Greg Haerr, creator of the open source Microwindows embedded Linux GUI and president of Century Software, and Chief Strategist of GUI Technologies for Hard Hat Linux developer MontaVista Software, reports that version 0.88 of Nano-X and Microwindows have just been released and are currently available for ftp download target=”_blank”>here.

Microwindows is an Open Source project aimed at bringing the features of modern graphical windowing environments to smaller devices and platforms. Microwindows allows applications to be built and tested on the Linux desktop, as well as cross-compiled for the target device. Microwindows' genesis was with the NanoGUI project, and has now been combined into a single distribution. The Win32/WinCE API implementation is known as Microwindows, and the Xlib-like API implementation is known as Nano-X.

Here is Haerr's description of the latest release (version 0.88) . . .

Although I didn't get in everything I wanted to, this version is stable and provides needed support for some important projects that I'm trying to stay synchronized with. My open source browser project, ViewML, now runs client/server with Nano-X using this version of Microwindows. We've also added a touch screen driver for the Compaq iPAQ, and will have the browser running on it shortly, with full touch screen support. We'll release a ViewML v0.15 shortly with almost all of the features present in the X version. We'll be showing all this at the Linux Expo the week after next, and are also working on binaries that can be downloaded without having to build.

Details on the enhancements for this release include:

• GIF, JPEG, and BMP image rendering with stretching or shrinking to any size. (PNG and PPM coming soon) Image caching in the server if desired, without sending image data from client to server. We decided to support images directly in Microwindows, rather than bringing in the larger imLib image library, used with the X version of ViewML.
  
• A number of bug fixes were received from ScreenMedia, who are working on releasing the FreePad, based on Microwindows.
  
• A number of new/changed config options, including IPAQMOUSE, ADSMOUSE, and
  
• HAVE_GIF_SUPPORT were added

There's still quite a few enhancements recieved that I haven't integrated yet, including caret support, a chinese input method, and some color macro bugs. I will be releasing an enhanced FLTK for Nano-X at the same time as the ViewML v0.15 release.

The detailed changelog for this release is . . .

Version 0.88 – 3rd August 2000 – [email protected]

* added iPAQ mouse support from Century Software, config IPAQMOUSE
* changed config option TSMOUSE to ADSMOUSE
* added HAVE_GIF_SUPPORT to config, added GIF decoder
* changed image decode algorithms, image is kept in core until drawn
* added GrDrawImageFromFile, GrLoadImageFromFile, GrDrawImageToFit, GrFreeImage, GrGetImageInfo for GIF, BMP and JPEG
* removed GrJPEG/GdJPEG, GrBMP/GdBMP
* modified MWIMAGEHDR structure, added pitch and bytesperpixel
* wrote decoder for 24bpp .bmp files, enhanced convbmp
* added stretch blit, rewrote image routines in Nano-X for ViewML
* corrected nano-X demo makefiles to work with LINK_APP_INTO_SERVER
* Patches recieved from ScreenMedia: Jan Vehusheia
* nanox/srvnet.c Free allocated events to freelist when destroying a client
* nanox/srvutil.c correctly reassigns mouse pointer information when an application crashes while a mouse button is held pressed down
* Patches recieved from ScreenMedia: Jon K Hellan
* nanox/srvmain.c (GsInitialize): Initialize wp->owner to NULL
* drivers/kbd_x11.c (X11_Read): Initialize modifiers also when no key press pending
* demos/nanox/demo5.c (main): Correct height of bitmap2(fg|bg) in GrSetCursor call
* added Kevin's patch for destroying eventclient structures
* added Jiwon's patch for NULL name strcpy in devfont.c
* added Kyle's makefile patches, PORTRAIT_MODE=R or L in config

Have fun!

Related stories:
Microwindows project leader 'drops the other shoe'
Insights into ViewML development: history, status, and plans
ViewML — an open source embedded Linux web browser
Glue layers simplify porting graphics apps to Microwindows
Microwindows: a Graphical Windowing system for Embedded Linux
Linux + Microwindows: challenger to WinCE
Enabling embedded Linux graphical applications
The Microwindows and NanoGUI Projects
Display connectivity solution for embedded Linux devices

 
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