preview of gowrite 2.3 - updated

[lpaatero]

Long time no see!

New preview of GOWrite 2.3 is now available. This version (2.3.2) add new features, and fixes relatively minor bugs.

I am still developing this, but this development version is already quite useful. I am using it myself.

Any feedback is most welcome.

NOTES

Keyboard
Keyboard navigation in game has changed! keys are now

• * left / right - move in in game; do no change active variation.
  * Down / up - Move in game and select active variation.
  * Enter / space + - read all of file thru (- key goes backwards).

Active variation is shown in normal colors in gametree. Inactive variations are grayed out.

Game properties
Pay attention to game information. Internal changes in game information handling are quite big. New implementation mangles with game information quite a lot, and any problems in this would be important to detect.

Gowrite settings
Preview ignores settings from gowrite 2.2 versions. Thus game search database must be configured again for first preview.

New features:
- Changes in keyboard navigation of gametree. GOWrite now remebers "current" variation and indicates it in tree.
- OpenDocument export for diagrams and comments. Makes easy to create small high quality PDF files using OpenOffice.
- New icons (and icon resolutions) for application and SGF files. Scalable SVG icons for linux.
- Better main screen layout for small screens, such as Acer Aspire One.
- Faster search in multi-processor machines: up to 4 processor should give considerable speedup and up to 8 are used.
- GOWrite can now read UGF (.UGI) files.
- Improvements in game information presentation and entry.
- Improvements in font selection, and international font and text layout support. Now font exporting should work more predictably.
- Various less visible improvements and bug-fixes.

Installation and platform integration
- Linux installer and integration improved. Aspire one desktop icon creation using script.
- Mac OS X integration is new, and requires OS X 10.4. Thumbnail viewer is also included, this requires OS X version 10.5.
- Windows installer simplified (from users point of view...). Version should work on Windows 2000 and later.

Requirements:
- Java 1.5 or later.

Things still in future:
- More graphics settings in more accessible ways
- Better ways to use editing tools
- New gametree; Keyboard navigation changes relate to this, but actual new tree may take a while.
- Thumbnail viewer for KDE4 is soon ready.

regards
Lauri Paatero

[lpaatero]

Still more preview version...

Windows
This version (2.3.3) include SGF thumbnail view for Windows 2000, XP and vista.
Thumbnail view does not (and will not) work in Windows ME, 98 or 95.

Update: Initial version contained memory leak. Updated version (28/3/2009) fixes this and improves(?) winner indication in thumbnail view.

Note to XP users: If you are comfortable with regedit, you can adjust explorer thumbnail sizes in HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer. Make a new DWORD value named ThumbnailSize and set the value to decimal in range from 32 to 256.

Mac OS X

This version corrects QuickLook daemon crash when thumbnail generation fails due to invalid SGF file.

Any feedback would be nice to hear, in particular if thumbnailing fails in any of environments.

regards
Lauri

[lpaatero]

This is mostly bug-fix version. GOWrite version is 2.3.4 now in all platforms.

Main improvements:

• Search window layout has been improved.
  Game information layout has been improved.
  Thumbnail viewer works well in Windows and in Mac. Linux KDE4 version is not included due to package issues. If someone wants to help in building KDE4 distribution RPMs, I would be happy.

2009-04-18 NOTE:Linux startup script gowrite2 contains various problems. Corrected script is attached (in zip).

regards
Lauri

[lpaatero]

Still more previews.

UPDATE: 2.3.6 adds character conversion fix and recoginition fix to original 2.3.5 version available below.

This contains mainly fixes, most changes are internal and not visible:

• - 2.3.4 did lose / misformat some of game information. This is corrected now.
  - Automatic CJK character set recognition has been improved. Probably more tuning will be required, as current algorithm has difficulties in recognizing between EUC-KR and EUC-JP.
  - Non-round circles have been improved and look quite ok now.
  - Large number of lesser improvements / fixes.
  - File Open -dialog allows selection of character set. Setting applies when file does not specify character set.
  - Work-around for character conversion bug in Sun JRE 1.5.

regards
Lauri Paatero

[lpaatero]

New preview 2.3.7

2.3.6 contain quite fatal problem in exporting diagrams. This corrects the problem.

Version also contains optimization in game reading and database handling.

Version also continue to do internal rework of graphics system. Settings menu contains "Layout and Graphics options". It does not yet really work, but in future versions many of graphics settings will accessible from there.

(Deleted links, as beta version is available).

regards
Lauri

[lpaatero]

Finally 2.3.8 contain new graphics system and adjustments that help in diagram layout work in publishing.

Settings menu contains "Layout and Graphics options". There are number of settings that adjust graphics. Most notably is B&W board margin setting, which allows adjustment of "invisible" region around board in B&W boards.

Print preview is implemented as by-product from layout and graphics options work.

Normal printing layout is improved and probably now better that 2 column layout.

(Deleted links, as beta version is available).

regards
Lauri