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authorTimothy Pearson <kb9vqf@pearsoncomputing.net>2011-11-08 12:31:36 -0600
committerTimothy Pearson <kb9vqf@pearsoncomputing.net>2011-11-08 12:31:36 -0600
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+/****************************************************************************
+**
+** Change documentation
+**
+** Copyright (C) 1992-2008 Trolltech ASA. All rights reserved.
+**
+** This file is part of the Qt GUI Toolkit.
+**
+** This file may be used under the terms of the GNU General
+** Public License versions 2.0 or 3.0 as published by the Free
+** Software Foundation and appearing in the files LICENSE.GPL2
+** and LICENSE.GPL3 included in the packaging of this file.
+** Alternatively you may (at your option) use any later version
+** of the GNU General Public License if such license has been
+** publicly approved by Trolltech ASA (or its successors, if any)
+** and the KDE Free Qt Foundation.
+**
+** Please review the following information to ensure GNU General
+** Public Licensing retquirements will be met:
+** http://trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/licensing/opensource/.
+** If you are unsure which license is appropriate for your use, please
+** review the following information:
+** http://trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/licensing/licensingoverview
+** or contact the sales department at sales@trolltech.com.
+**
+** This file may be used under the terms of the Q Public License as
+** defined by Trolltech ASA and appearing in the file LICENSE.QPL
+** included in the packaging of this file. Licensees holding valid Qt
+** Commercial licenses may use this file in accordance with the Qt
+** Commercial License Agreement provided with the Software.
+**
+** This file is provided "AS IS" with NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
+** INCLUDING THE WARRANTIES OF DESIGN, MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR
+** A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. Trolltech reserves all rights not granted
+** herein.
+**
+**********************************************************************/
+
+/*!
+\page keyfeatures30.html
+
+\title Key Features in Qt 3.0
+
+Qt 3.0 adds a lot of new features and improvements over the Qt 2.x
+series. Some internals have undergone major redesign and new classes
+and methods have been added.
+
+We have tried to keep the API of Qt 3.0 as compatible as possible with
+the Qt 2.x series. For most applications only minor changes will be
+needed to compile and run them successfully using Qt 3.0.
+
+One of the major new features that has been added in the 3.0 release
+is a module allowing you to easily work with databases. The API is
+platform independent and database neutral. This module is seamlessly
+integrated into Qt Designer, greatly simplifying the process of
+building database applications and using data aware widgets.
+
+\omit
+Other major new features include a component architecture allowing you
+to build cross platform components, 'plugins' with Qt.
+\endomit
+Other major new features include a plugin architecture. You can use
+your own and third party plugins your own applications.
+The Unicode support of Qt 2.x has been greatly enhanced, it now
+includes full support for scripts written from right to left (e.g.
+Arabic and Hebrew) and also provides improved support for Asian
+languages.
+
+Many new classes have been added to the Qt Library. Amongst them are
+classes that provide a docking architecture
+(\l{QDockArea}/\l{QDockWindow}), a powerful rich text editor
+(QTextEdit), a class to store and access application settings
+(QSettings) and a class to create and communicate with processes
+(QProcess).
+
+Apart from the changes in the library itself a lot has been done to
+make the development of Qt applications with Qt 3.0 even easier than
+before. Two new applications have been added: Qt Linguist is a tool to
+help you translate your application into different languages; Qt
+Assistant is an easy to use help browser for the Qt documentation that
+supports bookmarks and can search by keyword.
+
+Another change concerns the Qt build system, which has been reworked
+to make it a lot easier to port Qt to new platforms. You can use this
+platform independent build system for your own applications.
+
+
+\section1 The Qt Library
+
+A large number of new features has been added to Qt 3.0. The following
+list gives an overview of the most important new and changed aspects
+of the Qt library. A full list of every new method follows the
+overview.
+
+
+\section2 Database support
+
+One of the major new features in Qt 3.0 is the \link sql.html SQL
+module\endlink that provides multiplatform access to SQL databases,
+making database application programming with Qt seamless and portable.
+The API, built with standard SQL, is database-neutral and software
+development is independent of the underlying database.
+
+A collection of tightly focused C++ classes are provided to give the
+programmer direct access to SQL databases. Developers can send raw SQL
+to the database server or have the Qt SQL classes generate SQL queries
+automatically. Drivers for Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL and ODBC are
+available and writing new drivers is straightforward.
+
+Tying the results of SQL queries to GUI components is fully supported
+by Qt's SQL widgets. These classes include a tabular data widget
+(for spreadsheet-like data presentation with in-place editing), a
+form-based data browser (which provides data navigation and edit
+functions) and a form-based data viewer (which provides read-only
+forms). This framework can be extended by using custom field editors,
+allowing for example, a data table to use custom widgets for in-place
+editing. The SQL module fully supports Qt's signal/slots mechanism,
+making it easy for developers to include their own data validation and
+auditing code.
+
+Qt Designer fully supports Qt's SQL module. All SQL widgets can be
+laid out within Qt Designer, and relationships can be established
+between controls visually. Many interactions can be defined purely in
+terms of Qt's signals/slots mechanism directly in Qt Designer.
+
+\omit
+\section2 Component model - plugins
+
+The QLibrary class provides a platform independent wrapper for runtime
+loading of shared libraries. Access to the shared libraries uses a
+COM-like interface. QPluginManager makes it trivial to implement
+plugin support in applications. The Qt library is able to load
+additional styles, database drivers and text codecs from plugins which
+implement the relevant interfaces, e.g. QStyleFactoryInterface,
+QSqlDriverInterface or QTextCodecInterface. It is possible to remove
+unused components from the Qt library, and easy to extend any
+application with 3rd party styles, database drivers or text codecs.
+
+Qt Designer supports custom widgets in plugins, and will use the
+widgets both when designing and previewing forms.
+
+QComponentFactory makes it easy to register any kind of component in a
+global database (e.g. the Windows Registry) and to use any registered
+component.
+\endomit
+\section2 Plugins
+
+The QLibrary class provides a platform independent wrapper for runtime
+loading of shared libraries. QPluginManager makes it trivial to implement
+plugin support in applications. The Qt library is able to load
+additional styles, database drivers and text codecs from plugins.
+
+Qt Designer supports custom widgets in plugins, and will use the
+widgets both when designing and previewing forms.
+
+See the \link plugins-howto.html plugins documentation\endlink.
+
+
+\section2 Rich text engine and editor
+
+The rich text engine originally introduced in Qt 2.0 has been further
+optimized and extended to support editing. It allows editing formatted
+text with different fonts, colors, paragraph styles, tables and
+images. The editor supports different word wrap modes, command-based
+undo/redo, multiple selections, drag and drop, and many other
+features. The new QTextEdit engine is highly optimized for proccesing
+and displaying large documents tquickly and efficiently.
+
+
+\section2 Unicode
+
+Apart from the rich text engine, another new feature of Qt 3.0 that
+relates to text handling is the greatly improved Unicode support. Qt
+3.0 includes an implementation of the bidirectional algorithm (BiDi)
+as defined in the Unicode standard and a shaping engine for Arabic,
+which gives full native language support to Arabic and Hebrew speaking
+people. At the same time the support for Asian languages has been
+greatly enhanced.
+
+The support is almost transparent for the developer using Qt to
+develop their applications. This means that developers who developed
+applications using Qt 2.x will automatically gain the full support for
+these languages when switching to Qt 3.0. Developers can rely on their
+application to work for people using writing systems different from
+Latin1, without having to worry about the complexities involved with
+these scripts, as Qt takes care of this automatically.
+
+
+\section2 Docked and Floating Windows
+
+Qt 3.0 introduces the concept of Dock Windows and Dock Areas. Dock
+windows are widgets, that can be attached to, and detached from, dock
+areas. The commonest kind of dock window is a tool bar. Any number of
+dock windows may be placed in a dock area. A main window can have dock
+areas, for example, QMainWindow provides four dock areas (top, left,
+bottom, right) by default. The user can freely move dock windows and
+place them at a convenient place in a dock area, or drag them out of
+the application and have them float freely as top level windows in
+their own right. Dock windows can also be minimized or hidden.
+
+For developers, dock windows behave just like ordinary widgets. QToolbar
+for example is now a specialized subclass of a dock window. The API
+of QMainWindow and QToolBar is source compatible with Qt 2.x, so
+existing code which uses these classes will continue to work.
+
+
+\section2 Regular Expressions
+
+Qt has always provided regular expression support, but that support
+was pretty much limited to what was retquired in common GUI control
+elements such as file dialogs. Qt 3.0 introduces a new regular
+expression engine, QRegExp, that supports most of Perl's regex
+features and is Unicode based. The most useful additions are support
+for parentheses (capturing and non-capturing) and backreferences.
+
+
+\section2 Storing application settings
+
+Most programs will need to store some settings between runs, for
+example, user selected fonts, colors and other preferences, or a list
+of recently used files. The new QSettings class provides a platform
+independent way to achieve this goal. The API makes it easy to store
+and retrieve most of the basic data types used in Qt (such as basic
+C++ types, strings, lists, colors, etc). The class uses the registry
+on the Windows platform and traditional resource files on Unix.
+
+
+\section2 Creating and controlling other processes
+
+QProcess is a class that allows you to start other programs from
+within a Qt application in a platform independent manner. It gives you
+full control over the started program, for example you can redirect
+the input and output of console applications.
+
+
+\section2 Accessibility
+
+Accessibility means making software usable and accessible to a wide
+range of users, including those with disabilities. In Qt 3.0, most
+widgets provide accessibility information for assistive tools that can
+be used by a wide range of disabled users. Qt standard widgets like
+buttons or range controls are fully supported. Support for complex
+widgets, like e.g. QListView, is in development. Existing applications
+that make use of standard widgets will become accessible just by using
+Qt 3.0.
+
+Qt uses the Active Accessibility infrastructure on Windows, and needs
+the MSAA SDK, which is part of most platform SDKs. With improving
+standardization of accessibility on other platforms, Qt will support
+assistive technologies on other systems, too.
+
+
+\section2 XML Improvements
+
+The XML framework introduced in Qt 2.2 has been vastly improved. Qt
+2.2 already supported level 1 of the Document Object Model (DOM), a
+W3C standard for accessing and modifying XML documents. Qt 3.0 has
+added support for DOM Level 2 and XML namespaces.
+
+The XML parser has been extended to allow incremental parsing of XML
+documents. This allows you to start parsing the document directly
+after the first parts of the data have arrived, and to continue
+whenever new data is available. This is especially useful if the XML
+document is read from a slow source, e.g. over the network, as it
+allows the application to start working on the data at a very early
+stage.
+
+
+\section2 SVG support
+
+SVG is a W3C standard for "Scalable Vector Graphics". Qt 3.0's XML
+support means that QPicture can optionally generate and import static
+SVG documents. All the SVG features that have an equivalent in
+QPainter are supported.
+
+
+\section2 Multihead support
+
+Many professional applications, such as DTP and CAD software, are able
+to display data on two or more monitors. In Qt 3.0 the QDesktopWidget
+class provides the application with runtime information about the
+number and geometry of the desktops on the different monitors and such
+allows applications to efficiently use a multi-monitor setup.
+
+The virtual desktop of Mac OS X, Windows 98, and 2000 is supported, as well
+as the traditional multi-screen and the newer Xinerama multihead setups on
+X11.
+
+
+\section2 X11 specific enhancements
+
+Qt 3.0 now complies with the NET WM Specification, recently adopted
+by KDE 2.0. This allows easy integration and proper execution with
+desktop environments that support the NET WM specification.
+
+The font handling on X11 has undergone major changes. QFont no longer
+has a one-to-one relation with window system fonts. QFont is now a
+logical font that can load multiple window system fonts to simplify
+Unicode text display. This completely removes the burden of
+changing/setting fonts for a specific locale/language from the
+programmer. For end-users, any font can be used in any locale. For
+example, a user in Norway will be able to see Korean text without
+having to set their locale to Korean.
+
+Qt 3.0 also supports the new render extension recently added to
+XFree86. This adds support for anti aliased text and pixmaps with
+alpha channel (semi transparency) on the systems that support the
+rendering extension (at the moment XFree 4.0.3 and later).
+
+
+\section2 Printing
+
+Printing support has been enhanced on all platforms. The QPrinter
+class now supports setting a virtual resolution for the painting
+process. This makes WYSIWYG printing trivial, and also allows you to
+take full advantage of the high resolution of a printer when painting
+on it.
+
+The postscript driver built into Qt and used on Unix has been greatly
+enhanced. It supports the embedding of true/open type and type1 fonts
+into the document, and can correctly handle and display Unicode.
+Support for fonts built into the printer has been enhanced and Qt now
+knows about the most common printer fonts used for Asian languages.
+
+
+\section2 QHttp
+
+This class provides a simple interface for HTTP downloads and uploads.
+
+
+\section2 Compatibility with the Standard Template Library (STL)
+
+Support for the C++ Standard Template Library has been added to the
+\link qt-template-lib.html Qt Template Library (QTL)\endlink. The QTL
+classes now contain appropriate copy constructors and typedefs so that
+they can be freely mixed with other STL containers and algorithms. In
+addition, new member functions have been added to QTL template classes
+which correspond to STL-style naming conventions (e.g., push_back()).
+
+
+\section1 Qt Designer
+
+\link designer-manual.book Qt Designer\endlink was a pure dialog
+editor in Qt 2.2 but has now been extended to provide the full
+functionality of a GUI design tool.
+
+This includes the ability to lay out main windows with menus and
+toolbars. Actions can be edited within Qt Designer and then plugged
+into toolbars and menu bars via drag and drop. Splitters can now be
+used in a way similar to layouts to group widgets horizontally or
+vertically.
+
+In Qt 2.2, many of the dialogs created by Qt Designer had to be
+subclassed to implement functionality beyond the predefined signal and
+slot connections. Whilst the subclassing approach is still fully supported,
+Qt Designer now offers an alternative: a plugin for editing
+slots. The editor offers features such as syntax highlighting,
+completion, parentheses matching and incremental search.
+
+The functionality of Qt Designer can now be extended via plugins.
+Using Qt Designer's interface or by implementing one of the provided
+interfaces in a plugin, a two way communication between plugin and Qt
+Designer can be established. This functionality is used to implement
+plugins for custom widgets, so that they can be used as real widgets
+inside the designer.
+
+Basic support for project management has been added. This allows you
+to read and edit *.pro files, add and remove files to/from the project
+and do some global operations on the project. You can now open the
+project file and have one-click access to all the *.ui forms in the
+project.
+
+In addition to generating code via uic, Qt Designer now supports the
+dynamic creation of widgets directly from XML user interface
+description files (*.ui files) at runtime. This eliminates the need of
+recompiling your application when the GUI changes, and could be used
+to enable your customers to do their own customizations. Technically,
+the feature is provided by a new class, QWidgetFactory in the
+QResource library.
+
+
+\section1 Qt Linguist
+
+\link linguist-manual.book Qt Linguist\endlink is a GUI utility to
+support translating the user-visible text in applications written with
+Qt. It comes with two command-line tools: lupdate and lrelease.
+
+Translation of a Qt application is a three-step process:
+
+\list
+ \i Run lupdate to extract user-visible text from the C++ source
+ code of the Qt application, resulting in a translation source file
+ (a *.ts file).
+ \i Provide translations for the source texts in the *.ts file using
+ Qt Linguist.
+ \i Run lrelease to obtain a light-weight message file (a *.qm file)
+ from the *.ts file, which provides very fast lookup for released
+ applications.
+\endlist
+
+Qt Linguist is a tool suitable for use by translators. Each
+user-visible (source) text is characterized by the text itself, a
+context (usually the name of the C++ class containing the text), and
+an optional comment to help the translator. The C++ class name will
+usually be the name of the relevant dialog, and the comment will often
+contain instructions that describe how to navigate to the relevant
+dialog.
+
+You can create phrase books for Qt Linguist to provide common
+translations to help ensure consistency and to speed up the
+translation process. Whenever a translator navigates to a new text to
+translate, Qt Linguist uses an intelligent algorithm to provide a list
+of possible translations: the list is composed of relevant text from
+any open phrase books and also from identical or similar text that has
+already been translated.
+
+Once a translation is complete it can be marked as "done"; such
+translations are included in the *.qm file. Text that has not been
+"done" is included in the *.qm file in its original form. Although Qt
+Linguist is a GUI application with dock windows and mouse control,
+toolbars, etc., it has a full set of keyboard shortcuts to make
+translation as fast and efficient as possible.
+
+When the Qt application that you're developing evolves (e.g. from
+version 1.0 to version 1.1), the utility lupdate merges the source
+texts from the new version with the previous translation source file,
+reusing existing translations. In some typical cases, lupdate may
+suggest translations. These translations are marked as unfinished, so
+you can easily find and check them.
+
+
+\section1 Qt Assistant
+
+Thanks to the positive feedback we received about the help system
+built into \link designer-manual.book Qt Designer\endlink, we decided
+to offer this part as a separate application called \link
+assistant.book Qt Assistant\endlink. Qt Assistant can be used to
+browse the Qt class documentation as well as the manuals for Qt
+Designer and Qt Linguist. It offers index searching, a contents
+overview, bookmarks history and incremental search. Qt Assistant is
+used by both Qt Designer and Qt Linguist for browsing their help
+documentation.
+
+
+\section1 qmake
+
+To ease portability we now provide the \link qmake-manual.book
+qmake\endlink utility to replace tmake. QMake is a C++ version of
+tmake which offers additional functionallity that is difficult to
+reproduce in tmake. Trolltech uses qmake in its build system for Qt
+and related products and we have released it as free software.
+
+*/