Wine 1.3.37 Rounds Out The DIB Engine

As Wine 1.4 approaches, Wine 1.3.37 was released today with several prominent changes.

Key features of this bi-weekly development snapshot of the open-source Wine includes completing the DIB engine, improvements to the C++ run-time, audio driver fixes, removing unnecessary Direct3D options from WineCfg, and fixes for the built-in Internet Explorer. There's also the usual "various bug-fixes."

The DIB engine has been worked on quite extensively over the course of the Wine 1.3 development releases over the past year. The first bits of the DIB engine implementation came just last year (at the same time as the X Input 2 raw mouse events) and in the releases since the DIB engine has progressed bit-by-bit. Now with Wine 1.3.37, with the 1.4 release expected in the next few months, the DIB engine looks to be completed.

DIB is short for Device Independent Bitmaps and is part of the display sub-system. Windows applications can use DIBs by either the GDI (Graphics Device Interface) API or directly touching the memory for the bitmap. Wine's DIB engine is what provides software rendering for the GDI approach. Extensive information on Wine's DIB engine can be found on the WineHQ.org Wiki. Implementing a DIB engine goes back to bug 421, which was created back in 2002 but is now only realized for the Wine 1.4 release in 2012.

Besides seeing the completion of the DIB engine, some of the other changes are also nice to see like the improved C++ run-time and audio driver fixes. There's also a number of Direct3D-related changes in the Wine 1.3.37 release, but nothing to significantly advance the implementation's support of Direct3D 9/10/11. The support here is still looking to be incomplete for the Wine 1.4 release, of which CodeWeavers' CrossOver Games 11 will be based.

Additional details regarding the release of Wine 1.3.37 can be found at WineHQ.org.