Changes Between Amulet Versions 1 and 2 Beta

This page contains two sets of changes:

Changes betweeen V1.2 and V2.0 Alpha
Changes in Amulet V2

Changes in Amulet Version 2

Changes between V2.0 beta and V2.0 official release

Minor Changes

Unix/X now correctly maps some previously unmapped keysyms.
Inspector startup keys can be reset at runtime from user code.
Added out of memory dialog box on the Mac.
Added minimal support for dotted and dashed lines on the Mac.
Some options set correctly in Mac Project files.
New 68k and PPC project files for goodbye demos.
Mac now distinguishes between esc and clear keys correctly.

Bug Fixes

Fixes for GIF files on the PC. Color GIF images only worked for certain bit depths on the PC in older versions of Amulet. All GIF files were occasionally corrupted in the lower right hand corner.
Fix for fonts under Unix/X. Fonts constructed by name sometimes came up underlined when they shouldn't have.
Bug fix on Mac to make inverted text styles work correctly.
Bug fixes to prevent windows from shrinking and sliding around when they're not supposed to on Windows `95 and fvwm.
Bug fix on PC for garbage-filled popup windows in menus.
Bug fix in Windows `95 to support 16 color mode correctly.
Patch so dotted/dashed line code doesn't cause an internal compiler error on VC++ 4.1.
Bug fix on Mac prevents applications from crashing on exit if you close windows from the window manager.

Changes between V2.0 alpha and V2.0 beta

Major Changes

Added support for the Macintosh

Minor Changes

New Am_Tab_To_Next_Widget_Interactor for handling tabbing from text field to text field in a dialog box
To support "weird" characters at the top of fonts, changed so META-character will set the high bit when typed. Thus META-6 gets the paragraph sign (char 182, 0xb6). Using the As_String or cout form still gets the META-6 version. Fixed Opal to pass through these characters.
Scrolling Groups have new Am_LINE_STYLE slot for the outline of the scrolling area, which can be NULL.

Bug Fixes

Got rid of the rest of the memory leaks in testselectionwidgets
Makefiles for gcc with libraries now works
Multiple shared libraries consolidated into one shared library "libamulet"
Click in text field but not over the text makes cursor go to end instead of to the beginning
Fixed bug where option_button popup menu didn't start off in right place
Fixed bug where MS Win95 windows keep moving or shrinking after the user moves or changes size.
A fix for slots declared Am_Local, that showed up with instances of Am_Option_Buttons

Changes betweeen V1.2 and V2.0 Alpha

Major Changes

Support for gesture recognition, through the new Gesture_Interactor and the interactive tool Agate which allows gestures to be defined by demonstration.
A new undo model that supports selective undo, redo and repeat of all operations. The design is described in a conference paper.
New widgets:
- Graphics Selection Handles widget
- Built-in Command objects for cut, copy, paste, to top and bottom, group and ungroup, etc.
- Option button widget, that shows one value and pops up a menu
- Built-in dialog boxes for errors and simple queries
Significantly expanded debugging facilities
- In the interactive Inspector:
  - PopUp windows for constraint dependencies, slot properties and object hierarchies Showing which constraints are inherited
  - Ability to trace or break when slots are set
  - Formulas and Methods now show their names
  - Many more kinds of values can be edited
  - Flashing the selected object
  - Controlling the Interactor tracing options interactively
  - Automatic update of the display when slots change
- Also, tracing and breaking on slot change; many more types print out meaningfully for cout
Support for GIFs (pixmaps) on Unix, PC and Mac
Support for double buffering.

Minor Changes

Menubars now support accelerator characters.

For text_interactor and text_input_widgets, clicking outside now stops the interactor or widget, but passes through the click so it still does whatever other action is desired.

Provided routines to start, stop and abort widgets and interactors: Am_Start_Widget, Am_Stop_Widget, Am_Abort_Widget; Am_Start_Interactor, Am_Stop_Interactor, Am_Abort_Interactor

References in formulas to slots and objects that do not yet exist leave the formula uninitialized, which means that now you need fewer calls to Valid(). In particular, it is safe to do obj.GV_Object(SLOT).GV(Am_LEFT) even if the SLOT of obj does not yet contain a value. The formula must return a "real" value before the result of the formula is used (such as to draw the object).

You can now destroy windows using the window manager's Kill-Window or close box, and this is converted into a message to the window. By default this deletes the window, but you can override with other behaviors.

Added support for popping up modal dialog boxes and waiting for the user to supply a value.

We significantly sped up the execution. Polygons got about 10 times faster, other parts are about twice as fast.

A new type of group was added: Am_Resize_Parts_Group which acts like a regular group, except that if you change the width and height of the group, it changes the width and height of the parts correspondingly.

The Amulet libraries can now be dynamically linked using gcc, which saves LOTS of time when compiling and linking. This is the default.

Amulet now works on some new platforms and compilers: List of known working platforms:

  Unix
	OS: SunOS, Linux, IBM RS6000/AIX-3.2.5, HP/UX, SGI
	Compilers: gcc 2.6.3, gcc-2.7.0, ObjectCenter 2.1
  PC
	OS: Windows NT 3.5 and 3.51, and Windows 95
	Compilers:  Visual C++ 2.0, 2.1 or 4.0
  Mac
	OS: 7.1, 7.5
	Compilers: CodeWarrior 7 and 8

The documentation (manual) is available as an HTML file on the Web.

Very Minor Changes

Under X, extra move events are flushed to get better performance
Guarantee that Am_SAVED_OLD_OWNER of command in inter or widget is always the inter or widget so you can use it in the DO method or constraints.
In the PC version, we use console.cpp instead of GW Streams
You can scroll and cut and paste in the DOS window for debugging
obj.Text_Inspect(slot) prints out lots of information (like the inspector) which can be useful for debugging. This can be invoked from many debuggers. Also, obj.Get_Name() can be invoked from the debugger.
New value list method: Append
Under ObjectCenter, you no longer need to have 2-line definition of objects. Thus, it now works to do Am_Object o = obj.Get(SLOT);
Am_Point_In_Leaf and Am_Point_In_Part (in opal.h) have extra parameter want_groups, that if false makes it not return a group. Default = true, which is the same as the v1.0 behavior.
None of the debugging and printing code is included in the generated binaries if you compile with DEBUG off. This significantly reduces code size.
Advanced slot properties can now be set from the object so you don't need to use object_advanced.h, including the inherit rule, read-only, single constraint mode, and demon bits.
Built-in support for moving objects across multiple windows in the Move-Grow Interactor. The feedback object in the move-grow, new_point and gesture interactors can be a little window (so you can see it in the background), or if you use a regular object, the interactors will move the object into the appropriate window.
Unnamed parts are now inherited.
Interactors now will beep when aborted explicitly. You can turn this off using the Am_INTER_BEEP_ON_ABORT slot.
Support pending delete, where the text is deleted if you type something, in the text interactor and text input widget.
Am_Point_List class for polygons has many more features and has a consistent interface with the other list-like classes. Polygons will now be scaled correctly if their Am_WIDTH and Am_HEIGHT are set.
Get_Object and GV_Object method in objects that declares that the return type of the slot is an object, primarily to help construct long chains of GV's without intermediate variable assignments.
Default start-when for all widgets changed to Am_Default_Widget_Start_Char which is "ANY_LEFT_DOWN" to make widgets start even if shift and control keys are down, and they work on double clicks.
If double-click in a text object or text-input widget, the string is copied into X cut buffer, and it is put into "pending-delete" mode so the next character will delete it. Using the middle button on a text field or object while the cursor is visible will copy the current contents of the X cut buffer.

Bug Fixes

If an interactor or widget is in a scrolling window, but is outside the visible region, clicks no longer go through to those interactors or widgets.
Fix to make virtual window managers such as tvtwm work under Unix.
Made interactors with Am_OTHER_WINDOWS = true work, especially for new windows created after the interactor is created. Note that the slot was renamed to be Am_MULTI_OWNERS.
We eliminated some of the memory leaks from Amulet.
New color allocation scheme under X uses a more intelligent color than black if run out of colors.
Bounding box for thick, mitered polygons works right
Point_In_Part for polygons works right.
CAPS-LOCK key only affects alphabetic characters on Unix.

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Maintained by:

Brad Myers, Alan Ferrency (last updated 5-24-96 asf)