NEWS

X11 Work Bench - open source project for IDE and X11 toolkit

pre-release
  Work begins 04/08/2006 to address need for X11 development tools

  TODO:  see http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/11/verity_stob_text_editor/
         (for an 'El Reg' list of mandatory text edit features)

  PROJECT BASIS, GOALS, and REQUIREMENTS

    . Rejection of GTK usage (GTK lacks features I want)
    . Rejection of wxWidgets (shared library requirements)
    . Rejection of C++ toolkits (application to be in 'C' or 'C++')
    . Determined need for new toolkit to support required features
    . List of required features
      . Tabbed multi-document interface (no hamburger menu)
      . Full compliance with various desktop specs
      . Interoperability with most popular window managers 
      . Seamless desktop integration and operation
      . Uses 'open desktop' specification whenever possible
      . Complies with 'best known practices' whenever possible
      . Supports edit features like 'box select' and 'virtual space'
      . Integrates with gdb for symbolic debug
      . Wizards for rapid appplication framework development
      . 'Lean and Mean' toolkit and API
        . Minimal API support by application
        . Minimal coding requirements for event processing
        . Fast, efficient code for API
        . Small API size for overall simplicity
        . Text-based resources for menus and dialog boxes
        . Menu/Dialog event handling uses simple custom events
          that identify the control or menu item chosen.
        . As much of the UI as possible to be handled internally
          including MDI tabs, input focus, painting, and so forth
      . International support for UTF-8 only (other unicode support
        to be determined at a later date).
      . Simplified font support that enables listing and soft-selection
        by size, typeface, and features (bold, italic, underscore)
        and loading the user-specified defaults and 'alias' fonts.
      . Builds and runs on Windows (native), plus Cygwin and other
        subsystems, in addition to BSD, Linux, and OSX.
      . Native Win32/Win64 API to be implemented following X11 completion.
        Native Apple OSX GUI support to be determined
      . Integrated development environment should be easy to use
      . Learning curves for development environment AND toolkit
        must be as short as possible to encourage others to use it.
      . Documentation must be specific without being excessive,
        generated by Doxygen comments throughout the source
      . Other features to be determined


  Project becomes officially supported by S.F.T. Inc., 04/2010

  Project added to Sourceforge, 4/6/2012
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/X11workbench

  Project added to Github, 5/24/2016
  http://github.com/bombasticbob/X11workbenchProject

  Modified copyright statements to allow GPL, LGPL, and/or BSD-like license
  Revised above goals prior to initial project publish.



PROJECT STATUS

  4/6/2012 - basic menu and dialog toolkit features implemented.  Work on
             the toolkit continues until enough has been completed to
             support the main edit window.  'File Open/Save' dialog in
             progress.  Additional work remains for tree and list boxes.
             Toolkit currently 'usable' for testing and simple dialog-based
             applications.  Most of the core functionality, such as
             message handling, fonts, and window creation, are reasonably
             complete and simply require proper testing to reveal bugs.


Version 1.0
  pre-alpha state as of 4/6/2012
  additional project updates 5/24/2016, added github repository