I have uploaded the remaining emodules to SF:
gvemod-cplxview
gvemod-crayola
gvemod-labeler
gvemod-ndview
gvemodules-xforms
gvemod-xforms-example
BTW, the stuff (including geomview-1.9.0) should compile (and maybe even
work) on Linux, Cygwin, FreeBSD, OpenDarwin. OpenDarwin probably does
not imply that it works on MacOSX, but who knows.
Cheers,
Claus
Claus-Justus Heine schrieb:
> I have just released version 1.9.0 of Geomview. I have decided to start
> a new "minor" release series instead of just incrementing the revision
> number because there are some significant changes between Geomview 1.8.x
> and 1.9.0. V1.9.0 should be backwards compatible, but contains some new
> features, and a changed build-layout for the extension "E"modules.
>
> I have only uploaded the Orrery and Maniview (and of course
> Geomview-1.9.0 itself) to SF, the rest will follow later this evening.
>
> Contents
> ********
> User Visible Changes Concerning the Drawing Engines ("MG" library")
> User Visible Changes Concerning the User-Interface
> User Visible Changes Concerning Saved Data
> User Visible Changes Concerning OOGL file formats, GCL
> ND-Stuff
> Build-System Changes, separate EModules
>
> There are also a bunch of internal changes, including a fair amount of
> fixes for long standing bugs, and a cleanup of the somewhat broken
> reference count system.
>
> User Visible Changes Concerning the Drawing Engines ("MG" library")
> *******************************************************************
>
> - The OpenGL backend now renders translucent objects correctly by
> means of a BSP-tree approach. To be correct: translucent objects
> accessible through the main panel's object browser are rendered
> correctly with respect to themselves and with respect to any other
> solid object. Multiple translucent top-level objects will not be
> rendered correctly with respect to each other.
>
> Self-intersecting or concave translucent polygons will be drawn
> correctly if the GLU-tesselator is available.
>
> - As a new features Geomview now supports off-screen glX
> snapshots. Those off-screen glX snapshots render everything just
> like the OpenGL drawing backing would do it on screen, but they work
> even if the window is not mapped. Thus one can iconify the camera
> window, or activate a screen-saver while some script in the
> background makes a movi using off-screen glX snapshots. In contrast
> to this, the current implementation of on-screen glX snapshots tries
> to map the window before actually dumping the data to disk (but how
> to tell whether the window is really mapped right now or not ...)
>
> - The OpenGL drawing backends now additionally supports
> the GL_REPLACE texture application method (i.e. the surface color
> simply is replaced by the texture, no lighting)
>
> - Background image feature of the OpenGL MG-library was broken.
>
> - the RenderMan MG-backend now supports textures. This will not work
> with the old Blue-Moon tools, but should work with Aqsis, 3Delight
> and Pixie, and probably with other RenderMan compliant shaders as
> well. To use texturing with the RenderMan snapshots produced by
> Geomview one needs to compile the texture aware RenderMan-shaders
> that come with Geomview; I have written shaders which emulate the
> OpenGL application methods GL_MODULATE, GL_DECAL, GL_BLEND and
> GL_REPLACE. Actually, GL_MODULATE is already implemented in the
> "paintedplastic" shader, but not for constant shading. The shaders
> are located in the "data/shaders/" directory.
>
> - Binary RenderMan output was broken on Little-Endian machines. This
> is fixed.
>
> - Aliens were rendered upside-down by the X11, buffer and PS
> MG-libraries. Fixed.
>
> - OpenGL rendering can now be disabled with the "-nopengl"-switch, if
> so desired.
>
> - OFF objects carrying per-vertex colours and per-face colours are now
> coloured
>
> * according to the per-vertex colours for smooth shading
> * according to the per-face colours for flat and constant shading
>
> User Visible Changes Concerning the User-Interface
> **************************************************
>
> - new "help"-button, a PDF-viewer or HTML-browser can now be opened to
> view the installed manual.
>
> - new button "BBox Center" in the tools menu: use the center of the
> current objects bounding box as origin for motions. Especially
> useful when rotating an object.
>
> - new shading option "VCflat" available through the "Appearance"
> panel: the colours between the vertices are interpolated, but each
> planar surface facet just has a constant normal. This is useful,
> e.g., for complex 3d objects like tetrahedral meshes.
>
> - new configuration commands:
>
> * (ui-cam-focus focus-change|mouse-cross)
> Optionally use the focus policy of the window-manager instead of
> changing active camera when the mouse happens to cross a camera
> window. The default policy "mouse-cross" is particularly annoying
> with multiple camera windows.
>
> * (ui-motion interia off|on)
> Switch inertia off.
>
> * (ui-html-browser HTML-BROWSER), (ui-pdf-viewer PDF-VIEWER)
> You guess what this is for.
>
> - Using `Universe' as target in the file-save dialog (instead of
> `World'), and command-language as file-format, will now also dump
> aliens to disk. This was not the case with 1.8.x.
>
> User Visible Changes Concerning Saved Data
> ******************************************
>
> - Saving of objects as geometry or command-language objects will now
> preserve symbolic handles (including their names), and references
> through handles will only be dumped as references. Geomview makes
> sure that each referenced object is dumped once to disk (and only
> once).
>
> - Default display names in RenderMan output are no longer absolute
> path-names, this makes it much easier to "relocate" the
> RenderMan-snapshots, e.g. take them to another computer etc.
>
> - RenderMan: texture files are dumped as separate TIFF-files along
> with the RenderMan output.
>
> User Visible Changes Concerning OOGL file formats
> *************************************************
>
> - New OOGL object "Image". Bitmap images for textures (and background
> images for the OpenGL MG-library) have now their own
> OOGL-object. Bitmap images can be referenced by symbolic
> handles. The old style `texture { filename "blah" ...' is still
> supported for backwards compatibility. Bitmap images can be embedded
> into the normal data stream. Details are documented in the manual
>
> - SPHERE objects now feature texturing. Also, spheres are no longer
> approximated by a BEZIER object, but by a mesh in polar
> co-ordinates. Texturing uses texture co-ordinate auto-generation in
> the style supported by the Orrery's `mktxmesh' script. Details are
> documented in the manual.
>
> - INST objects now feature (optional) texture transformation
> lists. This is currently used for the texture support in the SPHERE
> objects.
>
> - Apperances can now be referenced by handles (maybe overkill, but so
> what)
>
> - New shading option `vcflat': smooth interpolation between vertex
> colour, but otherwise lighting is flat. Currently a little bit
> experimental, and does not really work for MESH objects.
>
> - INST objects support single ND-transforms. ND-transformation lists
> are not supported.
>
> - new GCL command (hdelete HNAME) for lazy deletion of handles (see
> documentation)
>
> ND-Stuff
> ********
>
> - Although the concepts for the visualization of higher dimensional
> objects were well thought-out the implementation was very flaky, and
> full of memory leaks. The stuff is now much more complete than it
> was before. There is still much room for improvement, though,
> especially concerning the efficiency.
>
> - The NDview and ndutils emodules are available through the separate
> package `gvemod-ndview'
>
> - Translucent ND-objects are supported, but very inefficient (i.e. the
> display is slow).
>
> Build-System Changes, separate EModules
> ***************************************
>
> - I have moved all add-on "E"modules using the XForms library to
> separate packages:
>
> gvemod-xforms-example
> gvemodules-xforms
> gvemod-cplxview
>
> - There are additional Tcl/Tk emodules:
>
> gvemod-crayola
> gvemod-labeler
> gvemod-ndview
>
> - The external modules are available through separate file-releases on
> SourceForge (like Maniview and the Orrery)
>
> - The build-process for add-on modules has changed, they have now to
> be built outside the Geomview source-tree. All (now) external
> emodules have been ported to that new scheme, including the Orrery
> and Maniview. The module packages come with the usual GNU-style
> configure script.
>
> **************************************************************************
>
> There is -- of course -- the more-or-less helpful file `ChangeLog'
> which comes with the Geomview distribution.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Claus
>
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