ANNOUNCE: Gtk2Hs version 0.9.10 released

[Duncan Coutts <duncan coutts worc ox ac uk>]

Gtk2Hs - A GUI Library for Haskell based on Gtk+

Version 0.9.10 is now available from:

http://haskell.org/gtk2hs/download/

An installer for Windows is available. A package is available for
Gentoo. Packages for other platforms should become available soon
(hopefully including Fedora Core, Debian, Darwin, FreeBSD and OpenBSD).

Changes since 0.9.9:
      * New bindings for the cairo vector graphics library. This
        provides a easy-to-use vector graphics API (using a PDF-style
        drawing model) with high quality output for multiple backends
        (screen, print and image files).
      * Completion of Pango, the text layout and rendering engine of Gtk
        +. We now provide all functions that end users should ever need
        for rendering text, ranging from type-setting whole paragraphs
        down to breaking up attributed text into several runs. All
        offsets into Haskell strings are transparently translated into
        UTF-8 offsets used in Pango, thereby alleviating much of the
        grief of dealing with Unicode.
      * new Gtk+ 2.8 APIs are bound
      * many bugs fixed
      * various minor documentation improvements
      * an installer for Windows is available again
      * the mozembed HTML rendering component can now be built against
        the FireFox libraries if the appropriate developer files are
        present.

Other news since the last release announcement:
      * Paolo Martini won a $4500 grant under the Google Summer of Code
        programme for a project to add bindings for the cairo vector
        graphics library to Gtk2Hs.
      * Gtk2Hs is being used as part of the practical element of
        Functional Programming courses at the University of Oxford in
        England and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland.

Gtk2Hs feature highlights:
      * automatic memory management
      * Unicode support
      * nearly full coverage of Gtk+ 2.8
      * bindings for the cairo vector graphics library
      * support for the Glade visual GUI builder
      * bindings for several Gnome modules:
                GConf, Gnome's system for storing app preferences
                SourceView, code editor widget with syntax highlighting
                the Mozilla browser rendering engine in a widget
      * extensive API reference documentation
      * multi-platform support with native look
      * LGPL licence

Platforms and requirements:
      * builds from source on Linux, Windows, MacOS X, FreeBSD, OpenBSD
        and Solaris
      * builds with GHC 6.4.x, 6.2.x, 6.0.x and 5.04.x
      * works with Gtk+ version 2.0 through to 2.2, 2.4, 2.6 and 2.8
      * optional cairo support requires cairo 1.0 or later, however
        using cairo in conjunction with Gtk+ requires Gtk+ 2.8.x or
        later
      * optional Gnome support requires Gnome 2.0 or better
      * optional Mozilla support requires Mozilla 1.4 or FireFox 1.0 or
        later with the appropriate development files.

Goals for the 1.0 release:
      * a stable API for the 1.0.x series
      * greater coverage of the Gtk+ API (we're about 90% there now)
      * support for the OpenGL 3D rendering API
      * introductory and other tutorials
      * packages for all popular platforms

Please report all problems to gtk2hs-devel sourceforge net
Contributions and feedback are also most welcome.

To lower the barrier to contributions, the development version of Gtk2Hs
is now available via darcs:
darcs get http://haskell.org/gtk2hs/darcs/gtk2hs

Duncan
(on behalf of the Gtk2Hs team)