News_(ancient)
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I've made my christmas card this year with nip:
Here are the (commented) workspace to build the card if anyone's interested. You need the latest nip for it to work.New packages for vips and nip up, plus binaries for linux and windows. Still no mac os x binary, sorry :-( but it does build cleanly from source. Less than 3 weeks late! Highlights:
- nip finally has a help system
- new menu items in nip (thanks Joe) for colour calibration, overlays and X-rays
- more menu items for rubbersheeting and image array assembly
- fixed a mosaic balance bug on large mixed mosaics (thanks Clare)
- now loads RGBA tiff files, and 16-bit LAB tiff (thanks Jenny and Haida)
- new preference items for default image window size and auto-image popup (thanks Rachel)
- much better windows build, with more built-in support libraries
plus many small fixes, check out the ChangeLog.
More or less done the documentation. There are three quick tours and a 50 page nip manual.
nip has about 6 things on the to-do ... we'll try to get a new release out by Friday.
Small website fixes done.
New vips-7.8 versions, binary and source. These fix 3 or 4 large bugs found in the past few days :-( Thanks Joe, David, Kirk and Clare. Let me know if anyone finds any more.
New vips-7.8. This is built and tested on unix, windows, and mac. It all seems to work, so just final testing and documentaion now. There's a new windows binary that fixes all the serious problems (I think).
Well vips-7.8 is up, but it's still beta :-( another week or so maybe. Download if you want to risk it. There's a native windows build too! We're still updating the website, so it'll be rather half-baked for a few days.
vips-7.8 is in final testing. We have a working windows build! Check out this screendump. There are a few problems with it still: the main window scrollbars seem to be broken, and the fileselector still has 'issues' with drive letters. This is a native windows build: there's no unix emulation layer, and no X windows server.
I've added Mac OS X versions of the new packegs to the vips-7.7 page. They are identical, but revert to an earlier version of autoconf. This breaks largefile support, but they do build correctly.
New developer snapshots of vips, ip and nip on the vips-7.7 page. Almost there.
Big feature this month: largefile support. You can now have images of any size (used to be 2GB maximum). Here's a screendump of nip working on a 4GB image. There are some benchmarks in the ChangeLog.
Bad news: we've switched to autoconf 2.52 to get the largefile stuff, and this has broken the Mac OS X build (autoconf2.52 does not seem to handle zsh quoting well). Jaguar (10.2) should fix this.
The mailing list seems to be completely messed up, again. Hopefully jiscmail will start working again soon.
New developer snapshots of vips, ip and nip on the vips-7.7 page. Yet another new screendump too. vips-7.8 is hopefully just a month or two away now.
VIPS has a new mailing list, which we hope will actually work. There are new packages for vips and nip up on the vips-7.7 page. vips has a couple of tiny bugfixes and nip has a whole lot of new stuff.
There are new packages for vips, ip and nip up on the vips-7.7 page. See the ChangeLogs (for vips and nip) for details, but highlights include:
- Bugfixes for the C++ API (several nasty ones).
- All C++ programs need to be changed, sorry. Include VIPS with:
#include <vips/vipscpp.h>
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VIPS now wraps FFTW, the Fastest Fourier Transform in the West. If VIPS finds libfftw when you configure, it will use the fftw routines for Fourier Transforms instead of it's own functions. FFTW is about 3 times faster and much more accurate.
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VIPS now wraps Little CMS. There are four new functions which you can use to transform VIPS images between devices using ICC profiles. For example
VImagescreen=fred.icc_export("my_screen_profile.icc",3);Transforms fred from a LAB image to an RGB image using the specified profile.
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All the packages should build cleanly on Mac OS X. It's a pretty challenging build. I hope to put up static binaries as soon as I can figure out how to make them :-(
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nip is getting very close to being finished ... check out this screenshot :-)
- There's a new nip snapshot up ... lots of polishing and bugfixes. Just two big-ish things left to fix (I think). Check out the ChangeLog for details.
- I've bought one of those new iMacs and got everything more or less going under Mac OS X. There still seem to be a few linking problems :-( but I'll put up binaries soon.
There's a new vips library with some
bugfixes and speed ups. Check out the ChangeLog for details.
There's another new nip. This month: bugfixes, proper logical operators, more menu work and operator overloading. I've hit some scalability problems now classes have become so large :-( Need to add copy-on-write expressions to fix this.
Section <ahref="http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/doc/ipdummies/eight.htm">8, of the <ahref="http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/doc/ipdummies/index.shtml">Vips/ip beginnersguide, has been updated to include, grey card corrections, i.e. the process for correctinghomogeneity problems.
There's a new nip up. Lots of bugfixes, and a revised and cleaned up recomp system. Menus next!* There's a new vips library too, but there are only a couple of tiny fixes, soit's only worth downloading if you need to build nip from source.
Darn, ip-7.7.15 had an error in a Makefile that caused it to miss acouple of files when building the distribution. There are new versionsof all the packages, and new binaries.
New development snapshot: vips-7.7.15. VIPS and ip have hardly changed, but nip now has a preferences system, automatic rename for workspace merge,cloning, proper range selects, speed ups, save and replace, draggablereordering, lots of bug fixes, and the first two toolkit menu items.
The Working withDigital X-ray Images: instructions have been updated to match the new release ofVips-7.7.14. The changes include an updated instalation guide, see section <ahref=http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/doc/ipdummies/x-ray/seven.htm>7 and a briefdescription about the difference between 16-bit and 8-bit images, tryingto explain why X-ray plates should be scanned at 16-bit, see section <ahref=http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/doc/ipdummies/x-ray/three.htm#_chap3.4>3.4.
New development snapshot: vips-7.7.14. There'sa new screen shot too.New this release: bugfixes, and workspace load for the new ip.
We've broken vips up into three pieces: vips-7.7.14 is the library,ip-7.7.14 is the old Motif ip, nip-7.7.14 is the fancy new GTK ip.Having it in three bits means we can carry on working on nip withouthaving to release new versions of the other packages every month aswell. This should be the last vips library release before 7.8. I hope.
On the downside, it's now a bit harder to configure and build. Take alook at the READMEs for tips. On the plus side, vips no loger dependson libxml2 (but nip does).
It took 3 months of awful, horrible pain to get XML workspace load workingproperly in nip :-( But it does now somewhat rock.
Section 8.3 , of the Vips/ip beginners guide, on rubber-sheeting, has been updated to included an explanation of how to crop images and a correction to the "Expand Image" column used during the rubber-sheeting process.
New development snapshot: vips-7.7.12. There'sa new screen shot too. New this month:bugfixes, a program window for editing code, and use of XML for savefiles. No XML load yet though :-(
7.7.11 ... and histogram operations were broken too! Thanks Joe. Thereare a few other tiny fixes too, and ip2 has gained a trace window(handy for debugging).
Dagnabbit, 7.7.10 ... sharpen was broken on LABPACK images. Thanks to Clare for spotting that one.
A new guide has been added to the documentation section: Working with X-rays.This document covers: scanning and mosaicing X-rays images, and the process of adjustingthe completed mosaics to remove the 'shadowing' or tonal inbalance causedby stretcher bars or cradles.
- Ooops, make that 7.7.9 ... I forgot to patch the x-ray
print menu,sorry Joe.
New development snapshot up: vips-7.7.8. There'sa new screen shot too. Region displayadded, the last of the Motif code has gone, plus a bunch of fixes. Just workspace load to go!
New development snapshot up: <ahref="vips-7.7">vips-7.7.7. There's a newscreen shot too. I think most of theworkspace widgets are done now, and image display is done too. Justregions and workspace save to go.
Ipdummies for vips-7.6.5 is up, with details of how to capture images directlyinto VIPS/ip. vips-7.6.5 is up, with binaries for Linux and Solaris. vips-7.6.5 adds video grabbing on Linux, includes some fixes to video grabbingon Solaris, and nails a couple of nasty ip bugs.
The mailing list is still broken :-( sorry, investigations continuing. A new development snapshot, vips-7.7.5, is up.
vips-7.7.4 is up. Quite a few new VIPS functions, and some useful speed ups.
vips-7.6.5 should be out soon; this is a maintenance update whichfixes a few bugs, and adds video grabbing under linux. You'll find ithard to get video working well with kernels before 2.4 ... we've hadout-of-the-box success with SuSE 7.1.
- I've put up vips-7.7.3. vips-7.7 is just for fun, it does not actually work. Programmers only!
- Beginners' Guide; Section 6.1 "Unpacking/Uncompressing VIPS" has been updated, correcting a few typos.* Online "Beginners' Guide" for installation and usage of VIPS/
ip(based on vips-7.6.4) has been posted on the documentation page. - The mailing list is still broken :-( sorry, investigationscontinuing.
Beginner's Guide; Section 6.1 "Unpacking/Uncompressing VIPS" has been updated, correcting a few typos.
I've put up a vips-7.6.4 binary for Solaris 7.
I've put up vips-7.7.2. vips-7.7 is just for fun, itdoes not actually work. Programmers only!
Online `Beginners' Guide' for installation and usage of VIPS/ip(based on vips-7.6.4) has been posted on the documentation page. New menu tool has been provided for overlaying images, see Extras.
I've added a vips-7.7 download area, and updated the TODO list with some more tiny bugs. vips-7.7.0 is just for fun, itdoes not actually work. Programmers only!
Great vips-7.7 ip improvements this weekend ... slider is now defined as aclass:slider from to value = class { check = checkargs this [ [ from, is_real, "real" ], [ to, is_real, "real" ], [ value, is_real, "real" ] ]; }in ip's macro language. The "check" stuff is used for arg checking: it just makes sure slider is given three reals.If you type "slider 0 255 128", you get aslider you can drag about. You have to type "A1.value" now to get thenumber, but oh well.
New bit: you can subclass display classes, and they still work! islider f t v = class slider f t v { value = super.from + (super.to - super.value); }This defines "islider", (for inverted slider) which takes parameters ft v (and just passes them on to it's superclass, "slider"), butoverrides the "value" field ... so it inverts the sense of the slider(max on the left, instead of the right).
I've also updated the ip example pagewith new screendumps, and slightly better text.
www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk is now up on a proper server with backup!please replace any links/bookmarks to azul etc with the new name. - Kirk
Here's a new screenshot ... subcolumns, withdynamically generated sliders and toggles. You can see the code in theVIM window, and what I typed to get the screen displays in the lowercopies of the columns. All these widgets are generated by ip's macro language, and they areall linked together by the class dependencies ... drag one of thesliders, and the others all move too.
Added acocal-1.0 to 7.6 download page.
Found a new vips-7.6 bug: nested classes can't reference parameters in enclosing scopes correctly. This shouldn't affect too many users
-)
Still no anonymous CVS, sorry.
The new ip is coming along, here's a screenshot!And another one!It's missing lots of stuff still, but it does look cool. This version should work on windows as well as UNIX.
Rachel found a nasty bug in vips-7.6.3: Global_balance.Float wasbroken (it least produced rather poor results). I've made a new distribution, vips-7.6.4, which fixes this, and addsa couple of small extras to ip and to configure. I've only put up thebinary for Solaris 2.5.1 (works on 2.6 too), I hope to get the restdone in the first part of next week.
VIPS is now in CVS. As soon as we get anonymous CVS going, I'll post the stuff you need. IRIX binaries are up.
Joe at the Hamilton-Kerr has written a couple of 'IR mosaicing for dummies' guides, I've put them in the docs section.They are currently for vips7.4, if anyone fancies updating them, that'd be great :)
vips-7.6.1 is up!There's new documentation too, and a new examples package. No binarydistribution yet, maybe in a few days.
- Found the first bug: OK in option edit before you've entered any options causes a crash.
- I've added binary distributionsfor Linux glibc2.0 systems (SuSE 6.0 and 6.1). I managed to trim 2Moff the download by stripping the executables too.
- IRIX binaries on the way!
- I think the mailing list is broken, sorry. I'll look into it.
vips-7.6 is almost done, up in a few days.Small fixes on the web pages.
New NT vips7.5 up ... as before, command-line only. Just an update.
SGI vips7.5 is up - Kirk Basic binaries only version for Irix on SGI systems. Video grabbing tested on O2 systems.
Rubber sheet plug-in availableThere's a new rubber-sheet tool in the vips7.5 download area. Sun onlyfor now, Linux soon, SGI a bit later.
Ooops, found a bugim_rotate*mask*() functions do not preserve mask scale and offset correctly.
New vips7.5 version upThere's a new vips7.5 beta available for download.This version fixes all of the bugs listed in the buglist, and addsthe cool new stuff listed below. Sun and Linux versions are up, expectan SGI version in the next few days.The sources will be up when the SGI version is done and we have atree that builds easily on Sun/Linux/SGI.
VIPS fixes/improvementsim_tiff2vips() refused to open pyramids in the previous beta, im_global_balance() now lets you specify a gamma for balancing.
ip fixes/improvementsAll the known bugs have been fixed, a few enhancements have beenmade to the menus. I've sped up recalculation quite a bit. I've fixeda few things which were causing the odd core-dump too.
Huge bonus: ip now uses GDK for rendering image display windows.This gives much better behaviour on 8- and 16-bit displays. Performance should be up too.
Awful bugI've found a bad bug in the graph reduction engine inside ip's programminglanguage --- for example, the "===" operator is rather unreliable. I've fixedit in the Gallery version, I'll give it a week or so to settle, and makeanother release.
I've started getting rid of Motif, and moving to gtk instead. This will take a while (sixmonths?), but ip should be much nicer. I'll do a final Motif version in a week or so, then it'll go quiet for a bit.
Improved global balance stuff.I've tweaked the global balance stuff for better behaviour with non-linearimages. You should see better results when balancing mosaics of images fromtube cameras.
Found a bug! Occasional internal errors and coredumps while dragging regions about. It happens when you drop a region and pick it up again withoutmoving your mouse inbetween. Workaround: don't do it! I've fixed it in the version here, next distribution will include it. Ansthe other stuff on the buglist too, hopefully.
I've had no crashes in the last two weeks with the current vips7.5 beta, seems OK!
Redone the web pages, and I've added a todo list.This is supposed to list known bugs in the current release, stuff that'splanned to be added before the current beta stops, and stuff that's plannedfor the long term.If you have any bugs to report, or cool ideas for stuff to add, please email me (john@giorgio.hart.bbk.ac.uk) and let me know.