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F-35 Lightning II
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The major new features of the new 3.4 release of the GLG Toolkit include:
A new C# GLG Class Library
is now available for developing GLG
.NET applications. Previously, the GLG ActiveX Control
was used in the .NET environment, while the new C# DLL can now be
used for a native .NET application development.
The ActiveX Control is still provided as an option for
applications that require OpenGL hardware accelerated graphics to
render complex 3D drawings.
A C# GLG User Control
component provides a tight
integration with the Visual Studio. For flexibility, both
the native C# events, listeners and overridable callbacks are
supported for handling GLG events. Numerous demos and
examples are also included with the release.
The C# version of the run-time library provides support for
balloon tooltips, which can be activated by setting the GlgNativeTooltip global
configuration variable to GlgNativeTooltipType.BALLOON_TOOLTIP.
The new version of
the OpenGL driver enables support for hardware-based hidden surface removal which allows
complex 3D scenes to be rendered in real time, as shown in the new
demos: F-35
Lightning II Demo and Dog Fight
Simulation.The
OpenGL-based hidden surface removal is activated by setting the DepthSort attribute of a
viewport or a group object. If OpenGL driver is not available, a
slower non-OpenGL based depth sorting algorithm is used, the same
as in the previous versions.
The toolkit transparently handles all aspects of the hidden
surface removal, using a common two-pass method to avoid
"stitching" artifacts rendering polygons with both fill and edges
when the OpenGL hidden surface removal is turned on. New global
configuration variables are provided to control the number of
passes in cases when polygons have only fill or only edges, as
well as to change a default polygon offset used to draw polygon
edges.
Nested groups may have the DepthSort
flag set to on or off for precise control of the rendering and to
optimize performance of complex 3D scenes. For example, text
labels and annotations may be placed in a separate group with DepthSort=NO to make sure
they are always drawn on top regardless of their position in the
3D space. The drawing order of objects is still relevant and may
be used to always draw translucent objects on top of other objects
to obtain a desired effect.
To avoid very long refresh intervals when a large drawing with
the OpenGL hidden-surface removal is accidentally loaded in the
GDI version of the Toolkit, the Z-sorting operation is aborted for
large drawings if the OpenGL driver is not available. The GlgMaxNonGLZSortSize global
configuration resource may be used to control the maximum number
of objects to be Z-sorted.
In the new release, hardware-based
lighting is automatically activated for viewports that
have a Light object added and use the OpenGL driver. When the
OpenGL driver is not available, a slower method inherited from the
previous versions is used.
A new POINT light type is now supported for viewports with the
OpenGL driver. If the OpenGL driver is not available, the FLAT
light type will be used instead of the POINT light.
The Shading polygon
attribute can now activate shading of the polygon fill and edges.
Previously, only the polygon fill was shaded depending on its
orientation relatively to the light source. Now shading can be
activated for edges as well. This feature is available for both
OpenGL and GDI drivers and across all deployment options
(C/C++/C#/Java/ActiveX).
GLG ports for embedded Linux on ARM-based processors are now
available. Downloads for both
ARM6 and ARM7 architectures are
provided, including Raspberry Pi
and BeagleBone boards.
The ports use X Windows for graphics rendering and work with
Debian, Ubuntu and Red Hat Linux distributions, as well as with
their derivatives. Custom on-demand ports can be also done upon
request.
Support for new hex and octal
format options (%x, %X and %o) was added to the FormatD transformation. A new
Format Type parameter was
added to specify the format type (integer or double). The double
format options include %f, %g, %G, %e and %E formats. All
floating-point format options are now supported across all
deployment options - C/C++/C#/Java/OCX.
A new Range Conversion
transformation was introduced to replace the previous
Range transformation. The new transformation has an independent InputValue parameter that makes it
easier to use the input value to control multiple parameters
constrained to it. The new transformation was used to enhance
Controls and Process Widget Sets and simplify their usage as
described in the following sections.
The old range transformation is deprecated in the new release: it
will still work in the old drawings, but it is replaced with the
new range conversion transformation in the Graphics Builder by
default. The EnableDeprecatedTransforms
option in the GLG configuration file may be used to enable
deprecated transformations in the Enterprise version of the
Builder.
A new Linear transformation
provides an extended set of
parameters that allow a developer to define more
elaborate functionality with a single transformation. The old
linear transformation was deprecated in the same way as the old
range transformation.
The new Range Conversion and Linear transformations also provide a
simple editing interface which eliminates a source of confusion by
preventing the user from directly altering the value of a variable
when a transformation is attached to it.
A new Identity transformation was also introduced and used for the
internals of control widgets. The Identity transformation may be
activated in the Enterprise version of the Graphics Builder by
setting the EnableAdvancedTransforms option to 1 in the GLG
configuration file.
Special Widget Set now includes new Layout widgets that provide layout templates for
drawings with navigation menus and toolbars. Widgets with a
variety of layout and resizing options are provided.
All widgets in the Controls Widget set, as well as other input
widgets (such as text input, option menus, lists, etc.), were redesigned to simplify constraining
their input value parameters to other objects in a
drawing.
For example, a Value
resource of a Value Display widget can be constrained directly to
a Value resource of a
slider or numerical text input to display the entered value.
Previously, the OutValue
resource had to be used instead of Value; the OutValue resource was
eliminated in the new version of the controls.
Even better, the Value
resource of a slider, a spinner or some other widget can be
constrained to another parameter in the drawing without affecting
the control's functionality, which was not possible in the
previous versions. This makes it possible to link the output value
of two controls by simply constraining their Value resources.
The new design uses the new Range Conversion and Identity
transformations to implement the controls' functionality.
The Process Control symbols were modified to take advantage of
the new Range Conversion transformation, which makes it easy to constrain a text
widget to display a value of a tank.
Support for the Control key
modifier was added to GLG buttons and toggles, so that
they can be activated only when
the Control key is pressed.
If a button or a toggle with the GlgButton handler has a resource named ArmedState (and its value is
different from -1), the interaction handler will set the resource
value to 0 or 1 depending on the state of the Control key, and
will allow the button to be activated with the mouse click only
when the Control key is pressed.
The ArmedState resource
was added to the buttons and toggles in the Controls Widget Set
and is set to -1 be default to deactivate the Control key feature.
To enable it, set the ArmedState
resource to 0.
A custom default font table can
now be specified globally by using the GlgDefaultFontTableFile
global configuration resource (or the GLG_DEFAULT_FONT_TABLE_FILE environment
variable) which points to a GLG drawing (.g) file containing the
font table. For the GLG editors, GlgDefaultFontTableFile may also be set in the
GLG configuration file.
The drawing file can contain a font table saved via the Save Font Table option in the
Font Table Properties dialog. For the convenience of editing, the
drawing file can also contain a viewport object named $Widget, in which case the
font table of the viewport will be used as the default font table.
The GlgDefaultFontTable
global configuration variable is also provided for advanced use
and may be set to an object ID of a font table object.
Support for Granularity
and Increment parameters
was added to the native slider objects with the GlgNSlider input handler.
Previously, these parameters were supported only by the GlgSlider input handler.
On Windows, Granularity
is set to 1000 globally by default to fix non-exact slider values
at the ends of the slider's interval. The GlgScrollbarGranularity
global configuration resource is provided to specify the global
granularity value.
The PageIncrement
parameter of the GlgNSlider
interaction handler can now be set to -1 to automatically use the
slider size as the page increment.
The handling of BOUND attributes of subdrawing objects was
changed to set the attributes' Global
flag to LOCAL for the subdrawing instances for convenience of
using bound attributes in multilayered subdrawings and subwindows.
Previously, the Global
flag of rebound attributes was inheriting the BOUND state, which
caused problems for nested subdrawings and required the flag to be
manually set to LOCAL in all subdrawing instances.
The EnableCache
attribute was added to the GLG Image object. The value of the
attribute may be set to NO to suppress
caching images that need to reload an image from a
periodically updating image file.
New GlgClearBuffer
method was added to the Standard API. The method allows an
application to clear data
buffers not only of the chart itself, but also the
buffers of the chart's individual plots.
New GlgChangeObject
method was added to the Standard API for all deployment options.
It may be used to force the object to re-setup and/or redraw
without setting new values of object attributes. For example,
invoking the method for the ImageFile attribute of an image object
with EnableCache=NO causes the image to reload the image file.
New GlgSetFocus
method of the Standard API may be used to set a keyboard focus to
a parent viewport of an object in a cross-platform way.
New GlgGetModifierState
method of the Standard API may be used to get the current state of
the Shift and Control modifier keys in a cross-platform way,
eliminating a need to use the Trace callback.
Support for %e, %E, %g and %G
floating point formats of the FormatD transformation was
added to the Java version of the Toolkit. All floating point
formats and the GlgNText
input handler are now using the current locale for formatting.
The performance and rendering
quality of rotated text, as well as spherical and
elliptical gradients, was improved by using native Java features that became available
since the Java version 1.6.
The new version of the GLG Java class library increased the use of
internal caches for faster
performance.
The mutable GlgDouble class
is now used internally for all D resource queries instead of
immutable Java Double for increased performance. Alternative
versions of the GetDResource
and SetDResource methods
that use GlgDouble were
added; the new methods can be used to minimize the use of the garbage collector.
The DrawTicks parameter
was added to the GlgNSlider
handler. Setting the parameter value to a non-zero value activates
drawing ticks for JSliders. The number of ticks is specified by
the Granularity
parameter if it is defined, otherwise the value of the DrawTicks parameter is used
as the number of ticks.
The JAVA_OBJECT container element type was deprecated and replaced
with NATIVE_OBJECT for better compatibility with the C# DLL. The
old constant will continue to work for backward compatibility.
New Java bean properties, SelectEnabled,
HierarchyEnabled, TraceEnabled and Trace2Enabled, were added to
fine-tune the use of the bean's callbacks in a way compatible with
the new C# User Control. The properties are automatically set when
the corresponding listeners are added to the bean. All callbacks
other than Trace and Trace2 are enabled by
default, and the properties may be used to explicitly enable or
disable specific callbacks by setting the value of a corresponding
property before the bean's drawing is loaded.
The new release adds support
for Qt 5 and provides integration files for both Qt 4 and
Qt5. On the X Windows platforms, support
for an alternative XCB bindings was added, allowing
developers to use GLG in both Xlib and XCB environments, such as
Qt 5.
Enabled the use of embedded
top-level dialog viewports in Qt and GTK integrations in
the X Windows environment, which was not previously possible with
the X11-based GLG library. The embedded top-level dialog viewports
are enabled by setting the viewport's ShellType attribute. The top-level dialogs
support DeleteWindow
action, allowing the program to handle dialog closing.
Glyph caching was extended to the Windows binary driver for
C/C++/ActiveX. The glyph cache increases text rendering speed in
OpenGL and also the rendering speed of the rotated text in GDI.
Previously, it was available only in X Windows.
Added support for simultaneous use of a transparent color defined
by the image object and GIF transparent color; previously, only
one or another was supported, but not both. On Windows, in the
C/C++ or ActiveX environment, this feature is supported only with
the OpenGL driver.
The run-time size of fixed-scale top-level viewports is now set to
be the same as their size in the Graphics Builder at design time,
unless the size is explicitly set by a program. For resizable
viewports, the default run-time size depends on the size of the
screen they are displayed in.
The -p option was added
to the gconvert file conversion utility. The option may be used to
specify a file name pattern for the recursive and multiple files
modes. The pattern supports the *
and ? wild cards. Only
the files with names matching the specified pattern will be
processed.
A new GLG Graphics Builder
Quick Reference Guide is now available online at the
following link:
https://www.genlogic.com/doc_html/glgquickref.pdf
Added a menu option for replacing a Viewport object with a SubWindow.
Added fractional choices to the option menu of the Visibility attribute to
facilitate using the attribute for
transparency and dimming. On Windows, transparency is
supported in the Builder only in the OpenGL mode. However, the
semi-transparent settings of the Visibility are still active even in the GDI mode
to make it possible to define the semi-transparent settings for
the C# and Java run-time options which do not depend on OpenGL.
The ConstrainOne option
of the Attribute Object dialog in the Graphics Builder is now
disabled by default to avoid confusion. The ConstrainAll option
should be used in most cases; if needed, the ConstrainOne option
can be enabled using the Options,
Selection Options, Enable ConstrainOne menu option, or by
setting EnableConstrainOne
in the GLG configuration file.
Deprecated and Advanced transformations are now disabled in the
Graphics Builder by default, and can be activated by setting
corresponding options in the GLG configuration file. Currently,
the advanced transformations group includes only the Identity
transformation; this will be expanded in the future.
Increased number of items in the recent drawings menu to 10.
Added a Skip Command button to the Animation Command dialog of the
Run Mode.
Changed Undo and Paste keyboard
accelerators on X Windows (to Ctrl-Z and Ctrl-V,
respectively) for uniformity between all supported platforms.
Added Ctrl-U keyboard
accelerator for the Public
Properties dialog.
Disabled the File, Open
menu option while editing a subdrawing's template to avoid
accidental rewriting of the template drawing.
Improved handling of the visibility attribute of a child with
visibility value greater than 1 inside a parent group with the
visibility less than 1, to allow an element of a semi-transparent
group to increase its opacity level.
Handling of gray scale JPEG
images in the OpenGL driver was fixed.
Special cases of moving objects that have control points with an
offset transformation attached was improved to properly move
offset points regardless of the objects' drawing order.
Display of span marks in the Graphics Builder was made more
consistent for stretched subdrawings.
A special case of selecting arcs with even number of points is now
properly handled for all mouse positions.
Fixed handling of custom events attached to the top viewport when
the mouse event occurred in the child viewport.
Fixed handling of custom events attached to objects inside
viewports that are completely obscured.
Fixed X error reporting in Qt integration.
Improved pixel mapping of OpenGL thick lines with even line
widths for crispier rendering with no blurring.
Changed child viewports to inherit the DisplayName attribute from the parent viewport
to allow the GLG Generic API in
multi-display environment to use drawings with embedded
viewports.
