.. $Id: ReleaseNotes 1044 2009-06-13 08:17:58Z bverheg $    -*- rst -*-
..
..  This file is part of pyFormex 0.8 Release Sat Jun 13 10:22:42 2009
..  pyFormex is a tool for generating, manipulating and transforming 3D
..  geometrical models by sequences of mathematical operations.
..  Website: http://pyformex.berlios.de/
..  Copyright (C) Benedict Verhegghe (bverheg@users.berlios.de) 
..  Distributed under the GNU General Public License version 3 or later.
..
..
..  This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
..  it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
..  the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
..  (at your option) any later version.
..
..  This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
..  but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
..  MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
..  GNU General Public License for more details.
..
..  You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
..  along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
..

pyFormex 0.8  Releasenotes
==========================

This is a collection of the most prominent changes in pyFormex 0.8
compared to the previous release 0.7.3


Installation
------------
pyFormex now includes install scripts for:
 - gl2ps
 - gts
 - tetgen
 - calpy  


Command line
------------
- In GUI mode, pyFormex script filenames passed on the command line will now
be processed just like in NONGUI mode, before entering the GUI.


Configuration
-------------
- The pyFormex user configuration files have been moved to a directory ~/.pyformex


Core
----
- Formex:
  + Formex transformation preserve the 'eltype' attribute
  + New transformations: mirror (now different from reflect!), centered, resized
  + Deprecated 'readfile'
  + cutAtPlane is deprecated in favor of cutWithPlane
  + A number of deprecated functions were removed
 
- All script executing functionality is moved to script.py
- The GUI can now be started from a nongui script
- mydict.py: changed the pickling to allow non-ascii pickling of projects
- olist.py: new module gathering list functions
- odict.py: new class KeyList


Gui
---
- GUI can be started from the nongui mode by calling a function
- Current viewport identified by a focus rectangle
- Rectangle zooming
- Mouse wheel zooming
- Revised Project File menu
- Project files can be compressed


Drawing
-------
- Defaults for draw() have changed. Use view='last' and bbox='last' to keep
  camera settings unchanged.
- New drawing functions drawMarks en drawVectors
- All colors named in X11/rgb.txt file are usable.


Scripting
---------


Plugins
-------
- mesh: new class Mesh to represent geometry in (coords,connectivity) format,
  functions/methods to sweep, extrude and connect meshes.
- isopar: added more transformations('quad13','quad16','hex64'
- fe_menu: start of a Finite Element Preprocessor plugin
- export: start of a generalized exporting framework
- dxf: start of an exporter to DXF format
- curve: added PolyLine.atLength() method
- tools_menu: added general variable editor, delete all variables
- project: moved to pyFormex core 


Examples
--------
- new examples: Extrude, 
- Connectmesh: Mesh class moved into mesh plugin
- SweepBeam: expanded with extrude method
- Curves: expanded with more curve types and data sets

Manual
------
- The reference manual has been expanded largely with automatically generated documentation from the Python source docstrings. 


Project Status
--------------
We have upgraded the project status to Beta. This is a clear sign to the user that we have reached a status where the program has become largely usable, despite some still missing or unfinished functions.

