Qt 3.2 introduces new features as well as many improvements over the

3.1.x series. This file gives an overview of the main changes since

version 3.1.2.  For more details, see the online documentation which

is included in this distribution. The documentation is also available

at http://qt.nokia.com/doc/

The Qt version 3.2 series is binary compatible with the 3.1.x series.

Applications compiled for 3.1 will continue to run with 3.2.

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*			    General					   *

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Qt library

----------

New classes have been added to the Qt Library including a

class to add splash screens to applications (QSplashScreen), a toolbox

widget that provides a column of tabbed widgets (QToolBox), and a

class to manage per-thread data storage (QThreadStorage).

The SQL module received a fair bit of attention this time. The most

notable improvements include a native IBM DB2 driver, complete support

for stored procedures including the possibility to access

out-parameters, and native support for 64 bit fields without having to

convert to or from strings. We also added support for setting

connection parameters. This way you can, for example, conveniently

open an SSL connection to a MySQL or PostgreSQL database. If you need

even more customization, e.g. for an Oracle database, you can set up

the connection yourself and instantiate a Qt driver object on top of

it. An extended SQL cursor class has been added that makes it more

convenient to display result sets from general SQL queries

(QSqlSelectCursor). QSqlDatabase::tables() is now capable to return

tables, views and/or system tables. In addition, you can add custom

database drivers without compiling them as plugins

(see QSqlDatabase::registerSqlDriver()).

QLineEdit, the one-line text editor, now supports validation input

masks. The feature complements the previous QValidator concept and

allows e.g. restriction of input to the IP address format (mask

"990.990.990.990;_"), or to ISO date format (mask "0000-90-90;0").

Qt's unicode code support has been extended. Most notably, full

support for Indic scripts has been added, covering writing systems

such as Devanagari, Tamil and Bengali. The group of right to left

writing systems has been extended with support for Syriac. Both

improvements are available on both Windows with Uniscribe installed,

and on Unix/X11 when using XFT with OpenType fonts.

All tool classes that support STL-like iterators with begin() and

end(), contain two extra functions constBegin() and constEnd(). The

const versions always return const iterators, and thus can be a little

bit faster with Qt's implicitly shared containers.

QPainter's complex drawText() function has been highly

optimized. Despite its support for complex unicode scripts, it now

performs better than its less unicode-capable counterpart in Qt 2.3.

QPixmap now supports pixmaps with alpha channel (semi transparency) on

all Windows versions except Windows 95 and Windows NT 4.0.

The print dialog now supports "selection" as a print range as well as

the possibility to enable/disable all different printer options

individually.

On Windows, the Qt installation includes a toolbar for Visual Studio.NET 

that provides an integration of the Qt tools (ie. Qt Designer) with the 

IDE.

Many classes were improved; see the detailed overview that follows.

Qt Motif Extension

------------------

Dialog handling has matured and has been extended since the

extension's introduction in Qt 3.1.  The documentation and code

examples have been improved, including a walkthrough that covers the

complete migration of a real-world Motif example to Qt. The process

contains four intermediate steps where the application utilizes both

toolkits.

ActiveQt Extension

------------------

Type handling has been extended on both the container and the server

side. The new supported types are byte arrays and 64bit integers. The

QAxServer module supports aggregation, as well as QObject subclasses as 

return and parameter types of slots, and allows error reporting through 

COM exceptions.

The Designer integration has been extended to support property dialogs

implemented by the control server.

Controls developed with ActiveQt support aggregation, which makes it

possible to use them in containers that require this form of containment to

be supported. ActiveQt also supports masked controls in containers that

support this for window'ed controls.

Qt Designer

-----------

The popup menu editor has been rewritten. The new editor provides the

the ability to add, edit and remove menus and menu items directly in

the menubar and in the popup menu. Navigation and editing can be done

using either the mouse or the keyboard.

The property editor now allows editing of properties with or'd values

(sets).

Designer also supports the new QToolBox widget in a similar fashion to

QTabWidget, etc.

Qt Assistant

------------

Profiles have been introduced to allow applications to extend the use

of Qt Assistant as a help system. Profiles describe the documentation

to use so that only application specific documentation will be

referenced in an end user installation. Profiles also allow some

customization of the look in Qt Assistant. For detailed information,

see the helpdemo example in $QTDIR/examples/helpdemo.

Profiles replace the content files and categories system. The

following command line options are removed since they no longer serve

any purpose: addContentFile, removeContentFile, category, and

disableFirstRun.

Qt Assistant has multiple tabs for browsing, therefore enabling

multiple pages to be browsed without opening a new window.

It is possible to specify a default home page.

It is possible to specify a PDF reader so that urls to PDF files can

be opened from Qt Assistant.

Compilers

---------

Note: Qt 3.2 is the last version to officially support IRIX MIPSpro

o32 and Sun CC 5.0. A script, $QTDIR/bin/qt32castcompat, is provided

for 3.2 which needs to be run for these compilers.

Miscellaneous

-------------

Users of the 3.2.0 beta releases please note: The QWidgetContainerPlugin

interfaces was removed from the final release due to some serious issues.

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*			   Library					   *

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- QAction / QActionGroup

	Simplified constructors so that it is no longer necessary to

	specify texts for buttons and menu items separately.

	For action groups, we fixed the enable/disable behavior. If

	an action inside an action group is explicitly disabled, it is

	no longer implicitly enabled together with the group.

	This is identical to enabling/disabling widgets and their

	children.

- QApplication

	Added the aboutQt() slot for convenience.

- QAssistantClient

	Added the new function, setArguments(), that invokes Qt

	Assistant in different modes.

- QAxBase

	Added the new function, asVariant(), that passes a COM

	object through dynamicCall().

- QAxBindable

	Added the new function, reportError(), that sends error

	information to the ActiveX client.

- QColor

	Added the new static function, colorNames(), that retrieves a

	list of all color names known to Qt.

- QDeepCopy

	Now also supports QDir, QFileInfo, and QStringList.

- QDom

	Now has long and ulong support for setAttribute() and

	setAttributeNS().

- QFont

	Added the new properties: stretch and overline. Added the new

	function, resolve(), that copies unspecified attributes from

	one font to another.

- QFontDataBase

	Added a new overload for families() that restricts the

	returned list to fonts supporting a specific QFont::Script,

	e.g. QFont::Greek, QFont::Devanagari or QFont::Arabic.

- QFontInfo / QFontMetrics

	Added new constructors that force the info and metrics objects

	to use a given QFont::Script.

- QGLWidget

	Added a new constructor that takes a QGLContext

	parameter. Makes the undocumented setContext() obsolete.

- QHeader

	Added getters for the sort indicator (sortIndicatorSection()

	and sortIndicatorOrder() ).

- QImage

	Added a new overload for save() that writes to a given

	QIODevice*.

- QListView

	Added tristate support to check list items

	(QCheckListItem::setTristate()). Added the new function,

	setSelectionAnchor(), to set the list view's selection anchor

	explicitly.

- QLineEdit

	Added input masks: setInputMask(), inputMask(), and

	hasAcceptableInput(). Added new function selectionStart()

	which returns the index of the first selected character in the

	line edit.

- QMacStyle

	Added customizable focus rectangle policy.

- QMessageBox

	Added the new static function, question(), that complements

	the existing information(), warning() and fatal() functions.

- QMotifDialog [Qt Motif Extension]

	Now has two distinct modes of operation: 1) it allows a Motif

	dialog to have a Qt parent, and 2) it allows a Qt dialog to have

	a Motif parent.

- QMYSQLDriver

	Better support for MySQL/embedded.

- QPixmapCache

	Added the new function, remove(), to explicitly remove a

	pixmap from the cache.

- QPrinter

	Added the new functions: setPrintRange(), printRange(),

	setOptionEnabled(), and optionEnabled(). For Windows only,

	added the new function, setWinPageSize(), that allows setting

	DEVMODE.dmPaperSize directly.

- QPtrList

	Added STL-like iterators with begin(), end(), and erase().

- QScrollBar

	Maintains a user defined size policy when the direction

	changes.

- QSplashScreen [new]

	This new widget class provides a splash screen to be shown

	during application startup.

- QSplitter

	Added the new properties: opaqueResize, childrenCollapsible,

	and handleWidth.

- QSqlError

	Added a couple of convenience functions: text(), which returns

	the concatenated database and driver texts. showMessage(),

	which will pop up a QMessageBox with the text that text()

	returns.

- QSqlQuery

	Added overloads for the bindValue() call which makes it

	possible to specifiy what role a bound value should have: In,

	Out or InOut.

- QSqlSelectCursor [new]

	This new QSqlCursor subclass provides browsing of general SQL

	SELECT statements.

- QSqlDatabase

	Added overloaded tables() call which can return tables, views

	and/or system tables.

- QPSQLDriver

	Calling tables() with no arguments will only return table names,

	instead of table and view names as in Qt 3.1.

	The new tables() call in QSqlDatabase can be used to get

	table and/or view names.

- QString

	Added 64 bit support. Added the new functions: multiArg(),

	reserve(), capacity(), squeeze(). Added case insensitive

	overloads for startsWith() and endsWidth().

- QStringList

	Added the new function gres().

- QStyle

	Added support for toolbox, header, MDI frame, table grid line

	color, line edit password character, and message box question.

- QSyntaxHighlighter

	Added the new function, currentParagraph().

- QTabWidget

	Added support for custom widgets to be placed beside

	the tab bar: setCornerWidget() and cornerWidget().

- QTextEdit

	In Log mode, added the new functions: setMaxLogLines() and

	maxLogLines(). Implemented insertAt() for LogText mode.

- QThreadStorage [new]

	This new tool class provides per-thread data storage, also

	referred to as thread local storage or TLS.

- QToolBox [new]

	This new widget class provides a column of tabbed widgets, one

	above the other, with the current page displayed below the

	current tab.

- QVariant

	Added support for LongLong and ULongLong.

- QWidget

	Added a new widget flag, WNoAutoErase, that combines the now

	obsolete WResizeNoErase and WRepaintNoErase flags.