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1 0.5.1
2 The first line of this file shall be the last tagged version string. The version history may be filled in at any time, but when a version is tagged, the current date shall be added on the first line of the release notes for the version being tagged.
4 Version history
5 ===================
7 ====( 0.5.1 )====
8 2009-08-19
10 A minor version increment with important new features, one remarkable removal of a bad feature, changed syntax, and more.
12 The two big news are the path-to-path approximation and an improved analysis of user programs.
14 The path-to-path approximation is available through <approximator>. It captures a very natural way to select a point on a path (but the implementation was a little bit involved, which is why the feature hasn't appeared until now).
16 The improved analysis keeps track of the free states in every expression, and is therefore able to detect that a code bracket which only mutates its own states is a pure expression.
18 With this version, the old and ugly procedures have been removed from the language. They were never used, and made programs much more difficult to analyze. Without procedures, there was no longer any need for the old "!" syntax, and hence the old "!!" was changed to "!".
20 Bugfixes include:
21 - Errors in the CSS for HTML documentation.
22 - Subpaths at end of closed path.
23 - A 3D arrowhead was trying to fill a non-closed path.
26 ====( 0.5.0 )====
27 2009-05-18
29 Stepping the version from 0.4.x to 0.5.x is motivated by the arriaval of the interactive mode of the compiler. The interactive mode could make it easier to teach and learn Shapes, and the it is also used extensively by the new debugging facility. The debugging facility, represented by the debugger state #db (available in the interacitve mode only), provides common debugging tools such as examination of the current evaluation state (lexical and dynamic environments, and backtrace), breakpoints, and stepping. While the true usefulness of the interactive mode during normal use of Shapes remains unclear, it implementation brings important improvements to the compiler design.
31 The shapes-mode for Emacs has been updated, and includes some support for the interactive mode (try it with "M-x run-shapes" in Emacs!).
33 This release also contains the new arrowhead <ShapesArrow>. It generally looks better than <MetaPostArrow>, and replaces <MetaPostArrow> in most examples and extensions.
35 Now supporting the PDF feature to clip with a text object as mask.
37 More documentation.
39 Bugfixes include:
40 - Random number generation was completely broken when compiling with recent gcc g++ compiler.
41 - Installation of HTML documentation was broken, causing the documentation index.html to be overwritten by the "project web" index.html.
42 - The PDF text state was not updated correctly in some situations.
45 ====( 0.4.3.1 )====
46 2009-03-10
48 This release combines compatibility fixes for GCC 4.3 with some install-related improvements.
50 Bugfixes include:
51 - Sloppy C++ has been cleaned up to compile with GCC 4.3.
54 ====( 0.4.3 )====
55 2008-12-22
57 This release comes with many long awaited, but backwards incompatible changes. Merry Christmas!
59 New string construction syntax. There are now three ways to enter strings, two of which have no escape characters, and a third that is only partly human-readable. Most notably, the newline is now entered as the four character construct "{n} (having no special meaning inside the human-readable strings).
61 New operator for sending one argument through a function from the left. For instance, the following two lines are equivalent:
62 [stroke [immerse [circle 1cm]]]
63 [circle 1cm] >> immerse >> stroke
64 Note that the operator is left associative.
66 Changed operator precedence and associativity rules. Biggest change is that [] is now left associative to give good support for hard-wired curry functions. This means that all old chains of [], changes into chains of >> (in reversed left-right order). The new priority of | allows many old parentheses to be removed, but needs only a few new to be inserted. Operator precedence and associativity can now be found in the syntax documentation.
68 There is now a prelude. The standard prelude relieves the user from bringing in the most common extensions with ##needs.
70 Many functions in the standard prelude were renamed.
72 Bleed boxes are used instead of bounding boxes to determine size of final page. Used by TeX (which takes a setting from @TeX_bleed) to remedy an old problems with bounding boxes coming out slightly too small from pdfLaTeX.
74 Improved Emacs support.
76 More documentation.
78 Buxfixes include:
79 - Prevention of endless elementary path computation.
80 - Problems with thunks in user dynamic variable declarations.
81 - Character encoding setting in the Emacs shapes-mode.
84 ====( 0.4.2.1 )====
85 2008-12-13
87 (Celebrating Gustaf's thirtieth birthday.)
89 This is primarily (but not only) a bugfix release.
91 Bugfixes:
92 - For some build setups, not all xsl files were included in distributions.
93 - Exponents in scientific notation.
94 - Removed confusion regarding which dynamic environment to use in tack-on operations.
97 ====( 0.4.2 )====
98 2008-12-02
100 GPL and copyright notes have been inserted in all non-trivial files.
102 A logo has been introduced. Do not consider it final!
104 New notation, including more ASCII fall-backs. The change of notation for functions is not backwards compatible!
106 Introduced mutators for states. Old, global, non-pure functions were removed -- not backwards compatible!
108 New shapes-mode for Emacs.
110 Stuff for transforms, including fields (components as well as predicates), a <chop> method, and a kind of real Schur decomposition in 3D.
112 Lots of new documentation.
114 Source code for methods of types in Shapes has been reorganized.
116 Bugfixes include:
117 - Including FlexLexer.h in distribution.
118 - Annoying internal errors when displaying source locations were removed.
121 ====( 0.4.1 )====
122 2008-10-16
124 (Celebrating my thirtieth birthday.)
126 Improved build process for the documentation.
128 Introducing exit codes.
130 Bugfixes include:
131 - Building the correct index.html at the top of the HTML documentation.
132 - Lost JPG files in the HTML documentation were found by correct handling of the percent sign in URIs.
135 ====( 0.4.0 )====
136 2008-10-05
138 The distribution contains the documentation now, making it complete.
140 Lots of new documentation.
142 Minor, but many, changes in the syntax of command line options. Basically, all parameters but files and directories are given using the --param=val style.
144 The directory for temporary files can be created automatically, if allowed.
146 New operator, &|, that combines dynamic bindings with priority to the second argument.
148 Pages can be grouped to have equal media boxes. At the moment, the media box will be the smallest that contains the bounding boxes of all pages in the group. See the non-pure function setbboxgroup for more details.
150 The document can be split into one output file per page, see the --split=mode option.
152 Improvements relating to PDF versions including a separate setting for whether to use transparency in the kernel, and not marking the output file with a higher version than what is implied by the PDF features is uses.
154 Additions and improvements to some of the standard extensions.
156 Bugfixes include:
157 - Intersection of straight line segments.
158 - Sometimes, functions were associated with the wrong environment.
159 - Escaping the '\' in PDF strings.
162 ====( 0.3.7 )====
163 2008-04-21
165 The previous version was broken. This version has been verified by running "make distcheck".
168 ====( 0.3.6 )====
169 2008-04-20
171 Lots of new documentation, including substantial work on structure, crosslinks, and formatting. So far the HTML format has been in focus.
173 Procedure application is limited to certain scoping rules to ensure that the function abstraction is not broken.
175 Improved output to help finding errors i TeX label strings, and a bug with the --tmpdir feature was remedied.
177 Changed command line syntax for boolean options changed; no more --no-someopt, instead we use --someopt=no (the "no" has some synonyms).
179 New features of all kinds, ranging from additions to the scanner to new state types and functions.
181 Also new application examples in 3D, code optimizations, and bugfixes.
184 ====( 0.3.5 )====
185 2007-12-06
187 The previous attempt to create a file for distribution failed. This version is the second attempt.
190 ====( 0.3.4 )====
191 2007-12-03
193 Bugfixes, including one in the computation of elementary paths. There also used to be a problem (since 0.3.2) with running pdfLaTeX in a different directory than where the Shapes source is located, since the meaning of relative file locations must be changed when source code is moved.
195 This is the first version planned for (very limited) distribution using the new build process.
198 ====( 0.3.3 )====
199 2007-11-21
201 Simple constants in the global environment were named back to their names before variables had to begin with lowercase letters. For instance, rgb_RED changed back to RGB_RED.
204 ====( 0.3.2 )====
205 2007-11-21
207 New ways to specify files, both on the command line and through environment variables.
209 Further improved build process, and minor additions to the documentation.
212 ====( 0.3.1 )====
213 2007-11-05
215 Bugfixes required to make the project compile in the Cent environment.
217 More standardization.
220 ====( 0.3.0 )====
221 2007-11-03
223 First version with most references to old project names removed.
225 Slowly changing to a more standardized way to compile things, for better compilance with standard make tools in the future.
228 ====( 0.2.3 )====
229 2007-11-03
231 Upsampling has been added. The interesting methods for upsampling only apply in 2D, but length-based upsampling is provided also in 3D. Please note that there is no need to do upsample_inflections before doing upsample_bends, as this is done autimatically to ensure clear semantics. The method upsample_balance samlpes the timewise midpoint of each segment, which I believe will make the speed equal in the incoming and outgoing side of the sample point.
233 Identifiers are again allowed to begin with uppercase letters. Type names are prefixed with either a paragraph sign or a double slash.
235 This is planned to be the last version where anything "Drool" remains.
238 ====( 0.2.2 )====
239 2007-06-05
241 The interpreter now makes another pass of the code, checking variable bindings, function borders, and other static aspects of the code. Type checking will hopefully fit in here in the future. The three passes are:
242 1) Scan and parse
243 2) Analyze
244 3) Evaluate
246 The error reporting mechanism has been revised so that the errors found during static analysis are collected in a list, rather than throwing just the first we detect and then abort.
249 ====( 0.2.1 )====
250 2007-05-19
252 By now many feature examples have been compiled successfully, and the tests go through.
254 More importantly, the random number facility has been redesigned so that states are used where appropriate. To make it easy to use states in folds, the kernel's list type has been enhanced with methods foldsl ("fold with state, left") and foldsr ("fold with state, right"). However, this was not quite necessary since the same functionality can be implemented as an extension, as was done in conssupport.drext, and used random.drool.
256 Among all bugs found lately, one was in the z-buffer. Although it was fixed, I'm not at all convinced that transforms are handled correctly, nor that overlaps and line-surface intersections are determined correctly.
259 ====( 0.2.0 )====
260 2007-04-24
262 This version marks the point where the two feature examples states.drool and values.drool compile. This means that the program is getting useful again. However, the great majority of the examples have not been updated, and it is expected that many bugs will be revealed in the process of updating them.
264 In other words, this version marks the beginning of the use of states and structures, but these features should be debugged and tested on the many available examples before being considered a true alternative to using the language as of version 0.1.1.
267 ====( 0.1.2 )====
269 This version is to be used during the early phases of the transition from hot variables to temporary states. One the program becomes useful again, the version number shall be incremented.
272 ====( 0.1.1 )====
273 2007-01-02
275 Testing has been automated. The tests are divided into two cathegories depending on whether it is the graphical or textual program output that is to be compared against a given output. See the Makefile's in the ./test directory and its subdirectories to learn how to run the tests or add new tests.
277 The z-buffer idea has been postponed. Instead, a z-sorter has been implemented. It does not handle cyclic overlaps properly.
279 There are lots of bugfixes and small enhancements over the previous version. One of the enhancements is the "[...]"-syntax for evaluated cuts along one argument.
281 This is planned to be the the last usable version with hot variables.
284 ====( 0.1 )====
285 2006-12-12
287 First named version.
289 I'd say this is far too late for the introduction of a version number. The reason not to make a named version has been that rather big changes in the language syntax have been expected. However, these changes are still expected, but today I was really curious to know what binary I had installed, and this is what made me take this step.
291 To give an idea of how long this project has been running I'll mention two things. First, the initial import of the project into subversion dates back to 2005-09-23. Second, there's now 395 kB of zipped source code for the compiler. In addition, there are many examples and language extension files.
293 There still not much at all of documentation. Comments in the source are sparse, much too sparse. A user's guide hsa been initiated, but the files have not yet entered the project repository. There is no laguage definition either, but this is partly because the language is still expected to change substantially.
295 A few words about testing: The testing is without structure so far. I generate examples to test the features I'm currently working on, but I do not generate tests that can be checked automatically. This probably says something about the quality of this version. That I plan automatize testing soon does not make this version better.
297 The list of features that exist in this version is much too long for me to think of right now. The first such a list I expect to create will be the user documentation, so until then the examples is as close as one gets.