Releases/0.61.08

Language:

English

Warning! This page contains outdated information. The release of Synfig Studio 0.64.0 introduced new terminology and this translated page needs to be updated according to original English text. You can help updating this page - see instructions here. Thank you!

warning end

ETL

Update the website URL to http://synfig.org/ instead of synfig.com.

Removed the 'bootstrap' script for building.  Use autoreconf instead.

Fixed errors and warnings detected by a pre-release version of g++
4.3.

Make ETL-config a wrapper around pkg-config. Patch by Ralf Corsepius
<rc040203@freenet.de>

Synfig Core

Synfig is now translatable using gettext.  Currently only a Spanish translation exists.

Build
-----
	Removed the 'bootstrap' script for building.  Use autoreconf
	instead.

	Fixed errors and warnings detected by a pre-release version of
	g++ 4.3.

Layers
------
	New layer, 'Duplicate'.  This is an experimental feature, but
	seems to work quite well.  It can be used to clone the layers
	under it multiple times. ( http://synfig.org/Duplicate_Layer )

	PasteCanvas
	-----------
		Prevent a "bad_alloc" error in the 'PasteCanvas' layer
		caused by the bounding boxes changing when the user
		changes parameters while rendering.

		Allow zooming furter in to nested PasteCanvas
		layers. (#1809480)

	Plant Layer
	-----------
		New parameter "reverse" in the Plant layer allows
		plants to be rendered back-to-front.

		Fix: Use the 'width' of each blinepoint in the plant
		layer to affect the velocities.  Patch from
		genete. (#1831897)

		Add the 'offset' parameter to the Plant layer.

		Don't let 'select all' select the green ducks of a
		plant layer.

		Do some sanity checking on Plant layer parameters.

	Stretch
	-------
		Prevent a crash when rendering a 'Stretch' layer with
		zero x or y amount. (#1823082)

		Make the 'Stretch' layer's "amount" duck be relative
		to the center duck.

	Text
	----
		Allow multibyte characters in the Text layer. Patch by
		Niki W. Waibel. (#1852208)

		First step towards fixing the problem of distorted
		'Text' layers not rendering correctly at tile borders.

	Misc
	----
		Shade: Make the quality of the 'Shade' layer worse at
		quality 10 than it is at quality 9!

		Shape: Rename the 'Position' parameter to 'Offset' for
		all the 'Shape' layers.

		Spherize: Fix clipping for tile-based rendering in
		Spherize layer.

		Star: New parameter "regular polygon" in the 'Star'
		layer allows regular polygons to be drawn.

		Time Loop: New version 0.2 of the 'Time Loop'
		layer. It uses the same parameters as the newly added
		Time Loop ValueNode.

		Warp: Fix a problem with the 'Warp' layer where some
		tiles weren't being rendered.

ValueNodes
----------
	Add new type: 'Cos', to calculate cosines. (
	http://wiki.synfig.com/Convert#Cos )

	Add new type: 'Duplicate', only used by the Duplicate layer. (
	http://synfig.org/Convert#Duplicate )

	Add new type: 'From Integer', to convert integers to other
	types for linking to.  Currently disabled. (
	http://synfig.org/Convert#From_Integer )

	Add new type: 'Random', to generate pseudo-random values. (
	http://synfig.org/Convert#Random )

	Add new type: 'Reciprocal', to calculate reciprocals. (
	http://synfig.org/Convert#Reciprocal )

	Add new type: 'Reverse Tangent', to reverse the direction of
	tangents. ( http://synfig.org/Convert#Reverse_Tangent )

	Add new type: 'Switch', to switch between two alternative
	values. ( http://synfig.org/Convert#Switch )

	Add new type: 'Time Loop', to allow individual parameters to
	be time looped, like the Time Loop layer, but for individual
	parameters. ( http://synfig.org/Convert#Time_Loop )

	Add new type: 'aTan2', to calculate inverse tangents. (
	http://synfig.org/Convert#aTan2 )

	Extended types: 'Add' and 'Subtract' now work with gradients.

Targets
-------
	Fix one memory leak and one filehandle leak in target 'png'..

	Fix the ffmpeg/dv/imagemagick targets/importers on Windows.

	Improved the 'imagemagick' target so it can create a series of
	numbered images.

	Fixed the 'mng' and 'yuv420p' targets.

	Security fixes: arbitrary code execution when rendering
	specially crafted .sif files.

	Show which output target is used if it has been chosen
	automatically, not specified by the user.

Blend Methods
-------------
	Don't accept illegal values for 'blend_method'.  Use
	'Composite' instead.

	Re-enable the 'alpha brighten' and 'alpha darken' blend
	methods.

	Fix the 'straight', 'straight onto' and 'alpha brighten' blend
	methods.  Even completely transparent pixels in the top layer
	should affect the result of these blends.  Existing .sif files
	which relied on the previously broken behavior should still
	render correctly for the most part.

Canvases
--------
	Fix a crash that was happening if we had 2 exported canvases
	in a .sif file where the 2nd contained a pastecanvas that used
	the 1st as its canvas.  The canvases are destructed in the
	order in which they appear in the .sif file, so by the time
	the 2nd is destroyed, the pastecanvas it contains no longer
	has a valid canvas parameter.  The fix is to clear the canvas
	parameter of any pastecanvases using a canvas when the canvas
	itself is destroyed.

	Encapsulations containing imported images fail to clone
	properly (#1838132)

SIF Files
---------
	Refer the user to 'http://synfig.org/Convert#Compatibility' if
	we try to load a .sif file that uses a not-yet-implemented
	ValueNode type, or that tries using a ValueNode with a type
	which it doesn't yet support.

	Changed the .sif file format.  'Composite' and 'Radial
	Composite' ValueNodes used to be saved with obscure XML
	element names <c1>, <c2>, etc.  Now we use more readable names
	<point>, <width>, etc.  The old version is still accepted, and
	can still be written by selecting the old version from the
	"Save As..." dialog.  The new format will not be accepted by
	previous releases of Synfig.

	New Feature: Allow saving .sif files in formats that can be
	read by versions 0.61.07 and older.

	Add information about which valuenode types were added in
	which release.  Don't save new types in old format files.

	Fix: Prevent a crash when loading a .sif file with 'use=""' in
	it.

	Fix: Prevent studio crashing when loading a document that
	contains an unknown valuenode type from a newer version of
	synfig. Simply refuse to load the document instead. (#1811250)

Misc
----
	Don't render feathering of circles or shapes (ie. outlines,
	regions, stars, polygons, etc), or motion blur, blur, or
	radial blur layers when the quality is 10.

	New feature: allow importing of lipsynced voice animations
	from Papagayo (#1879688)

	Fix: Inserting a new item into a list in animation mode caused
	unpredicatable renders before the time of
	insertion. (#1841280)

	Fix: The hex color code parser is much more forgiving now.
	Previously spaces before or after the color code would cause
	it to fail.

	Fix: Don't treat the required values of command line flags as
	flags themselves. (#1695735)

	Fix: Initialise the 'time_last_changed' when creating a Node.
	Previously it was being left at a random value.

Synfig Studio

Rename "Dialogs" to "Panels" for the dockable windows.

Synfig Studio is now translatable using gettext.  Currently Franch
and Spanish translations exist.

Removed the 'bootstrap' script for building.  Use autoreconf instead.

Added the option to run everything in the same thread.  It doesn't
work very well, and seems to cause more problems than it solves.

Don't hide and reshow the workarea window when the user clicks the
'X' button to close it. (#1682008)

Indicate that a canvas is unsaved by putting a '*' in front of its
name.

Fix a problem with the canvas properties dialog.  It wasn't possible
to edit both the 'name' and the renddesc parameters at the same time.

Fix the 'auto' render target selection, so it automatically choses
the target type each time based on the filename.

When a PasteCanvas' "time offset" parameter shifts the timing of its
sub-canvas, the waypoints of that subcanvas are now displayed shifted
accordingly.

Added new target 'magick++' for rendering multiple images to a single
file using Magick++.

Added a 'Type' column to the parameter dialog so it's possible to
tell an 'Add' from a 'Subtract' convert for example.

Draw tool
---------
	Fixed 'fill last stroke' button in the drawing tool.

	Rearrange the drawing tool options a little.  Instead of
	'region only' have checkboxes for 'region' and 'fill', like in
	the bline tool, so now it's possible to draw regions and
	outlines together.

	Fix: When drawing an outline and a region at the same time,
	put the outline just on top of the region. (#1829172)

	Fix: always leave only the newly created layers
	selected. (#1830245)

New environment variable:
'SYNFIG_DISABLE_NEW_CANVAS_EDIT_PROPERTIES'.  When set, don't pop up
the canvas properties dialog when creating a new document.

Renaming exported ValueNodes no longer causes a crash. (#1823053)

The popup caret menu has been disabled for some tools.  There's no
comment in the code saying why.  I've added an environment variable
which re-enables the popup menu when set.  export
SYNFIG_ENABLE_POPUP_MENU_IN_ALL_TOOLS=1 to try it, and report your
findings back to the bug report as to whether this should be the
default or not. (#1829182)

New feature: Angles are not wrapped modulo 360 degrees.  It's
possible to animate from 0 to 361 degrees and see a full rotation,
rather than seeing it shortcutting as it was previously.  It's also
now possible to drag angle ducks around their origin multiple times
and have the rotations count. (#1827966)

Added environment variable SYNFIG_DISABLE_TILE_RENDER which when set
will prevent the tile renderer from being used.

Fix: Crash closing preview window before using it. (#1835429)

Fix: If the window positions and sizes seem to be corrupted, give
them sensible values to prevent them being created
offscreen. (#1836848)

Fix ugly waypoint drawing by rounding to integer values
symmetrically.  [1] shows the difference.

Fix: Use the 'C' locale when loading and saving sketches. (#1830670)

If environment variable "SYNFIG_SHOW_TILE_OUTLINES" is defined, draw
red outlines around tiles as they are rendered.  For debugging
purposes.

Fix: Studio was crashing sometimes when closing a
document. (#1850637)

Also allow adjustment of the default brush size using horizontal
scrolling over the preview graphic.

Allow the use of horizontal scrolling to adjust the current time in
timeslider widgets.

Allow layers to be removed from groups without the user having to
type the name of the group they are in.

Fixed errors and warnings detected by a pre-release version of g++
4.3.

Fixes to allow sigc++ 2.1 and newer to be used. (#1859663)

Label the preview qualities "best" and "fastest" because it's not
clear that higher numbers mean lower qualities.

By default, set "use current frame" in the render dialog to off.
When "use current frame" is on, disable the Time tab's frame.

Added a new icon for values of type "Time", thanks to genete.

The entries that appear in the History panel are now more explicit;
they mostly now give details of the operation rather than just a
generic fixed string, making it easier to navigate through the
history.  For example "Remove Layer 'left leg'" will show up rather
than just "Remove Layer".

When the user types in the History dialog, search for any text in the
'name' column that matches the text.  Previously it was only
searching for names matching at the beginning.

Fix: Studio occasionally renders the tiles in the wrong places.  This
was happening when the canvas was one pixel greater than an integer
number of tiles wide, and low-resolution rendering (the default) was
enabled. (#1824437)

Add 'new', 'open' and 'quit' to the caret>file menu.

Remember separate default directories for opening and writing each of
animations, images, sketches, rendered output, and "miscellaneous".

Add checkboxes to the toggleable entries in the view menu.

Default 'end time' for new canvases to 5s instead of 0.  That's one
less thing a new user then needs to edit to start making his first
animation.  Also, don't show the intimidating canvas properties
dialog when a new composition is created, just use the defaults.  Set
environment variable "SYNFIG_ENABLE_NEW_CANVAS_EDIT_PROPERTIES" to
revert this change locally.  See
http://synfig.org/Wish_list#Improved_User_Experience_for_First_Contact
.

If no documents are specified to be loaded on the command line at
start-up, create a new empty document to the novice user can get
started straight away.
http://synfig.org/Wish_list#Improved_User_Experience_for_First_Contact

Allow the layer panel to be sorted by layer name.  Resize the layer
name column to fit the layer names.  Rename the "Layer" column to
"Name".

If environment variable SYNFIG_DISABLE_AUTOMATIC_DOCUMENT_CREATION is
set, don't create a blank document on startup, even if no documents
were specified on the command line.  I'll add proper configuration
items within the gui for this and other recent changes soon.

Change the default 'toggle onion skin' keyboard shortcut from
control-o (which is the stock binding for 'open') to alt-o.

Applied patch from IL'dar AKHmetgaleev aka AkhIL to allow different
pixel sizes in the workarea window.  control-'(' and control-')' make
the pixels bigger and smller.

Fix: Change the about dialog to a splash screen and implement a new
about dialog based on Gtk::AboutDialog. Still need to connect it up
to configure.ac though. (#1678554, #1741220)

Fix: Exported canvases weren't being deleted, due to a handle never
being released. (#1868911)

With the re-enabling of 'Alpha Brighten', the toolbox has become a
little wider.  Some foreign translations of the blend method could
also push it wider.  And since we have 15 tool icons by default, I've
made the toolbox 5 icons wide instead of 4, and rearranged them
slightly.  The top row is now all for "moving ducks", the middle row
for "drawing stuff", and the bottom row is more drawing on the left
and looking at stuff (eyedrop, zoom) on the right.

Show a very simple message in the console on start-up so as not to
scare people when they see an empty terminal window 'doing nothing'.

When linking simple values, use the value from the topmost layer.

Attempting to link a duck from the Children panel with other ducks
was causing an error.  Now it isn't.

Quality
-------
	Change the default quality to 8.  It makes shade layers render
	better without much impact on speed.

When doing a 'Save As', default to saving in the same directory that
the file was loaded from, if any.

BLine Tool
----------
      Allow the bline tool to draw plants as well as outlines,
      regions, and curvegradients.

      When the bline tool is creating new layers, arrange the new
      layers in the order: Outline - Region - Plant - Gradient, so
      that each layer is at least somewhat visible.  Rename the
      "*layer_bline*" variables to "*layer_outline*" since they
      represent outlines specifically.

Waypoints
---------
	Improve the waypoint context menus.  Now it's possible to
	delete and duplicate complete trees of waypoints at once.  The
	'change interp' functionality has been extended too, so now
	it's possible to set the interpolation type for the whole
	waypoint from the context menu as well as just the side that
	was clicked on, and it's possible for single waypoints as
	well.

	Fix a crash when editing a waypoint with a non-static value.

	Attach the "(Non-static value)" label into the waypoint
	dialog.

	Experimental: "export SYNFIG_SHOW_CANVAS_PARAM_WAYPOINTS=1" to
	see canvas parameter waypoints, not canvas content waypoints
	in PasteCanvas layers.  Doesn't work too well - dragging the
	waypoints doesn't work, for instance.

Fix: Show the correct SVN revision id in the about dialog. (#1797745)

Time
----
	Allow manual editing of the current time in the workarea
	window.

	Don't expand time fields to their full format (eg. "1s" -> "0h
	0m 1s 0f") when they get keyboard focus.  export
	SYNFIG_SHOW_FULL_TIME_ON_FOCUS=1 will restore the old
	behaviour.

	Make sure the time entry box shows the correct time - rounded
	to an integer number of frames.

	Improve the range of different scales used on the timeslider.
	Previously 3 fps animations were having the timeslider
	labelled "0.75f, 1.5f, ..." rather than "1f, 2f, ...".

	Subdivide the space between labels on the timeslider sensibly.
	Don't divide a 5 second gap into 4 parts of 1.25 seconds each,
	for instance.

	Set minimum and maximum zoom levels for the timescroller.

	Improve the behaviour of horizontal-scrolling on the time
	slider.  Scroll by one 'tick', stop at either end, better
	control of the time cursor position, leave the zoom alone.

	Improve the algorithm for determining the number of tick marks
	to put between pairs of labels in the timeslider widgets.
	It's better to divide 5 minutes into 5 tics of 1 minute each
	than 6 ticks of 50 seconds each, for example.

My panels were drifting one or two pixels each time I started studio.
This seems to be window-manager dependent.  I've added environment
variables to allow adjusting the drift to stop it.
SYNFIG_WINDOW_POSITION_X_OFFSET and SYNFIG_WINDOW_POSITION_Y_OFFSET.
Setting them both to 1 stops the drift for me in xfwm4.

Remember the position and size of the color and gradient dialogs even
if they're not displayed when studio exits.

Add a setting in the gui for the auto-backup interval.

Don't allow the user to set the 'ID' of exported canvases to be
empty.

Ducks
-----
	Always draw 'real' ducks on the right hand side of the circle
	they define.  Previously, canvases with a negative horizontal
	pixel width were drawing it on the left.

	Add an option to restrict 'radius' ducks to the top right
	corner of the plane.  This allows us to easily set their value
	to zero by dragging down and left.  Thanks to Zelgadis on IRC
	for the suggestion.  See "Toolbox > File > Setup > Misc >
	Restrict Real-Valued Ducks...".

	Show the size of circles as they are drawn using the draw
	tool.

	Give slight priority to radius ducks.  That way, it's possible
	to select the radius duck for a circle with radius zero.
	Previously the position duck would usually be selected
	instead.

Language:

English