Dashed and Stippled outlines in Tk8.0p2 (Tk4.2p2, Itcl2.2p2)
	references since August 19 1997

Currently only the following version is supported:

• for Tk8.0p2

• for Tk4.2p2, Itcl2.2p2
• for Tk4.1p1

• The canvas now supports the new Tcl_Obj API. Makes things much faster.
• Elide-patch, written by Tom Phelps. This makes the dash-patch compatible with TkMan 2.0.
• Support for John Ellson's Tkspline extension. This allows the line and polygon canvas items to use additional smooth methods.
• The options "-dash", "-activedash", "-disableddash", and "-dashoffset" are added to Arcs, Lines, Rectangles, Ovals and Polygons to allow for dashed outlines. The dash pattern can either be a list of integers or a string. When the line width is 1, the following equivalency exists:
  

  -dash .	-dash {2 4}	dotted
  -dash -	-dash {6 2}	dashed
  -dash -.	-dash {6 2 4 2}	dash-dot
  -dash -..	-dash {6 2 4 2 4 2}	dash-dot-dot

  If the line width is greater than 1, all values in the dash list are multiplied by the line width. So a "." will always look as a dot and "-" always as a dash. Both old and new syntax are continued to be supported, but only the above 4 examples are displayed correctly on Windows.
• Options "-tile", "-activetile", "-disabledtile", "-outlinetile", "-activeoutlinetile" and "-disabledoutlinetile". Now you can use an image for tiling. These options override the corresponding "-fill" and "-stipple" options. It works for all canvas objects and for many widgets (e.g. text, canvas, buttons, frames .....). The original code comes from BLT, which is written by George A. Howlett
• Postscript output for images and windows in canvas (Written by Henry A Rowley, originally distributed as tkImgPs.tar.gz)
• New option "-warp" for the "event generate" function. When this option is set to "yes" (or "1" or "true"), not only an event is generated, but also the mouse pointer is warped to the same location. For example: "event generate . <Motion> -warp yes -x 10 -y 10" It can be used for Motion, Button, ButtonRelease and Key events only.
• The visitors patch (by Matthew Rice) is also included. This makes it possible to add new canvas commands without making more changes in the Tcl/Tk core. An example is his rotate visitor (visrotate1.2.tar.gz).
• The entry validation patch, written by Jeffrey Hobbs.
• Speedup of canvas. A hash-table is used to keep track of all numeric item numbers. That makes an item lookup almost constant in time, which for large numbers of canvas items makes a huge difference. Written by Mark Weissman.
• The option "state" is added to all canvas objects and the canvas it self. Many options are added to all canvas objects that are related to this state.
• Indexing for coordinates of polygons and lines.
• All canvas objects now accept the coordinates in a single argument. This works for both the "create" and the "coords" commands.
• The option "-joinstyle" is added to Polygons, and a small related bug is corrected. Works the same as for lines, except that the default is "round" and not "miter". In my opinion the default should be "miter", but unfortunately John Ousterhout only implemented rounded outlines for polygons now. It's easy to change in the future, anyway.
• The options "-outlinestipple", "-activeoutlinestipple", and "-disabledoutlinestipple" are added to Rectangles, Ovals and Polygons. (Arcs already have "-outlinestpple" in Tk4.1).
• The option "-updatecommand" specifies a command that should be executed each time the canvas object is updated on the screen.
• The scan dragto widget scroll command now has an additional parameter gain. You can override the default gain of 10 times by that. This works for list boxes and text widgets too.
• Any widget that has the -state or -wrap options now accepts truncated values. So you can use "-state n" as abbreviation of "-state normal" or "-wrap w" as abbreviation of "-wrap word"
• The manual page (canvas.n) is adapted for all of the above. (Thanks to John Ellson)
• Postscript output is adapted for all of the above changes, except for the "-tile" option (and "-activetile" ...... of course).

Jan Nijtmans
CMG (Computer Management Group) Arnhem B.V.

email:

nijtmans@worldaccess.nl (private)

Jan.Nijtmans@cmg.nl (work)

url:

http://www.worldaccess.nl/~nijtmans/