Athene Change-Log

VERSION 5.0

New version of QikInstall now supports package dependencies, a new interface and improved functionality.
New version of Uninstall created to support the new QikInstall features.
New version of ZTerm developed. Supports multiple consoles, font selection, translucency and background styles, silence and activity alarms, cut and paste operations, and unicode is also supported by default.
Introduced Stix, a project management and editing application for multiple document types (version 1 currently focusses solely on text editing).
Introduced Fluid, a Lua-based scripting language that has complete integration with our system code.
Introduced Data-Direct, a database query program compatible with SQLite databases.
Introduced RSS News Reader, a simple application for reading RSS feeds.
Introduced Bookworm, a document reader primarily designed for help files and manuals.
Redesigned File Manager now features improved directory display speed, 'Open With' dialog when opening new file types, management for compressed files, wildcard based file selections, an ability to display and change file properties and a new drive status display.
Animated login and boot screens have been introduced.
The icon server now supports image overlays.
Increased the speed of pkzip file decompression.
Fixed cut and paste problems sometimes occurring between tasks due to clipboard resets.
Added support for the decoding of GIF and TIFF images.
New System Options features: It is now possible to configure menu popup speed, fading and scrollbar opacity; The DPMS mode can now be configured in the screen saver section; New user administration section for Linux systems; New PCI and USB management section; New RSS News Feed management; New network and Internet administration features for the commercial version.
Indigo Desktop: Fixed desktop scroll jittering caused by very large windows. Added new smooth scrolling feature (click-drag on the desktop). A variety of graphical improvements have been made.
Omega Desktop: Taskbar buttons are now always displayed at the top of the screen bar.
Major optimsations in the startup process initiated by all programs, plus design changes intended to speed up run-time execution have led to improved response times in many areas.
Fixed problems with the management of the font's bitmap cache when more than 10 fonts were loaded into any given program.
Clicking on a menu bar and then moving the mouse between menus will automatically show the menu that the mouse is positioned over.
Added support for the Spanish language, selectable from the Locale options menu.
German and Finnish keymaps added.
Dithering is now automatically applied when loading images on 15/16 bit displays.
Gamma correction settings are now restored correctly on user login.
Fixed a MiniPlayer crash, caused by stopping and replaying MOD files.
Added a restart option to the Run class, allows a task to be automatically restarted if it crashes.
The DML standard has been completely revised (refer to the whitepaper). DML now supports the conversion of flags to their string equivalency by preceding field references with a $ character. ElseIf commands are now supported in DML. Added new 'procedure' tag for speeding up local procedure execution in scripts.
Combo boxes with more than 8 items now utilise scrollbars to limit the amount of vertical space taken up by the combobox menu.
Runscript will no longer attempt to execute DML scripts when they are not defined as programs.
Fixed audio distortion problems caused by setting volume meters to their maximum.
XPath queries are now supported for looking up content in XML data sources.
Added support for CDATA sections in XML.
Pressing CTRL-ALT-S will now turn on the screensaver.
Pressing SHIFT-TAB will move the focus to the previous user gadget in a window.
Modal and pop-over dialogs are now supported.
Image class now supports animated scrolling.
Support for checkmarks has been added to the Menu class.
Radial gradients are now supported.
The View class now supports tree, column-tree and group view modes.
Extended the number of parametric equations in the Rotoplex class, revised the Rotoplex 3D demo.
Added new Database and Recordset classes for database management. SQLite is supported by default. MySQL is also supported as an extension.
Added new Divider class, for splitting interfaces into resizable sections.
Added new Document class, provides HTTP-like capabilities for document presentation.
Added new Drift class, a special effects processor for graphics that drift across the display.
Added new ColourDialog class for standardising the user selection of custom colours.
Added new FontDialog class, used for asking the user to select fonts.
Added new HTTP class for web server communication (supports POST, PUT, GET, HEAD etc). HTTPS support via OpenSSL is included.
Added new Icon class to assist in the creation and management of desktop icons.
Added new MenuBar class, to simplify the management of menu bars.
Added new MixerDialog class, for standardising user manipulation of the audio mixers.
Added new Move class, used to move any object from one point to another within a set time frame.
Added new NetSocket class and Network module for the provision of TCP/IP based network communication. Supports transparent asynchronous DNS resolution and SSL services.
Added new Noise class, a special effects processor that applies noise to surface graphics.
Added new Panorama class, provides a scaled down view of the desktop for scrolling to off-screen windows.
Added new Pattern class, used for drawing patterns of dots at any size.
Added new Polygon class, for drawing filled and empty polygons.
Added new PowerSave class, manages the video display, provides CPU scaling, temperature management and other power saving features.
Added new Presenter class, intended for creating business friendly screen savers.
Added new RSS class, provides RSS loading and display facilities.
Added new SideBar class, provides a simple means of grouping icons within a sidebar that has been split into categories.
Added new SineWave class, draws a variety of animated sinewave effects.
Added new Sinusoid class, calculates sine patterns in real-time to aid programming that involves sine waves.
Added new Stripes class, provides a fast means for drawing line patterns.
Added new WSDL class for communicating with SOAP based web services.
[Windows] Now runs in full-screen mode by default. Pressing ALT-ENTER switches between windowed and full-screen mode.
[Linux] The X11 server now supports the AltGr key and will adjust automatically if you change the Athene keymap.
[Linux] X11 windows are now assigned correct application icons, based on the window titlebar names. The name resolution database is user editable, and found in system:config/software/x11icons.cfg.
[Linux] Implemented new ALSA based audio system. User audio settings are now loaded corectly on user login. Volume settings applied in Athene are now system wide, so they affect X11 applications as well. The audio server is now automatically restarted by the system if it crashes.
[Commercial] Latest SNAP graphics drivers added to the code base.
[Commercial] Login screen now initiates DPMS automatically if it remains idle for more than 3 minutes.
[Commercial] When logging in, the 'default' desktop is now automatically adjusted to match whatever desktop the user was using last.
[Commercial] Added new 'fastplug' hardware support system for faster booting (about 25% faster than the old hotplug system).
[Commercial] Fixed swap partition auto-mounting problems on bootup.
[Commercial] Bash scripts are now treated as programs when run from the File Manager (if the +x bit is set).
[Commercial] Bluetooth support is now included as standard.
[Commercial] DHCP is now installed as standard.
[Commercial] Further boot speed improvements mean that the majority of machines will get a 5-10 second boot time.
[Commercial] An image is now displayed on shutdown rather than dumping the display back to the console.
[Commercial] Automounting of USB storage devices is now supported.

VERSION 4.1

Revised the display and resolution area in System Options. You can now type in custom refresh rates. The monitor frequencies can be configured manually if they are not detected correctly.
Indigo Desktop: Marginless windows were mis-aligned by one pixel. Improved automatic scrolling and navigation around the desktop area. Fixed popup menu positioning when the desktop menu opens near the display edges.
Audio mute settings are now restored correctly when Athene starts up.
Fixed a crash in the x11 program scanner, occurring for some machines during installation.
Fixed horizontal spacing for the X character in the Sans Serif 8 pt font.
Holding Alt-F4 now closes the currently active desktop window.
Ctrl-Alt-D now forces the display to go into power-saving mode (repeat the keypress to restore the display).
Alt-Tab now pops-up a selectable window list a'la Windows.
Added new Belgian keymap, fixed United Kingdom keymap.
Added a timeout option to the DML Run instruction when waiting for processes to return.
The default user configuration files are now duplicated in the user's home directory on first login.
File permissions, users and groups are now displayed in file views.
Added support for running services at bootup.
Pressing Left-Windows-D now minimises all windows on the desktop.
QikInstall now prints human readable messages for error codes.
When changing resolution, preferential treatment is now given to the display size rather than the colour depth.
Scrollbar jump scrolling is now based on the size of the page, not the scrollbar slider.
Dead keys are now supported and may be defined in international keymap files.

VERSION 4.0

[Linux] VESA mode is now used for the display by default.
[Linux] Audio muting now frees /dev/dsp for other Linux processes.
[Linux] Filetypes are now matched to X11 programs (e.g. ".html" to Mozilla) on installation.
[Linux] Fixed console restoration if the framebuffer is being used for a terminal.
[Linux] Setting the time in System Options will now set the BIOS clock to the given time value.
[Linux] New PCMEM kernel module available for restricting system-wide memory access to just the graphics hardware.
[Linux] New Terminal class has been added so that you can create terminals inside applications.
[Commercial] Automount has been replaced with subfs.
[Commercial] All hard disk partitions are now automatically detected on startup.
[Commercial] Added USB camera support.
[Commercial] Switched to GLIBC 2.3.
[CDROM-Install] Introduced new CDROM installation program, supports partition management. The CDROM is now ejected following installation.
[Windows] Removed the 1152x864 display size limit.
[Windows] User directories are now managed in the official home directory of the user, not under c:\windows\system32\pandoraengine\...
[Windows] Windows drive letters are now labelled against drive: assignments.
[File Manager] The cancel button now works correctly when creating directories; Now copies source file permission flags and user id's correctly when overwriting files; Now launches slave processes when copying, moving or pasting files to stop the core application from becoming busy; Refreshes the fileview when file sizes are changed; Copying and pasting a file over itself now results in a "Copy of File" being created;
[System Options] Fixed broken okay button when creating new shortcuts in the program section; Left-handedness for the mouse is now selectable; A confirmation dialog now pops-up prior to uninstalling software packages.
Extremely tall menus can no longer be posititioned off the top of the desktop.
The Wintel desktop taskbar is now stick-to-front, to appear above desktop windows.
Omega Workbench now has a program menu integrated into the screenbar.
Stopped erroneous trailing lines from being appended when saving text files.
It is now possible to cancel installs during the installation process.
driveX: assignments can now be given preconfigured names.
Added a scrollbar to the Uninstaller's results view.
Symbolic links can now be compressed into Athene zip files.
Find Files now supports matching against folders.
Window dragging has been improved for certain cases.
Speed improvements made to the loading of compressed archives.
New command scripts - commands:setpermissions.dml and commands:pastefiles.dml.
Clicking the taskbar clock in Wintel 2000 will now display the current date.
Desktop popup menus are no longer able to popup over the right or bottom edges of the display.
[QikInstall-Dev] Wildcards can now be used for copying executables; Added a nofail tag to ignore install failures; Added a link tag to create symbolic links; Registering programs against filetypes is now possible.

VERSION 3.4

[Linux] A rootless X11 Server is now installed by default for backwards compatibility with X11 programs.
"New" and "Delete" buttons have been added to the program manager so that you can create your own customised program icons.
The Wintel and Indigo taskbar buttons now automatically update to reflect current window titles.
A new "Startup" program category is available which will automatically run programs for you when your desktop is opened (i.e. the same functionality as the MS Windows startup folder).
It is now possible to organise program icons into sub-categories, e.g. "Programming/Documentation" instead of just "Programming".
The minimum possible size for scrollbar slider gadgets has been increased.
Fixed file date/time comparison error when installing packages over existing files.
Symbolic links are now represented in file views using a special icon to make it obvious that they are a link.
The File Manager's copy and move routines now support symbolic links correctly.
The message system has been rewritten for improved context switching between tasks.
[Athenyx] RGB hardware cursors are now supported.

VERSION 3.3

Enhancements to the File Manager now mean that it supports toolbars, dialog boxes, menu and view options. Cut and paste file operations are now supported and column viewing mode is now used by default.
Updated the Find Files program to support a new toolbar, directory browse button and auto-refresh for scanned files.
Rewrote the Mini Player for improved music playback, now includes support for all the basic player options and a play-list manager.
Bitmap fonts are now cached to prevent re-loading.
[X11] The mouse wheel is now supported correctly.
[X11] Implemented new DGA rendering for optimum graphics throughput in X11 - about 25% faster than earlier methods. This feature is enabled only in full-screen mode.
[Linux] The root: assignment has been replaced with a complete list of discovered hard drives that have been found on your system.
[Linux] Athene now sets up its home directory in the Linux user's home directory rather than its own directory tree.
New DML classes: Button, CheckBox, ComboBox, Dialog, FileDialog, Input, ScrollBar, TabFocus, ToolBar, View, Window
API calls are now possible from DML.
The default date format for files can now be set in the System Options area.
Translation support for foreign languages has been added for scripts and menus.
Fixed gradient drawing in 16 bit graphics mode.
Personal shortcuts can now be created from the File Manager by clicking the Create Directory button when at the root view.
The image quality for resized icons has been improved significantly.
The AltGr key now works correctly. Support for Shift + AltGr has also been added so that up to four characters per key can be supported.
Added Russian and United Kingdom keymaps. Fixed errors in Estonian and Spanish keymaps.
Screenshots are now saved to the file "user:screenshot.png" and not "pictures:screenshot.png"
QikInstall now supports a browse button next to directory input boxes.
Added an 'Are you sure?' dialog to the Uninstall application.
[Win32] Fixed a file-handle bug that prevented files and directories from being returned to the system after use.

VERSION 3.2

[Linux] All-new ZTerm terminal emulator, corrects earlier terminal support problems and is now installed on the desktop by default.
[X11] Implemented XShmImage support for much faster graphics support in X11.
[X11/Win32] Added support for context mouse pointers.
Added new Reflection effect class and accompanying demo.
The Gradient class now supports alpha blending.
Fixed minor bug occuring in some forms of window exposes.
Fixed window scrolling glitch that occurred when scrolling hidden window layers.
QikInstall now checks file dates to prevent the overwriting of existing files.

VERSION 3.1

Completely reconstructed Omega, Wintel and Spacewalk desktops.
Many graphics optimisations and new features, including: Fade-enabled icons and menus, translucent effects, selective transparency, fast blending, shadow casting and non-rectangluar windows.
New icon set from Carles Carbonell Bernado. Icon support now includes the ability to scale icons to any size between 16 and 256 pixels. Icons also resize themselves automatically according to the display size.
Scrollbars are now translucent, so that you can see what's underneath them.
High quality resampling added to image resizing processes.
Wallpaper image stretching now retains a 1:1 size ratio from the original image.
Automated menu expansion on mouse-over added to the menu interface.
Rounded rectangles are now supported in DML.
New <fade> DML instruction, for adding fade effects to window layers.
New <fieldmonitor> DML instruction, for responding to changes made to object fields.
New <break> DML instruction, for breaking out of repeat statements.
Menu class now supports item sorting.
Arrow class now supports standard GUI conventions.

VERSION 3.0

[Linux] Kernel 2.4 is now required as a minimum.
TrueType and Windows fonts are now supported.
Audio system revised with all known bugs now fixed.
MP3 support is now available in the Mini Player application.
All binaries are now compiled with GCC 3.2 for Pentium model processors and compatibles only.
Added a System Options application for configuring each desktop environment.
Added a combobox widget.
Scollbars are now fully functional: Holding scroll buttons will cause the bar to constantly move in the selected direction and clicking anywhere around the scrollbar causes the bar to slide in that direction.
Added a new <xml-translate> tag to DML.
The mouse pointer now anchors its position when dragging objects like scrollbars and windows.
Added support for image scrolling to the Picture Viewer application.
Added save support to the JPEG class.
All new text mangement system implemented for easier editing and consistent text support.
Fixed loading of PCX picture files. Large JPEG's no longer crash on loading. The loading speed for all picture formats has been increased.
The CommandLine application now features full support for font selection.
Implemented a new graphics system in the interface for advanced rendering features. Window buffering is now enforced as standard.
Minimising to the taskbar is now supported in the Wintel and Spacewalk desktops.
Enhanced the Clock widget's support for printing the date and time.
Added new system keys for changing resolution, colour depth, refresh rate and more.
Improved the system's abililty to clean up after itself when applications crash.
The menu system now supports key navigation.
Double clicking the taskbar buttons in Wintel and Spacewalk will now cause a reset of the related window position.
Added a Directory class for use in DML, for the purpose of processing directory contents.
International keyboard mapping is now supported.
All new desktop-shutdown support added, now allows user to logout, restart or shutdown the system.
Added a Stop button to the Find Files application.
Wintel 2000 now supports double-clicking on title bars to maximise windows.
QikInstall can now open read-only installation files.
The Image class now supports dynamic stretching of images.
[Linux] The cd1/2: and disk1/2: assignments are now automatically setup.

VERSION 2.0

Full audio support now included (both sound samples and digital music playback - MOD, S3M, IT, XM). To play back audio files, use the File Manager or the CLI's PlayMusic and PlaySound commands.
DML scripts can now be split into multiple procedures (previously only one execution path per file was allowed).
Netscape support is now available for browser integration (requires the DML plugin from the Rocklyte home page).
Added special run-time effects like fading to the Text and Box classes.
Added a ripple effect class for creating water based special effects.
The runscript program is now able to run compressed script packages.
In Win32, the user: assignment is now set according to the user's login name.
The scripts: and programs: directories have been merged into one.
Added an ftp: assignment for accessing FTP sites through the file system (warning - experimental!). Refer to user:config/ftp_sites.cfg to add FTP sites.
The drawing speed of masked graphics and ellipses has been increased in Win32.
Improved the menu system so that menu bar configuration files are no longer needed.
Added an <exit> tag to DML for the purpose of breaking out of a script.
Added a <unique> tag to DML to ease the creation of unique public objects.
Added Hide/Show support to the Image class.
A number of internal bug fixes. Athene has also been stress tested to fix some quirky bugs that occurred under heavy multi-tasking conditions.

VERSION 1.3

Introduced a completely revised menuing system for much faster user interaction with menus. This includes the addition of an XML-Menu file standard for the construction of menus.
Added QikInstall and Uninstall utilities for the installation of ".install" packages.
Created an XML-Install standard for the installation of Athene and DML based software.
Added a Wait command to DML, making it possible to wait for user activity or pause for a short period of time in a DML script.
Added a plug-in based compress command to the CLI, currently supporting pkzip compression.
It is now possible to insert text based content within DML tags, allowing large quantities of data to be embedded within DML scripts. Also added an <xml> tag for embedding pure XML content in DML scripts.
Improved interprocess messaging in the Linux version for speed and lockup prevention.
Fixed graphical problems that occurred when opening multiple Athene instances.
Fixed a bug in the Run class that occasionally would prevent programs from running.
Fixed a crash that sometimes occurred when drawing outlined fonts.
Added support for the dynamic disabling and enabling of buttons.
The TextList class now supports word wrapping and margin definitions.
The Render class now supports Disable and Enable actions.
Added a NOEXTENSIONS flag to the FileView class to prevent file extensions from being shown. Also added a SHOWPARENT flag if a return-to-parent-directory option is required from within a file directory list.
The FindFiles component is now implemented as a command so that it may be used from the CLI.