Announcing XaoS 3.5

[J.B. Langston]

XaoS 3.5 is now available for download from http://sourceforge.net/projects/xaos/.
The new features in this release are explained below. Please give the
new version a try and let us know what you think!

RELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.5
----------------------------------

Cross-platform changes
======================

o New Portuguese translation courtesy of Lucio Henrique de Arujo and
Zelia Maria Horta Garcia

o Fixed crash bug when using -render command line option with user
formulas
(Mateusz Malczak)

o Removed support for unmaintained platforms (DOS, BeOS, Plan 9, etc.)

o Updated documentation to reflect infrastructure changes
(Discussion and issue tracking have moved to Google Groups and
Google Code)

o Additional fractal examples by J.B. Langston


Windows-specific changes
========================

o Improved GUI appearance with modern fonts and controls on XP and
Vista

o Help format changed from WinHelp to HtmlHelp. WinHelp was no longer
supported starting with Windows Vista and Windows 7.

o Fixed bug where output was invisible when using XaoS from the
command line

o Simplified and improved build instructions for Windows developers


GTK+ User Interface (Beta)
==========================

The GTK+ user interface is approaching beta quality. We welcome beta
testers to try out this version and let us know what issues you
encounter.
Please share your feedback with us on the developer's discussion group
at:
http://groups.google.com/group/xaos-devel.

We ask that beta testers be advanced users who are comfortable
compiling
software from source and submitting useful bug reports including
backtraces.
If you are not comfortable with this, then please wait for the final
version
to be released. We would also really appreciate it if any experienced
GTK+
developers can review our code and make suggestions for improvement.

Since the GTK+ UI is still not ready for everyday use, it will not be
compiled by default. You must explicitly enable it using the following
configure switch:

--with-gtk-driver=yes

In addition, we recommend you disable all other drivers when using the
GTK
driver using the following configure switches:

--with-x11-driver=no


New Documentation Format (Beta)
===============================

We are in the process of migrating the XaoS help system to Sphinx and
reStructuredText. Our user manual was previously in a crippled
subset
of HTML that we dubbed XSHL, which was missing many features
necessary
for maintaining modern, attractive documentation.

Sphinx was developed by the Python project for their documentation,
and
it is very similar to a Wiki in the way you mark up the text. It
can
output the results as HTML, PDF, and Windows Help. It supports all
the
important things that are missing from the current help format, such
as
tables, images, and internet hyperlinks. It can even convert LaTeX
math
markup into image files that get included in the HTML output.

The documentation still needs a lot of work before it is ready, and
we
have to make some modifications to Sphinx itself in order to
integrate
the documentation it produces with XaoS's help system. However, it
is
far enough along that we would welcome volunteers who are familar
with
reStructuredText to submit improvements to the documentation.

The new documentation is located in the help/rest directory, and it
can
be converted into HTML or PDF using the included Makefile. In order
to
generate the output, you will need to install Sphinx. Visit the
Sphinx
homepage at http://sphinx.pocoo.org/ for installation instructions and
more information on the new documentation format.

If you would like to help with the documentation, please contact us
on
the discussion group at: http://groups.google.com/group/xaos-devel.
We will be happy to help you get started.