NetLogo 7.0.4 released

[Uri Wilensky]

Dear NetLogo users,

The Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling at Northwestern University is pleased to announce NetLogo 7.0.4, available for free download from our website. This release has a few new features and many fixes to small bugs, including both long-standing issues and ones discovered after 7.0.3, We also bundled the “NetLogo Launcher” which enables Mac users to launch multiple NetLogo models at once (Windows and Linux users can already do this by default). 

A big change in 7.0.4 makes NetLogo more accessible to non-English speaking users: we have added the ability for users to select their own font for the code tab (which also applies to the command center and widget edit dialogues). This allows those who need a font that can display Chinese (and any other language that is not currently displayed properly) to choose a font that works.

We recommend that all users upgrade to 7.0.4. All changes are listed below.

We very much appreciate feedback from our users. Please send your feedback to feed...@ccl.northwestern.edu and bug reports to bu...@ccl.northwestern.edu, or post to the NetLogo Forum on the Bugs Reports or Feedback categories. 

NetLogo is still actively developed and we have a lot yet to build. Consider donating to support NetLogo. 

Donate here (donations are processed through Northwestern University, but 100% goes to fund NetLogo development).

NetLogo is free, and we’re committed to keeping it that way. But maintaining a large codebase, shipping new features, and growing the models library takes real resources. As we shift from government grants toward community-supported funding, your donation, at any level, makes a real difference. Every donor is invited to join the NetLogo Donors Circle, where you can help shape our roadmap through discussion and voting. Donors at $250+ receive additional perks.

Enjoy,

-Uri

Uri Wilensky

Author, NetLogo

Preside, NetLogo Center

New Features

• Users can now select a preferred code font (see the “Code” tab in the preferences)
• In addition to simply providing more flexibility, this is intended to provide a workaround for users who have reported that Chinese characters were not rendering in code on Windows
• Note that you can quickly search for a specific font by typing a subset of the font’s name after opening the dropdown
• NetLogo will now open the relevant help page in the bundled user manual PDF when an internet connection is not available
• The static HTML version of the manual will no longer be provided, since it mainly duplicates the content of the PDF
• NetLogo will still default to opening your browser to the latest docs on docs.netlogo.org when an internet connection is available
• Exported BehaviorSpace experiments now record which version of NetLogo they were exported from

• NetLogo will now ask for confirmation if you are about to discard data from paused BehaviorSpace experiments (e.g. by closing the application or changing models)
  
  

Bugs Fixed

• Widgets
• Mouse cursor icons were sometimes failing to change appropriately when editing widgets
• Input widgets were getting set to the “String” type after being edited
• The text input on vertically-oriented sliders was not accepting clicks properly
• Plot pen code editors could “undo” into unexpected states
• Plot pen “update” code editors did not provide good scrolling
• The plot-level pen “update” code editors were not keeping their contents in-sync with their respective pen-level pen “update” code editor
• Plot code editors were closing on mouse-down (instead of mouse-up), reducing sensitivity to mouse movement and preventing abortive clicks
• Trying to save a plot with duplicated pen names could lead to multiple error dialogs
• The “Snap to grid” setting from the previous model was persisting when opening a new, empty model
• The plot editor’s display panel for runtime errors was displaying incorrectly
• When panning the 3D view widget, agents could be visible that should not have been, due to the topology
• The “forever” icon on buttons did not previously respond to zooming
• Clicking a slider widget would block the use of some other valid keyboard shortcuts
• Sliders could previously only handle span ranges of up to about 2e9 numbers, but can now span the full range of double-precision floating-point numbers (closer to a span of 3e308 values)
• Compilation errors were not being displayed within “Edit” dialogs for slider widgets
• Some widget types were not offering tooltips when title text was truncated by ellipses
• Button action keys now only work when the interaction tool is selected 
• Making a selection box that intersected the view widget sometimes left erroneous vertical lines in the view
• Note widgets were not always using the correct font size when zoomed
• Sliders resized incorrectly when zoomed
• The arrow icon on chooser widgets failed to resize correctly when zoomed
• Editor
• The “Comment / Uncomment” action would previously only add ; to the beginning of the line, but now respects the pre-existing indentation of the text
• Using the “Comment / Uncomment” action on multiple lines of code was not being treated as a single action, with regards to “Undo”/“Redo”
• Only the main Code tab editor was allowing use of the keyboard shortcut for toggling the comment state of a line of code. Now it works in widgets too.
• __includes files were always being compiled on-save, unlike the main Code tab
• __includes files would display their compilation errors in the main Code tab
• __includes files would not update the name listed in their tab until hovered by the mouse
• __includes files, when saved on Windows, could produce duplicated tabs
• Extensions
• GoGo: The daemon process could erroneously continue running if NetLogo closed unexpectedly
• GoGo: The daemon process previously required a separate, manual installation of Java, but now simply reuses the one that ships with NetLogo
• Bitmap: Was not always notifying NetLogo of the need to perform a redraw after importing an image
• LevelSpace: Child models opened in separate code editor tabs could not be closed
• LevelSpace: The child model UI was not adapting to main application’s selected color theme
• Engine
• NetLogo was producing an error when the size of an agentset changed while that agentset was being iterated over
• NetLogo code that calculated an infinite/non-numeric result could result in the wrong error message
• resize-world was not resetting the tick counter
• BehaviorSpace
• BehaviorSpace was not giving early or informative errors, when the world dimension parameters were clearly invalid
• BehaviorSpace experiment selection was not being remembered, after editing that experiment
• BehaviorSpace experiment selection was not being remembered, after importing a new experiment
• The directory from which the last BehaviorSpace experiment was imported was not being remembered
• Checkbox selections (i.e. whether or not to update plots or the view) were not being remembered after resuming a paused experiment
• Tooltips on labels in the experiment editing dialog were hiding too quickly
• Experiments exported to XML were not being given proper XML headers
• HubNet
• Some HubNet widgets had unintended differences in sizing and layout from non-HubNet widgets
• HubNet toolbar actions were sometimes interfering with standard toolbar actions
• The HubNet “mirroring” option was getting out of sync when opening multiple HubNet models in a row
• The HubNet activity name was getting out of sync when opening multiple HubNet models in a row
• “Ghost” monitor widgets were not showing a preview name in the HubNet Client Editor
• An unnecessary number of blank lines were being printed out to the HubNet Control Center when sending a message
• HubNet could sometimes display an incorrect list of connected clients, if multiple connections were established at the same time
• Changes to the drawing layer would sometimes be delayed in appearing to clients
• Opening the HubNet Client Editor would always cause NetLogo to behave as if the current model had unsaved changes.
• Color themes / Dark mode
• The default color theme was not syncing with the device’s system-wide settings
• The divider between the widget area and the Command Center could erroneously take on a shade of gray that did not visually distinguish the two sections very well.
• Apply to System Dynamics Modeler tabs and code editor
• Apply to “Import from Library” button in shapes editor dialogs
• Apply to code block text in rendered Info tab content
• Don’t apply to plotting area borders; use value of set-plot-background-color instead
• Misc
• Files were reloading due to external changes, even when the preference for this was disabled
• Editing a model that was saved in OneDrive (or similar) was causing unnecessary reloads of the model
• netlogo-gui.sh did not properly launch on Linux (although bin/NetLogo worked as expected)
• Errors when parsing invalid .nlogox files were sometimes not handled gracefully
• Multiple “Are you sure you want to overwrite this file?” dialogs were being displayed, when only one was needed
• .nlogox files could be opened by dragging and dropping into the application, but .nlogo files could not
• A dialog was being displayed to warn about unsaved changes when first opening the Models Library window, instead of waiting until a model was actually being opened from the Models Library
• The analytics/telemetry functionality could lead to a freezes or unnecessary use of resources, when unable to upload the data
• The announcement banner was made shorter
• Old autosaves of models were being kept around for far too long
• Models were not being marked as in need of saving after changing the view update mode
• Improved the contrast of buttons that are disabled until ticks start
• The interactable model list in the Models Library dialog had the same background color as the non-interactable sections of that dialog
• Code editors with compiler errors were sometimes scrolling to the bottom whenever they were made visible
• Documentation, text labels, and file names were inconsistently using the terms “BehaviorSearch” and “Behaviorsearch”.  It is now consistently “BehaviorSearch”.
• Attempting to open NetLogo models from Finder with the Mac launcher installed was opening the application but not loading the selected file
• Error messages were unhelpful when headlessly launching BehaviorSpace experiments in invalid configurations  
• When compiling invalid code of the form set [ 1 2 ] [ 1 2 ] , the error message was unhelpful
• The 3D view widget’s “Model Settings” dialog was not showing the option to mirror the updates to the 2D view

• The 3D view widget would (in rare circumstances) throw an error when being opened or closed