PixInsight 1.7.5 Released

[Juan Conejero]

Hi everybody,

We are about to release PixInsight Core 1.7.5.779 as an update for all supported platforms: FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows. This is a bugfix/maintenance release. I have summarized the most important bug fixes and improvements below.

Main Bug Fixes

Process Explorer window (all platforms): Fixed a bug where the Process Explorer was being shown with incorrect geometry (the process tree and the documentation browser collapsed and overlapped) when the "Browse Documentation" button was activated on any tool window. Priority: Critical. Refer to the original bug report:

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3756.0

Process Explorer window (all platforms): Fixed a bug where successive activations of "Browse Documentation" buttons on different tool windows were not loading the corresponding reference documents in the correct order. Priority: High. This bug has not been reported by users.

Workspace (all platforms): Shaded image windows were not reported as active when selected. Priority: Critical. Refer to the original bug report:

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3765.0

Process Console window (all platforms): Removed unnecessary forced activations of PixInsight's main window each time a process starts and stops running. These calls were causing several "focus stealing" problems on Mac OS X. Priority: High. We hope this will fix the following reported bug:

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3747.0

Splash window (all platforms): Similar to the previous bug, unnecessary forced window activations have been removed. Priority: Low.

Image windows (all platforms): Images loaded from files of read-only formats (e.g., DSLR raw formats) didn't make use of the default file extension in "File > Save As" operations. As a result, the BMP file format was always selected on Save As dialog boxes. This is now fixed and either the FITS format (or the default format selected through preferences) or the last used format (if the corresponding option has been enabled in preferences) is always proposed to save these images by default. Priority: High. This bug has not been reported.

Projects (all platforms): Track View states of tool windows were not stored in project files. They are now correctly stored and restored when a project is loaded (obviously not from projects generated before this release). Priority: High.

Workspace animations (all platforms): Fixed a number of minor screen drawing problems with icons and related workspace animations. Priority: Low.

Workspace (Mac OS X / Cocoa): In the 64-bit Mac OS X version of PixInsight 1.7.4, the keyboard focus was completely lost sometimes, following a repeatable but very complex pattern. When this happened, no keyboard mode activation shortcuts worked (e.g., Spacebar to enable the Pan mode, or Alt+Spacebar to enable the Zoom In mode), the command line and the Script Editor window ceased to work, some keyboard shortcuts were ignored, etc. These problems are caused by a Qt bug. We have found a workaround to fix all of these issues in version 1.7.5. Priority: Critical.

Keyboard shortcuts (Mac OS X / Cocoa): Keyboard shortcuts with the Ctrl modifier key were not working reliably in version 1.7.4 for 64-bit Mac OS X due to a Qt bug. These shortcuts are for now handled directly by the core application instead of Qt, so they work as expected. Examples: Ctrl+S to enable/disable STF visualization and Ctrl+M to enable/disable color management. Priority: High. Refer to the original bug report:

http://pixinsight.com/forum/index.php?topic=3811.0

JavaScript runtime (all platforms): The following methods of the Matrix object were not working in version 1.7.4: Matrix.gaussianFilter(), Matrix.variableShapeFilter(), Matrix.moffatFilter(), Matrix.linearFilter(). These problems are now fixed. Priority: Critical.

About PixInsight dialog (X11 + KDE - FreeBSD and Linux): Fixed extremely ugly (and wrongly generated!) window shadows on KDE 4. Priority: Low.

Workspace (X11 + KDE - FreeBSD and Linux): Native KDE 4 file dialogs cause severe interface corruption in PixInsight when the Script Editor window has one or more text documents loaded. We actually don't have a workaround for this problem, other than disabling native dialogs. Native file dialogs are now disabled by default on X11 due to these bad interactions with KDE (they still can be enabled through preferences). Priority: High.

Workspace (Windows): The MS Sans Serif font causes rendering and layout problems with some tool interfaces on Windows. This font is no longer used by default for process interfaces, unless there is no viable alternative. The Segoe UI and Verdana fonts are always used by default when available. This should reduce layout issues to some vintage---and already unsupported officially---Windows XP platforms.

Main Improvements

New console text size limit. A new preferences item has been included in PixInsight 1.7.5: The maximum number of text lines that can be stored by the process console. When the number of text lines in the console exceeds from this limit, old lines are removed automatically from the beginning of the console before writing new ones. This greatly improves efficiency of console text output, especially during long batch processes (think of processing 30,000 files for example), and also improves normal processes after a long time without clearing the console. The default value is 1000 lines. This parameter can be set to zero for unlimited text lines.

Use of PixInsight's documentation browser as the default web browser. Most items in the Resources main menu are now opened directly by the documentation browser on the Process Explorer window (for example, PixInsight Home Page, Processing Tutorials, etc.). The YouTube PixInsight channel is still opened by the default browser application, since the integrated browser in PI doesn't have (and of course won't have) flash support.

As always, thank you for your support and your patience suffering these bugs. Hope you like the new version!

[Nocturnal]

Can you please make the last item optional? I really have no need for PI to become a web browser. I'd much rather have the links open in the system browser so I can alt-tab between the content and PI. Browse with a browser, process astro pics with PixInsight. Before we know it PI will get an email client as well! I probably gave Juan a good idea just now

[pfile]

thanks juan - i've been out for a few days and just saw this today. i'll try to update as soon as possible and check out the window/qt bug fixes on osx.

[Cosmick]

Can you please make the last item optional? I really have no need for PI to become a web browser.

I also would ask that this be left for the user to decide. I have a very good browser that I have customised to work the way I want it to. Many of the features I find invaluable are not possible with the Pixinsight internal browser. Simple things like tabbed browsing, so I can have both a tutorial and the forum thread discussing it open at the same time. It is then easy to flick back and forth between them. When I drag and drop an image link in my normal browser, the image opens in a new tab in the background while I continue to read the original post. In the internal browser when I click on an image link it opens a blank page with the unhelpful message - "Unable to load document."
Please make this change optional.

Regards,

Mick

[ruediger]

We are about to release PixInsight Core 1.7.5.779 as an update for all supported platforms: FreeBSD, Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.

Hi Juan,
will there be Windows XP 32 Bit support? I didn't find 1.7.5 for XP 32 Bit in the download area.
I have a second PixInsight installation on a netbook (slow, but it works) for playing and testing and now it seems, that I won't be able to install e.g. the gradient domain based processes from update-devel repository, because 1.7.5 is needed.
Regards,
 Rüdiger

Edit: Looks like all 1.7.5 versions disappeared from the software distribution system, all timestamps are from 2011 Dec 28 or older

[skoop]

Edit: Looks like all 1.7.5 versions disappeared from the software distribution system, all timestamps are from 2011 Dec 28 or older

Looks like I missed it too.
I am still at PixInsight Core 01.07.00.0702 Starbuck (x86) version.
And if I go
Resources > Updates > Check for updates > I get "There are no updates currently available for your PixInsight installation."

[Nocturnal]

I'm pretty sure 1.7.5 is an auto update on top of 1.7.4. 1.7.4 is not an auto update of 1.7.0, I'm sure that was communicated somewhere. Install the latest and update it.

[ruediger]

I'm pretty sure 1.7.5 is an auto update on top of 1.7.4. 1.7.4 is not an auto update of 1.7.0, I'm sure that was communicated somewhere. Install the latest and update it.

I can confirm this.
I've now 1.7.5 on both my win64 and win32 bit machines, with all the latest and greatest updates and modules (especially the gradient domain tools). But after installing 1.7.4 on the win32 machine I had to reset PixInsight's setting to get further updates. This was confusing me.

Rüdiger

[shurik]

How do I get the current version?? where is the upload area, mine is 1.7.....so how do I update it to 1.7.5 ?

thanks , Alex

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Alex,

Follow these steps:

1. Go to the software distribution login page:

http://dist.pixinsight.com/

and log in with your user name and password.

2. From Software Distribution, download the latest version available for your platform(s). Currently it is version 1.7.4 for all supported platforms.

3. Uninstall the application you have currently installed. On Windows, select: Start > All Programs > PixInsight Platform > Uninstall PixInsight. On Mac OS X, simply remove the application bundle. On Linux/UNIX, simply delete the directory where you have PI installed.

4. Install version 1.7.4.

5. Download and apply all updates available (there are 20 or so). One of them will update your core application to version 1.7.6 (you'll need your user name and password again).

[tommy_nawratil]

hi,

didn't get any automatic updates for a while, now I see it's already version 1.8
at the distribution site only:
Core version 01.07.04.0759 (commercial)

is available for me.
This version's RAW plugin doesn't support my new Eos650d 
they have a pinkish tint

what's on there? could you help me?
gracias, Tommy

[georg.viehoever]

PI 1.8 is not yet released. If your camera is not yet supported, maybe you file a request in the bug reports section. May it makes it into 1.8.
Georg

[tommy_nawratil]

thanks Georg,

I always appreciate your Canon anti-banding script   8)

I'm on 1.7.04 from Dec 2011, not even 1.7.4 or 1.7.5 is available in the dist zone.
What do I get wrong?

Tommy

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Tommy,

Just install version 1.7.4, which is available on the software distribution site. Once installed, it will download and install a number of updates, including the latest version of the PixInsight Core application.

As for the newest Canon camera models, I ask for a bit of patience. The new version 1.8 includes the latest version of dcraw, which supports all of these cameras. PixInsight version 1.8 is being finished right now, and should be ready for release in a few weeks.

[NGC7789]

Perhaps what is confusing is that what is referred to as 1.7.4 is called 1.7.04, or am I wrong?