CHANGELOG.txt

  Release notes for fpGUI
  =======================

v2.1.0 (2026-04-27)

  - Event Loop Rearchitecture
    * Worker threads can now wake the main event loop instantly on all
      platforms without waiting for mouse movement or timer expiry.
    * TThread.Queue() and TThread.Synchronize() wake the event loop
      automatically via FPC's WakeMainThread hook.
    * Duplicate FPGM_PAINT and FPGM_RESIZE messages for the same widget
      are coalesced, reducing redundant processing under high load.
    * New TfpgAsyncTask class for background tasks that safely publish
      progress updates to the GUI thread (SwingWorker-inspired).
    * New fpgInvokeLater() schedules work on the main thread from any
      thread.
  - Hybrid Canvas (new) — now default on all platforms
    * The AggPas hybrid canvas is now the default on all platforms.
      No extra build profile is required; the 'agg' and 'freetype'
      profiles have been removed.
    * Cached bitmap glyph rendering for fast syntax-highlighted text.
    * Platform buffer managers added for Windows (GDI) and macOS (Cocoa).
    * Performance: fast-path for opaque rectangle fills, bypassing AggPas
      blending when alpha is not needed.
    * Fixed several Windows-specific rendering issues: upside-down text on
      32-bit FPC 3.2.2, layout not applied on first show of modal dialogs,
      and a compilation error on 32-bit targets.
  - Fusion Style (new)
    * Added Fusion Light and Fusion Dark application styles, inspired by
      Qt5 Fusion. Fusion Light is now the default IDE style.
    * Fusion-style page control tabs and body rendering.
    * Checkbox, radio button, and progress bar painting delegated to
      TfpgStyle, enabling per-style customisation.
  - HiDPI improvements
    * Improved HiDPI scaling for the GDI (Windows) and X11 backends.
  - Maximus IDE
    * PasBuild backend integration: TPasBuildProjectBackend
      bridges the IDE with the PasBuild build system.
    * Project tree redesign: displays modules, dependencies,
      and build profiles as tree nodes with accent colour category headers.
    * Multi-module UI with aggregator project support.
    * Dependency tree visualisation added to the project tree.
    * Build actions: clean, rebuild, and test added to IDE toolbar.
    * INI and XML syntax highlighting added.
    * MigLayout used throughout the IDE UI, including a TfpgMigSplitter
      and MigLayout-managed status bar.
    * Session persistence: open files, window layout, and file dialog
      directories are saved and restored per project.
    * Edit menu: Duplicate Line, Delete Line, Undo, and Redo added.
    * Status bar shows cursor position, file path, and current git branch.
    * Go to Declaration (Ctrl+B / Ctrl+Click) with cross-unit resolution
      including FPC RTL and packages.
    * Find Usages (Alt+F7) with highlighted context column.
    * Quick Documentation popup (Ctrl+F1).
    * Navigate to File and Navigate to Symbol dialogs with fuzzy matching.
    * Cursor history back/forward navigation.
    * Custom Pascal tokeniser replacing vendored fcl-passrc, used by the
      highlighter, symbol finder, procedure list, and declaration finder.
    * Debug session lifecycle: F9 starts a debug run, Ctrl+F2 stops it.
    * Breakpoints panel and full breakpoint add/remove management; live
      breakpoints routed through the ptrace owner thread.
    * Execution line highlighted in the editor at each debugger stop.
    * Variables panel showing Locals and Globals groups; Show Globals
      toggle persisted across sessions.
    * Call Stack panel.
    * Watches panel.
    * Evaluate Expression dialog.
    * Exception notification bar.
    * OPDF/PDR integration via a dedicated debugger worker thread.
      Requires FPC 3.3.1 + OPDF debug format support.
      Linux x86_64 only, until OPDF support more platforms.
    * Support for building the IDE with FPC 3.2.2 via a stub debugger
      adapter (OPDF dependencies disabled by default).
    * Cross-module source file resolution for Ctrl+B navigation and
      debugger stop-line lookup.
    * 'Reopen last project on startup' preference added.
    * Messages tab now activates automatically when a build is triggered.
    * Quick Documentation popup signature search stops at the
      class/record declaration header.
    * Pascal modifiers and directives (virtual, override, stdcall, etc.)
      now highlighted as secondary keywords.
  - DocView
    * Project restructured and added as a PasBuild module.
    * Fixed rendering stopping prematurely, leaving a blank area at the
      bottom of the document.
    * Fixed DocView statusbar colour being reset to the wrong default.
    * DocView navigation toolbar now uses some HVIF vector icons.
  - UI Designer
    * Added style preview support, showing the designer form in the
      user-selected style.
  - Framework Bug Fixes
    * Fixed FreeType font metrics producing squashed line spacing.
    * Fixed XOR selection rendering in TfpgMemo — now uses proper theme
      colours instead of XOR pixel inversion.
    * Fixed Open/Save dialog grid not growing correctly on resize.
    * Fixed pagecontrol tab rendering to be font and DPI aware.
    * Fixed Cocoa hybrid canvas rendering (drawRect instead of lockFocus).
    * Fixed Cocoa font metrics and popup window visibility.
    * Fixed FreeType font cache not being enabled on Windows.
    * Fixed index out of bounds in File Open dialog under macOS.
    * Compatibility fix for upcoming FPC 3.3.x release.
    * Added wpMainFormCenter window position option; centralised window
      positioning logic into fpg_form.pas.
    * Experimental multi-monitor and per-screen DPI support.
    * Fixed several bounds-checking issues in the text editor component.
    * Deprecated old DrawXXX widget paint methods in TfpgCanvas.
    * Fixed ComboBox text not clipped to exclude the dropdown button area.
    * Fixed TfpgLabel not auto-sizing to text content when no
      PreferredSize was set.
    * Fixed developer-set text colour ignored by style DrawString.
    * Fixed popup calendar generating deprecation warnings.
  - Code Hygiene
    * Replaced bundled SynRegExpr with FPC's standard RegExpr unit.
    * Replaced bundled mPasLex with FPC's fcl-passrc for Procedure List.
    * Replaced bundled sha1.pas (D5-era) with FPC's standard hash package.
    * Removed Cairo rendering backend.
    * Removed VLC units (now part of FPC's Free Component Library).
    * Removed MigLayout Java reference source (porting complete).
    * Removed unused and empty style units.
    * Removed vendored fcl-passrc (replaced by custom Pascal tokeniser).
    * Moved documentation and Lazarus IDE integration package out of the
      framework source tree.
    * Legacy Agg2D canvas moved out of the framework source to
      extras/aggpas/.
    * GDI & X11 native canvas classes marked "Deprecated" for future
      removal.
    * TfpgCanvas.DrawXXX methods for widget painting marked "deprecated"
      for future removal.
  - HVIF (Haiku Vector Icon File) Icon Format
    * New HVIF binary reader with AggPas renderer and unit tests.
    * New HVIF binary writer with unit tests.
    * svg2hvif CLI tool converts SVG files to HVIF; --inc flag emits a
      Pascal byte-array include file for embedding icons in source.
    * hvif_dump inspection tool for examining HVIF binary files.
    * Full rendering pipeline: multi-stop gradient LUT, gradient strokes,
      transforms, arc segments, and LOD visibility scale.
    * TfpgIconStore: DPI-aware HVIF icon registry; fpgIcons global
      initialised automatically in TfpgApplication.
    * HVIF icons wired into core framework widgets.
    * New IconName and IconSize properties on TfpgBaseButton for
      icon-store–driven button icons.
    * imageconvert utility added to the PasBuild ecosystem.
  - Vertex HVIF Icon Editor (new application)
    * Full HVIF vector icon editor added to the primary build.
    * Tools: Select, Node edit, Pan, Zoom, Rectangle, Ellipse, and Pen.
    * Bounding box and affine transform interactions; Shift+drag for
      uniform scale, Ctrl+drag for shear.
    * Gradient style editing with multi-stop ramp widget and editor popup.
    * Grid overlay with configurable snap-to-grid.
    * Object tree with inline rename and sidecar metadata file.
    * Bezier path outline overlay in node-edit mode.
    * Undo support for path and shape property edits.
    * File > New, Open, Save (.hvif), Export as .inc, and Export as PNG
      at 16/32/48/64 px.
    * File > Open Recent with persistent last-used directory.
    * Window position and size restored across sessions.


v2.0.3 (2026-02-14)
  - Bug Fixes
    * Fixed AggPas canvas crash when using the 'plastic dark' theme.
      Widget canvases now correctly route pixel operations through the
      window canvas target instead of accessing a nil image buffer.
    * Added bounds checking in TfpgImageBase.SetColor to prevent
      out-of-bounds memory writes when using the AggPas canvas.
    * Fixed incorrect pixel coordinates in plastic style DrawFocusRect
      that used Width/Height as positions instead of Left+Width and
      Top+Height.
    * Fixed GDI font reverting to bold stock font after device context
      reallocation.
    * Fixed duplicate TranslateMessage call causing double keystrokes
      on Windows.
    * Added Windows font paths to FreeType font cache.
    * Fixed widget constructors using property setters for Width/Height
      instead of direct field access, which caused issues with the
      sizing API separation.
  - UI Designer
    * Fixed resizer rendering and canvas sizing.
    * Fixed property display and source generation to use
      ActualWidth/ActualHeight for positioning.
    * Fixed widget placement to call UpdatePosition after positioning.
    * Changed PasBuild module name to 'fpgui-uidesigner'.


v2.0.1 (2026-02-11)
  - Bug Fixes
    * Fixed infinite recursion crash when default font fails to load on
      distros with non-standard font paths (Arch, Void, Fedora). Raises
      a clear EfpGUIException instead. (Fixes #143)
    * Added /usr/share/fonts/ as a recursive font search path, covering
      all Linux distro font directory layouts. Added ~/.local/share/fonts/
      for XDG user fonts.
    * Fixed ERangeError in DoDrawImagePart when the image rectangle is
      fully clipped out of the visible area. (Fixes #121)
    * Fixed Canvas.GetClipRect returning an empty rectangle when no
      explicit clip rect was set. (Fixes #113)
    * Fixed access violation in timer list when a timer destroys itself
      during its own callback, or after Windows hibernation. (Fixes #17)
    * Widened TfpgMsgParmUser.Param1/2/3 from Integer to PtrInt for
      correct 64-bit window handle passing.
    * Added missing extrafpc.cfg in hexviewer example folder.
    * Fixed AggPas Win32 font engine compilation and rendering: added
      proper ifdef splits for Win32 TrueType vs FreeType font engines,
      fixed font size DPI scaling, and removed unnecessary freetype.dll
      dependency when using the default Win32 font engine.
  - Improvements
    * Timer architecture redesign:
      - X11 message loop now uses the calculated timeout instead of a
        hardcoded 10ms poll, reducing idle CPU wakeups
      - GDI message loop replaced blocking GetMessage with
        MsgWaitForMultipleObjects, enabling proper timeout support
      - Removed redundant native Windows.SetTimer mechanism; timer
        checking is now unified through the main loop
      - All timer arithmetic switched from wall-clock time (TDateTime/Now)
        to monotonic time (GetTickCount64/CLOCK_MONOTONIC), making timers
        immune to NTP sync, DST changes, and system hibernation
    * Normalized GDI clip rect storage to widget-local coordinates,
      matching the X11 and Cocoa backends.
    * About fpGUI dialog now shows the canvas backend type (AggPas or
      Native) after the version number.
    * Added 'freetype' build profile for PasBuild, allowing Windows
      users to toggle between the Win32 TrueType and FreeType font
      engines via: pasbuild compile -p windows,agg,freetype


v2.0.0 (2026-02-09)
  - Code breaking changes
    * TfpgScrollStyle enums have changed names to make it more clear as to
      what they do or mean.
      ssHorizVisible, ssVertiVisible, ssBothVisible were deleted, and new
      ssBoth, ssAutoHorizontal, ssAutoVertical types added.
    * Widgets with 3D borders were cleaned up and refactored. Instead of them
      descending directly from TfpgWidget, they now descend from TfpgBorderWidget.
      So if you have custom written widgets, they might need some adjusting.
    * AlienWindows branch got merged. This resulted in some code changes that
      might need to be applied to your code:
       - UpdateWindowPosition -> UpdatePosition
       - HasHandle -> Window.HasHandle  or use  WindowAllocated
       - WindowToScreen() -> WidgetToScreen()
       - WinHandle -> Window.WinHandle
       - WindowAttributes -> Window.WindowAttributes
    * PDF reporting classes and identifier names got translated from French to
      English. See commits ea74bd8c & 5afa5d44 for the bulk of it.
    * Renamed TfpgRect.IsEmpty to TfpgRect.IsUnassigned. Added TfpgRect.Clear
    * Removed OnDragEnter, OnDragLeave and OnDragDrop from TfpgWidget. Now a
      property DropHandler is used that expects a TfpgDropHandler descendant.
      TfpgDropEventHandler may be used as an object that accepts drop events.
    * The FPGM_DROPENTER message has changed. Before the message type was
      TfpgMsgParmMouse now it is TfpgMsgParmDrop. FPGM_DROPMOVE has replaced part
      of the functionality FPGM_DROPENTER used to fulfill.
  - MacOS cocoa backend added
  - MigLayout v11 port and layout manager framework (298 commits):
    - Layout manager framework: ILayoutManager interface with
      FlowLayout, BorderLayout, and MigLayout implementations
    - MigLayout v11: full port from Java including constraint parsing,
      grid engine, grow/shrink, cell spanning, docking, split cells,
      component links, size groups, and debug visualisation
    - Fluent constraint API: LC (layout), AC (axis), CC (component)
      with chainable methods for concise layout definitions
    - Widget sizing: Width/Height as preferred/intent size separated
      from ActualWidth/ActualHeight as rendered size (WPF-inspired)
    - MinWidth/MinHeight/MaxWidth/MaxHeight enforcement in base widget
    - Repository restructured for PasBuild (framework + uidesigner
      as separate build modules)
    - Canvas hardening: dimension guards across X11, GDI, and Cocoa
      backends preventing range errors on small/negative sizes
    - 395 unit tests covering all MigLayout components
    - Quick start guide and example demos for all three layout managers
    - Updated all example extrafpc.cfg files for new directory layout
  - PasBuild build system: multi-module reactor builds with
    automatic test discovery and resource filtering
  - So many bug fixes - too many to mention!


v1.4.1 (2015-09-02)
  This was a maintenance release. We had 71 commits made by 5 contributors.
  Run the following command to see all the changes:

    git shortlog v1.4..v1.4.1


v1.4 (2015-04-09)
  We had 172 commits made by 6 contributors. Run the following command to see
  all the changes:

    git shortlog v1.2..v1.4


v1.2 (2014-08-20)
  We had 375 commits made by 8 contributors. Run the following command to see
  all the changes:

    git shortlog v1.0..v1.2


v1.0 (2013-04-09)
  - Docview improvements: Bookmark maintenance, keyboard shortcuts,
    image support in INF files, cross link support.
  - Many improvements to the experimental Maximus IDE.
  - More widget themeing improvements.
  - Keyboard shortcut handling improvements.
  - AggPas 2D graphics library merged into fpGUI as a new
    cross-platform graphics backend. This is the first step in
    adding AggPas support, and this is still work in progress, but
    most functionality works already. Also added some 64-bit fixes
    to the AggPas code.
  - Many PDF report engine improvements. Also enhanced the look and
    functionality of the Print Preview dialog.
  - Lots more documentation added. This is an ongoing task.
  - Big improvements to the TextEdit widget, that is used by Maximus
    and the Nanoedit example project.
  - Many improvements to the RichView component and it's supported
    syntax - used by Docview. This widget is now also useable
    in other projects, not just Docview.
  - Improved fpGUI language translations.
  - The UI Designer (forms designer) has also seen many improvements,
    like new widgets added to the palette, more published properties
    added to the Object Inspector window etc.
  - Many, many more bug fixes and improvements. For a full list run:
      git log v1.0...v0.8


v0.8 (2011-12-02)
  - New widget demos and many improvements to existing demos.
  - New application examples
    * Spinning Globe, show some graphics support with zooming.
    * An experimental IDE called Maximus, which supports project
      management, compiler settings management, macro management,
      multi-threading enabled, fast procedure list searching,
      syntax-highlighting enabled text editor, OS independent
      file monitor support etc.
  - PDF reporting engine and preview support. Thanks to
    Jean-Marc Levecque for this awesome contribution.
  - Huge improvements and enhancements to the Treeview widget.
    * massive speed improvement
    * improved painting support
    * extended treeview and node method calls
    * state image support (eg: having checkboxes next to nodes)
    widget.
  - Many Docview (fpGUI documentation viewer) improvements
    * Bookmark support
    * Improved annotation support
    * Improved the text rendering and text wrapping
    * Rewrote the font handling which gave a massive 200+% speed
      increase in startup times (depending on the amount of fonts you
      have installed on your system), and reduced memory usage by 50%.
  - Added image support to RichView, the text viewer used by Docview.
  - Two new supported platforms: OpenSolaris and MacOSX (with X11
    support).
  - Global keyboard shortcut support for menu items and actions.
  - fpGUI API documentation has been extended and improved.
  - OS independent DND (drag-n-drop) support has been implemented. This
    supports external application-to-application and internal
    widget-to-widget drag-n-drop.
  - Improved the workings of implementing context sensitive help inside
    your applications.
  - Improved fpGUI project templates for use with Lazarus IDE or MSEide.
  - Included the WIPFC (OpenWatcom IPF Compiler) binaries to allow you
    to compile your own IPF help files into binary INF help files.
  - UI Designer (the visual forms designer for fpGUI) has seen many
    improvements:
    * new components on the component palette.
    * new properties accessible in the Object Inspector
    * improved dialogs for "tab order" and "widget order" changes.
    * code generated can now use spaces or tab characters for
      indentation.
    * improved File menu layout and new options.
  - Improved themes support
  - Experimental MDI (multi-document interface) support
  - Extended the Unicode wrapper functions for the FPC's RTL file
    handing
    functions.
  - New built-in code page conversion functions have been added.
  - Grid widgets have improved scrolling support options.
  - Improved fpGUI language translations.
  - Many, many more bug fixes and improvements. For a full list run:
      git log v0.8...v0.7


v0.7 (2010-08-02)
  - Quite a few more minor bug fixes since v0.7-rc2.
  - Some memory leaks in TfpgListView
  - Added an example Debug Server in examples/apps/debugserver
    - This can be used with FPC's dbugintf unit so you can send
      debug messages. Handy for debugging CGI apps on your server.
  - A new unit fpg_imgutils was added. It contains some handy
    utility functions for images.
  - Implemented disabled images support for all controls that can
    display images.
  - Added a new TfpgMemo Mediator for use with tiOPF based
     applications.
  - Improved quick date selection in TfpgComboCalendar. Users can
    now click the Year or Month to quickly select a different value
    without the need for scrolling through every month.
  - Many more improvements to the "prototype" text editor component
    located in prototypes/textedit/. Soon this will become a
    standard component in fpGUI.
  - Minor improvements to DocView's toolbar.
  - DocView now has a 'File | Open Special' option, which can open
    environment variables pointing to a location where INF files are.
  - Grids now have a smooth scrolling option for horizontal scrolling.
  - A new Input Query dialog was added.
  - Some demos where improved. eg: SplashScreen demo.
  - JPEG image format support was added. Soon all image formats
    supported by FPImage will be included. Unfortunately it did not
    make it into this release.
  - Added a fpGUI project template for when you use fpGUI with MSEide.
  - A new Color Selection dialog was added to fpGUI.
  - fpGUI's UI Designer has a few more components on the component palette.
    eg: TfpgFilenameEdit, TfpgDirectoryEdit, TfpgFontEdit, etc...
  - Some more minor changes to allow compiling fpGUI under MacOSX with X11.


v0.7.rc2  (2010-04-08)
  - Localization of Character Map dialog.
  - Insert from Character Map added to TfpgEdit default popup menu.
  - ModalResults is now a enum type. Improved integration with UI
    Designer.
  - Memo: problems with deleting selected text is now fixed.
  - Improved WinCE support, including reading BMP files.
  - Fixed compilation of all example projects.
  - Extended available properties that can be edited via the Object
    Inspector of the UI Designer.
  - Fixed issues where dialogs are closed via the window border X
    button and not the available buttons in the dialog. Developer
    can define behaviour of X close button.
  - Improved TabSheet handling in UI Designer.
  - Various improvements to TfpgPageControl and TfpgTabSheet. This
    includes new tab positions: Bottom, Left, Right and None.
  - SelectDirectory dialog was not working under Windows.
  - Setting selected directory in SelectDirectory dialog now works.
  - New mouse cursor demo.
  - Improved the ability to customize the HintWindow. HintWindow
    demo was extended to show how this can be done.
  - Improved Visible property handling especially with child
    components. Now only the parent Visible property is changed.
  - tiOPF: correctly disable event handlers in edit mediators.
  - Added a script which generates a fpGUI version number based on
    Git repository information. Later this will be converted to
    a object pascal console application.


v0.7.rc1  (2010-03-04)
  - FPC 2.4.0 compatible.
  - Fully tested on 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. Tested on Linux,
    Windows and the *BSD family.
  - Mobile device support is back. Tested on ARM Linux and Windows
    Mobile devices.
  - fpGUI UI Designer has improved a lot and extended it's component
    palette and Object Inspector.
  - Various bug fixes, memory leaks and other enhancements have been
    applied.
  - Units have a more uniform naming style.
  - Classes have a more uniform structure/hierarchy with base classes.
  - Help support has been added to the core framework
  - fpGUI now has it's own help file viewer called DocView.
    Docview includes the following features:
     - document annotation
     - bookmarks
     - browse history
     - exporting articles to plain text or IPF format.
     - full text search (including weighting of results to see how
       relevant the results are)
     - Font and Color customization
     - Concatenation of help files at run-time so a library of help
       files can be viewed simultaneously.
     - Easy integration via the "external tools" feature of IDE's like
       Lazarus or MSEide. This allows for context sensitive help.
     - History of most recently viewed help files.
     - Help file format used is the INF format (IBM's format used it
       OS/2), which is very compact, incredibly fast and supports full
       text search.
  - A lot of new components have been added, including enhancements
    to existing components.
  - Various new dialogs have been added, which include Color Wheel,
    Character Map, Database Login etc.
  - Improved integration with tiOPF project via the Model-GUI-Mediator
    design pattern.
  - Graphical FPCUnit unit test runner.
  - Lots of new language translations for the core fpGUI library.
  - A lot of new example projects demoing various GUI components.


v0.6  (2008-02-17) revision 534
  - Added a new INI Utils unit which introduces ReadOnly ini support
  - Implemented the Model-GUI-Meditor design pattern so fpGUI can be
    used with tiOPF's object persistent framework. This allows any
    fpGUI component to become object-aware. I find this a better
    alternative to DB-aware components.
  - Many improvements to the GUI Designer. New property editors, new
    components, better mouse support, MRU menu etc.
  - 64-bit support is now added
  - Newly supported platforms: FreeBSD and DesktopBSD
  - Unicode text input is now supported under Windows.
  - Started implementing Message Dialogs (with multiple buttons, icons etc).
  - New components:
    * Calendar combobox
    * Gauges (pie, bar, needle, etc.)
    * DB Label example component.
  - Better support for newer desktop environments under Linux.
  - Anti-aliased line drawing support.
  - Line styles (dot, solid, dash...) are now fully supported on all platforms.
  - Implemented the Command design pattern interface. Something like
    Delphi's TAction component.
  - Fixed many memory leaks in CoreLib units.
  - New examples/demos added: Splash Screen, Command Handler, Gauges,
    Anti-aliased line drawing etc..
  - Started working on Message Dialogs.
  - Better clipboard support.
  - Including MANY more improvements and bug fixes. There are to
    many to list. For a detailed listing of the changes use the svn command
    line client as follows:  svn log -r 367:534


v0.5  (2007-09-13)
  - The first release since the rewrite of fpGUI to use a 'windowed'
    multi-handle implementation.
  - Available components in this release:
    * Button with image support
    * Label
    * Bevel (aka Panel)
    * Radio Buttons
    * Check Boxes
    * Track Bar (aka Slider)
    * Page Control (aka Tab Control)
    * List Box
    * Scrollbars
    * Memo (partially implemented)
    * Forms (Windows). Normal, Modal and Popup.
    * Dialogs
          o ShowMessage()
          o Font Selection dialog
          o File Open...
          o File Save As...
    * Text Edit
    * Combo Box (aka Choice List)
    * Grids (aka Tables)
          o Base Grid
          o Custom Grid
          o Draw Grid
          o String Grid
          o File Grid
    * Progress Bar
    * List View
    * Main Menu bar and Popup Menus
    * Treeview
  - Align and Anchor support has been added.
  - Clipboard support (application wide). Global (OS based)
    is in the works.
  - All painting is done via double buffering, so drawing flicker
    is a thing of the past.
  - Better font support. We now have support for Font Aliases. We
    can define a font style (font name, size and attributes) and
    give it a text name. Whenever we want to use that font style,
    we can reference it by the text name.
  - All colors are now defined in RGB order, no matter what platform
    we use.
  - Modal form support (with some minor issues under Windows that
    should be fixed soon).
  - Widgets and Forms now have a single consistent constructor due
    to the base window class that descends from TComponent.
  - Delayed resource allocation. This is very handy under Linux where
    the X Server can be in a remote location (not on the same computer).
    This gives a performance bonus as we need to communicate less with
    the X Server which is inherently slow.
  - Supports a Model-GUI-Mediator (MGM) implementation to work with
    the tiOPF Object Persistent Framework. Business Objects can now
    be saved in a OO fashion. The MGM implementation also makes the
    standard fpGUI components Object-Aware. No need for DB Components.
  - fpGUI now has a Visual Form (GUI) Designer in the example/apps
    directory. Developers can now create forms visually at a much
    faster rate. The designer uses the same source file that contains
    your code - generating the ui code like you would have done
    manually. No external ui files like Lazarus (*.lfm) or Delphi
    (*.dfm). See the readme file in the project directory for more
    details.


v0.4
  - The last version of fpGUI using a single handle (windowless)
    design.

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