Tcl/Tk 8.4.2 Release Announcement
March 3, 2003
The Tcl Core Team is pleased to announce the 8.4.2 releases of the Tcl
scripting language and the Tk toolkit. This is the second patch release
of Tcl/Tk 8.4. More details can be found below. We would like to
express our gratitude to all those who submit bug reports and patches.
This information is invaluable in enabling us to identify and eliminate
problems in the core.
Where to get the new releases:
------------------------------
Tcl/Tk 8.4.2 sources are freely available as open source from the
Tcl Developer Xchange web site at:
http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/8.4.html
This web page also contains additional information about the releases,
including new features and notes about installing and compiling the
releases. Sources are always available from the Tcl SourceForge
project's file distribution area:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=10894
Windows, Linux, Solaris and HP-UX binaries are available from:
http://www.activestate.com/Tcl
For additional information:
---------------------------
Please visit the Tcl Developer Xchange web site:
http://www.tcl.tk/
This site contains a variety of information about Tcl/Tk in general, the
core Tcl and Tk distributions, Tcl development tools, and much more.
Thank you for your contributions:
---------------------------------
As usual, this release includes contributions from the Tcl community.
We have a page honoring these contributors at:
http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/contributors.html
Summary of Changes since Tcl/Tk 8.4.1:
--------------------------------------
The following were the main changes in Tcl/Tk 8.4.2. A complete list
can be found in the changes file at the root of the source tree. The
more complete ChangeLog is also included with each source release. This
is a patch release, so it primarily included bug fixes and corrections
to erratic behavior. Below are only the most notable changes.
* Corrected some execution traces that were not firing.
* Multiple signs no longer accepted as valid integer.
[string is integer ++1] => 0
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* Revisited Tcl/Tk finalization and reloading to allow for repeat
load/unload of Tcl correctly.
* Negative return codes now propagated correctly by procs.
* Syntax error in [expr 0x] now detected.
* [catch {return}] properly returns 2 (was 0).
* Corrected 'file atime|mtime' for non-ascii paths.
* Corrected crash from 'dde eval' with {} service name.
* Several command trace corrections.
* Corrected [info loaded {}] for static packages in multiple interps.
* Corrected MT-safety for [clock format].
* Corrected [info complete] from stopping at NULL char.
* Command rename traces get fully-qualified names.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* Improved VFS file performance across platforms.
Notably [glob] on Windows is 2.5 times faster.
* Added `make valgrind` target to Unix makefile.
* Lack of Cygwin support indicated by configure error. Cygwin is
currently not supported, although mingw still is.
* [glob -types l] missed broken symlinks on Unix.
* Accept non-ASCII7 for $::tcl_platform(user) on Win.
* Correct crash when Tcl_DeleteEvents deletes last event.
* Fixed parser that missed some missing ] syntax errors.
* Memory leak during command rename plugged.
* Reduced per-thread memory overhead.
* Use xnet library on HP 11 (64 bit).
* Corrected jis round-trip encoding.
* Stop MacOSX hang trying to read a write-only pipe.
* Added cut and splice C API functions for file channels on Mac.
* Fixed [binary scan] failures on some wide ints.
* Plugged data leak during thread exit.
* [pkg_mkIndex -load] now does a case-insensitive match.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* Made [place info] complete and bring into line with other geometry
managers.
* Better handling for half-dead windows.
* Better handling of narrow scrollbars on OSX.
* Made the [text see] work when the widget is unmapped.
* Stopped [wm withdraw] and [wm transient] from interfering with each
other.
* Made sure that Tk always knows whether its windows are mapped or not.
* Clip long lines so they show correctly even when they hit
windowing-system limits.
* Stopped selection handling crashes under KDE3.0.
* Image creation cannot trigger Tk's death.
* Corrected entering data for Entry when the mouse button is pressed.
* Make canvas item coordinate list handling consistent to stop
segfaults. Cannot now create items without coordinates.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* Better support for themed and animated cursors on OSX.
* Stopped motion events from morphing into button press and motion
events.
* Removed memory leak in GIF image loader.
* Made OSX menus support UTF8 text and icons.
* Stop message boxes from getting extremely wide.
* Make focus behaviour of spinboxes more like entries.
* New demo showing off Tk's Unicode font handling.
* Bring event handling more into line with the OSX standard.
Also improves "dead key" handling.
* Improvements to [panedwindow] pane size and sash handling.
* Stopped read of freed memory when working with large composite fonts.
* Stopped crash in Windows XP scrollbar handling. Windows scrollbars
now appear "disabled" when there is nothing to scroll, in accordance
with the native style.
*** POTENTIAL VISUAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* Stopped panedwindow from crashing when embedded in a window with a
different visual to the root window.
* Limit the screen-size of [tk_get*File] file type selection menu.
* Rework standard dialogs to use [grid].
* Correct boolean return value of Entry/Spinbox 'selection present'
and Listbox 'selection includes' when disabled.
* Improved display of indicators in disabled checkbuttons and
radiobuttons.
* Make Tk pick the first best matching font on the font path.
*** POTENTIAL VISUAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
* Fixed conversion of apple event parameters to posix path names.
* Implemented simple XOR text drawing in Tk_DrawChars on Windows.
* Make %-substitutions for events only read data out of the event
structure when that field is valid for that event type.
*** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
--
Tcl Core Team and Maintainers
Jeff Hobbs, Tcl Core Release Manager
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