TaxiDraw-0.3.0 is now released. It can be found at
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~eazdluf/taxidraw.html.
The brief changelog is as follows:
***
* libcurl is used for download instead of relying on the presence of wget.
* Downloaded USGS images are used as multiple tiles instead of
concatenating them. As a result, the presence of ImageMagick is no longer
required.
* As a result of the above two changes, USGS image downloading is now
enabled in the Windows binary.
* The USGS image downloader first checks for colour imagery, and then
reverts to black and white imagery if colour is not available.
* A scrolled canvas is now used, giving a more standard feel to moving the
airport around than previously.
* Seaplane bases can now be opened, edited and written.
* Stopways are now displayed.
* Threshold position is now displayed for displaced thresholds.
* Beacons can now be added and deleted.
* Windsocks and tower viewpoint position are now displayed and editable,
include add and delete (maximum of 1 tower viewpoint position per airport).
* An airport properties dialog is available allowing the airport properties
to be edited.
* The runways properties dialog is greatly extended allowing all runway
properties to be edited.
* Insert Taxiway shortcut is changed from T to Ctrl+T.
* Cygwin fixes from Bruce Finney.
* The windows binary release now uses a proper installer (thanks to
Inno-setup).
* Menu items are now greyed out when not logically available. (Most of
them - some still need to be done such as undo/redo).
* Probably more stuff that I can't remember!
***
Note the change from wget to libcurl for downloading. This means that folk
compiling TaxiDraw will need development libraries for libcurl installed.
It's a pretty ubiquitous library though, and shouldn't cause any problems.
Some of the 'improvements' can cause some problems. The downloaded images
are now handled as tiles, which makes operation at high zoom levels much
better, but there can be slight pauses during panning as tiles are
loaded/unloaded. The scrolled window can also cause some problems - on
Linux it can cause flicker during zoom and sometimes whilst dragging
taxiways, and on all platforms the view position can sometimes move whilst
trying to drag large taxiways (just the view position, *not* the actual
airport position). I'm sure most of the glitches will eventually be ironed
out. On non-windows platforms it is possible to revert to the old
non-scrolled-window code by undefining _TD_SCROLLED_WINDOW in TaxiDraw.h.
I'm gradually removing support for the old FlightGear airport data format.
It will no longer export to it, although it will still read it. Note that
exporting to X-Plane format now merges with the specified file if the file
already exists - only the target airport is overwritten, the rest are left
unchanged. This is to avoid upsetting X-Plane users who are used to
exporting to apt.dat from WorldMaker.
At this point TaxiDraw is pretty much feature-complete as far as editing
the current airport data format goes, IMHO. I'm sure there's loads more
refinement that could be done to it, but I'm going to try and spend more
time on stuff that will be progress to FlightGear now, rather than stuff
that simply extends what we already have (which realistically is all
TaxiDraw does at present - it is/does nothing new, but is simply a
convienience tool). Stuff that springs to mind includes extending the
range of 2D objects - for example allowing airport boundaries to be
defined, and allowing simple hangars to be defined. I think in the long
run I'd like to move TaxiDraw's airport definitions over to a node-arc
arrangement, from which both physical layout in our current (or future
format) and also logical taxying information could be exported. This would
also probably make it easier to build better airports with a modified
genapts.
I'm also very keen to announce TaxiDraw to X-Plane users in the near
future, since I feel that our voice might get heard a little louder with
regards to the airport data format if we get used by the X-Plane community.
I think that the current release has reached a point where it's pretty
easy to figure out, and should be OK for WorldMaker users to try without
too much hassle. So if you find any critical bugs in the next week or so,
please let me know ASAP before I do this.
As always, back up your data before using new software...
Cheers - Dave
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