| The Wine team is proud to announce that the stable release Wine 1.4 |
| is now available. |
| |
| This release represents 20 months of development effort and over |
| 16,000 individual changes. The main highlights are the new DIB |
| graphics engine, a redesigned audio stack, and full support for |
| bidirectional text and character shaping. |
| |
| It also contains a lot of improvements across the board, as well as |
| support for many new applications, notably Microsoft Office 2010. See |
| the release notes below for a summary of the major changes. |
| |
| This release is dedicated to the memory of Gé (Greg) van Geldorp, who |
| passed away in May 2011. Greg single-handedly designed, built, and |
| maintained the Wine Testbot, which has become a cornerstone of our |
| development process. The high quality of this release owes a lot to |
| his work. He is greatly missed by us all. |
| |
| |
| The source is available from the following locations: |
| |
| http://ibiblio.org/pub/linux/system/emulators/wine/wine-1.4.tar.bz2 |
| http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wine/wine-1.4.tar.bz2 |
| |
| Binary packages for various distributions will be available from: |
| |
| http://www.winehq.org/download |
| |
| You will find documentation on http://www.winehq.org/documentation |
| |
| You can also get the current source directly from the git |
| repository. Check http://www.winehq.org/git for details. |
| |
| Wine is available thanks to the work of many people. See the file |
| AUTHORS in the distribution for the complete list. |
| |
| ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| |
| What's new in Wine 1.4 |
| ====================== |
| |
| *** Graphics |
| |
| - There is a new graphics engine for rendering into Device Independent |
| Bitmaps (DIB). DIB rendering no longer requires access faults or |
| round-trips to the X server, which yields large performance gains in |
| DIB-intensive applications. |
| |
| - The DIB engine can also be used for fall-back implementations of |
| some graphics primitives, like alpha blending, when the display |
| driver doesn't support them directly. |
| |
| - All possible color formats are supported by the DIB engine, so DIB |
| operations are no longer limited by the color resolution of the |
| display. Rendering of the various palette formats is also improved. |
| |
| - Custom styles of dashed lines are supported. |
| |
| - Cosmetic pens using hashes or patterns are supported. |
| |
| - Gradients use dithering on low color resolution devices for a nicer |
| appearance. |
| |
| - The XRender extension is used for gradients when supported. |
| |
| - PostScript output quality is improved, particularly for bitmaps and |
| paths. |
| |
| - Rotated text works better for all output device types. |
| |
| - GdiPlus supports more image formats, including formats that are not |
| supported through GDI. |
| |
| - More image codecs are implemented, including support for TGA and CMYK |
| JPEG decoding, as well as BMP, TIFF, PNG, and ICNS encoding. |
| |
| |
| *** Audio |
| |
| - The audio stack is completely redesigned, based on the Vista |
| model. WinMM and DirectSound are implemented on top of the new |
| MMDevAPI library. |
| |
| - The Alsa, OSS, and CoreAudio drivers have been rewritten to use the |
| new model. They now serve as back-ends to the MMDevAPI dll, which no |
| longer needs to rely on the OpenAL library. |
| |
| - The Jack, NAS, AudioIO, and ESD audio subsystems are no longer |
| supported. Version 3 of the OSS subsystem is no longer supported |
| either, version 4 is required. |
| |
| - The Audio tab in the Wine Configuration tool has been redesigned for |
| the new audio subsystem. The appropriate driver is automatically |
| selected and no longer needs to be configured manually. |
| |
| |
| *** Input devices |
| |
| - The XInput 2 extension is used to provide better mouse control in |
| games and other full-screen applications. |
| |
| - The mouse is automatically clipped to prevent it from leaving a |
| full-screen window when running in desktop mode. Switching to a |
| different application with Alt-Tab releases the mouse. Clipping can |
| be disabled through the Wine Configuration tool. |
| |
| - Animated mouse cursors are fully supported. |
| |
| - Joystick action mapping is supported, including a configuration dialog. |
| |
| |
| *** Internationalization |
| |
| - Bidirectional text rendering is fully supported. |
| |
| - Font shaping and reordering is supported for all the scripts |
| specified in the Unicode standard. |
| |
| - Bidirectional text editing is supported in the standard edit |
| control. |
| |
| - Vertical fonts (e.g. for Japanese) are supported. |
| |
| - Mirroring of windows, menus, and window controls for right-to-left |
| languages is fully supported. |
| |
| - All resources (strings, menus, dialogs, accelerators) contained in |
| Wine can be translated through standard gettext-style po files. |
| |
| - The Unicode character data tables have been updated to version 6.0 |
| of the Unicode standard. |
| |
| - Wine is translated to French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, |
| Swedish, Finnish, Portuguese, Catalan, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, |
| Slovenian, Lithuanian, Japanese, and Korean. It has partial |
| translations for another fifteen languages. |
| |
| |
| *** User interface |
| |
| - The new Vista style of file dialogs is supported. |
| |
| - Common controls are improved, particularly the calendar, tree view, |
| system link, and image list controls. |
| |
| - Parts of the Game Explorer API are implemented. |
| |
| - Wine can take advantage of the GStreamer framework for audio and |
| video playback. This makes it possible to support all formats that |
| have a GStreamer codec. On Mac OS X, the QuickTime framework is used |
| for the same purpose. |
| |
| |
| *** Desktop integration |
| |
| - System tray notification balloons are implemented. |
| |
| - The system tray is displayed as a task bar at the bottom of the |
| screen in desktop mode. |
| |
| - The system tray is automatically registered again when the Unix tray |
| manager is restarted. |
| |
| - The standard mouse cursors are remapped to the cursor theme of the |
| Unix desktop. |
| |
| - Drag & drop of OLE objects across applications is supported. |
| |
| - Icons for menu entries are exported in multiple sizes and in PNG |
| format. |
| |
| - Icons are displayed for the Unix desktop "Open with..." menu |
| entries. |
| |
| |
| *** Internet and networking |
| |
| - The built-in Internet Explorer has a user interface, including a |
| menu, an address bar, a tool bar, and configuration dialogs. |
| |
| - There is an "Internet Settings" control panel that allows |
| configuring various aspects of web browsing, as well as managing |
| security certificates. |
| |
| - The VBScript language is fully supported. |
| |
| - The built-in (Gecko-based) web browser engine supports ActiveX. |
| |
| - The Gecko engine has been updated to the version from Firefox 8. |
| |
| - The Gecko engine is packaged as an MSI file, and its installation |
| can be managed from the "Add/Remove Programs" control panel. |
| |
| - The Gecko engine is available on 64-bit. |
| |
| - Persistent HTTP connections are supported. |
| |
| - HTTP proxies are better supported, including PAC scripts. |
| |
| - Changing network passwords is supported. |
| |
| - The HTML Help support is improved, including a nicer user interface |
| and better navigation support. |
| |
| - Asynchronous I/O on network socket is improved, particularly |
| asynchronous accepts. This helps with various networked games. |
| |
| |
| *** Direct3D |
| |
| - Reloading sRGB textures uses either EXT_texture_sRGB_decode or FBO |
| blits when available. This is much faster. This affects Source |
| Engine games and Unreal Engine 3 games in particular. |
| |
| - WineD3D supports multisample anti-aliasing. |
| |
| - D3D8 and D3D9 properly support v-sync / swap intervals. |
| |
| - The WineD3D blitter code is improved both for correctness and |
| performance. |
| |
| - The WineD3D graphics card database has been updated to recognize new |
| graphics cards and Mesa drivers. |
| |
| - WineD3D no longer uses COM for its implementation. This makes it |
| much nicer to work with. |
| |
| - The context management code is improved. The window being destroyed |
| while the WineD3D device is still active in particular is handled |
| much better. |
| |
| - There have been some performance improvements related to WineD3D |
| state management and resource updates. |
| |
| - Focus and device window handling work better for D3D8 and D3D9. This |
| mostly affects things like changing graphics settings, switching |
| from full-screen to windowed and back, etc. |
| |
| - NVDB is supported on cards that support GL_EXT_depth_bounds_test. |
| |
| - The INTZ and NULL formats are supported. |
| |
| - Depth surface blits are implemented in WineD3D. |
| |
| - Depth bias handling is improved. This fixes flickering shadows and |
| decals in a couple of games, like Mass Effect 2 and Unreal |
| Tournament 2004. |
| |
| - GL_ARB_draw_elements_base_vertex is supported. This allows draws to |
| be more efficient in some cases. |
| |
| - GL_ARB_map_buffer_alignment is supported. This allows for more |
| efficient mapping of textures and buffers in some cases. |
| |
| - Handling projected textures works better in early shader model |
| versions. |
| |
| - Shaders are strictly checked against the hardware capabilities. This |
| means we won't try to create e.g. a shader model 3 shader on shader |
| model 2 hardware. |
| |
| - D3D9EX texture creation from system memory is supported. This |
| affects some Source Engine games like Team Fortress 2. |
| |
| - The D3DX9 shader assembler is mostly finished. It is now part of the |
| new d3dcompiler dll. |
| |
| - Various parts of D3DX9 are more complete, including: |
| - The surface / texture loading functions. |
| - The mesh creation and manipulation functions. |
| - The vertex declaration handling functions. |
| - The effects framework, binary effect parsing in particular. |
| |
| |
| *** DirectDraw |
| |
| - OpenGL is used by default for DirectDraw as well, just like D3D8 and |
| D3D9. For most applications this is an improvement, but nevertheless |
| the old GDI renderer may still work better for specific applications |
| or if the graphics driver's OpenGL implementation is inadequate. |
| |
| - Flips are properly supported. The back buffer now contains the front |
| buffer contents after a flip instead of being undefined. |
| |
| - Improved support for viewports in early versions of DirectDraw that |
| include an extra clipspace transformation. This affects the original |
| Half-Life. |
| |
| - Fixes for cooperative levels and associated window handling and mode |
| changes. |
| |
| - DirectDraw clippers are supported. |
| |
| |
| *** Kernel |
| |
| - DOSBox is used to run DOS applications on platforms that don't |
| support vm86 mode. |
| |
| - The Windows console is emulated as best as possible on Unix |
| terminals without requiring switching into curses mode. |
| |
| - Volume label and serial number can be retrieved from UDF filesystems |
| (used on DVDs). |
| |
| - Side-by-side manifests are installed for a number of built-in |
| libraries to make them more compatible with applications using |
| manifest resources. |
| |
| - The Wine preloader is also used on 64-bit for a more compatible |
| address space layout. |
| |
| |
| *** Installer support |
| |
| - Applying installer patches is supported. This is needed for various |
| Service Pack installers, particularly for the .NET ones. |
| |
| - Installing side-by-side assemblies is supported. |
| |
| - Rollbacks of failed installs is supported. |
| |
| - Installing services is better supported. |
| |
| - MSI installers can be created entirely under Wine, using the |
| 'cabarc' and 'winemsibuilder' tools. |
| |
| |
| *** Build environment |
| |
| - The IDL compiler (widl) can generate format strings for both |
| old-style and new-style COM interpreted stubs. |
| |
| - Registrations for dlls and typelibs are based on scripts generated |
| at compile time, for faster Wine prefix creation and updates. |
| |
| - The Resource Compiler (wrc) and Message Compiler (wmc) can generate |
| translated resources from po files, as well as create po files from |
| existing translated resources. |
| |
| - Fake PE dlls are generated and installed for all built-in dlls, |
| since many applications expect to find the PE dlls on disk. |
| |
| - The ARM platform is supported by the Wine tool chain. |
| |
| - The windows.h header can now be used in Wine code, the compile time |
| gains are no longer worth the header incompatibilities. |
| |
| - Some headers have been modified to make them easier to share with |
| the Mingw-w64 project. |
| |
| |
| *** Platform-specific changes |
| |
| - Wine compiles on ARM platforms. |
| |
| - On Mac OS X, the secure channel implementation uses the Security |
| framework instead of the GnuTLS library. |
| |
| - On Linux, dynamic device management can use the new UDisks service |
| in addition to HAL. |
| |
| - Stubless OLE proxies are supported also on 64-bit platforms. |
| |
| |
| *** Built-in applications |
| |
| - The new 'cabarc' program allows manipulation of cabinet files, |
| including creation of new cabinets. |
| |
| - The new 'wscript' program implements the Windows Script Host, to run |
| VBScript and JavaScript scripts. |
| |
| - The new 'taskkill' program allows killing Windows processes by name |
| or process id. |
| |
| - The new 'ipconfig' program displays the IP configuration seen by |
| Windows programs. |
| |
| - The new 'hostname' program displays the hostname seen by Windows |
| programs. |
| |
| - The 'explorer' program implements a shell namespace explorer instead |
| of launching the file manager. |
| |
| - The 'view' program can display enhanced metafiles. |
| |
| - The 'dxdiag' tool outputs real information about the system. |
| |
| - The new 'winemsibuilder' tool allows creating MSI installers; it is |
| used to build the Gecko add-on package. |
| |
| - Almost all built-in applications are fully Unicode. |
| |
| - All applications installed to /usr/bin have a manual page. |
| |
| |
| *** Quality assurance & debugging |
| |
| - The test suite no longer attempts to support Win9x platforms, this |
| was too much effort for little benefit. |
| |
| - The Wine debugger offers to save crash information to a file, to |
| make it easier to provide good information in bug reports. |
| |
| - Parsing of debugging information from various object file formats is |
| improved, which should yield better quality crash information, |
| particularly for 64-bit. |
| |
| |
| *** Miscellaneous |
| |
| - XML support is improved, including support for schemas, namespaces, |
| MSXML version 6, and an XML file writer. This is particularly useful |
| for the new Microsoft Office XML-based document formats. |
| |
| - The new "secure" versions of the C runtime functions are almost all |
| implemented. |
| |
| - There is an initial implementation of the Microsoft C++ standard |
| class libraries, including string, locale, and stream classes. |
| |
| - Creation of compressed cabinet files is supported. |
| |
| - There is an implementation of the OpenCL library, as a wrapper |
| around the equivalent Unix library. |
| |
| - Print jobs are submitted to CUPS directly instead of requiring the |
| 'lpr' command-line tool. |
| |
| - There is support for managing multiple .NET runtime versions and |
| their corresponding Mono versions. |
| |
| |
| *** New external dependencies |
| |
| - The XInput 2 library is used for mouse control in games. |
| |
| - The libopencl library is used by the OpenCL wrapper dll. |
| |
| - The libgettextpo library is optionally used at build time to update |
| po files from the rc sources. |
| |
| - The msgfmt tool (from the gettext library) is used at build time to |
| compile po files. |
| |
| - The zlib library is used to implement cabinet file compression. |
| |
| - The libfreetype library needs to be at least version 2.2, older |
| versions are no longer supported. |
| |
| - The libdbus library is used for the UDisks device support on Linux. |
| |
| - The smbpasswd tool (part of Samba) is used for changing network |
| passwords. |
| |
| - DOSBox is used to run DOS applications. It is recommended to use the |
| latest SVN version of DOSBox since it contains some Wine-specific |
| improvements. |
| |
| |
| *** Useful configuration options |
| |
| Note: More details abouts these and other configuration options can be |
| found at http://wiki.winehq.org/UsefulRegistryKeys |
| |
| - The correct audio driver is detected automatically, but can still be |
| overridden through the HKCU\Software\Wine\Drivers\Audio key like in |
| previous versions. It is recommended to delete this key entirely to |
| enable the auto-detection. |
| |
| - Multisample anti-aliasing can be disabled by setting "Multisampling" |
| to "disabled" under HKCU\Software\Wine\Direct3D. |
| |
| - Setting "AlwaysOffscreen" to "enabled" under |
| HKCU\Software\Wine\Direct3D simplifies sharing depth / stencil |
| surfaces between on-screen and off-screen render targets in |
| WineD3D. This will likely become the default for the next release. |
| |
| - The DirectDraw renderer can be switched back to the old GDI mode by |
| setting "DirectDrawRenderer" to "gdi" under HKCU\Software\Wine\Direct3D. |
| |
| |
| *** Known issues |
| |
| - Support for PulseAudio is improved, but very recent versions of |
| PulseAudio (>= 1.0) and alsa-plugins (>= 1.0.25) are required for |
| good results, since older versions contain various bugs. |
| See http://wiki.winehq.org/Sound for details. |
| |
| -- |
| Alexandre Julliard |
| julliard@winehq.org |