PRERELEASE NOTES FOR XAOS VERSION 3.1-2003-02-18 ------------------------------------------------ We would like to release a quality product in all manner. Unfortunately, such a complex software like XaoS requires many details and it does not seem to be so easy to put a quality software together. Well, we did all our best... Here come the latest prerelease binaries for Linux, Windows and DOS. They should work with the following restrictions: 1. The Linux version seems to be the most stable one. Almost no bugs were encountered testing it the last few weeks. SuSE 7.3 and SuSE 8.0 should be good enough to compile it. The latest source has been also tested on the Compile Farm of SourceForge.net with the next results: * [x86] Linux 2.4 (Debian 2.2) Compiles OK. Seems to be build properly. * [x86] Linux 2.4 (Red Hat 7.3) Compiles OK, seems to be build properly, however running the executable gives an error about MIT/SHM support (which may be probably disappear if someone runs it without X11 forwarding). * [x86] FreeBSD (4.7-STABLE) ./configure exits properly, make stops with an error. * [Alpha] Linux 2.2 (Debian 3.0) ./configure exits properly, make stops with an error during compiling ui.c. * [PPC - G4] MacOS X 10.1 SERVER Edition Compiles OK, the executable gives MIT/SHM problem. * [Sparc - Ultra60] Linux 2.4 (Debian 3.0) Compiles OK, MIT/SHM problem. * [Sparc - R220] Sun Solaris (8) ./configure stops with an error. * [CerfCube SA 1110] Linux 2.4 (Debian 3.0) Compiles OK, seems to be build properly. * [J2EE] IBM WebSphere Compiles OK, runs properly. Note that only IBM WebSphere was able to support X11 forwarded running of XaoS via the internet, other platforms resulted error messages (e.g. "Cannot initialize driver"). You can also realize that internationalization (i18n) will only work if you install XaoS as the system administrator with "make install". Future releases may solve this problem. Tcl/Tk interface will not work and is not planned to be fixed for a while since its author no longer develops XaoS. Volunteers are needed to continue his work. Under SVGAlib latin2 fonts will not work for some internationalized messages. For compilation with Aalib, you need version 1.4 which can be downloaded from http://aa-project.sf.net. 2. Microsoft DOS users will enjoy i18n if their system supports it. Unfortunately some systems have to have plain DOS to make i18n available. Many Windows systems also support running batch files from native Windows, however not all (my Windows NT 4 does not). DOS users should run xaos-??.exe in the bin\ directory. Note that some messages in latin2 fonts will not be displayed correctly. Aalib may not work 100% correctly. It may depend on your operating system and/or your video card. In fact, I don't know the exact reason why Aalib is so unstable. If you want to compile XaoS from scratch, you should download the following software: aalib-1.4rc5.tar.gz, all402.zip, bnu213b.zip, djdev203.zip, fil41b.zip, gcc2952b.zip, gtxt040b.zip, licv17b.zip, mak3791.zip, png1012b.zip, txi42b.zip, zlib114b.zip. Aalib must be patched to compile it (I sent a patch to the SourceForge Tracker) and libvga and libtext (needed for Aalib) must be also installed. Note that libtext will not compile under the newest DJGPP, if someone know why DJGPP fails to compile the appropriate assembly code, please write to us. 3. Microsoft Windows users should try xaos.exe or xaosnlsm.exe. The first one contains no i18n, the other one is compiled with supporting i18n. However, I didn't succeed to make i18n work under Windows during my tests (in fact I don't use Windows and am not an expert in configuring it, especially not for making Unixish i18n-features available). Volunteers may be needed to get i18n work on Windows. xaos.exe will give you the option to change the language. In opposite, xaosnlsm.exe will not give you any chance to make language changing possible because it will autodetect your national environment (if any). 4. Changes until the release: We would like to push out XaoS version 3.1 as soon as possible. This package is not a prerelease, it is just a snapshot of the current state of the project. Here is a list of the required changes until releasing version 3.1: * Removing "-pre-6" from version number. * Updating bug list and installation instructions (all README files). Here is an optional list (we will change them if we have a fix very soon, but if not, their corrections will remain for the next release): * Fixing Macintosh version (load/save works incorrectly). * Fixing Windows/DOS i18n. * Checking why Bailout item is duplicated in Windows help. Here are those bugs we will not fix until the next release: * Displaying latin2 fonts correctly. * Fixing catalog files. * Filling up i18n for menu files for some languages. * Enhancing documentation about (new) fractal formulae. * All other todos announced in TODO file. That's all. However the problem list is quite long, we hope you will enjoy this prerelease as well. Regards, Zoltan Kovacs Andreas Madritsch Jan Hubicka Credits: Jan Hubicka is the author of XaoS. He wrote the biggest parts of this program. In fact, all important thing was done by him. Really! Andreas Madritsch helped a lot putting together version 3.1. He also compiled the DOS and Windows executable and made German translations of menu items available. He added bailout and 3 fractal types into version 3.1. Zoltan Kovacs wrote this documentation about the recent installation problems and he is finalizing release 3.1. He added i18n support into XaoS and cleaned up the code as it was possible. Many others helped as well. The full list of them can be seen in file AUTHORS.