ABOUT REV 0140 - 10 June 2008

Major changes (some might say improvements) to compilation and
platform-specific support. As with all releases later than 0135,
this is essentially an alpha-quality release. We won't be making
them the default download until the series stabilizes. Please help
us out by testing this releases, and filing bugs in the bugs
database if you run into problems.

If this is your first release since 0135, be sure to read *ALL*
the releases notes in this file since that release. A lot has
changed, and there are several known issues.

[ jikes/javac ]

+ Jikes has been removed, and we are using Javac as the compiler.
 The negative side of this is that compilation is a little slower,
 because Javac is kind of a dog. But that's outweighed by:
 - better compatability (avoiding quirky Jikes bugs)
 - ability to support Java 1.5 syntax (only in tabs that end in .java!)
 - no more Jikes binary problems on Linux (or elsewhere)
 - removing a binary from the download (less moving parts)

+ Error messages from Javac are very different, and it's quite
 likely that some aren't being handled properly. If you run into
 this situation (on error messages--not warnings), please file
 a bug report, so that we can provide a better message to the
 user about what's going on.

+ It is still not possible to use Java 1.5 syntax in Processing code
 from within the environment. You won't be able to use 1.5 syntax
 until someone rewrites the preprocessor, which is a significant
 undertaking. We want to do it soon, but it's a lot of work.
 http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=598
 What has changed in release 0140 is that if you give a tab a name
 ending in ".java", you'll be able to use 1.5 syntax, because that
 tab will not be run through the preprocessor. However, you'll also
 lose all Processing-specific syntax, and you'll have to pass the
 PApplet object to any such class in order to use Processing API.
 (This is described in Help -> Getting Started.) And no, you cannot
 make the main tab a .java file. You can always use Eclipse to do
 that, or better yet, give us a hand fixing Bug #598.

[ platform classes ]

+ Platform-specific code has been moved to separate sections of the
 codebase. This simplifies how we connect to Mac OS X, Windows,
 and Linux. You no longer need the Apple support stubs to compile on
 Windows and Linux, for one.

+ Windows registry calls are now handled using JNA, which is behaving
 far better than the old JNI Registry code that we had been using.
 This should also help internationalization significantly (the old
 code didn't properly handle Unicode, or multi-byte characters).

+ I have added Windows Vista and Ubuntu 8.04 on AMD64 to my testing
 routine. The apartment is really starting to look ridiculous,
 and dinner guests probably won't be happening this Summer.

[ features/changes/fixes ]

+ With any luck we may have fixed the long-standing bug that prevents
 Processing from running on non-English systems with user accounts
 that contain non-ASCII characters. This is the target
 http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=49
 However this has not yet been verified. Please test!

+ Apply two patches for ancient bugs in readBytesUntil() and bufferUntil()
 in the serial library. Also fixes calls to serialEvent().
 http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=96
 (Thanks to stendahl and jmuhlich for the patches!)

+ Added a static version of loadBytes() that reads from a File object.

+ Slightly clearer error messages when OpenGL stuff is missing.

+ Removed sketchbook.fallback and settings.fallback from preferences.
 These cause more confusion/chaos/trouble than necessary.

+ Avoid an occasional division by zero when using the Create Font tool.
 http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=777