1) The "Standalone Builder" stack now allows you to set the version
information stored in the executable for the Win32 engine. This
information is displayed when you pick "Properties" from the
right-button popup menu in an Explorer window, and includes version,
copyright, product description, and other information.
2) Functions uniEncode and uniDecode convert to and from the 16-bit
Unicode character format used in Windows resources (and as the native
string format in Java). Implementation is limited to the converting
strings in ISO-8859 character sets at this point, and only for
little-endian processor architectures (Intel, Alpha, some MIPS).
3) A playStopped message is now sent when an audioClip or videoClip
finishes playing. It comes with one parameter: the name of the clip
that has stopped. This will help eliminate those pesky "wait until
the sound is done" statements that prevent interaction with the UI
while a clip is playing.
Bugs fixed include:
1) the problem on Win32 where starting up some stacks directly by
double-clicking on them causes the engine to GPF during startup.
2) a visual defect in the "push" visual effects on Win32 systems, and
a minor performance improvement for them.
3) a few other inefficiencies and potential GPF problems discovered
during the Mac port (the Windows, UNIX, and Mac engines are now all
built using the same source tree).
4) a memory fragmentation and eventual crash caused when repeatedly
deleting from the front of a field (the crash occured after executing
statements of the form "delete line 1 of field 1" a few thousand
times).
So far, only the Win32 engine has been built, and is now available as
Win32.gz in the directory ftp://ftp.metacard.com/MetaCard/. Be sure
to also get the tools stack (mctools.mc.gz). While you're there,
check out the latest update of the new demo stack mcdemo2.mc.gz. If
you don't already have a program that can uncompress .gz files, get
gunzip.exe from that directory.
The UNIX versions are on hold pending resolution of problems reported
displaying JPEG images on some 24-bit X servers (they display fine on
24/32 bit Windows and Mac systems).
**********************************************************
Scott Raney raney@metacard.com http://www.metacard.com
Only 1% of computer users know a programming language...
MetaCard: We can change all that.