Quicksilver Release Notes 1.1c
------------------------------

Content
1. File List
2. Standalone Setup
3. Applet Setup
4. Code Changes

1. File List
============
This is the 2nd minor maintenance release of 
quicksilver. The folder contains the following 
items:

bin_1.1c.jar: 
  The Java binaries of the environment and the samples.  
src_1.1c.zip:
  The Java sources of the environment and the samples.  

For the course and the design documentation you 
should refer to the corresponding quicksilver 
1.1 release item. 

2. Standalone Setup
===================
To run quicksilver you have to use 
a command line of the following form:

  java -Dmode=design -cp bin_1.1c.jar;<your agents>   xlog.online.QuicksilverOnline

Or equivalently you can configure your
development environment appropriately.

3. Applet Setup
===============
You can also now use an applet to run Quicksilver.
You should use a new browser and the JDK1.4 plugin.
The applet tag should look as follows:

<applet 
   codebase="http://www.yourserver.com/yourdirectory" 
   archive="bin_1.1c.jar" 
   code="xlog.online.QuicksilverOnline" 
   height="300" 
   width="500">
<param name="mode" value="designer">
<param name="blank" value="samples/lektion1/generatorobserver.mdl">
<param name="hideedit" value="true">
<param name="hideerror" value="true">
</applet>

The mode option is already known as a command 
line parameter. Additionally there are the 
parameters blank, hideedit and hideerror. 

4. Code Changes
===============
There have been some changes to the tools and
the components, but the contracts have mostly
remained the same. So your agents should run,
but if you have proprietary viewers you should
check them.

The following changes have been incorporated:

- The packages xlog.engine and xlog.batch have
  been eliminated. They will reappear in an 
  extension package of quicksilver. But this 
  release is supposed to restrict itself to a 
  version that can be used in classroom either 
  as standalone or as an simple applet without 
  server interaction.

- Parts of ReaderLisp, WriterLisp, QuicksilverOnline
  have been adjusted so that no property or access
  permissions are anymore necessary to run
  Quicksilver. This is to allow it to run in a
  simple applet. Unfortunately you should refrain
  of using private fields in your agents, this release
  is not anymore able to serialized these fields.

- A little rework of the Undo/Redo in FormView 
  was done. The UndoBuffer class has been replaced
  by the predefined UndoManager class. A new class
  FocusEdit has been introduced that is able to
  set the focus during a undo/redo.

- The cut/paste and the undo/redo of the Depiction-
  Viewer have been completed. The flyer is now
  handled correctly in each tool resp. operation,
  and each tool resp. operation does provide undo
  data in the new class PixelEdit.

- The GridViewer has been speed up. With JDK1.4 the
  GridViewer was awfull slow. This was because we used
  Transparency.TRANSPARENT bitmaps to draw the agents. 
  We have changed the Depiction class so that it can 
  provide Transparency.BITMASK bitmaps. There is still
  a glitch of JDK1.4 somewhere because white lines appear 
  sometimes.

- The class chooser DialogChoose has been speed up and 
  it is now able to load classes from an URL. For the 
  URL the code has been rewritten so that ZIPs are loaded 
  from an URL connection. For the speed up the chooser 
  does only once scan the ZIPs when it is opened and later
  when the tree is build the cached list is used.

- The new file chooser is now more consistently used 
  among the environment. We have also started defining
  FileFilters so that model or graphic files are 
  filtered. See for example the new class 
  ModelFilter.

Have fun, Jan Burse, 6. December 2002