PixInsight Core 1.0.43.329 RC8 + PCL 1.0.23.138 Released

[Juan Conejero]

New versions of the PixInsight Core application and PCL packages are now available for download. Here are direct links to the installation archives:

For Linux x86:
http://pleiades-astrophoto.com/export/PI32-linux-01.00.43.329rc8-20070928.tar.gz
http://pleiades-astrophoto.com/export/PCL-linux32-01.00.23.138-20070928.tar.gz

For MS Windows 32-bit:
http://pleiades-astrophoto.com/export/PI32-win-01.00.43.329rc8-sfx-20070928.exe
http://pleiades-astrophoto.com/export/PCL-win32-01.00.23.138-sfx-20070928.exe

As the previous build 325, this version can be considered as the final release version 1.0, with further bug fixes and corrections.

There are still some pendent changes to the Deconvolution process and a few features that must be added to the JavaScript runtime. Other than that, the job is done as for version 1.0.

This version includes the following main new features and bug fixes:

*** Attention *** Breaking Change ***

The PixInsight core application no longer performs an automatic reset of preferences settings. The good news is that your current preferences will be preserved. The bad news is that several new features may not be available unless you explicitly enable them.

In particular, this includes possible new modules (not the case in this version, but will surely happen in future ones), which will not be automatically installed when you install a new version of the core application. You'll have to install them manually through Process > Modules > Install Modules.

Another lack of automatic behavior is that new scripts that come with a new distribution are not featured automatically on the Script menu. To feature them, select Script > Feature Scripts, click the Add button, and select the scripts directory under your installation folder (typically, C:\PCL\src\scripts [Windows] or /usr/lib/pixinsight/src/scripts [Linux]). Then click the Regenerate button and finally the Done button.

Support for the following bitmap file formats:

BMP (Windows BitMaP) (read/write)
PNG (Portable Network Graphics) (read/write *1)
XPM (X11 PixMap) (read/write *2)
XBM (X11 BitMap) (read/write)
PPM (Portable PixMap format) (read/write)
PBM (Portable BitMap format) (read only)
PGM (Portable GrayMap format) (read only)

(*1) PNG support is very basic for now. PNG files can only be written in 32-bit RGBA format (8 bits per channel), and ICC profiles cannot be embedded. This should be considered as a provisional support for the PNG format, until we develop a specific module.

(*2) The implementation of XPM has some problems with certain transparencies (alpha channels) in 32-bit RGBA files. Along with that, the identifier of the char* variable in the XPM header cannot be changed when saving a XPM file, although it can be changed very easily by editing the XPM file as plain text.

Improved JPEG2000 support under Windows. The Windows version of the JPEG2000 support module integrates now JasPer 1.900.1. The Linux version already included it since June.

Improved parallelization of critical PCL routines. More critical routines have been parallelized in PCL build 138. Among others, the following routines can use now all available processors: luminance extraction/insertion, all color space transformations, all image operations with integer and real operands, as well as image operands (add, subtract, multiply, etc).

Improved ImageContainer functionality. Several bugs and limitations have been fixed, and a complete help text on output file name templates can be read now on a pop up window by clicking a specific tool button on the ImageContainer interface.

Improved image rendering on the Real-Time Preview window. Several optimizations have been applied to this window, which avoid flicker and speed up real-time previews.

New Preferences option: Use file names as image identifiers. This option, which is enabled by default, is a significant improvement because it makes it easier to assign meaningful identifiers to images. Of course, for this to be true you must use meaningful names for your files. This feature has been suggested recently in this thread.

New Preferences option: Paint image renditions directly on the screen. This option is available exclusively under X11-based window managers (Linux/UNIX). It avoids the doubly-buffered graphics output normally used by PixInsight's GUI, which may accelerate image renditions slightly, so this feature is enabled by default. However, direct screen painting may conflict with some advanced X11 composition managers (see this problem report). Try disabling this option if you experience problems with window transparencies and other special desktop effects. On MS Windows and Mac OS X platforms, the state of this option is simply ignored.

New example script: BatchFormatConversion. A batch image format conversion utility. This script allows you to select a set of input image files, an optional output directory, and an output format. The script then iterates reading each input file and saving it on the output directory with the specified output format. This script is very useful when you have to convert several images --no matter dozens or hundreds-- from one format to another automatically. It saves you the work of opening and saving each file manually one at a time.

JavaScript runtime: Corrected Settings.lastReadOK. This is now a static property of the core Settings object. Formerly, it was a static method, which doesn't make sense since it represents a single boolean value. This may break scripts that rely on the Settings object. These scripts will require small changes to work; in particular, conditional expressions like:

Code: [Select]

if ( Settings.lastReadOK() ) // old code, now invalid

should now read like:

Code: [Select]

if ( Settings.lastReadOK ) // valid use of the lastReadOK property

Sorry for the inconveniences.

Command-line help now visible under Windows. Since GUI applications don't have a standard output on Windows (WinDOS?), we have implemented a nice dialog that pops up when you invoke PixInsight32.exe with the --help command line argument. This dialog shows the complete help text that is elegantly sent to the standard output (e.g., the console) under Linux.

Critical bug detected and fixed in ACDNR's interface. This bug was causing severe heap corruption with the ACDNR interface working in real-time preview mode in some cases. It's completely gone now.

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And that's all for now. Have a nice weekend