forked from xaos-project/XaoS
-
Notifications
You must be signed in to change notification settings - Fork 0
/
NEWS
505 lines (351 loc) · 18.7 KB
/
NEWS
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 4.0
----------------------------------
o The user interface is based on Qt, so XaoS has a modern look and feel.
o Works on macOS Catalina, which broke older versions.
o Animation rendering has been fixed.
o Menu entries are now standardized.
o TrueType text rendering so fonts look nicer and non-Latin alphabets are
supported.
o Hindi, Icelandic, Russian, Serbian, Swedish translations.
o Several minor updates for the other languages.
o The language can be set in the View menu now.
o Lots of bug fixes.
o Zooming is possible also with the mouse wheel.
o Mouse cursor has been changed to cross.
o Iteration number N can be used in user formulas.
o Lots of source code cleanup and refactoring. It may not be obvious to
end users but this will allow us to make better features and more
frequent releases in the future.
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.6
----------------------------------
Cross-platform changes
======================
o Supporting libpng >= 1.5 and 1.6 (J.B. Langston, Petr Gajdos)
o Various bug fixes
o New fractal types (Arpad Fekete)
Mac-specific changes
====================
o Fixing zooming on Mac OS X 10.8 (J.B. Langston)
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.5
----------------------------------
Cross-platform changes
======================
o New Portuguese translation courtesy of Lucio Henrique de Arujo and
Zelia Maria Horta Garcia
o Fixed crash bug when using -render command line option with user formulas
(Mateusz Malczak)
o Removed support for unmaintained platforms (DOS, BeOS, Plan 9, etc.)
o Updated documentation to reflect infrastructure changes
(Discussion and issue tracking have moved to Google Groups and Google Code)
o Additional fractal examples by J.B. Langston
Windows-specific changes
========================
o Improved GUI appearance with modern fonts and controls on XP and Vista
o Help format changed from WinHelp to HtmlHelp. WinHelp was no longer
supported starting with Windows Vista and Windows 7.
o Fixed bug where output was invisible when using XaoS from the command line
o Simplified and improved build instructions for Windows developers
GTK+ User Interface (Beta)
==========================
The GTK+ user interface is approaching beta quality. We welcome beta
testers to try out this version and let us know what issues you encounter.
Please share your feedback with us on the developer's discussion group at:
http://groups.google.com/group/xaos-devel.
We ask that beta testers be advanced users who are comfortable compiling
software from source and submitting useful bug reports including backtraces.
If you are not comfortable with this, then please wait for the final version
to be released. We would also really appreciate it if any experienced GTK+
developers can review our code and make suggestions for improvement.
Since the GTK+ UI is still not ready for everyday use, it will not be
compiled by default. You must explicitly enable it using the following
configure switch:
--with-gtk-driver=yes
In addition, we recommend you disable all other drivers when using the GTK
driver using the following configure switches:
--with-x11-driver=no
New Documentation Format (Beta)
===============================
We are in the process of migrating the XaoS help system to Sphinx and
reStructuredText. Our user manual was previously in a crippled subset
of HTML that we dubbed XSHL, which was missing many features necessary
for maintaining modern, attractive documentation.
Sphinx was developed by the Python project for their documentation, and
it is very similar to a Wiki in the way you mark up the text. It can
output the results as HTML, PDF, and Windows Help. It supports all the
important things that are missing from the current help format, such as
tables, images, and internet hyperlinks. It can even convert LaTeX math
markup into image files that get included in the HTML output.
The documentation still needs a lot of work before it is ready, and we
have to make some modifications to Sphinx itself in order to integrate
the documentation it produces with XaoS's help system. However, it is
far enough along that we would welcome volunteers who are familiar with
reStructuredText to submit improvements to the documentation.
The new documentation is located in the help/rest directory, and it can
be converted into HTML or PDF using the included Makefile. In order to
generate the output, you will need to install Sphinx. Visit the Sphinx
homepage at http://sphinx.pocoo.org/ for installation instructions and
more information on the new documentation format.
If you would like to help with the documentation, please contact us on
the discussion group at: http://groups.google.com/group/xaos-devel.
We will be happy to help you get started.
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.4
----------------------------------
Cross-platform changes
======================
o New Italian translation courtesy of Sergio Zanchetta
o Updated catalog and i18n for German by Andreas Madritsch
o Bug fix to prevent garbled characters when using non-English languages
on modern systems using UTF-8
o Bug fix to prevent XaoS from crashing after using the Render Animation
functionality
o Bug fix to prevent incorrect colors on smooth coloring modes with
certain video modes
Mac-specific changes
====================
This is a huge release for Mac users. The Mac user interface has been
completely rewritten in Cocoa and improved in a number of ways:
o Standard Aqua dialog boxes instead of the strange-looking Unixy things
in previous versions. Fields in dialog boxes now support cut and paste
as you would expect.
o Pop-up menus are now displayed using standard Aqua menus
o Menu bar in full-screen mode is now the standard Mac OS X menu bar. It
automatically slides into view when you move your mouse to the top of
the screen and slides out when you move away from it.
o XaoS now has a standard Aqua about dialog box, which displays links to
license and credits in help file.
o Help is now displayed via Mac OS X's standard help viewer. Tutorials
can still be launched via links in the help viewer.
o Support for opening xpf (Saved Position) and xaf (Saved Animation)
files directly from Finder via drag and drop and by double-clicking.
XaoS now includes its own document icon for these files as well.
o Support for basic AppleScriptability via the standard script
dictionary. Includes things like opening files and manipulating the
window, but no XaoS-specific functionality.
o Support for panning the fractal with the mouse scroll wheel or
trackpad two-finger gestures.
In addition to the user interface improvements, XaoS for Mac has the
following improvements:
o Now uses greater precision (long double) for calculations to enable
much deeper zooms.
o In addition to English, XaoS for Mac OS X now supports the following
languages: Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Italian, Romanian, and
Spanish.
o Integration with Stone Design's Videator (http://stone.com/Videator/).
XaoS can now send live a live video stream to Videator, which can then
do post-processing using Mac OS X's core video technology. This is
great for VJing (live video performance art). See
http://stone.com/Videator/VJ.html for more details.
o Edge Detection and Pseudo 3D filters now work correctly. Fixed a
bug that previously caused them to render the image completely black.
Experimental GTK+ Port
======================
An experimental GTK+ user interface has been added in the src/ui/ui-drv/gtk
directory. Eventually we hope to replace the old X11 interface with this
one so that XaoS will blend in seamlessly with the GNOME environment.
Right now, this port is incomplete and it should be considered an alpha-
quality preview. As such, the GTK+ port will not be compiled by default.
You must explicitly enable it using the following configure switch:
--with-gtk-driver=yes
In addition, we recommend you disable all other drivers when using the GTK
driver using the following configure switches:
--with-x11-driver=no
--with-dga-driver=no
--with-ggi-driver=no
--with-aa-driver=no
Please do not report bugs against the GTK+ driver. We know that it is very
buggy and we are working to rapidly improve it. If you want to help with the
GTK+ driver's development, please contact the xaos-devel mailing list first,
since it is likely that your patches could conflict with the rapid development
that is taking place on this driver.
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.3
----------------------------------
This release is mostly done by Mateusz Malczak who implemented user
formula support for XaoS. This feature has been a huge demand for
several years and we proudly (humbly?) announce it to the public
audience now.
Mateusz has been working on the underlying SFFE (SegFault Formula
Evaluator) library for several months. XaoS-3.3 can be compiled using
both NASM (Netwide Assembler) or GSL (GNU Scientific Library) for the
underlying complex arithmetic used by SFFE. For more information about
the available user functions please read the enclosed documentation
(see online help, "Other things to read", last entry), or visit
Mateusz's info page on http://www.segfaultlabs.com/sfXaoS.
User formula support has been tested on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X
systems. Recent Ubuntu versions should work without any problems.
You may also notice that internationalization can be broken on modern
Linux systems. This is due to the use of Unicode (UTF8) by default on
these operating systems (including Ubuntu 7.x). To solve these
problems please read Section 6 in src/i18n/README. If you are a packager
of a Linux distribution, you may consider to add extra codepages for
standard locales to the dependency list of XaoS (or create a package
which installs an extra locale if needed).
In addition, this version includes several fixes to the X11 driver
contributed by Tormod Volden. These improve compatibility with recent
versions of Xorg (-fullscreen and -root options), XScreenSaver
(-window-id), and Beryl and Compiz (extreme transparency).
Other improvements include a bug fix for color cycling and a performance
mode, which inhibits text output when using XaoS for public exhibition
(VJing). These changes were contributed by Andrew Stone.
Finally, this version includes several build improvements for Mac OS X
and a bug fix for incorrect colors on Intel Macs when switching from
fullscreen to windowed mode.
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.2.3
------------------------------------
Romanian translation added. Contributed by Ilinca Sitaru.
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.2.2
------------------------------------
This release contains a rewritten Mac OS X port by J. B. Langston III,
and some small fixes for pipes by Marton Torok. For more details
please read the ChangeLog file.
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.2.1
------------------------------------
A new fractal type, the Spidron hornflake has appeared. We changed
the web site to a dokuwiki database, so the help system contains
now a converter for dokuwiki (not completely working yet).
STICKY/DESTDIR is now supported (by Claudio Fontana). The French
translation is updated (by Philippe Wautelet). Bigger fonts are
available for Latin-2 based usage if the user changes the screen
resolution more than 800x600 or 1000x720.
Some small fixes have been done in the catalog files.
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.2
----------------------------------
Main points are the classic Sierpinski and Koch fractals, but still
other formulas are introduced. Some 'oldie but goldie' fractals are
included from the Fractint formula database. The keystroke order has been
changed a little bit. Now gcc-4.0.x is also supported (-mcpu is deprecated
now and the source had to be modified for this).
The new formulas are demonstrated with 3 new tutorial movies. These are
also available in Hungarian language. Volunteers are requested to
translate the new movies into other languages.
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.1.3
------------------------------------
Using this release gcc version 4.0 should also compile the code, not only
the 3.x versions.
Two new fractal types were also added. In addition, the DirectX header
files have been fixed. The French translations are updated.
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.1.2
------------------------------------
This release is a fast bugfix for some gcc versions (or more precisely,
there is a workaround for the B-B bug, see the ChangeLog for details).
The example files were not able to load in version 3.1.1 and msgmerge
was not recognized (this is fixed, however not tested yet).
There are other small but irrelevant fixes (see ChangeLog), too.
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.1.1
------------------------------------
This release is a CVS snapshot freeze for those who are using newer
systems. The most important update is a fix for gcc-3.4. There are also
- improvements in French and Spanish translations,
- some more example files (contributed by Zsigmond Kovács),
- some fixes which patch annoying problems.
For other issues please read the ChangeLog file.
RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.1
----------------------------------
We would like to release a quality product in all manner. Unfortunately,
such a complex software like XaoS requires many details and it does not
seem to be so easy to put a quality software together.
Well, we did all our best... Here come the latest release binaries
for Linux, Windows and DOS. They should work with the following
restrictions:
1. The Linux version seems to be the most stable one. Almost
no bugs were encountered testing it the last few weeks.
SuSE 7.3 and SuSE 8.0 should be good enough to compile
it. The latest source has been also tested on the Compile
Farm of SourceForge.net with the next results:
* [x86] Linux 2.4 (Debian 2.2)
Compiles OK. Seems to be build properly.
* [x86] Linux 2.4 (Red Hat 7.3)
Compiles OK, runs properly. It is suggested to
configure it with --with-mitshm=no to avoid immediate
exit after startup. Runs correctly in an X11 window
on cf.sf.net.
* [x86] FreeBSD (4.7-STABLE)
./configure exits properly, make stops with an error.
* [Alpha] Linux 2.2 (Debian 3.0)
./configure exits properly, make stops with an error
during compiling ui.c.
* [PPC - G4] MacOS X 10.1 SERVER Edition
Compiles OK, the executable gave MIT/SHM problem
with "./configure". It should work with --with-mithsm=no,
but currently I have no access to any Mac OS X
systems to test this.
* [Sparc - Ultra60] Linux 2.4 (Debian 3.0)
Compiles OK, seems to be build properly.
* [Sparc - R220] Sun Solaris (8)
./configure stops with an error.
* [CerfCube SA 1110] Linux 2.4 (Debian 3.0)
Compiles OK, seems to be build properly.
* [J2EE] IBM WebSphere
Compiles OK, runs properly.
I tried to run the executables, mostly I got "Cannot initialize
driver", except where I wrote "runs propery" above. I'm almost sure
that those platforms I wrote "seems to be build properly" for, XaoS
will work without any problems, because there should be only "Can't
open display"-related configuration errors on cf.sf.net and/or at my
place.
You can also realize that internationalization (i18n) will only work
if you install XaoS as the system administrator with "make install".
Future releases may solve this problem.
Tcl/Tk interface now works, but it is not updated since a rather long
time. You can run it entering "wish ./xaosmenu.tcl &" in a Unix shell
in the bin/ directory. This interface is experimental.
Under SVGAlib latin2 fonts will not work for some internationalized
messages.
For compilation with Aalib, you need version 1.4 which can be
downloaded from http://aa-project.sf.net.
2. Microsoft DOS users will enjoy i18n if their system supports it.
Unfortunately some systems have to have plain DOS to make i18n
available. Many Windows systems also support running batch
files from native Windows, however not all (my Windows NT 4
does not). DOS users should run xaos-??.bat in the bin\
directory.
Note that some messages in latin2 fonts will not be displayed
correctly.
Aalib may not work 100% correctly. It may depend on your DPMI
settings. You should download the latest csdpmi*.zip package.
If you want to compile XaoS from scratch, you should download
the following software:
aalib-1.4rc5.tar.gz, all402.zip, bnu213b.zip, djdev203.zip,
fil41b.zip, gcc2952b.zip, gtxt040b.zip, licv17b.zip, mak3791.zip,
png1012b.zip, txi42b.zip, zlib114b.zip.
Aalib must be patched to compile it (I sent a patch to the
SourceForge Tracker) and libvga and libtext (needed for Aalib) must
be also installed. Note that libtext will not compile under the
newest DJGPP, if someone know why DJGPP fails to compile the
appropriate assembly code, please write to us.
3. XaoS has i18n support under Microsoft Windows now. You are not
suggested changing the drivers many times because XaoS will
crash.
4. Here is a list about recent bugs and problems:
* Fixing Macintosh version (load/save works incorrectly).
* Checking why Bailout item is duplicated in Windows help.
* Displaying latin2 fonts correctly.
* Fixing catalog files (mainly French and Spanish).
* Filling up i18n for menu files for some languages.
* Fixing Macintosh version (crash when loading random examples).
* Fixing Windows version (crash when several times saving files
and configurations).
* Fixing generated xaos.dlg for certain languages (e.g. Hungarian).
* Fixing crashing configure/make for all problematic platforms.
* Rewriting i18n to be easier to add new menus and others.
* All other todos announced in TODO file.
That's all. However the problem list is quite long, we hope
you will enjoy XaoS 3.1.
Regards,
Zoltan Kovacs <kovzol@math.u-szeged.hu>
Andreas Madritsch <amadritsch@datacomm.ch>
Jan Hubicka <jh@ucw.cz>
J.B. Langston <jb-langston@austin.rr.com>
Credits:
Jan Hubicka is the main author of XaoS. He wrote the biggest parts of
this program, in fact, all the most important things.
Andreas Madritsch helped a lot putting together version 3.1. He also
compiled the DOS and Windows executable and made German translations of
menu items available. He added bailout and 3 fractal types into version
3.1. He also fixed i18n to work under Windows correctly.
Zoltan Kovacs wrote this documentation about the recent installation
problems and he was finalizing release 3.1. He added i18n support into
XaoS and cleaned up the code as it was possible.
J.B. Langston contributed the Mac OS X native driver, the new XaoS web
design, and has helped maintain the software from 3.2.2 onward.
Many others helped as well. The full list of them can be seen in file
AUTHORS.