New Features in xfig 3.2.3 (Released Jan 14, 2000)

# New Features in xfig 3.2.3

(Released Jan 14, 2000)

Arrow thickness is a function of line width by default now instead of absolute

If figure is modified and user does "File/New", xfig first asks if user wants to save the file before doing the "new" operation

Changed the "paste text" key in app-defaults file from F20 to F12, because most systems don't have an F20 key. The "Paste" key on Sun workstations (it is really F18) may also be used to paste text.

Changed default export border margin width to 0

Re-enabled export magnification for EPS

New "Flags" group of library objects from Roland Rosenfeld. These are flags of Europe which Roland converted from a Sketch example. There is also Japan's and the U.S.'s flag which were drawn in xfig by Brian Smith

Added Ian MacPhedran's web site http://duke.usask.ca/~macphed/soft/fig/ for FIG-related information to the html docs under "Related Applications" in the "Getting and Installing Xfig" section

Moved allocation of xfig's 32 "standard" colors last in the widget setup procedure so that there is a better chance of the widgets getting the correct colors before the colormap fills up and xfig changes to a private map.

Assumes default of Letter(or A4 if metric mode) if no %%BoundingBox in imported eps

All traces of GIF decoding/encoding have removed from xfig so as to avoid the patent royalty issue with Unisys corp. xfig now calls giftopnm (part of the netpbm package) to read the GIF file and then ppmtopcx to convert it to a colormapped image that xfig's read_pcx routine can handle.

Mr. T. Sato's email address has changed to VEF00200@nifty.ne.jp as of July 15, 1998. He is the person to whom you should send email if you have any questions about the Japanese HTML pages.

New depth manager. Enable/disable depths individually or all at once to selectively hide parts of drawing. Can also click on one depth button and drag mouse up or down to enable/disable multiple buttons. Command-line options -showdepthmanager and -hidedepthmanager to control it (resource Fig.showdepthmanager). The default is to show it.

When updating the depth of a compound object, the relative depths of the objects inside are retained, with the object having the smallest depth number being assigned to the value updated by the user. For example, if you update a compound object to depth = 5, and it contains objects with depths 8 and 11, after the update they will have depths 5 and 8 respectively. From T. Sato.

Default depth for creating new objects is now 50 to make it easier to put new objects on top without having to remember to start the older objects at a depth > 0.

Xfig allows panning to negative x and y now. This is the default and may be turned and off with the -allow_neg command-line option and from the global settings panel.

Command panel has pull-down menus for File, Edit, View and Help operations. Default accelerators for these menus are Meta-F, Meta-E, Meta-V and Meta-H respectively. File menu includes list of recently loaded Fig files.

Comments in Fig files are preserved with the objects and are written back when the file is saved. Popup edit for objects allows entering/ editing of comments. Also, clicking mouse button 2 on the canvas in edit mode will popup a panel to edit comments for whole figure.

From the File/Open panel, you may startup another xfig process to open a Fig file. From T. Sato.

New join/split button to split a line/spline/etc into two, or to join two lines/splines etc together to make one. Also, will convert a box to a line by splitting between two corners, and close an open line or spline by joining the two ends.

Arrow keys, Home and End keys may be used to browse any of the lists in xfig. (e.g. Open file list, library popup object list, misspelled word list in spell checker)

Border option put back in for exporting to EPS and bitmap formats (fig2dev -b option). User may specify border margin in pixels (roughly). This will be a background margin area around the figure bounding area.

New background color option for printing and exporting - sets whole background of figure to this color. Available for all bitmap formats and PostScript, EPS, PSTEX and PDF

New background option to specify background color for figure. This works for all bitmap formats and PostScript (including pstex). This is passed to fig2dev as the -g option.

If your system uses /etc/printcap to define printers, xfig will make a pulldown menu for the printer selection in the printer panel.

New "smooth" button in export to smooth when exporting to bitmap format (e.g. GIF, JPEG). Causes fig2dev (using -S 2 option) to force ghostscript to render at 2x magnification which improves font rendering, then passes through pnmscale to reduce to original size, which also smooths the image by averaging colors of adjacent pixels.

Export/Print errors now appear in the popup error message window

Popup object editor positions itself adjacent to object being edited instead of possibly being on top of it

Xfig automatically chooses pwidth, pheight and the number of buttons per row on the mode panel (left side) if necessary, to fit on a small screen. If the user explicitely chooses any of those options, their choice overrides the automatic setting. From T. Sato (VEF00200@nifty.ne.jp).

New PDF export driver (uses ps2pdf from the ghostscript distribution)

New CGM export driver (Computer Graphics Metafile) for fig2dev (and in xfig export menu) from Philippe Bekaert (Philippe.Bekaert@cs.kuleuven.ac.be)

More paper sizes (Japanese JIS B0-B10 and ISO A0-A9)

Middle button in paste mode will place object at its original position (where it was when it was placed in the xfig cut file) "Spinners" increment/decrement by value appropriate to item being modified. E.g., fill intensity % now steps by 5% for each click of the mouse on the spinner arrows, and text step by 0.1.

Also, if mouse button is held down on spinup/down button, spinner counts automatically after "spinner_delay" every "spinner_rate" milliseconds (resources).

Fill intensity and Pattern fill now show image in popup edit panel

Can now draw arcs by defining: 1. Center point 2. First angle/Radius 3. Second point to deterimine direction 4. Final angle Initiate this mode by starting arc with mouse button 2. Original arc mode still available. From T. Sato (VEF00200@nifty.ne.jp).

New color scheme (grayish instead of bisque) - can still use old colors by using Fig-color.bisque.ad or really old colors in Fig-color.classic.ad

I have made the web pages available from our server at: http://www-epb.lbl.gov/xfig A mirror site in Japan is http://www.lint.ne.jp/~masashi/xfig/index.html

Popup window with global settings (use Meta-g or Alt-g) containing: checkbutton for tracking mouse in rulers checkbutton for showing page borders checkbutton for showing info balloons checkbutton for lengths on lines checkbutton for showing vertex numbers on objects entry for max image colors entry for image editor entry for spelling checker entry for HTML browser entry for PDF viewer checkbutton for turning on/off debug information Consequently, the balloon on/off checkbutton has been removed from the message window area

Two new "make" options:

1. "make install.doc" - install only the documentation files (i.e. man pages, html and pdf files)
2. "make install.libs" - install only xfig object libraries

Filename mask for File and Export panels can have multiple wildcard masks separated by blanks or tabs, e.g. "*.fig *.fig.gz *.fig.[Zz]"

Export wildcard mask is dynamically changed when selecting the export language (e.g. *.gif when GIF is selected for export). Thus, the Fig*export_panel*mask*string resource is defunct.

New format for browser resource will parse for "%f" and replace with the filename. Using this and the -remote option for netscape, xfig will either use a running netscape to open the help file (html) or will start one if one isn't already running.

PDF viewer resource is also parsed for %f (filename)

Xfig will first try the correct PostScript font name (e.g. AvantGarde) and then try a backup font name if the first fails. If that one fails too, it will use 6x13. In the past, because the AvantGarde, Bookman, HelveticaNarrow and Palatino fonts were NOT distributed with the X distribution from the Open Group (and the X Consortium before that), xfig would substitute fonts for those, that were close. Now it will try the correct one and switch to one of the backups if it doesn't exist.

FIGAPPS file updated with new information about GNU plotutils

Rulers shows fewer ticks for smaller zooms

Rulers show more labels between major ticks for larger zooms

New floppy disk library object in "Computers"

New firewall symbol and "generic hardware" library objects in "Networks" from Tomi Ollila (Tomi.Ollila@tfi.net)

New "Optics" library includes mirrors, lenses, fiber optics from Kai-Martin Knaak (kmk@abraxas.physik.uni-mainz.de)

New Structural Analysis library includes plates, supports, loads, beams, coordinate systems and trusses. From Roman Putanowicz (putanowr@twins.pk.edu.pl) Please see copyright information in the Structural_Analysis/readme object. (Examples/Libraries/Structural_Analysis/readme.fig

More descriptive error message about non-existent or old app-defaults file

Removed restriction that fonts are ISO8859-1 encoded to allow, e.g. iso646.1991, which is what the scalable Schumacher fonts are.

New computers/terminals in Computers library, and new network comp- onents in the Networks library of objects. From T. Sato (VEF00200@nifty.ne.jp).

When a compound object containing right- or left-justified text is flipped horizontally, the justification of those text objects is also swapped (i.e. right-justified text becomes left-justified and vice versa)

Warning printed if user uses Fig.geometry resource to size main xfig window - should only use -geometry command-line argument or pwidth/pheight args/resources.

Uses ANSI stdargs.h instead of varargs.h now. From Roland Rosenfeld (roland@spinnaker.de)

Spell check command uses "%f" now instead of "%s" for filename

Can define BINDIR to install xfig in custom directory (see README file)

Xfig windows aren't unmapped now when user presses "Edit Image" to edit imported image file (not necessary)

When in edit mode and you hit Control-Return inside of a text box rather than just Return, it's a shortcut for DONE. From Jeff Hakner (hak@cooper.edu)

When editing a compound object, any text objects in it are shown and editable. From Jeff Hakner (hak@cooper.edu)

In library place mode, the change draw mode function was moved to Shift-Middle rather than Shift-Left. Shift-Left now has the behavior of placing the object and doing an edit on it. When you conclude the edit, it resumes place mode. This combined with including the text objects in editing compound objects, allows you to edit any text labels in library objects as they are placed. From Jeff Hakner (hak@cooper.edu)

Rotation angle of objects may be floating point now. From Marc Joosen (marcj@historia.et.tudelft.nl)

Spelling checker and search/replace popup more useful now

New "zoom to fit canvas" feature - Ctrl-Z accelerator in canavs will zoom the figure to just fit the canvas. New button in popup zoom dialog to do same.

After closing an open compound, the "Open Compound" mode is selected

If the Shift key is held down while mouse button 2 is clicked on an object, any comments in the object are displayed in a popup until the mouse button is released

New command-line option -flipvisualhints (resource Fig.flipvisualhints) which will flip left/right mouse indicator messages for mice whose buttons have been switched.

New import picture formats supported - TIFF and PPM

Added -hiddentext and -rigidtext command-line options and X resources to fill out the text flags options (first was -specialtext)

[ Contents | Introduction | Credits ]