leaks (Tracker: 1201190)
Fix drawing problems with coloured backgrounds (Tracker:1363141)

Other Bugs
-background and -foreground options now work for RichEdit windows
The SendMessageTimout implementation now matches the documentation
-truncate option now works correctly for Label windows
SetTabStops() method now works for ListBox windows
The demo code all works
Fix memory leak in Win32::GUI::DIBitmap::AlphaCopyToDC method

Deprecated feature status
This section documents features that have been deprecated in this
release, or in recent releases, and feature that will be deprecated in
up-coming releases.

Win32::GUI::Constants
The introduction of Win32::GUI::Constants means that we now have access
to a very large number of constants, so the current behaviour of
Win32::GUI to export all constants to the calling namespace by default
is no longer appropriate. So, a bare

use Win32::GUI;

now generates a warning that the old default behaviour will be
deprecated - although the export behaviour of Win32::GUI 1.03 is
maintained except for this warning.

To eliminate this warning and correct your script, do one of the
following:

If you don't need any constants, use the empty list:
use Win32::GUI();

If you need some constants, name them explicitly:
use Win32::GUI qw(ES_WANTRETURN CW_USEDEFAULT); # Two
constants exported
use Win32::GUI qw(/^MB_/); # Export all constants starting
with MB_

See the Win32::GUI::Constants documentation for the full allowable
syntax.

You are advised to fix your scripts now, as the next version will stop
exporting any constants by default.

Although not advised, you can suppress the warnings by turning
deprecated warnings off:

no warnings 'deprecated';

Additionally accessing constants from within the Win32::GUI
namespace is
deprecated. I.e.

-addstyle => Win32::GUI::WS_BORDER,

will generate a warning with this release, and will stop working with
the next release. Use one of the following methods instead:

use the Win32::GUI::Constants namespace instead
-addstyle => Win32::GUI::Constants::WS_BORDER(),

use any other namespace you fancy
use Win32::GUI qw(-exportpkg => A::B -autoload);
...
-addstyle => A::B::WS_BORDER(),

maintain compatibility of existing scripts
use Win32::GUI::Constants qw(-exportpkg => Win32::GUI
:compatibility_win32_gui);
...
-addstyle => Win32::GUI::WS_BORDER,

Win32::GUI::NotifyIcon
It is no longer necessary to use the '-id' option to any of the
Win32::GUI::NotifyIcon methods. The ID is now entirely handled
internally. You will receive deprecated warnings if you use it.

In particular, removing Icons from the system tray should be done using

$NI->Remove();

and not by the (now deprecated)

$NI->Delete(-id => 1);

Removal of GUI:: namespace
For at least the last 6 years the Win32::GUI namespace has been aliased
to the GUI namespace for backwards compatibility with very early
scripts. This aliasing has been removed, and any remaining scripts will
need updating.

Contributors to this release
Robert May
Reini Urban
Jeremy White