PixInsight 1.8.0 RC4 "Ripley" Released

[Juan Conejero]

Hi everybody,

We have just released a new version of PixInsight: 1.8.0.990 RC4 Ripley for Linux/X11, Mac OS X, and Windows. It is now available on our Software Distribution site.

Along with many bug fixes and performance improvements, this version comes with a number of important new features:

* Refactored user interface. The PixInsight Core application has now a complete separation between appearance and functionality. Every aspect of the user interface (colors, fonts, margins, item spacing, etc.) can now be restyled by editing a CSS (cascading style sheet) document. As part of this refactoring work, all core application icons have been replaced by a new set with improved coherence and readability.

* New console log file functionality. Type 'help log' in PI's command line for more information. Basically, you can send all console text output to a disk file, with automatically generated timestamps. This is particularly useful to control long batch processes, such as the output of the BatchPreprocessing script.

* New inline source code editing feature. By right-clicking a process icon and selecting the "Edit instance source code" option, the JavaScript source code for the icon's instance is automatically generated on the fly and loaded on a floating script editor window. You can just inspect the icon's source code, or edit it and commit the changes to the icon. This is a powerful feature for developers and advanced users. It gives you easy access to many process parameters that are not available on the standard graphical interfaces.

* Improved compatibility with Mac OS X 10.8. This version has been built with the latest development tools from Apple (Xcode 4.6 and the LLVM compiler), and has been tested thoroughly on Mountain Lion (10.8.2). Our tests show that all previous issues have been fixed on this platform.

* The latest versions of all standard scripts. Please let me know if you detect some mistakes in the script versions distributed with this release.

* Full support for SSL/TLS connections in the update system. The default update repository is now https://pixinsight.com/update/. This is a very important security improvement for authentication of update repositories and packages.

* Lots of new and improved features and APIs in the PixInsight JavaScript Runtime (PJSR) and PixInsight Class Library (PCL) development platforms. A new version of PCL will be available in a few days.

Main Caveats

* This version is not compatible with Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard). This is due to a problem with the WebKit library, which PI uses to implement its document browsers. We'll release a special version for OS X 10.6 as soon as possible. However, we strongly encourage all Mac users to upgrade to 10.8.

Things not working / requiring significant development

* PixInsight's printing system works nicely on Linux. However, it doesn't work optimally on Windows, and is clearly deficient on Mac OS X, due to color management issues. We have to redesign/rewrite the entire printing system on these platforms.


As always, thank you so much for your patience and support. Enjoy!

[Harry page]

Hi

mmmm   Perhapes I will get used to the look !

Why have you removed rescale from the tool bar 

Harry

[cfranks]

Hi,

Most of the toolbar icons are no longer in colour.  Makes it a little difficult to differentiate between, for example, 'Extract Cie L*' and the adjacent 'Split RGB channels'.   

Windows 7 Pro x64.

Charles

I just read the 'edit a CSS sheet' above.  Sorry!

[amiralen]

Hi Juan

The UI-changes looks clean and nice.

But the function "new preview" now has to be done with a the mask where you need to enter size and name (attachment).
This function was there before but not as standard. The one where you can graphically change the size was much more practical. Can it be found somewhere else?.

best regards / Jan

[naavis]

Awesome stuff! I recall seeing a post about layers being a new feature in 1.8, but they haven't been included in any of the release candidates. Will there be layers in the final version?

[Juan Conejero]

Hi Jan,

The UI-changes looks clean and nice.

Thank you!

But the function "new preview" now has to be done with a the mask where you need to enter size and name (attachment).

The new preview mode is definitely still there. See the attached screenshot. You may have to select View > Default Control Bars from the main menu.

[amiralen]

But the function "new preview" now has to be done with a the mask where you need to enter size and name (attachment).

The new preview mode is definitely still there. See the attached screenshot. You may have to select View > Default Control Bars from the main menu.

Hi Juan

Thanks for the hint. It works fine.

best regards / Jan

[derrickf]

Hi everybody,

We have just released a new version of PixInsight: 1.8.0.990 RC4 Ripley for Linux/X11, Mac OS X, and Windows. It is now available on our Software Distribution site.

Along with many bug fixes and performance improvements, this version comes with a number of important new features:

* The latest versions of all standard scripts. Please let me know if you detect some mistakes in the script versions distributed with this release.

As always, thank you so much for your patience and support. Enjoy!

Juan,
thanks for all your hard work on this version - so far it looks great and appears to fix the "corrupted image structure" and read-locked image issues that intermittently occurred in RC3.

I have noticed that at least 3 scripts that were standard in 1.7 have disappeared: HaRGB Combination and, as reported elsewhere, PSF Estimator and SubFrameSelector.

Hopefully these useful tools will re-appear at some point in the 1.8 lifecycle

Regards
Derrick

[Harry page]

Hi

Ok I am going to say it

Pi now looks bland in its default setting , do know how to colour things up ,   but a default palate would be good 

Harry

[sreilly]

Well I guess it's just me but I get version 1.7 with 19 available updates and none bring it up to version 1.8. The download is shown below.

[cfranks]

Hi everybody,

.........

* Full support for SSL/TLS connections in the update system. The default update repository is now https://pixinsight.com/update/. This is a very important security improvement for authentication of update repositories and packages.

I cannot access the above update repository - HTTP Error 403.  I spent hours yesterday, trying to find the CSS that would enable me to change the Toolbar colours and couldn't.  I assume it might be in the update repository?  Or am I completely screwed up? 

Charles

[georg.viehoever]

Well I guess it's just me but I get version 1.7 with 19 available updates and none bring it up to version 1.8. The download is shown below.

The update system does not bring you from 1.7 to 1.8. You'll have to do a full install.

[sreilly]

I un-installed 1.8 RC3 before attempting to install the latest that comes up as 1.7 as posted above.

[FunTomas]

...Every aspect of the user interface (colors, fonts, margins, item spacing, etc.) can now be restyled by editing a CSS (cascading style sheet) document. As part of this refactoring work, all core application icons have been replaced by a new set with improved coherence and readability...

Sorry Juan, but this new set of icons is step back. I learned icons and their functionality few years. But now I can start again. What the hell has radioactive symbol common with Automatic screen transfer :-) ? Letter "A" as icon is more understandable. Is there chance to get back previous icons set? Please, please. I want my old icons.

[Juan Conejero]

Awesome stuff! I recall seeing a post about layers being a new feature in 1.8, but they haven't been included in any of the release candidates. Will there be layers in the final version?

We are reconsidering our priorities. A layers tool is indeed half-developed. We have the layers engine working and the static interface is almost finished. Only the interactive part (the hard part, really) remains to be done.

Initially, we had planned the layers tool as a "weapon" against other competing products. Now we have realized that no matter what we do, we'll never be able to compete with free (gratis) software applications that are being used and supported by the AP community (including professionals) as a replacement for another well-known, non-quite-free application. We cannot compete in the field of image retouching/edition, where a layers tool pertains. In addition, other dedicated AP software packages, some of them also free, are competing with us.

So we better try to compete with more image processing power. A layers tool would be nice, and the layers paradigm can be useful, but it adds very little to the PixInsight platform in terms of image processing. We have other ongoing projects, such as:

* A drizzle image integration tool.

* A quads-based, highly parallelized image registration tool (the next evolution step of the current StarAlignment tool).

* Total generalized variation deconvolution and denoising algorithms. Carlos Milovic is already working on this front.

* New noise reduction algorithms to replace the now obsolete ACDNR tool.

* Multiscale maximum entropy deconvolution.

* A number of tools that we have been developing during the last years, but have never been included in the standard set (most of Carlos' unofficial tools) due to lack of time.

* Improve PixInsight as a development platform.

A layers tool requires a considerable amount of time, which would be mostly my own development time. I'm not sure if this is where I should invest my time and resources now. We definitely will release a layers tool, but probably not before some of the above.