|
| Release 9.0.0
| Date | December 15, 2008 |
| Status | General |
Overview
This release introduces a new data-driven, scene-based graphics system with integrated expression language support. The new graphics system simplifies the creation of drawings with advanced graphics and behavior.
This release also introduces several improvements to the graphical user interface components. It introduces a layout progress indicator and provides a layout cancel facility. It introduces fade transitions, animation, and multi-threaded execution for the layout, routing, and labeling operations. Formatting options fit the drawing to the drawing canvas or the printed page. Further, this release contains many additional layout, labeling, and routing refinements.
New
Drawing Representation
- Data-driven, scene-based, drawing element user interface (UI) framework:
- Drawing element scene hierarchies provide rich UI decoration
- Runtime drawing element construction and manipulation
- Expression language enables dynamic control of UI representation
- XML representation of drawing element UIs
- Predefined drawing element UIs:
- Industry standard shapes for Networking and UML diagrams
- Expanded node UI displays a small summary of the collapsed node UI
- Varying level of detail based on zoom level
- Graphical badges enable drill-down, expand, and collapse actions
Display Components
- Interpolation and fade transition animation
- XML-driven drawing element palette
- XML-driven preferences dialog box
Layout
- Non-blocking layout threads
- Layout progress and cancel
- Drawing Fitting optimizes use of the drawing canvas or printed page
- Open and closed group constraints
Documentation
- Additional tutorials
- Reference page of available resources
Improvements
Layout
- Reduced number of edge crossings for inter-drawing edges when laying out nested drawings
- Refined options for minimum and maximum number of clusters for disconnected drawings with more than one component in the circular layout style
- Enhanced incremental hierarchical layout style results
- Reduced number of edge crossings in the hierarchical layout style
- Reduced local edge crossings in the orthogonal layout style
- Improved node placement when fixed connectors are present in both symmetric and orthogonal layout styles
- Enhanced multi-edge routing in both symmetric and circular layout styles
- Increased labeling quality
Demonstration Application
- Reorganized toolbars and menus
- Redesigned graphical UI and icons
Documentation
- Enhanced Developer's Guide
Requirements
- Dropped support for JDK 1.4
- These operating systems have been added:
- Apple Mac OS X 10.5
- IBM AIX 5.3
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5*
- Ubuntu Linux 8.0*
- These operating systems have been dropped:
- Apple Mac OS X 10.3
- HP-UX 11
- IBM AIX 4
- Microsoft Windows 2000
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003
- Sun Solaris 9
*The 32-bit compatibility layer is required for 64-bit Linux systems.
Issues
- Layout
- The layout command option to invoke the layout operation in the current thread is missing. A workaround is available.
|
