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ABOUT REV 0126 - 9 October 2007

** This should be considered more of an alpha quality release. Please
give it a try, but We won't be making this the default download unless
no problems are found. The model for opening and saving sketches has
changed completely. This is dangerous because if there are bugs it
can mean lost data. Use carefully, but please test! **

The biggest change to this release is that Processing now supports
multiple sketches open at once. This means that we've dispensed
with the single window setup, and have a standard File menu (New,
Open, Close, Save, Save As). A blank sketch is treated as an Untitled
document, and asks that you confirm its name the first time that
it's saved. New sketches open in their own window. The sketchbook
model is still in place, serving as the default location for sketches
when they are saved the first time, but in the six years since
we first released Processing, the single window setup has made less
and less sense.

That said, there are a handful of bug fixes in this release as well,
and a few API changes for cleanup that happened as we worked on the
Processing book and the forthcoming "Visualizing Data" book.


[ ide changes ]

+ Regular new/open/close/save/saveas model for files. Menus have been
 moved around a bit, and Examples and Sketchbook now have their own
 section under the File menu.


[ api changes ]

+ Added getChild(name/path), getChildren(name/path) to the XML library.
 These allow you to grab sub-elements of a particular XMLElement by
 their name instead of by their index. You can also specify a path
 to a particular element (a series of XML element names separated by
 slashes) so that you can grab an item several levels deep. The
 getChild() method grabs the first matching name, the getChildren()
 method returns an array of XMLElement objects. For the XML heads out
 there, think of it as a poor man's XPath. A very poor man. Proper
 documentation forthcoming in a future release.

+ Added MIN_FLOAT, MAX_FLOAT, MIN_INT, and MAX_INT as built-in
 variables. Syntax highlighting and proper documentation coming later.

+ Added unregisterXxxxx() methods for libraries, thanks to ewjordan.
 http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=312

+ Files with .gz extension (when opening or saving) will be automatically
 gzip uncompressed (or compressed). That means loadStrings("blah.txt.gz")
 will magically decompress without any additional help. And that
 saveStrings("blah.txt.gz", data) will compress while saving. This works
 for all API functions. To use the old openStream() method, and avoid
 the GZ business, use openStreamRaw().

+ Disable mipmapping to fix memory leaking problem with OpenGL.
 Bug #150 was fixed, then resurrected in the same release cycle.
 A better solution (that doesn't leak memory) is coming soon.
 http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=610

+ Added a match() method. This is a very simple way to use regular
 expressions (regexp) in your code. Calling match(data, regexp)
 will return an array of any matched items (things in parens in
 the regexp). If you aren't familiar with regular expressions,
 this will make sense once the documentation for it has properly
 been added. This requires Java 1.4, see the "status" section below.

+ The sort() method that takes String[] arrays now ignores case,
 which is usually the desired behavior when sorting strings.


[ bug fixes, additions, improvements ]

+ Repaired a problem with library export that cause export to break
 in recent releases.
 http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=625

+ Fixed readStringUntil() in the net library.
 http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=606

+ Added proper icon image for Find, Preferences, and other windows.
 http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=627

+ Fixed problem with ctrl-, typing a comma in the editor on Linux.

+ Fix drag & drop on Linux. This also has led to Java 1.5 being included
 with the Linux download, because D&D in Java 1.4 was badly broken.
 http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=595

+ Implement "Show Sketch Folder" and open() for Linux.

+ Ask user for confirmation when replacing files with Sketch -> Add File.

+ Show confirmation in console when Sketch -> Add File succeeds.

+ Mac OS X now has the standard "window modified" indicator (a dot
 inside the close box) that indicates that changes are unsaved.

+ Improve the speed of the sketchbook menu rebuilding. In most
 situations, the menu will be rebuilt asynchronously (so that it does
 not hold up the rest of the program).

+ Fix problem with the version of str() that takes arrays.


[ doc updates ]

+ Fixed some errors in the changes.html file that were out of date.

+ Lots of additional notes and tidbits in the reference.


[ status ]

+ Also FYI... We're giving up on Java releases earlier than 1.4.
 We don't have the means to test for them, and we're simply better
 off targeting a larger percentage of users given our resources.
 Processing has evolved a lot from its early days as a fast
 Java 1.1 graphics library, where we need to simplify things for
 ourselves by relying on Java 1.4 support across the board.
 More about this change later.