News

These are the general news and news regarding the web site. For a changelog, see changes.

2015-02-04 : tekUI-1.12rc1 has been released today. This version fixes the long-standing issue that Lua 5.2 and 5.3 had to be compiled with LUA_COMPAT_MODULE. The whole class and documentation system has been reworked and cleaned up, and this is no longer the case, 5.1, 5.2, 5.3 just work now. Also this is a major update to the native Windows display driver, which is now basically on par with the X11 driver: Unicode rendering, keyboard qualifiers, better popups, clipboard, and support for more font styles were added, and the sluggishness has been eliminated. A few minor glitches with popups remain, otherwise it should be complete and running crisply.

2015-01-21 : tekUI-1.11 has been released today. This version is mainly about multiple threads of execution ('tasks') and their integration into tekUI. See also the new childtask example. More examples are likely to follow. The Exec module is fully contained in the tekUI distribution, but it can be used standalone as well, by requiring tek.lib.exec. It has been forked off from tekUI as a new side project. See LuaExec, which contains more information, examples, and a tutorial, which is also a bit of a primer to multitasking in general.

2014-12-15 : tekUI-1.10 has been released. This version is a major overhaul of the C libraries, bugfixes, cleanup, stability, portability, performance improvements. A serious stack corruption bug was fixed in the window opening procedure that showed up on Mac OS X with LLVM/clang, but was potentially harmful on all platforms. With the help from people on the mailing list, this bug was narrowed down, Mac OS X support was improved, and support for Solaris (Sparc and x86) and HP-UX (HPPA and IA64) was added. Some work went into improved image loading. Some more infrastructure for compiling Lua/tekUI into executables was added. The internal 'Visual' API is now documented.

2014-10-25 : tekUI-1.09 has been released today. This version introduces Linux framebuffer and event interface support, without the need to resort to DirectFB. On native displays without a window manager tekUI now brings its own window decorations. The framebuffer driver is much more flexible in regard to pixel formats and conversions now. The VNC server option is available for this setup as well. Linux framebuffer support has been tested on Raspberry Pi, fbtft, and a i915 laptop. There is some pixmap caching infrastructure now used for gradients, many bugs, glitches and refresh problems have been corrected, and some development went into the new textlist class. Also, there was a certain focus on reduced memory consumption.

2014-02-18 : tekUI-1.08 has been released. This version has some subtle (and not so subtle) changes under the surface that allow the dynamic reconfiguration of an open GUI from stylesheets during runtime. For this, the demo program features a new "Open Stylesheet..." menu.

2014-02-13 : tekUI-1.07 has been released, with improvements in the build procedure, another bugfix and some performance improvements.

2014-02-11 : tekUI-1.06 has been released, which fixes a serious bug in layouting sliders. See changes for details. Also, helpful people on the Lua mailing list have provided a LuaRock and build corrections for Mac OS X.

2014-02-09 : tekUI-1.05 has been released. The most noteworthy change is the addition of PNG file format support and general support for rendering pixmaps with alpha channel. The only driver currently implementing this is RawFB. Intermediate versions were mainly about bug fixes, and some internal restructuring.

2014-02-04 : tekUI-1.02 has been released. This and the 1.01 release were mainly about bug fixes, the addition of an XML launcher and some XML examples, a new prototype list class, and some minor internal restructuring. The website has been updated to reflect these changes. (Please note that the HTML documentation in the package has some extra functionality and is generally in better shape than the website.)

2014-01-26 : tekUI-1.0 for Lua 5.1, 5.2, and LuaJIT has been released today. See list of changes since version 0.8k. Summary: Lua 5.2 compability, improved text input class (maxlength, multiline, soft scrolling, efficient resizing, passwords, colorization, selections, clipboard), improved font management and styling options, color gradient support, transparency support, new Unicode/metadata string class, more efficient partial refreshes, new 'Sizeable' class, raw framebuffer support, VNC support, improved facilities and new examples for host communication via pipes and sockets. Improved support functions and registration prolog for classes written in C. The Area and Frame classes have been rewritten in C. Minimal text editor included. Numerous bug fixes, much faster.

2014-01-23 : Another snapshot (test4) has been released. See announcement here.

2014-01-14 : Another development snapshot for the upcoming release has been released today. See announcement here. Also, there are new screenshots.

2013-12-31 : A development snapshot for the upcoming version 0.8l has been released today. See announcement here.

2012-05-20 : tekui-0.8k is now available. After a long hiatus, it fixes a few outstanding bugs and some issues which showed up over time, especially with regard to LuaJIT.

2010-03-15 : tekui-0.8j has been released today. This is a very strong update. Regarding programming comfort: The DEBUG mode has been disabled in the default distribution. This finally allows the programmer to place arbitrary variables in objects at any time, which was a stumbling block for many who tried tekUI in the past. An onClick() handler was added, which allows the programmer to react on abstract activation events in almost any element, without the need to use the cumbersome onPress() handler. Also, this version contains a preview of the new editor class, which is based on the new Sizeable. This class allows element resizing without intrusive repaints. The prototype editor represents just the most generic form, from which a multi-line, a new single-line text input field as well as a new floating text class shall be derived in the future. The notification system has been beefed up in that it now supports class-wide notifications, for which a copy-on-write scheme creates instance copies on demand; this is another meta-table magic which not only saves huge amounts of memory, but improves startup time as well. Last not least, thanks to this change, notification handlers have become so cheap that virtually any state variable may come with a predefined handler in the future. Newly added handlers include onSetStyle(), onSetClass(), onDblClick(), onHold(), onClick() and some more I forgot. Check out the style.lua test, which allows you to edit an element's style properties in a running application. Before I forget to mention this: The Drawable class has been removed, and most of the logic moved into the C library. This eliminates a whopping Lua stack frame in all drawing operations. Inevitable run-time geometric data like Rect, MinMax etc. is now stored in Region objects, which further reduces the memory footprint. The default layouter has been partly rewritten to operate on more C data structures and fewer Lua stack. Drawing operations now always accept symbolic colors - no need to convert them over a pen table anymore, which simplifies drawing considerably. Summary: this version is faster, uses fewer memory, is easier to program, and introduces new functionality.

2010-01-05 : tekui-0.8i released. You will hardly notice a visual difference, but this is a monstrous update, as it gets most of the remaining architectural issues straight. The complex and ugly refresh/relayout logic vanished completely, layouting is now better isolated and has been simplified, a fixed-coordinates layouter has been added, any number of author and user style sheets, direct formattings and hardcoded class properties can now be cascaded... oh yes, the property management: the former naive approach has been kicked out and replaced by a metatable graph, which reduced startup time to a fraction. Many less prominent class members are now available as style properties only, which reduces the memory footprint considerably. The list of changes is endless and consists mainly of simplifications. I'm quite confident that the next releases can and will once and for all focus on the incomplete UI class library. Btw., be sure to use the offline documentation, as the documentation on the web site lags behind in navigation comfort.

2009-09-06 : tekui-0.8h has been released today. Among the most notable changes are fixed and improved hotkey handling, strict enforcement of class versions, improved fullscreen support in the X11 driver, new symbolic colors ("black", "white", "fuchsia", etc.), a corrected argument parser, double buffer support. A myriad of minor improvements came with this version as well.

2009-06-18 : tekui-0.8g has been released. This update was mostly about an improved Window and Application setup procedure, improvements in the documentation, and the usual bug fixes.

2009-05-23 : tekui-0.8f has been released today. As we are heading towards a beta release, we are now in a phase of frequent API changes to improve its consistency in the long run. Most notably, the show() method has lost one argument and its return value; while this is probably a welcome simplification, it also breaks existing code. To make up for this, this version profits from speed improvements and reduced memory usage again, especially in managing regions and parsing style sheet properties. Some styling options were added in that the Canvas class now supports child margins, which also helped to get rid of complicated workarounds in other places. The module compiler and linker can now be used from the command line.

2009-05-08 : tekui-0.8e has been released today. This version has seen speed improvements, structural and API changes, bugfixes, and preliminary texture support. You can use texture.css and supply some textures of your own to get an impression, but it's probably too early to use this feature on a regular basis. Also notable: It seems Xft and the Composite extension are no longer mutually exclusive in recent versions of X11, so we have reenabled antialiased font rendering in this case; hopefully this works on your computer, too. We have also created another Windows snapshot, but due to some kind of latency bug, the X11 version still feels about 10 times faster.

2009-05-08 : Added regular releases and a changelog. The changelog and the online manual are now supposed to update themselves automatically when a new release comes out. Let's see if these things work out.

2009-05-05 : Texture and graphics support is coming up - soon. See the screenshots section.

2009-04-25 : Website documentation updated; added another Windows snapshot today

2009-04-19 : Improved refresh logic: further reduced the number of repaints, some cases (especially sliders) should feel less sluggish now

2009-04-16 : Improved general image and bitmap support (still not complete though), more consolidation of attribute names, improved TextInput, DirList and file requester, some cleanup. Finally, the documentation in the archive is now sorted alphabetically - this applies to both class and function names. (Note: The online documentation has not been updated yet.)

2009-03-28 : Added a great many of enhancements, most notably faster border rendering and improved examples and tutorials. The Canvas class now descends from the Frame class, giving it a border option, which is used by the FloatText and ListView classes for a nicer appearance. A few attributes have been renamed.

2009-03-16 : The manuals and tutorials on this web site have been updated to reflect the recently created snapshot. This version also got a tag in the repository.

2009-03-15 : The Windows display driver is mostly complete. Get the regular snapshot or perform a normal checkout if you intend to build it yourself. Otherwise, for the impatient, a pre-packaged snapshot for the Windows platform can be found in the download section. There are some issues left with keyboard input and popups, but for a first preview it should be Ok!

2009-03-12 : Major update. Several new demos added, the number of windows/popups is now unlimited, simplified message handling and dispatch, improved touchscreen support, slowly evolving Windows driver (but don't expect anything usable yet)

2009-03-04 : The script serving the repository via HTTP stopped working for unknown reasons. This has been corrected (or worked around). In addition to that, a daily snapshot was added to the releases section.

2009-02-22 : A Windows display driver has been added to the repository. It is not fully functional, and Windows support isn't official yet.

2008-11-14 : tekUI is currently being used for the development of a commercial home entertainment system. This somewhat slowed down the architectural progress, but it led to innumerous improvements, mainly in the appearance and stability department, which we are frequently merging back into the public repository.

2008-09-04 : Localization added - it's in the repository. See also the screenshots section.

2008-08-01 : For the Alpha 2 release, cascading stylesheet (CSS) support is coming up, including element, class, pseudo class and individual formattings. You can also expect some hefty speed improvements, the appearance of drawing hooks and an overall slicker appearance. See also the screenshots section for the latest in self-adulation.

2008-07-21 : The online manual has been updated. Note: a few broken links are due to unresolved differences between the formats used in the documentation generator and the CMS; if this annoys you, use the offline HTML documentation, which should be correct.

2008-06-30 : download section added; alpha 1 released today

2008-06-30 : Documentation added

2008-06-18 : TODO section added

2008-05-14 : Technical description updated, installation manual added

2008-05-06 : screenshots section added.

2008-05-02 : Website update - but still no release, sorry.