bnns / News: Recent posts

This release contains fixes for configuration and compilation issues on OS X.

• Added mandatory cmd line option --task-name (-t).
• Added config file support and --conf-file (-f) cmd line option.
• Added cmd line opts to enable a user to control row size of the
  corresponding window: --{input,hidden,output}-row-size.
• Fixed lost frozen weights info on update of learning rate value.
• Fixed processing of events from empty RFP slots, mark empty slots.
• Improved CLI by use of readline and history library.
• Fixed a bug in calculation of MSE across output layer.
• Prepared a section 1 manual page to be installed by make install.
• pgm2bnns.pl: Added -d cmd line opt to specify patterns dest dir.
• gluplot scripts: Updated default logpath to /tmp.
• PGM images: Applied threshold 255 to have values in {0,255}.

Added a gtk2 based control window. Anyone is welcome to test it and send bug reports.
Checkout the corresponding branch and read the INSTALL file.

$ svn checkout svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/bnns/code/branches/gtk-gui-uzak/

Added the [Manual] page based on the manual from bnns distribution.

This maintenance release adds support for gcc versions above 4.4, uses a default position for the extrapolation window to avoid a deadlock in XCB enabled Xlib reported on Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS, drops an obsolete xpm.h include causing compilation errors because libxpm presence was not checked by the configure script, changes interpretation of the --scale-factor value, and introduces a set of supported values.

This release was focused on refactoring and usability. The command line options sets in perl scripts which assist in patterns preparation was extended. All control variables have now corresponding command line options to make the patterns preparation process comfortable and user friendly. I hope this encouraged everyone to start experiment with patterns preparation.

List of new features:

• Freeze and unfreeze of weights coming into a neuron by the Space key at the corresponding RFP. The RFP becomes highlighted to inform users of weights being frozen.
• The detail/conflicts view opens on the Left side and extrapolation view on the right side of the window displaying output layer RFPs.

News in this release:

• Disabled user interaction during the training process, which improved the overall stability.
• Improved processing of command line attributes in perl scripts.
• Added --log-path option to support user defined location of logs.
• Added --user-interaction option to turn on interaction interface.
• Added --conflicts-preview and --ee-preview options to turn on the preview of interest in RFPs of the output layer.
• Implemented error-energy preview. Added conflicts and error-energy preview entries to bsh menu.
• Added the softmax option to the activation function menu in bsh.

This release includes improved manual in the doc/draft directory and a number of items from TODO list were addressed. Looking for response and bug reports.

Started to use GNU Autotools for configuration and Makefile generation since the Beta stage.

In case scaling of RFPs is enabled, a user can use the Left mouse button to open a new window (detail view) displaying the selected RFP in its original size. The detail view updates by clicking on any other scaled RFP with the Left mouse button again. A user can simply close the detail view any time.

In case there are more then just one neuron in the output layer, then a user can click with the Right mouse button on any of the output layer RFPs to open a new window (conflicts view) displaying the conflicts between output neurons. A user can simply close the conflicts view any time.

Visualization of the extrapolation performance is functional and stable. A user can generate extrapolation patterns with the accompanying perl script in the data directory:

$ perl -w pgm2bnns.pl -v -e pgm/spiral.pgm

Dimensions of the extrapolation space are set by the $ev_stratch variable in pgm2bnns.pl at the moment. There might be a command line option in future.

Working on the basic support of interaction in the learning process of a MLP. This feature has been disabled since 2008. A new user interface accompanying the mouse gestures is required.

Working on visualization of extrapolation performance of a MLP. This feature was disabled since 2008. Check the following URL for details:
http://www.ai-cit.sk/People/MatusUzak/ANNvisualization/FullViews