Tk 4.0b4 Release Announcement
June 16, 1995

John Ousterhout
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
john.ousterhout@eng.sun.com

I have just released Tk 4.0b4, the fourth beta release of Tk 4.0, and
Tcl 7.4b4, the corresponding Tcl release.  Unless there is something
terribly wrong with these releases, they will be the last beta releases
for Tk 4.0 and Tcl 7.4.  I plan to fix bugs for a couple of weeks and
then make the final releases around the first week of July.  There will
be no more functional changes of any sort until after the final releases.
Any requests for feature changes will have to be delayed until the
releases are out.

I would appreciate it if as many people as possible could try out
the new releases as soon as possible, so I can find out about any
major bugs.

I believe that I have addressed all bugs reported by May 14, 1995 either
to me or to comp.lang.tcl.  If there is a bug that you think you reported
before then and it is still present in the b4 releases, please report
it again.

Where to get the new releases:
------------------------------

Tk 4.0b4 and Tcl 7.4b4 are currently available from two FTP servers,
ftp.smli.com (in the directory /pub/tcl) and ftp.cs.berkeley.edu (in
the directory /ucb/tcl).  The releases should appear on the usual
mirror sites within a few days.  The new releases include four files:
	tk4.0b4.tar.Z
	tcl7.4b4.tar.Z
	tk4.0b4.patch.Z
	tcl7.4b4.patch.Z
The first two files are complete releases, and the last two are patch
files that will upgrade from the b3 releases to the b4 releases.

What's new in these releases?
-----------------------------

Here is a summary of the changes in Tk4.0b4.  As always, see the file
"changes" in the release for a complete list.  Note that changes 2-6
introduce incompatibilities with previous versions of Tk.

    1. Dozens of bug fixes (all bugs reported before May 14, 1995 should
       be fixed in this release).
    2. Changed the default Tk color palette to a gray scheme.  Added
       a library procedure tk_setPalette that makes it easy to change
       colors on the fly, and a procedure tk_bisque that restores the
       previous light brown scheme.
    3. Changed default bindings tags so that widget-specific bindings
       are processed before class bindings.  The new order is
       widget, class, toplevel, then all. 
    4. Added -outlinestipple option to canvas arc items, changed
       "-style arc" to use -outline and -outlinestipple instead of
       -fill and -stipple.
    5. Modified interface to Tk_Main to pass in the address of the
       application-specific initialization procedure.  Tcl_AppInit is
       no longer hardwired into Tk_Main.  This is needed in order to
       make Tk a shared library. 
    6. Renamed -decimate in photo widget to -subsample (the name
       "decimate" wasn't technically correct).
    7. Changes to text widgets:
	- Added "window names" command, -wrap option to text tags.
	- Changed index parsing to allow mark and index names with
	  arbitrary characters.
	- Changed tab code so that tabs always occupy at least the
	  width of a space character.
    8. Added support for GIF and PGM images to the photo widget.
    9. Changed binding mechanism so that all class bindings are now
       installed immediately.
    10. Major revision of "widget" demo to be more hypertext-like.  It
        also allows you to view the scripts for the demos, modify the
	scripts, and re-run them.
    11. Added -outline and -width options to canvas polygons.
    12. There is a new document to introduce Tk 4.0's new features and
        help people port Tk 3.6 scripts to Tk 4.0.  It is available in
	Postscript form in the distribution as "doc/tk4.0.ps" or on the
	Web at http://www.smli.com/research/tcl/tk4.0.ps.
    13. Added "winfo pointerx" and "winfo pointery" commands to fetch
	pointer position.
    14. Added "--" option to "clipboard append" command.
    15. Added "winfo colormapfull" command.
    16. Added "wm resizable" command to allow windows to be non-resizable.
    17. Changed default text for labels, buttons, checkbuttons,
        radiobuttons, menubuttons, and messages from " " to "".
    18. Changed visual mechanism so that when specifying "best" as
        the visual type you can also give a depth, as in "best 8".
    19. Changed display of text so that it only displays "\xx" if the font
        doesn't define a character for the given value.  If the font
	does define a character, it is displayed.

The changes in Tcl 7.4b4 are much less significant those those in
Tk 4.0b4.  There are several bug fixes, plus the following new and
changed features:

    1. Added new options to the "subst" command: -nobackslashes,
       -nocommands, and -novariables.

    2. Added optional pattern argument to "parray" library procedure
       and "array names" command.

    3. Added tcl_library variable (whose value is now returned by the
       "info library" command).  This allows the application to change
       the location of the Tcl libraries.

    4. Added TCL_EVAL_GLOBAL flag to Tcl_RecordAndEval.

    5. Modified interface to Tcl_Main to pass in the address of the
       Tcl_AppInit procedure as argument (more flexible, plus handles
       dynamic linking better).

    6. Changed name of installed versions of binaries from tclsh and libtcl.a
       to tclsh7.4 and libtcl7.4.a, for easier coexistence with older
       versions.