Qt 3.1 introduces many significant new features and many improvements

over the 3.0.x series. This file provides an overview of the main

changes since version 3.0.5. For further details see the online

documentation which is included in this distribution, and also

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

The Qt version 3.1 series is binary compatible with the 3.0.x series:

applications compiled for 3.0 will continue to run with 3.1.

****************************************************************************

*                                 General                                  *

****************************************************************************

Qt Script for Applications

--------------------------

Qt 3.1 is the first Qt release that can be used with Qt Script for

Applications (QSA). QSA provides a scripting engine, an IDE for

creating and editing scripts and script forms, and bindings to the Qt

API. Script-enabling a Qt application is not difficult and the IDE

makes it easy for resellers and end-users to write their own scripts.

QSA is due for release after Qt 3.1.

Qt Designer

-----------

Qt Designer, the visual GUI builder, has undergone several usability

improvements. A new dialog for creating and editing signals and slots

connections has been created: it is much easier to use and much faster

for setting up multiple connections. The widgets are now presented in

an easy-to-use toolbox rather than in toolbars (although you can still

have the toolbars if you want). The property editor now handles common

properties in multiple widgets simultaneously. By popular demand,

WYSIWYG support for QWidgetStack has been added. Rich text is now

supported with a rich text editor. And the code editor can be used for

ordinary member functions as well as for slots.

Qt Assistant

------------

Qt Assistant, the Qt documentation browser, can now be used with

custom documentation sets. This new functionality combined with the

new QAssistantClient class means that you can use Qt Assistant as a

help browser for your own applications. Qt Assistant has also been

enhanced by the addition of a fast full text search engine.

Motif

-----

The general industry-wide move away from Motif is leaving more and

more companies in need of a migration solution. But converting large

legacy applications in one step is often impractical. To minimize

risks and to manage the workload companies often want to port code on

a module by module basis. Qt 3.1 includeds a completely new Motif

module that supports hybrid applications in which Qt code and Motif

code coexist. (This obsoletes the earlier rudimentary Qt Xt/Motif

extension.)

ActiveX

-------

With the release of Qt 3.1, customers who use Qt for Microsoft Windows

development can now use Qt with ActiveX. The new ActiveQt module

provides a simple API for COM and ActiveX. The module can be used to

create applications which host ActiveX controls, and also to create

applications that serve ActiveX controls (e.g. Internet Explorer

plugins).

Qt/Mac

------

The introduction of Qt/Mac, a Mac OS X port of Qt, with Qt 3.0 has

proved a great success. This port has undergone many improvements in

Qt 3.1, especially with respect to Appearance Manager, anti-aliased

text and user settings. The Qt OpenGL support is greatly improved, and

uses the hardware-accelerated drivers.

Qt/Embedded

-----------

Graphics, mouse and keyboard drivers can now be compiled as plugins.

Qt library

----------

In addition to the new additions and enhancements referred to above,

as with all major Qt releases, Qt 3.1 includes hundreds of

improvements in the existing class library. Here is a brief summary of

the most significant changes:

- QTextEdit has a new text format: LogText. This is a performance and

  memory optimized format especially designed for the fast display of

  large amounts of text. The format supports basic highlighting,

  including bold and colored text.

- The new QSyntaxHighlighter class makes it both easy and efficient to

  add syntax highlighting capabilities to a QTextEdit.

- QHttp and QFtp in earlier Qt's were implementations of the

  QNetworkProtocol. Both have been extended to stand in their own

  right. If you missed some flexibility in the network protocol

  abstractions of earlier Qt's, the new QHttp and QFtp classes should

  provide the solution.

- QAccel, used to handle keyboard shortcuts, now gracefully copes with

  shortcut clashes. If a clash occurs, a new signal,

  activatedAmbiguously(), is emitted. Classes that use QAccel, like

  QButton and QPopupMenu, make use of this new functionality.

  Futhermore QAccel can now handle multi-key sequences, for example,

  Ctrl+X,Ctrl+F.

- QClipboard has been extended to simplify data exchange between

  programs.

- Thread support: almost all methods in the tools classes have been

  made reentrant. QApplication::postEvent() and a few other methods

  are now thread-safe if Qt is compiled as a multi-threaded library.

  (The documentation now states if a class or function is thread-safe

  or reentrant.)

- A QMutexLocker class has been added to simplify the locking and

  unlocking of mutexes.

- Input methods: A selectionLength() function has been added to

  QIMEvent. Japanese compositions are now handled correctly. Support

  for AIMM based input methods (those working on non-Asian versions of

  Win95/98/Me) has been added.

- Large File support: Qt's internals have been modified to support

  Large Files (> 2GB). QFileDialog will now correctly display and

  select Large Files.

- SQL module: Support for prepared query execution and value binding

  has been added. Among other benefits, this makes it possible to

  write large BLOBs (> 2 KB) to Oracle databases, and to write Unicode

  strings to SQL Server databases.

Build process

-------------

The build process has been improved:

- The configure script does not need QTDIR to be set anymore.

****************************************************************************

*                                 Library                                  *

****************************************************************************

New classes

==================

- QBackInsertIterator

- QEventLoop

- QIconFactory

- QMutexLocker

- QSyntaxHighlighter

QAction

------------------

New functions:

	void setVisible( bool )

	bool isVisible() const

QCanvas

------------------

New functions:

	void invalidate()

	bool isValid() const

QColorDialog

------------------

New functions:

	static void setStandardColor( int, QRgb )

QAccel

------------------

New signals:

	void activatedAmbiguously( int id )

QApplication

------------------

The event loop has been moved to the QEventLoop class, making it

easier to integrate other toolkits with Qt.

New functions:

	QEventLoop *eventLoop() const

	void setEventLoop( QEventLoop * )

	QString sessionKey() const

QClipboard

------------------

New functions:

	void clear( Mode mode )

	bool supportsSelection() const

	bool ownsSelection() const

	bool ownsClipboard() const

	QString text( Mode mode )  const

	QString text( QCString& subtype, Mode mode ) const

	void setText( const QString &, Mode mode )

	QMimeSource *data( Mode mode ) const

	void setData( QMimeSource*, Mode mode )

	QImage image( Mode mode ) const

	QPixmap pixmap( Mode mode ) const

	void setImage( const QImage &, Mode mode )

	void setPixmap( const QPixmap &, Mode mode )

QDesktopWidget

------------------

New functions:

	const QRect& screenGeometry( QWidget *widget ) const

	const QRect& screenGeometry( const QPoint &point ) const

	const QRect& availableGeometry( int screen ) const

	const QRect& availableGeometry( QWidget *widget ) const

	const QRect& availableGeometry( const QPoint &point ) const

QFileDialog

------------------

Large Files (> 2GB) are now correctly displayed and selected.

QFileInfo

------------------

QFileInfo now supports Large Files (> 2GB) internally. To maintain

binary compatibility the QFileInfo API cannot be adapted before Qt 4

and will truncate file sizes and offsets to 4 GB.

New functions:

	bool isHidden() const

QFile

------------------

QFile now supports Large Files (> 2GB) internally. To maintain binary

compatibility the QFile API cannot be adapted before Qt 4 and will

truncate file sizes and offsets to 4 GB.

QDir

------------------

QDir now supports Large Files (> 2GB).

QImEvent

------------------

New functions:

	in selectionLength() const

QIconSet

------------------

New functions:

	void installIconFactory( QIconFactory *factory )

QImage

------------------

New functions:

	static QImage fromMimeSource( const QString& abs_name )

QMetaObject

------------------

New functions:

	QStrList enumeratorNames( bool super ) const

	int numEnumerators( bool super ) const

	static bool hasMetaObject( const char *class_name )

QMenuData

------------------

New functions:

	bool isItemVisible( int id ) const

	void setItemVisible( int id, bool visible )

Both functions are inherited by QMenuBar and QPopupMenu

QPaintDevice

------------------

New functions (x11 only):

	static Qt::HANDLE x11AppRootWindow()

	static int x11AppDepth( int screen )

	static int x11AppCells( int screen )

	static Qt::HANDLE x11AppRootWindow( int screen )

	static Qt::HANDLE x11AppColormap( int screen )

	static void *x11AppVisual( int screen )

	static bool x11AppDefaultColormap( int screen )

	static bool x11AppDefaultVisual( int screen )

	static int x11AppDpiX( int )

	static int x11AppDpiY( int )

	static void x11SetAppDpiX( int, int )

	static void x11SetAppDpiY( int, int )

QPicture

------------------

New functions:

	void setBoundingRect( const QRect &r )

QPixmap

------------------

New functions:

	bool hasAlpha() const

	static QPixmap fromMimeSource( const QString& abs_name )

QPrinter

------------------

New functions:

	void setMargins( uint top, uint left, uint bottom, uint right )

	void margins( uint *top, uint *left, uint *bottom, uint *right ) const

Improvements:

	Handle masked images and pixmaps correctly. Add code to handle

	asymmetrical printer margins correctly.

QSessionManager

------------------

New functions:

	QString sessionKey() const

QStyleOption

------------------

New functions:

	QStyleOption( QCheckListItem* i )

	QCheckListItem* checkListItem() const

New enums values:

	PE_CheckListController, PE_CheckListIndicator,

	    PE_CheckListExclusiveIndicator, PE_PanelGroupBox

	CE_MenuBarEmptyArea

	CE_DockWindowEmptyArea

	PM_CheckListButtonSize

	CT_TabBarTab, CT_Slider, CT_Header, CT_LineEdit

	SH_GroupBox_TextLabelVerticalAlignment

QThread

------------------

New functions:

	void terminate()

QTranslator

------------------

New functions:

	bool load( const uchar *data, int len )

QVariant

------------------

New functions:

	QVariant( const QPen& )

	const QPen toPen() const

	QPen& asPen()

	bool isNull() const

New enum values:

	KeySequence, Pen

QWidget

------------------

All top-level widgets will now try to find an appropriate application

icon when they're not given one, trying in this order

 1. Parent widget's icon

 2. Top-level widget's icon

 3. Application main widget's icon

New functions:

	bool isFullScreen() const

	void setSizePolicy( QSizePolicy::SizeType hor, QSizePolicy::SizeType ver, bool hfw = FALSE )

New enum values:

	AncestorOrigin

QWMatrix

------------------

Two different transformation modes for painter transformations are now

available. See the QWMatrix documentation for details.

New functions:

	QPointArray mapToPolygon( const QRect &r ) const

	double det() const

	static void setTransformationMode( QWMatrix::TransformationMode m )

	static TransformationMode transformationMode()

New enums:

	TransformationMode { Points, Areas }

QFtp

------------------

While still remaining a subclass of QNetworkProtocol, QFtp can be now

used directly for more advanced FTP operations. The QFtp documentation

provides details of the extensions to the API.

QHttp

------------------

While still remaining a subclass of QNetworkProtocol, QHttp can be now

used directly for more advanced HTTP operations. The QHttp

documentation provides details of the extensions to the API.

Related new classes:

	QHttpHeader

	QHttpResponseHeader

	QHttpRequestHeader

QSqlDriver

------------------

New enum values:

	Unicode, PreparedQueries, OracleBindingStyle, ODBCBindingStyle

QSqlQuery

------------------

New functions:

	bool isForwardOnly() const

	void setForwardOnly( bool forward )

	bool exec()

	bool prepare( const QString& query )

	void bindValue( const QString& placeholder, const QVariant& val )

	void bindValue( int pos, const QVariant& val )

	void addBindValue( const QVariant& val )

QTableSelection

------------------

New functions:

	QTableSelection( int start_row, int start_col, int end_row, int end_col )

QTable

------------------

New properties:

	int numSelections

New functions:

	void selectCells( int start_row, int start_col, int end_row, int end_col )

	void selectRow( int row )

	void selectColumn( int col )

	void updateHeaderStates()

	void setRowLabels( const QStringList &labels )

	void setColumnLabels( const QStringList &labels )

QCString

------------------

New functions:

    	QCString &replace( char c, const char *after )

    	QCString &replace( const char *, const char * )

    	QCString &replace( char, char )

New global functions:

	QByteArray qCompress( const uchar* data, int nbytes )

	QByteArray qUncompress( const uchar* data, int nbytes )

	QByteArray qCompress( const QByteArray& data )

	QByteArray qUncompress( const QByteArray& data )

Improvements:

	Speed optimisations in lots of the old search and replace

	functions.

QDate

------------------

New functions:

	int weekNumber( int *yearNum = 0 ) const

	static QDate currentDate( Qt::DateTimeSpec )

QTime

------------------

New functions:

	static QTime currentTime( Qt::DateTimeSpec )

QDateTime

------------------

New functions:

	static QDateTime currentDateTime( Qt::DateTimeSpec )

QPtrList

------------------

New functions:

	bool replace( uint i, const type *d )

QRegExp

------------------

New functions:

	QString errorString()

	static QString escape( const QString& str )

	int numCaptures() const

QSettings

------------------

New functions:

	QSettings( Format format )

	void setPath( const QString &domain, const QString &product, Scope = User )

	void beginGroup( const QString &group )

	void endGroup()

	void resetGroup()

	QString group() const

New enums:

	Format { Native = 0, Ini }

	Scope { User, Global }

QChar

------------------

Updated Unicode tables to Unicode-3.2