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This is the announcement of the third publicly available version of
mGTK.  This version is called pink-chickens (or mgtk-beta-0.03).  It
is only a minor update of the previous version.


News in the pink-chickens release
---------------------------------
Since the last release, red-hens, there are only minor changes (refer
to the Changes file for details).  The reason for the change is that
the red-hens release do not work well with Moscow ML 2.00 on Windows.
Also, there is now rudimentary support for working with the CList
widget.  Finally, mGTK is now on Sourceforge.


Download
--------
mGTK can be obtained from the mGTK homepage at 

     http://mgtk.sourceforge.net

mGTK is distributed in source form, and is known to compile on Linux
and Windows. In principle, mGTK should run on all platforms supported
by Moscow ML and GTK+.

We provide binaries for Windows to eliminate the need for a C
compiler.


What is mGTK? 
-------------
mGTK is glue code to make GTK+ (the Gimp Toolkit) accessible from SML,
thereby providing a convenient interface for SML programmers to
develop applications with a graphical user interface.

For the moment only the Moscow ML compiler is supported. 


Current Release
---------------
mGTK is still in the early phases of development.  A number of design
decisions have yet to be made. Consequently, changes to the signature
must be anticipated. That being said, the major design issues *are*
resolved and the overall structure should remain intact. We anticipate
only minor changes in user-visible parts of the toolkit; for example,
(a) naming of functions, (b) the number of widgets and/or functions
present, (c) the types of the functions connecting signals to widgets,
and (d) improved pretty-printing of the generated code. We would like
to encourage you to submit ideas for improvements to mGTK; see below.


What is Gtk+? 
-------------
Gtk+ is a wonderful graphic toolkit written in C for the X-Windows
system that was originally developed as the basis for the gimp. It is
currently being ported to Win32 by Tor Lillqvist.  For more
information about gtk+ refer to the gtk+ homepage at
http://www.gtk.org


Contact information
-------------------
If you have comments, bug reports, feature request, or just wants to
say that that you think that mGTK is cool, then please send an email
to: mgtk@it.edu

We have a low trafic moderated mailing list for announcements of new
releases of mGTK.  To subscribe to the mgtk-announce mailing list go
to:
        http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/mgtk-announce


Helping out
-----------
When you have played a bit with this release we would be most grateful
if you would help us answer the following questions (this is your
change to have some influence):

(1) ``Manual'' or ``automatic'' initialization (should Gtk.init
    be called explicitly, or is it better that the library takes
    care of the initialization)?

(2) Names for functions with optional parameters.  At the moment there
    are two versions of functions that takes optional parameters:
    one with the normal gtk+ name, for example:
   
	val text_new: 'a GtkAdjustment option -> 'b GtkAdjustment option
                                              -> base GtkText

    and one with the normal name and a pling, for example:

        val text_new': unit -> base GtkText
   
    The plinged version corresponds to the normal version called with
    all optional arguments set to NONE.
 
    Should this be the other way around?  That is, should the version
    with the optional arguments be called name_full, and the shorter
    (default?) version be called name?

(3) Should the functions that may fail return an option or should they
    raise an exception.

Or you can look in the CONTRIB file in the distribution.


Authors
-------
mGTK was developed by 

* Ken Friis Larsen (http://www.it.edu/people/kfl)
* Henning Niss (http://www.diku.dk/users/hniss)

in our spare time.


Contributors
------------
* Mike Thomas helped with the Win32 port.



Sweet SML'ing

Ken Friis Larsen and Henning Niss


ANNOUNCEMENT ANNOUNCEMENT ANNOUNCEMENT ANNOUNCEMENT ANNOUNCEMENT