Path: ...!postnews.google.com!news3.google.com!out01a.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!in04.usenetserver.com!news.usenetserver.com!wesley.videotron.net!newsfeed.east.grouptelecom.net!news.east.grouptelecom.net!not-for-mail
From: Jeff Hobbs <jeffh@activestate.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.tcl
Subject: ANNOUNCE: Tcl/Tk 8.5a6 release
Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:33:32 -0700
Organization: Group Telecom - a 360networks Company
Lines: 161
Message-ID: <f15cs7$4kv$1@utornnr1pp.grouptelecom.net>
NNTP-Posting-Host: remote.activestate.com
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Trace: utornnr1pp.grouptelecom.net 1177958087 4767 209.17.146.129 (30 Apr 2007 18:34:47 GMT)
X-Complaints-To: abuse@gt.ca
NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 30 Apr 2007 18:34:47 +0000 (UTC)
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.0 (Windows/20070326)

Tcl/Tk 8.5a6 Release Announcement
April 26, 2007

The Tcl Core Team is pleased to announce the 8.5a6 releases of the Tcl
dynamic language and the Tk toolkit.  This is the sixth alpha release of
Tcl/Tk 8.5.  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 8.5a6 sources are freely available as open source from the Tcl
Developer Xchange web site at:

	http://www.tcl.tk/software/tcltk/8.5.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

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 8.5a5:
--------------------------------------

The following were the main changes in Tcl/Tk 8.5a6.  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 an alpha release of 8.5.  The alpha moniker means that it is in
feature addition mode.  All relevant bug fixes (and some more) up to and
including 8.4.14 changes are included in 8.5a6.  The following list
focuses on new features added so far in 8.5.  This release is a
development release, and should only be considered for deployment use
after considerable testing.

    * Ensure the Tcl call stack always has a CallFrame, even at level 0.
      *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY for users of tclInt.h ***

    * Tcl_PushCallFrame and [info level] enhanced for ensemble rewrites.
      *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY ***
      *** for [info level 0] on interp alias ***

    * Replace {expand} with {*}
      *** POTENTIAL INCOMPATIBILITY with previous 8.5 alphas only ***

    * [TIP 274] Expression operator is right associative

    * [TIP 272] Added [lreverse] and [string reverse] commands

    * [TIP 261] [namespace import] returns list of imported commands

    * [TIP 270] New C routines Tcl_ObjPrintf, Tcl_AppendObjToErrorInfo,
      Tcl_Format, Tcl_AppendLimitedToObj, Tcl_AppendFormatToObj,
      Tcl_AppendPrintfToObj

    * [TIP 269] Added [string is list] classification command

    * [TIP 174] Added commands corresponding to most expr operators in
      ::tcl::mathop

    * [TIP 280] Added [info frame] command for more Tcl-level debugging
      information

    * [TIP 298] Change Tcl_GetBignumAndClearObj to Tcl_TakeBignumFromObj

    * [TIP 287] Added [chan pending] subcommand

    * [TIP 299] Added isqrt() expr operator

    * [TIP 267] Added -ignorestderr option to exec

    * [TIP 291] Added ::tcl_platform(pointerSize) key

    * Fix 64-bit handling of select() on unix where fd was greater
      than 32

    * Moved TCL_REG_BOSONLY from tcl.h to tclInt.h

    * Use SHLIB_SUFFIX=".so" on HP-UX IA64 (was ".sl")

    * Handle Windows NT \\?\... extended paths where possible

    * Improved Windows time zone tables to handle new US DST rules

    * Improved Y2038 compliance of zoneinfo files

    * Added bytecode compilation for global, variable, upvar and
      namespace upvar

    * [TIP 48] Addition of themed tk widgets to Tk as Ttk (themed Tk).
      Adds ttk::notebook, ttk::sizegrip, ttk::combobox, ttk::panedwindow,
      ttk::progressbar, ttk::menubutton, ttk::button, ttk::radiobutton,
      ttk::checkbutton, ttk::treeview, ttk::separator, ttk::scrollbar,
      ttk::entry, ttk::frame and ttk::labelframe widgets.
      Adds ttk::style command for theme control.

    * [TIP 300] Added [font actual $font $char]

    * [TIP 286] Added [$menu xposition] subcommand

    * Allow empty value for -selectforeground option

    * Aqua: Improve OS X Carbon event handling

    * Aqua: remove Tk-internal double buffering that is wasteful on Aqua

    * Aqua: add all OS theme colors/brushes (patterns) as system colors

    * Aqua: use OS theme for tk_dialog and bgerror

    * Aqua: add 'none' cursor & missing theme cursors

    * Aqua: [tk_getOpenFile -parent] uses sheet dialog

    * Aqua: fix <<MenuSelect>> support

    * Aqua: improve event processing during nested event loops

    * Aqua: add wm attributes -topmost, -fullscreen and -transparent

    * Aqua: correct composite attribute handling in
      [tk::unsupported::MacWindowStyle] and add new attributes;
      allow changing window class of already existing windows.

    * Aqua: add tcl document extensions and mime type to Wish.app's
      Info.plist

    * Windows: Fix unicode character underline in menus

    * Windows: Add -transparentcolor wm attribute

    * X11: enable --enable-xft by default when available

    * X11: Improved EWMH support for _NET_WM_PID and _NET_WM_PING

--

Tcl Core Team and Maintainers
Jeff Hobbs, Tcl Core Release Manager