# ;; -*- mode: org; coding: utf-8 -*-

#+TITLE: GNU G-Golf NEWS

#+BEGIN_COMMENT

Copyright (C) 2016 - 2023
Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This document is part of GNU G-Golf.

Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification, are
permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright notice
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#+END_COMMENT


                G-Golf - History of user-visible changes
                ========================================

                   Please send G-Golf bug reports to
                           bug-g-golf@gnu.org


* Latest News

** October 2023

[[http://www.gnu.org/software/g-golf][GNU G-Golf]] version 0.8.0-rc-1 is released.

This is the first release candidate of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now
available for testing.

*** Noteworthy changes in 0.8.0-rc-1

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes in this release. See G-Golf
[[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git][git summary]] and [[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git/log/][git log]] for a complete list and description.

**** New features

Derived class
GObject properties

Derived classes slot exposed as a gobject property now also support the
boolean, uint, float, double, flags, string, param and boxed types.

**** Examples

Adwaita Demo

The 'Style Classes' page has been added to the demo.


* Older News

** September 2023

[[http://www.gnu.org/software/g-golf][GNU G-Golf]] version 0.8.0-alpha-6 is released.

This is the sixth release of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available
for testing.

*** Noteworthy changes in 0.8.0-alpha-6

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes in this release. See G-Golf
[[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git][git summary]] and [[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git/log/][git log]] for a complete list and description.

**** Dependencies

- Core dependencies

The guile-lib dependency has been removed from the core dependencies, as
it effectively is only required to run the test-suite.

- Test suite

The test-suite requires guile-lib >= 0.2.5
The test-suite no longer requires Clutter.

- Adwaita examples

  Adw-1  >=  1.4.0

The adw1-demo - which currently implements the main window, primary menu
and first two pages (wip) - has been updated to correspond to the latest
upstream version, which no longer uses the deprecated AdwLeaflet*
classes. Instead, it uses the AdwNavigationSplitView, AdwNavigationView
and AdwNavigationPage classes, available since 1.4.0.

**** New features

Derived class
GObject properties

  Derived classes slot exposed as a gobject property now also support
  the object type - Wip (supported type are now int, enum and object).

disconnect

New method, which calls the newly added g-signal-handler-disconnect
binding.

**** Examples

Adwaita Demo

The adw1-demo - which currently implements the main window, primary menu
and first two pages (wip) - has been updated to correspond to the latest
upstream version, which no longer uses the deprecated AdwLeaflet*
classes. Instead, it uses the AdwNavigationSplitView, AdwNavigationView
and AdwNavigationPage classes, available since 1.4.0.

**** Bug fixing

g-value-set-boxed

Was silently setting the g-value to #f for opaque boxed type, fixed.

connect
signal-connect

Now return the handler-id, needed to call disconnect.

** August 2023

[[http://www.gnu.org/software/g-golf][GNU G-Golf]] version 0.8.0-a.5 is released.

This is the fifth release of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available
for testing.

*** Changes since 0.8.0-a.4

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes since version 0.8.0-a.4. See
G-Golf [[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git][git summary]] and [[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git/log/][git log]] for a complete list and description.

**** Dependencies

  Glib-2.0     >= 2.73.0
  Gobject-2.0  >= 2.73.0

G-Golf requires GObject-Introspection >= 1.72.0. This actually imposes
Glib-2.0 >= 2.73.0, which itself imposes Gobject-2.0 >= 2.73.0

**** New features

Derived class
GObject properties and signals

  Derived classes now support a mechanism that allow users to expose
  slots as gobject properties and define new signals.

Templates

  This release adds support for templates, a mechanism and facilities
  exposed by GtkWidget to automate the procedure of creating composite
  widgets with GtkBuilder XML.

Template and GtkBuilder ui files
SXML support

	[ currently in the examples/adw-1/adw1-demo/ui directory ]

  sxml-ui.el

  Emacs users should import this file in their .emacs file.

  This is an attempt to provide both indentation and font-lock support,
  so ui files editing becomes a more pleasant exprerience. It is a first
  draft, better then nothing (much better imo), but suggestions to
  improve would be welcome.

  Makefile

  Offered as an example of the simplest possible way to convert all
  *.scm files of a directory to their corresponding *.ui files.

**** Examples

Adwaita Demo

A G-Golf port of the Adwaita 1 demo. This is a work in progress,
currently implementing the Adwaita 1 demo window, header bars,
primary-menu (the inspector, preferences and about actions and windows)
as well as the Welcome and Leaflet pages:

Note: Adwaita 1.4 (unavailable in distros at the time of this release)
deprecates the AdwLeaflet* classes, in favor of the AdwNavigationView
and AdwNavigationPage classes. We'll move the demo to use those when
Adwaita 1.4 becomes available in dostros.

**** Bug fixing

A few G-Golf core bugs have been fixed, but none that we could expose
here as 'user visible'. If you're nonetheless interested to find out
what progress we made on that front, search the git logs for 'Fixing'
or 'Bug fixing'.

The peg-solitaire example

An ABI change was made, by the Gtk team, in Gtk 4.10.0, to the
gtk-css-provider-load-from-data function second argument, wHich is no
longer defined as an array, but a utf8, and hence g-golf would fail,
when using Gtk 4.10.0, to detect, compute and supply the third argument,
which is the css string length - fixed.

** April 2023

[[http://www.gnu.org/software/g-golf][GNU G-Golf]] version 0.8.0-a.4 is released.

This is the fourth release of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available
for testing.

*** Changes since 0.8.0-a.3

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes since version 0.8.0-a.3. See
G-Golf [[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git][git summary]] and [[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git/log/][git log]] for a complete list and description.

**** New features

Next-vfunc

  This release adds full support for a next-vfunc mechanism - which is
  to the GObject virtual method system what the next-method concept and
  mechanism is to the GOOPS (compute applicable) method system.

**** Examples

Simple Paintable
Animated Paintable

  New examples. Please note that these examples requires
  [[https://www.nongnu.org/guile-cairo/][guile-cairo]]. They actually requires a patched version of guile-cairo
  that contains the following new interface (which is not in guile-cairo
  1.11.2):

	cairo-pointer->context

**** Bug fixing

Missing <gobject> g-struct-fields

  At (load eval) time, the (g-golf defined) <gobject> class must be
  completed: retreive the class-struct and fill the <gobject>
  g-struct-fields slot - used by the vfunc mechanism.

** February 2023

[[http://www.gnu.org/software/g-golf][GNU G-Golf]] version 0.8.0-a.3 is released.

This is the third release of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available
for testing.

*** Changes since 0.8.0-a.2

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes since version 0.8.0-a.2. See
G-Golf [[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git][git summary]] and [[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git/log/][git log]] for a complete list and description.

**** Enhancement

Skip Array Length Argument(s)

This release implements skip array-length argument mechanism. This
affects all functions and methods of any upstream (type)lib that accept
one or more array argument(s), for which the function or method also
expect an array length argument.

Starting with this release, users don't have to pass those array length
arg(s) (more accurately, users may not pass those arg(s) anymore), as
G-Golf will supply those automatically. Note that this is also valid for
arrays of uint8 - those arg(s) are 'array of chars', that users must
provide as a string (as opposed to a list) - for example, see the
peg-solitaire example, updated accordingly, so that the
gtk-css-provider-load-from-data call does no longer provide the 'data'
array length argument.

**** Examples

All

Updated, wrt the above enhancement, to call the g-application-run method
'without' the args length argument.

Peg Solitaire

In addition, updating the call to gtk-css-provider-load-from-data,
removing the 'data' array length argument.

**** Bug fixing

Callback and VFunc

In G-Golf, both Callback and VFunc use one (identical) marshal
procedure, g-golf-callback-closure-marshal, entirely written in scheme,
which implements, in short, the foreign function interface (ffi) arg
retrieval and transfornmation into their scheme representation, then
call the callback of vfunc (user provided) scheme code, then sets the GI
argument to the return value (if any).

To obtain the ffi arg scheme representation values, G-Golf was calling
gi-type-info-extract-ffi-return-value (a GI function, in the girffi
module, not a G-Golf procedure) - but that function has some bug.

G-Golf has now been updated so g-golf-callback-closure-marshal calls a
'self made' ffi-args->scm (see commit 6a30a12dd) for further details on
this).

Peg Solitaire

The peg-solitaire example has been updated, as the Callback and VFunc
bug fixed its snapshot-vfunc method. More specifically its width and
height argument values are now correct, we no longer need to explicitly
call get-intrinsic-width and get-intrinsic-height.

** January 2023

[[http://www.gnu.org/software/g-golf][GNU G-Golf]] version 0.8.0-a.2 is released.

This is the second release of the upcoming 0.8.0 release, now available
for testing.

*** Changes since 0.8.0-a.1

Here is a summary of the noteworthy changes since version 0.8.0-a.1. See
G-Golf [[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git][git summary]] and [[http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/g-golf.git/log/][git log]] for a complete list and description.

**** Dependencies

GObject-Introspection-1.0 >= 1.72.0

G-Golf uses GI girffi innterfaces, some only available since 1.72.0.

**** New interfaces

allocate-c-struct

**** Examples

Peg Solitaire

The peg snapshots (which are what users drag while playing the game) now
also have rounded corners. Before this improvment, they were being
clipped by their <gtk-image> instance hosts, which use both a css
border-radius style option and the overflow property, but users were
dragging a squared rectangle snapshot.

Drawing Widget

New example, which demonstrates how implement a widget that does some
custom drawing.

**** Performance

~15% improvement

  Note: by performance, until otherwise specified, we only refer to and
  measure how fast G-Golf imports the entire Gtk 4.0 typelib.

After some changes made to the G-Golf main GI cache, importing Gtk-4.0
shows a ~15% improvement.

**** Bug fixing

VFunc

A VFunc specializer may also be a g-object class, as the newly added
example demonstrates. Prior to this fix, a VFunc specializer was assumed
to (always) be a g-interface class (as in the peg-solitaire example).

GObject.TypeInstance

GObject.TypeInstance fundamental class support fix. They must inherit
<gtype-instance> and specify <gtype-class> as their metaclass.

** For older News, see [[http://www.gnu.org/software/g-golf/news.html][here]].
