path: root/NEWS

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 familar 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 arithmetics 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.