[3Dwm-announce] 3Dwm 0.3.0 released

[Niklas Elmqvist]

3Dwm 0.3.0 has been released. For instant access to the source, point your
browsers to the following URL:

	http://www.3dwm.org/html/development_download.html

Or, for the tarball itself:

	http://www.3dwm.org/download/3dwm-0.3.0.tar.gz

You may also use the 3Dwm FTP server at the following address:

	ftp://oss.medialab.chalmers.se/pub/3dwm/

This release introduces the following changes from 3Dwm 0.2.4:

   o Solid modeling functionality added to the display server. Using
     solid modeling, it is possible to use boolean set operators to
     combine geometrical entities in various ways. CSG (constructive
     solid geometry) trees can be built and evaluated in real-time and
     with excellent performance. It is even possible to animate them.

   o VNC support is now complete. You can seamlessly now run your
     normal X11 applications inside 3Dwm! A special desktop interface
     has been created so that you can connect to a VNC desktop and
     handle *both* input to the desktop as well as the graphical
     output. Rudimentary focus management has been implemented.

   o 3D primitives and factory kit created. This makes it easy to
     effortlessly create 3D primitives such as spheres, cuboids,
     cones, cylinders and planes in 3Dwm clients.

   o "tdwm-clock", the first real 3Dwm application, has been added to
     the distribution. The clock application makes use of the new
     solid modeling functionality to display an analog clock in full
     3D.

   o Partial C++ SAX (Simple API for XML) implementation added to
     Celsius. Uses expat (http://expat.sourceforge.net) as a backend
     and conforms mostly to David Megginson's original Java SAX that
     can be found on http://www.megginson.com/SAX/.

   o Configuration file support implemented in the display server.
     Configuration files are written in XML (and are parsed by the SAX
     parser) and contain a number of run-time options to configure the
     display server.

   o Event mapping language implemented. This is handled by the Zorn
     subsystem that contains an interpreter for a simple prepositional
     logic language. Input events are now mapped to system commands in
     the new event manager using the Zorn interpreter.

   o Basic mapping files for mouse and keyboard as well as a 3DOF
     headtracker has been implemented (headtracker needs the Itrax
     driver compiled in with the source).

   o Support for the Intersense InterTrax 2 headtracker implemented.
     You need the itrax kernel module version 0.2+ that can be
     downloaded from http://www.mip.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~evers/.

   o Pick traversal implemented. The pick traversal is the basic
     mechanism for input event propagation in the scene graph.

   o Ray picking implemented. Used for letting the user click on the
     2D window using his mouse and then sending a ray from the screen
     through the scene graph to detect any intersections with graph
     nodes. By computing the intersection point with the ray, this
     mechanism can be used to communicate with VNC sessions.

   o Axis-aligned bounding boxes for all scene graph nodes added. In
     the future, high-resolution bounding volumes will be supported as
     well.

   o Enhanced the 3Dwm texture mapping facilities, added a texture
     coordinate generator, refactored all calls related to texturing
     and put them in a the new TextureKit.

   o Various utilities classes related to operating system services
     and file path support have been added to Celsius.

   o Logging has been made more verbose. This should make it much
     easier to troubleshoot the display server, especially on boot-up.

   o Camera navigation has been improved and now uses a "standardized"
     combination of mouse and keyboard for easy manipulation (see the
     INSTALL file for more information).

   o Quaternions for 3D rotations have been added to Celsius and are
     used when animating the camera in the server view.

   o French translations of the README and INSTALL files contributed
     by Jean-Francois Quenault <jfquenault@wanadoo.fr>.

   o C++ conformance bugfixes. 3Dwm should now compile cleanly under
     gcc 3.0. Unfortunately, there are some serious issues with using
     omniORB and gcc 3.0, so avoid 3.0 for the time being.

   o Minor fix to the build system to install the generated Nobel
     headers correctly. This means that 'make install' should now do
     the right thing, making it substantially easier to create
     independent 3Dwm applications.

   o Various additional bugfixes.

Enjoy!

best,
Nick

-- Niklas Elmqvist <elm@3dwm.org> ------------------------------------
   3Dwm Project Coordinator and Programmer.