path: root/dist/changes-4.6.0

Qt 4.6 introduces many new features and improvements as well as bugfixes
over the 4.5.x series. For more details, refer to the online documentation
included in this distribution. The documentation is also available online:

  http://qt.nokia.com/doc/4.6

The Qt version 4.6 series is binary compatible with the 4.5.x series.
Applications compiled for 4.5 will continue to run with 4.6.

Some of the changes listed in this file include issue tracking numbers
corresponding to tasks in the Task Tracker:

  http://qt.nokia.com/developer/task-tracker

Each of these identifiers can be entered in the task tracker to obtain more
information about a particular change.

****************************************************************************
*                           General                                        *
****************************************************************************

 - QtDBus
   * The minimum required version of the D-Bus reference library is
     now 0.93.


Third party components
----------------------

 - Updated FreeType to version 2.3.9

****************************************************************************
*                          Library                                         *
****************************************************************************

    * [245219] Added QXmlQuery::setFocus(const QString &focus);

 - QGraphicsBlurEffect
    * Since the 4.6 beta Qt::RenderHint has been moved to
      QGraphicsBlurEffect::BlurHint.

    * Input contexts are not activated for disabled widgets anymore.

    * [250555] Data copied from Mozilla Firefox can now be pasted correctly to
      a Qt application.

QtCore

 - QVariant
    * Many optimisations
    * Added QVariant::toFloat() and QVariant::toReal()
    * Added QVariant(float) constructor
    * qvariant_cast<QVariant> and qVariantFromValue<QVariant> are now
      identify functions

 - Qt::escape
    * now escape the double quote (&quot;)

 - QScopedPointer
    * New pointer class for cleaning up objects when leaving the
      current scope

 - QFile
    * Make QFile::resize() more robust when operating on buffered files

 - QObject
    * Added the possibility to pass the flag Qt::UniqueConnection to QObject::connect
    * Fixed race conditions that occured when moving object to threads while connecting

- QTextStream
    * [221316] Fixed crash on large input.
    * Improved reading utf8/utf16/utf32 data by correctly skipping the
      ByteOrderMark when reading data by one character at a time.

QtGui

 - QTreeView
    * [234930] Be able to use :has-children and :has-sibillings in a stylesheet
    * [252616] Set QStyleOptionViewItemV4::OnlyOne flag when painting spanning columns

 - QTableView
    * [191545] Selections work more similarly to well-known spreadsheets
    * [234926] Fixed sorting after changing QTableView header
    * [244651] [245327] [250193] [QTBUG-5062] Spans get plenty of love with
      speed-up, support for rows/columns insertion/removal, and better keyboard
      navigation

 - QTabBar
    * [196326] Fixed having a stylesheet on a QTabBar resulted in some tab names
      to be slightly clipped.
    * [241383] Added ability to style the close tab button with style sheet

 - QComboBox
    * [220195] Fixed keyboard search when current index is -1

 - QSpinBox
    * [259226] Fixed setting a stylesheet on a QSpinBox to change the arrow possition

 - QStandardItemModel
    * [255652] Fixed crash while using takeRow with a QSortFilterProxyModel

 - QGraphicsItem
    * Added a new set of properties to set a transformation on a item

 - QMenu
    * [252610] Fixed position of the shortcut text while setting a stylesheet on menu items

 - QSortFilterProxyModel
    * [251296] Fixed bugs in which filtered items could not be filtered.

 - QSplitter
    * [206494] Added ability to style pressed slided with stylesheet

 - QWidget
    * [201649] Added QWidget::previousInFocusChain
    * [254563] Fixed a crash when setting a focus in a widget tree that
      contains invisible widgets

****************************************************************************
*                      Platform Specific Changes                           *
****************************************************************************

 - Added community supported Qt ports for QNX and VxWorks. See platform
   notes in the Qt documentation for details.

 - Significant external contribution from Milan Burda for planned removal
   of (non-unicode) Windows 9x/ME support.

 - QRegion is no longer a GDI object by default. This means it is no
   longer subject to gui-thread only nor does it potentially impact
   the 10.000 GDI object limit per process. By explicitly calling
   .handle() a GDI object will be created and memory managed by
   QRegion. The native handle is for reading out only. Any GDI calls
   made on the HRGN handle will not affect the QRegion.

 - [259221] QFileInfo::symLinkTarget() now supports NTFS symbolic links
   thanks to Konstantin Ritt (merge request 1217).

 - The reading code of QLocalSocket on Windows has been rewritten to improve
   reading performance.

 - On Windows CE the link time code geration has been disabled by default to
   be consistent with win32-msvc200x.

 - Added QMAKE_LIBS_OPENGL_ES1, QMAKE_LIBS_OPENGL_ES1CL and
   QMAKE_LIBS_OPENGL_ES2 qmake variables for specifying OpenGL ES
   specific libraries.

 - KDE Integration: Improved the integration into KDE desktop (loading of KDE
   palette, usage of KColorDialog and KFileDialog) using the GuiPlatformPlugin

 - Fixed pasting the clipboard content to non-Qt application on X11 when the
   requested format is image/ppm. Patch by Ritt.K

 - On Windows when a file cannot be accessed (stat()ed), we are now restoring
   the error mode to the original value.

 - On X11 Qt now supports the _NET_WM_SYNC protocol.

 - On X11 Qt now supports the SAVE_TARGET protocol that allows to keep
   clipboard contents if the application that owns the clipboards exits

 - [QTBUG-4652] On X11 clipboard content can be properly retrieved even when an
   application asks the unsupported target. This fixes copying and pasting data
   when using Synergy.

 - [QTBUG-4418] Fixed maximizing and restoring a window on Mac.

****************************************************************************
*                          Tools                                           *
****************************************************************************

- Designer

 - [233683] Promoted Widgets are now stored correctly in scratchpad.
 - [249823] Added search functionality to the resource browser.
 - [254282] Enabled the use of promoted widgets in form templates.
 - [254824] Made it possible to override the createAction()/createWidget()
            functions of QUiLoader.
 - [256332] Enabled deleting all pages of a QTabWidget or QStackedWidget.
 - [259238] Fixed menubar/menu editing in right-to-left mode.
 - [259918] Fixed setting of object names for container pages not to use
            localized strings.
 - [260658] Fixed saving of alpha values set in the palette editor.
 -          It is now possible to further specify the kind of custom widget
            string properties using XML tags.

- uic3

 - [128859] Fixed code generation of QLabel's wordWrap property.

****************************************************************************
*                               DirectFB                                   *
****************************************************************************

 - When running Qt/DirectFB the DirectFB window id of a top level QWidget can
   be queried using property("_q_DirectFBWindowID")

 - Allow setting the background color of the primary layer in DirectFB with
   connect options. QWS_DISPLAY=directfb:bgcolor=red or
   QWS_DISPLAY=directfb:bgcolor=\#aabbccdd

 - Add support for rendering mouse cursor using a top level window when cursor
   support is not working in IDirectFBDisplayLayer. Define
   QT_DIRECTFB_WINDOW_AS_CURSOR to enable.

 - Add experimental support for optimized locking/unlocking of surfaces. Enable
   by defining QT_DIRECTFB_SUBSURFACE.

 - Fix a bug to conceptually allow using QDirectFBScreen as a subscreen of a
   proxy screen. Don't make QDirectFBScreen::instance() assume that
   QScreen::instance() is a QDirectFBScreen.

 - Optimize move/resize operations with DirectFB. With a properly configured
   DirectFB these operations are handled for us and we don't need to force a
   repaint of the window.

 - Support top level window opacity in DirectFB

 - Fix a bug when loading RGB32 images that would lead to rendering issues.

 - Fix a bug when painting with invalid pens/brushes.

 - Fix a bug that would show up when QWidget::scroll is called.

 - Implement support for loading pixmaps using IDirectFBImageProvider.

 - Disable color table support by default. This seems to work incorrectly on
   most boards and loading these images will generally require an image
   conversion anyway.

 - Fix a bug regarding QGraphicsProxyWidgets

 - Fix a crash when resizing windows

 - Compile with versions < 1.0. We still recommend using newer versions.

 - Considerable code cleanup

 - Various optimizations regarding painting, loading of images and creation of
   surfaces.

 - Allow forcibly falling back to raster engine for painting operations by
   exporting QT_DIRECTFB_FORCE_RASTER=1

 - Reenable support for RGB32 primary surface.


****************************************************************************
* Important Behavior Changes *
****************************************************************************

 - The experimental Direct3D paint engine has been removed. The reason for
   this is that Nokia focuses on OpenGL for desktop hardware accelerated
   rendering.

 - The default engine used to draw onto OpenGL buffers has changed in
   Qt 4.6. The QPaintEngine::OpenGL2 engine is now used as the default
   engine. This *may* cause compatibility problems for applications
   that use a mix of QPainter and native OpenGL calls to draw into a GL
   buffer. Use the QGL::setPreferredPaintEngine() function to enforce
   usage of the old GL paint engine.

 - When mixing OpenGL and QPainter calls you need to surround your
   custom OpenGL calls with QPainter::beginNativePainting() and
   QPainter::endNativePainting().
   This is to ensure that the paint engine flushes any pending drawing and sets
   up the GL modelview/projection matrices properly before you can issue custom
   OpenGL calls, and to let the paint engine synchronize to the painter state
   before resuming regular QPainter based drawing.

 - Graphics View has undergone heavy optimization work, and as a result of
   this work, the following behavior changes were introduced.

   a) QStyleOptionGraphicsItem::exposedRect now contains the item's bounding
      rectangle, and QStyleOptionGraphicsItem::matrix is uninitialized by
      default. You can enable an exact exposed rectangle and a correct matrix
      by enabling the flag QGraphicsItem::ItemUsesExtendedStyleOptions.

   b) QStyleOptionGraphicsItem::levelOfDetails is obsoleted and its value is
      always initialized to 1. Instead you can call
      QStyleOptionGraphicsItem::levelOfDetailFromTransform(const QTransform &)
      to determine the level of detail.

   c) QGraphicsView no longer calls QGraphicsView::drawItems(), and in turn
      QGraphicsScene::drawItems(), by default. You can get the old behavior
      back by enabling QGraphicsView::IndirectPainting.

   d) QGraphicsItem no longer calls itemChange() for position and
      transformation changes. If you want to receive notifications for changes
      to the item's position and transformation, you can set the flag
      QGraphicsItem::ItemSendsGeometryChanges (which is enabled by default by
      QGraphicsWidget and QGraphicsProxyWidget).

 - QDesktopWidget on X11 no longer emits the resized(int) signal when screens
   are added or removed. This was not done on other platforms. Use the
   screenCountChanged signal instead

 - QUrl's parser is more strict when for hostnames in URLs. QUrl now
   enforces STD 3 rules:

    * each individual hostname section (between dots) must be at most
      63 ASCII characters in length;

    * only letters, digits, and the hyphen character are allowed in the
      ASCII range; letters outside the ASCII range follow the normal
      IDN rules

   That means QUrl no longer accepts some URLs that were invalid
   before, but weren't interpreted as such.

 - The Unix configure-time check for STL is stricter now in Qt
   4.6.0. This means some legacy STL implementations may fail to pass
   the test and, therefore, Qt will automatically disable STL support.

   This is a binary-compatible change: existing code will continue to
   work without being recompiled. However, it affects the source code,
   since some STL-compatibility API will not be enabled.

   Platforms affected by this change:
     * solaris-cc-* with the default (Cstd) C++ STL library
       recommendation: use -library=stlport4
       See Sun Studio's documentation for the effects of this option

 - QVariant has now a new implicit constructor that takes a float. This
   means that code that assigned a float to a variant would create a
   variant with userType QMetaType::Float, instead of QVariant::Double.

 - QDataStream will now read and write all floating point numbers with the
   same precision, regardless of whether it's streamed into or out from a
   float or double. This is to maintain compatibility across platforms with
   a different default precision for qreal. The default is 64-bit precision
   for all floating point numbers, and this can be changed using the new
   function setFloatingPointPrecision(). Set Qt_4_5 as the version of the
   QDataStream to get the behavior of previous versions.

 - On Mac OS X, QDesktopServices::storageLocation(DataLocation) now includes
   QCoreApplication::organizationName() and QCoreApplication::applicationName()
   if those are set. This matches the behavior on the other platforms.