Release Notes: Virtual Notebook System Last Update : 04/08/91 Updated By : Barry Meyer Release: 2.1.0 Author : Barry Meyer Date : 03/27/91 General Info: o The new executable for VNS is a little over 2 meg. The executable is statically linked with the Motif and X libraries contained in /usr/motif/usr/lib. o Most of the user-interface was ported to Motif (1.1). There is still a need for several customized widgets in VNS. These widgets are now all contained in the library "Vw" (VNS Widgets). o I was able to eliminate the following link libraries: libEt.a - Eric Taylor's widget library libtext.a - Janet Carson's text widget library libgentools.a- Some generic tools used by the above libraries libmhp.a - The mouse help library o Several internal simplifications were made. The main simplification was in tunneling and stacking of pages. The internal implementation was improved greatly. o The VNS Toolkit library (Vt) was documented. Several widgets in the VNS widget library were also documented (VList, VnsBackground). But, for the most part, I did not have enought time to document the entire "vns" source code. o I went through my rather large list of bugs and tried to fix them all. I have probably missed a few things but I think I was able to fix most of the stuff on my list, except those bugs related to the notebook browser. o This version contains a modified version of the text object used in the older versions of VNS. The VnsText widget was modified so that it uses the Motif style scrollbar. Unfortunately, the Motif text widget did not want to cooperate with us and has been put on hold as an alternative to our current text object. o Support for the vns_comm library has been included in this version and can be used with any applications using this library (i.e. the vnscalendar, Sandeeps program, etc.) Enhancements: o The new printing driver with a Motif front-end has been included with this version. It contains everything that you have ever wanted in a printing interface. The only thing that is missing in this version is support for different paper sizes. o The notebook property sheet has been integrated with the property manager. Notebook properties provides the user with two property sheets: general information and access modification. The "info" sheet allows modification of the notebook name and home page id. It also indicates the notebook id which could not be determined in previous versions of VNS. The notebook access panel allows users to modify access to the selected notebook in much the same way as before. o When creating an image, Buttons 2 or 3 can be used to cancel the image creation process. o The page grid has been improved so that it is displayed much faster and is no longer redrawn uneccessarily. The performance on a NCD has been greatly improved. o All dialog boxes now popup in the center of the parent window to which the dialog is related. Most dialog boxes have been implemented as "application modal", where the user can only interact with the dialog. This is different from grabbing the server in that the user can still interact with other applications since this is only restricted within VNS application. o If "Properties" is selected under the "Object" menu, and no object is selected, the user is presented with a dialog box informing them that an object must first be selected to modify properties. o The "watch" cursor (or "busy" cursor) has been utilized throughout this version of VNS. o The Bug Mail popup has been improved so that more bugs types are allowed. An option menu was used to allow the user to select: - Enhancement Request - Has Workaround - No Workaround - Causes Crash - Documentation Error The popup was also made wider. o Moving or resizing objects beyound the bottom and right borders on a page now activate the scrollbars. o The "Export" item under the "File" menu is now accessible on read-only pages. Bugs Fixed: o The property manager is now opened and raised to the top of the window stack if the property manager was iconified (except under DecWindows). The property manager is also raised to the top if it is allready opened. o The user is no longer required to hold the shift button for the duration of a shift-button copy of a VNS object. The shift button only needs to be held down at the initial move of an object. o This version contains the bug fix for sweeping out images that was fixed in vns2.0.24. o Dynamic updating when allowing and disallowing access via notebook properties has been fixed so that these events are sent correctly. This bug has existed for a long time and dates back to the first version (vns2.0.0). o The "Link-Here" icon button is now properly reset after a link object has been deselected. This button should only be active if a link object has been selected. o When the page name is modified, the icon name for the page is now properly updated. o The propery manager is now reset properly if a notebook, page, or object has been deleted. The property manager is also reset correctly if a page is closed via the close button or via the window manager. o The problems with snap-to-grid have been fixed for the following cases: - when an object is resized - when new objects are created on a page - when objects are moved onto a page from another page o XPaste now works correctly for the following: - creating text objects at the pointer location on a page if no other object has been selected. - pasting text into a selected text object. Whats Missing? o This version does not contain the notebook browser. A new browser widget is currently under development and will be included in a future release. o The mouse help has been removed. I chose to remove this in an effort to clean up the code, remove the dependecy on the "mhp" library, and because it has not been used that much in Neuroscience. Of course, this can be added back in at any time and can be done rather quickly, but I think "on-line" help would be better since Motif supports help through the use callback functions for dialog boxes, menus, buttons, etc. o The Button 3 popup menu for the text editor was removed durring the porting. It will have to be reworked to use Motif. But, you can now XPaste into a text object. You can also select text in one text object, select another text object, and then use XPaste to paste. o The proportional resize popup window that displayed tbe resizing ratio was also removed when porting to Motif. This will be included in a future release. Release: 2.1.1 Author : Barry Meyer Date : 04/08/91 o Bug Fix: Page scrollbars are now activated when a page is first displayed that requires scrollbars. o Bug Fix: tunneling from a page to page now resets the scrollbars properly and positions the new page in the top, lefthand corner of the page viewport. The scrollbars also activated properly for the new page. o Bug Fix: Notebook properties now allows the author full access to modify properties for a notebook that they own. Previously, authors were prevented from modify their notebook if they had given themselves read-only permission. o Bug Fix: The page counter located in the lower, righthand corner of the page is now properly updated when pages are added to a notebook. o Bug Fix: a bug in handling dynamic page creation events in VNS was corrected which could have caused alignment problems. o Enhancement: A displayed page is now restricted to the size of the display that is being used to display the page. This solves the problem of displaying pages on different sized terminals (i.e., Suns, NCDs, etc...). o Enhancement: delete page popup now has the Cancel button as the default button to prevent users from accidently deleting a page. o Performance Enhancement: The header and footer of the VNS page are no longer unmanaged and managed during tunneling. o Bug Fix: a problem with the memory allocation for the internal list of notebooks has been fixed. The VNS no longer core dumps when deleting the last notebook in the notebook list. o Bug Fix: The notebook name is now properly updated in the notebook chooser when it is modified via the property manager. Release: 2.1.2 Author : Barry Meyer Date : 04/26/91 o Bug FIx: Two divide by zero errors were fixed in the text editor which was causing the VNS to crash when resizing these objects to small sizes. o Bug Fix: Authors with read/write access to a notebook now have access the modifying object properties in the property manager (i.e., the apply and ok buttons are now sensitive). o Bug Fix: When the VNS is busy (i.e. the watch is activated), the watch now appears in all of the windows currently displayed (command panel, property manager, any displayed pages, etc.). o Bug Fix: Importing large images (larger than the page) now activates the page scrollbars correctly. The page scrollbars will also activate correctly if objects are added off the page via the srvlib. o Bug Fix: Resizing objects in a reverse manner (crossing over the origin) no longer leaves little lines on the page background. o Bug Fix: Authors with read/write access to a notebook can no longer delete a notebook owned by another author. o Bug Fix: The "Search" command under the Special menu has been reworked completely. It now uses the Motif list widget and no longer crashes the program. o Enhancement: The menu titles on the command panel have been changed from "File" and "Options" to "Notebooks" and "Session". o Enhancement: The owner of an object on a page is now displayed in the property manager under object information. Release: 2.1.3 Author : Barry Meyer Date : 05/01/91 o The browser widget has been officially integrated with the new command panel. The browser supports most of the dynamic updating events but this is covered in more detail below (see known bugs). The browser expands nodes by clicking on or near the star (signifying "has children"). Clicking in the same area will fold the expaneded nodes. Double clicking on a selected node will open the page if it is a page or the home page if it is a notebook. Currently, nothing happens when clicking on the database name. In the future, we may wish to display a popup containing information about the database and will allow the user to connect and disconnect from the database. This will allow us to display many databases in the browser giving the user the ability to switch from database to database. In the furture, we can also support multiple connections in VNS and allow "cross linking" between databases. o Accelerators were added to the main menu on the command panel and the "Create" menu on the VNS page. These accelerators were added via the application resource file (Mvns). This will allow users to customize the VNS keyboard environment and will also help us prototype a standard set of keystrokes. o The performance of selecting notebooks, pages, and objects has been improved for the case when the property manager is not activated. Users should notice an improvement in speed when selecting page objects. The extra overhead for property manager updating is only in effect when it is active (popped up). o Enhancement: Text fields were added to all of the items requiring user input in the property manager. The TextField widget allows the user to type and "inifinite" amount of text in the field. The arrow keys allow the user to scroll back and forth within the field. o Bug Fix: The tunnel page is now rasied when tunneling to a new page. Known Bugs: o The Browser does not currently track changes in topology for the following cases: - If a link is reprogrammed on a page that is shown in the browser along with its children. - If a new page is created on a page (along with the link pointing to the new page) that is shown in the browser. - If either of the above situations were accomplished dynamically (by another VNS client). Release: 2.1.4 Author : Barry Meyer Date : 05/01/91 o The browser selection policy has been changed to reflect the old policy: Button 1 to select and Button 2 to expand and fold. o Bug Fix: The browser now operates in single selection mode as the default. Multiple selections are no longer allowed until support for operations on these selections is implemented. o The accelerators for the VNS page have been temporarily removed since they conflicted with the key mappings of the text widget. Release: 2.1.5 Author : Barry Meyer Date : 05/02/91 o Bug Fix: Authors with write access to a notebook which they do not own can no longer modify notebook properties (i.e., accesses). o Bug Fix: The owner of a page is now displayed in the property manager for page info. o Bug Fix: The size of the scrollbars are now taken into account when rendering a page. o The main program for mvns now uses an initial version of the API for the VNS library. Release: 2.1.6 Author : Barry Meyer Date : 05/15/91 This version has been completely reworked internally to implement the applications programming interface (API). Now, all of the data structures are allocated and the static program context used in previous versions has been eliminated. The new data structures is easier to understand and provides a more "open" architecture for the VNS user-interface. One area of focus on the overhaul was allowing the library to handle multiple database connections. In the old version, the library was tied to a single srvlib connection. The new data structures allow the VNS functions to operate on Notebooks, Pages, and Objects regardless of which database they are associated with. In the future, this will allow "cross linking" between databases to allow the user to access more than one database from a given notebook page. o Bug Fix: XPaste no longer causes VNS to crash. The Bad Atom X error has also been eliminated. o Bug Fix: Bug mail now reports the correct version number for the program instead of just leaving this item blank. o Bug Fix: The "Paste" item undef the Object menu is now only active when the clip board contains an object or objects for pasting. o Bug Fix: Text Objects that are created via XPaste and images that are created by sweeping out now activate the scrollbars when they are created. This is for the case when they hang over the edge of the page. o Bug Fix: Changing the background color on a page no longer cancels out the object outlines (if active). o Bug Fix: Action links are no longer created with lightning bolts when typing is performed at creation. o Enhancement: The printing cod was modified so that the site printer file could be specified in the app-defaults file.