A NOTE ABOUT GIF SUPPORT:
Because Unisys has stated that they will charge royalties for the
use of the LZW compression algorithm even in free programs, I have
removed all traces of the GIF LZW compression/decompression code from
xfig. Xfig now calls giftopnm and ppmtopcx to import GIF files.
Screen capture writes a PCX file.
Exporting is handled by calling the ppmtogif program from fig2dev.
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.
Command-line options -show_depth_manager and -hide_depth_manager to
control it (resource Fig.show_depth_manager). The default is to show
it.
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.
Main Menus
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
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.
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 image when exporting to bitmap
format (e.g. GIF, JPEG). Causes fig2dev (using the -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
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 milliseconds every
spinner_rate milliseconds (resources).
Fill intensity and Pattern fill now show
image in popup edit panel
Can now draw arcs by defining:
- Center point
- First angle/Radius
- Second point to deterimine direction
- Final angle
Initiate this mode by starting arc with mouse button 2. Original
arc mode still available. From T. Sato
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/index.html
A mirror site in Japan is
http://member.nifty.ne.jp/tsato/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 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:
-
"make install.doc" - install only the documentation files (i.e.
man pages, html, and pdf files)
-
"make install.libs" - install only xfig object libraries
Filename mask for File
and Exporting
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 it 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.
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-MartinKnaak <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
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 arguments or 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
When editing a compound object, any text objects in it are shown and
editable.
From Jeff Hakner
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
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 canvas will zoom the figure to just fit the canvas.
New button in popup
zoom dialog
to do same, as will menu entry
View/Fit to Canvas.
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)