Qt 2.1 introduces new features as well as many improvements over the

2.0.x series. This file will only give an overview of the main changes

since version 2.0.2.  A complete list would simply be too large to be

useful.  For more detail see the online documentation which is included

in this distribution, and also available on

http://qt.nokia.com/doc/

The Qt version 2.1 series is binary compatible with the 2.0.x

series - applications compiled for 2.0 will continue to run with 2.1.

As with previous Qt releases, the API and functionality of Qt is

completely portable between Microsoft Windows and X11.  It is also portable

between Windows 95, 98 and NT; unlike most toolkits, Qt lets a single

executable work on all three.

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*			    Overview					   *

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As usual, large sections of the documentation have been revised and

lots of new documentation has been added.

Much work went into existing classes, based on all the feedback we got

from our users. A warm thank you to you all at this point, we honestly

hope to satisfy most of your wishes with the new release.

Among the things that got a lot of polishing is the new geometry

management system that was introduced with the 2.x series. Some

classes, such as QBoxLayout, have been rewritten and many size hints

and size policies were optimized. As usual with newly introduced

systems, the occasional bug has been fixed as well. As a result,

layout in Qt-2.1 is not only nicer but also faster.

Big parts of the file dialog have been rewritten. It is now

synchronized in terms of features with the common Windows dialog,

including fancy drag'n'drop and in-place renaming. You can customize

both parts of the dialog, the front-end with info and preview widgets,

the back-end with different network protocols (see the QFileDialog and

QNetworkProtocol documentation for details).

Especially interesting for dynamic Qt applications is the newly

introduced property system. Many interesting things, from scripting up

to graphical user interface builders, become easier. The technology

requires a new macro Q_PROPERTY and a new revision of Qt's meta object

compiler (moc). See the Qt documentation for details.

Due to strong customer demand, we added a cross-platform way to easily

implement multi-document interfaces (known as 'MDI'). The widget is

called QWorkspace and makes this task trivial.

On X11, text dropping from Motif drag'n'drop applications has been

added, to make your Qt applications inter-operable with those Motif

applications that survived Y2K.

The rich text system, first introduced in Qt-2.0, has been

revised. Apart from great speed improvements, it now supports HTML

tables as well as floating images.

QMultiLineEdit, the text input field in Qt, got the missing word wrap

functionality. It's probably the last big extension we will add to

that widget. In Qt 3.0, it will be replaced by a fancier, faster and

more powerful QTextEdit widget that also deals with different colors

and fonts in a way similar to the existing QTextView.

Qt follows the respective GUI style guides even more closely. This

includes honoring desktop settings, and keyboard shortcuts such as

Ctrl-Z/Y for undo/redo in line edit and multi-line edit

controls. Dialog handling for both modal and non-modal dialogs has

been improved to follow the platform conventions precisely.

With QIconView, we added a powerful new visualization widget similar

to QListView and QListBox. It contains optinally labelled pixmap items

that the user can select, drag around, rename, delete and more.

Compared to the previous release, we have managed to reduce overall

memory consumption while improving execution speed and features.

Below is a list of the major new features in existing classes as well

as short descriptions of all new classes and the changes in some of

the extensions shipped with Qt.

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* 		New major features in existing classes			   *

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QApplication	- new function wakeUpGuiThread() to simplify using threads

		  with Qt.

QArray		- added sorting and binary search.

QColor		- custom color support added.  qRgb(r,g,b) helper function

		  now sets an opaque alpha value instead of a transparent

		  one.

QComboBox	- support for text items with icons.

QFileDialog	- many new features including fancy drag'n'drop

		  and in-place renaming.

		  Methods like setInfoPreviewWidget()and

		  setContentsPreviewWidget() make it easy to customize

		  the dialog extensively. With QUrlOperator and the

		  QNetworkProtocol abstraction, the dialog can operate

		  transparently by various different network protocols,

		  such as HTTP and FTP (see the Network Extension).

QFocusEvent	- carries a reason() for the event. Possible reasons are

		  Mouse, Tab, ActiveWindow, ShortCut and other. The

		  addition makes line edit controls behave properly.

QHeader		- added optional visual sort indicator. Revisited API that 

		  operates on sections only (solves the 'logical' vs. 'actual' 

		  index confusion). A reworked 'table' example shows how

		  to use QHeader in combination with a scrollview to create

		  a simple spreadsheet.

QListBox	- many signals and functions added for convenience and

		  greater flexibility.

QListView	- various selections modes similar to QListBox, many

		  new functions and signals added for convenience and

		  greater flexibility.

QMainWindow	- implemented draggable and hidable toolbars. A menubar

		  can be made draggable by simply putting it in a toolbar.

QMetaObject	- Parts of the API made public. The meta object allows

		  applications to access information about an object's

		  properties as well as its signals and slots.

QMultiLineEdit	- added different word wrap modes: WidgetWidth,

		  FixedPixelWidth and FixedColumnWidth.

QObject		- property access functions property() and setProperty().

QPen		- added adjustable cap and join styles.

QPopupMenu	- added support for tear-off menus, custom items

		  and widget items.

		  A new function setItemParameter() makes it possible

		  to distinguish between several menu items connected to

		  one single slot.

QPrinter        - Now allows printing to the default printer without doing

                  setup() first.

QProgressDialog	- auto-reset and auto-close modes.

QPushButton	- added a menu button mode with setPopup().

QScrollView	- support for auto-scrolling on drag move events (drag

		  auto scroll mode).

QSignal		- optional additional integer parameter for the emitted

		  signal.

QSimpleRichText - added adjustSize() function that implements a clever

		  size hint. Vertical break support for printing. inText()

		  hit test.

QSpinBox	- different button symbols, currently UpDownArrows and

		  PlusMinus.

QSplitter	- supports three resize modes now, Stretch, KeepSize

		  and FollowSizeHint.

QString		- new functions setUnicode(), setUnicodeCodes(), setLatin1(),

		  startsWith() and endsWith()

QStringList	- new functions fromStrList(), split(), join() and grep().

QStyle		- some extensions for menu button indicators, default

		  button indicators, variable scrollbar extends and toolbar

		  handles.

QStyleSheet	- a couple of tags added to the default sheet, such as

		  U, NOBR, HEAD, DL, DT, DD and table support (TABLE, TR,

		  TD, TH). Many attributes added to existing tags.

QTextView	- basic table support. Contents is selectable, selections

		  can be pasted/dragged into other widgets.

QToolBar	- stretchable depending on the orientation (setHorizontalStretchable()

		  and setVerticalStretchable(). Added orientationChanged() signal.

QToolButton	- added optional delayed menu with setPopup() and

		  setPopupDelay(). Auto-raise behaviour adjustable.

QWidget		- new widget flag WStyle_ContextHelp that adds a

		  context-help button to the window titlebar. The

		  button triggers "What's This?"-help. The flag works

		  with MS-Windows and future versions of X11 desktops

		  such as KDE-2.0.

		- New function showFullScreen().

		- Enabling and disabling with setEnabled() propagates to

		  children.

		- Changed isVisible(). It now returns whether a widget

		  is mapped up to the toplevel widget (the previous

		  implementation only returned isVisibleTo(parentWidget()).

		- New property 'backgroundOrigin' that lets a widget draw 

		  its background relatively to its parent widget's coordinate

		  system. This makes pseudo-transparency possible, without

		  the overhead of a real widget mask.

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*				New clases				   *

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QCustomMenuItem	- an abstract base class for custom menu items in

		  popup menus.

QFontDataBase	- provides information about the available fonts. Not really

		  a new class (it was used internally for the QFontDialog),

		  but for the first time public API.

QGuardedPtr	- a template class that provides guarded pointers to

		  QObjects.

QIconView	- a sophisticated new widget similar to QListView and

		  QListBox.  An iconview contains optinally labelled pixmap

		  items that the user can select, drag around, rename, delete

		  and more. The widget is highly optimized for speed and

		  large amounts of icons.

QInputDialog	- a convenience dialog to get some simple input values from

		  the user.

QMetaProperty	- stores meta data about properties. Part of the meta

		  object system.

QNetworkProtocol- base class for network protocols, provides

		  a common API for network protocols.

QUrl/

QUrlOperator	- provides an easy way to work with URLs.

QVariant	- a tagged union for the most common Qt data types.

QValueStack	- a value-based stack container.

QWorkspace	- provides a workspace that can contain decorated

		  windows as opposed to frameless child widgets.

		  QWorkspace makes it easy to implement a multi-document

		  interface (MDI).

QBig5Codec	- provides support for the Big5 Chinese encoding.

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*		Changes which may affect runtime behaviour		   *

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QDataStream / QPicture

 To accomodate for improved functionality, the stream serialization format

 of QString and QPen has changed in Qt 2.1. The format version

 number has been increased to 3. Compatibility has been kept, so

 applications built with this version of Qt are automatically able to read

 QDataStream and QPicture data generated by earlier Qt 2.x versions. But if

 your application needs to generate data that must be readable by

 applications that are compiled with earlier versions of Qt, you must use

 QDataStream::setVersion() (if the data contains QString or QPen objects).

 See the documentation of this function for further discussion.

QPainter::drawPolygon()

 An outline is no longer drawn in the brush color if NoPen is specified.

 This matches the behaviour on Windows and ensures that the area

 painted in this case is the same pixels defined by a QRegion made

 from the polygon.  To get the old behaviour, you can call

 painter.setPen(painter.brush()) prior to painting, which will also

 work on Windows.

QPushButton::sizeHint()

 The size hint of auto-default push buttons has been slightly

 increased in order to reserve space for a default button indicator

 frame. This is necessary for a proper Motif or Platinum emulation. If

 this change destroys your geometry management, a auto-default button

 is probably not what you wanted anyway. Simply call

 setAutoDefault(FALSE) on these push buttons to get the old behaviour.

QWidget

 Font and palette propagation has changed totally (from "almost

 brain-dead" to working).  In practice, the only changes we've seen are

 to the better.

QColor

 qRgb(r,g,b) now sets a default opaque alpha value of 0xff instead of

 a transparent 0x00 alpha value formerly.  Use qRgb(r,g,b,a) if you do

 need a transparent alpha value.

QPalette

 It turned out that the old normal/active/disabled set of color groups

 didn't work very well, except in the simplest hello-world examples,

 that it couldn't be fixed without nasty hacks, and that during five

 years nobody had discovered the bugs.  So, we've dropped our broken

 attempt at Tcl/Tk L&F compatibility, and added support for Windows

 2000 and Macintosh L&F compatibility instead.  The Macintosh and

 Windows 2000 looks differentiate between the window with focus and

 other windows.  Qt calls the color groups QPalette::active() and

 QPalette::inactive() respectively.

QGridLayout/QBoxLayout 

 setMargin() now also works on child layouts. As a result of this

 change, the geometry() of a layout now includes margin(). This may

 effect programs that use QLayout::geometry().

QToolButton

 The now adjustable auto-raise behaviour defaults to TRUE only when

 a button is used inside a QToolBar. That's usually what you want. If not,

 call setAutoRaise(FALSE).