News on Recent Fran Releases

1.16 January 8, 2002

• The Prelude tweak for threading mentioned for 1.15 is no longer necessary.

• Small source changes to accommodate new hierarchical module name spaces.

• Small source tweaks for comment lexer changes ("--|" is no longer a comment).

1.15 June 28, 2001

• Tiny tweak for compatibility with the February 2001 version of Hugs98.  Note: Fran examples will die immediately with "Program error: no more threads (deadlock?)" unless you make a small change to your Hugs98/lib/Prelude.hs. Find the line that says:
  
     loop (Hugs_ForkThread a b:r) = loop (a:b:r)
  
  and swap "a" and "b" in the right hand side, i.e., change the line to 
  
     loop (Hugs_ForkThread a b:r) = loop (b:a:r)
  
  My thanks to Sigbjørn Finne for this fix.

1.14 December 19, 2000

• Tiny tweak for compatibility with recently changed win32 libs.

1.13 May 15, 2000

• Update for Hugs98.  Fran was packaged with Hugs98, but didn't work because of version skew and showable functions.  Thanks very much to Mark Jones for porting Fran from Haskell 1.4 to Haskell 98.

1.12 June 19, 1998

• Added to media: halloween.bmp and halloweenBig.bmp (now used in Fifteen demo), and kids.bmp (now used in Collide demo).
• Added src/InputMonitor.hs, which defines functions for showing what actions the user is taking. See the brief treatment in the   User's Manual.
• Fixed a small but annoying bug that shows up in examples like Editor3.main (Fran/demos/CurveEditor). Zero-scaled text was showing up as a default size.
• Fixed another bug that showed up in various places, including Editor3.main. When you pressed a mouse button, the text would move down from the middle of the window.
• Added stylusPresent :: User -> Bool, which determines whether the given user has a stylus. See demos\Navigate\Hand.hs for a sample use.
• Added lift (elevator) simulator by Simon Thompson, ../demos/LiftSim/Main.hs. Click on the "up" or "down" button to call the lift up or down. If the lift cannot service your request right away, the call button lights up and the lift comes when it can.  See Simon's technical report about this example, which also sheds light on Fran programming in general.

1.11 May 6, 1998

• Rendered text and 2D geometry can now be much bigger without crashing Fran, because I no longer render outside of the crop region. (Well, a little outside, to make up for the infrequency of update w.r.t. display.) As an example, crop5 in demos\Test.hs is now much longer and bigger. (Yes, this is obviously the way to go, but I didn't realize it before.)
• importFlipBook. Here's a tip: start with an animated GIF, and use GIF Movie Gear to view it. Do Tools/Unoptimize, and then File/Export As/GIF Filmstrip, with horizontal orientation, and a factor of the number of frames as the "number of frames per strip". Then use another program (e.g., MS Photo Editor) to convert the resulting non-animated GIF into a BMP. Then use importFlipBook to bring it into Fran. Someday maybe Fran will import animated GIFs directly. (Volunteers?)
• I was surprised to learn that Windows generates WM_MOUSEMOVE messages as long as the mouse is in the window, even if it's not moving. Reduced the message volume by removing duplicates.
• Added rectLL, rectUR, rectLR, rectUL, rectCenter, rectSize, intersectRect, expandRect.  (See the User's Manual)
• Added support for tablets, based on Wintab. (See the User's Manual)
• New demos: two-handed image navigation, fifteen puzzle, colliding balls. See demos.htm.
• Switched to static linking of MFC, so there's no dependency on a user's machine having MFC, which tripped up several would-be users.

1.10 February 27, 1998

• Main new features (see details below):
  • animations with effects, via IO-valued events; and
  • multiple concurrent Fran windows.
  • CurveEditor demo.  Try main in Editor6.hs.  (Upcoming paper based on this example.)
• Misc additions (see the User's Manual):
  • bufferSound and importWave now take a boolean second argument saying whether to repeat.  For the old behavior, pass True.
  • Examples 6 and 7 in the User's Manual, which demonstrates a new event programming style that avoids explicitly recursive state machines and nextUser (or afterE).
  • moveTo and moveTo3.; nullB and !!*  (liftings of null and !!); colorRGB256
  • accumE and stepAccum for cumulative events and piecewise-constant behaviors.
  • Documented crop (UsersMan.hs). Try the cropping examples in ../demos/Test.hs.
  • Rect and RectB types tweaked and documented (used by crop).
  • In HSpriteLib, added some constants and functions that should be moved into Win32: WM_USER, Sleep, setWindowText, setWindowTextA, SIZE_RESTORED, SIZE_MINIMIZED SIZE_MAXIMIZED, SIZE_MAXSHOW, SIZE_MAXHIDE.
  • Fixed polyBezier to check the number of points:
       nPoints > 1 && nPoints `mod` 3 == 1
  • Added/documented setInitialViewSize and withInitialViewSize.
  • Generalized displayU to displayUs, which takes a *list* of User->ImageB functions and makes simultaneous windows. (displayU is still there as a convenience.)
  • Generalized displayU to displayEx. The argument produces not only an ImageB, but also a function from the created window to an effect-valued event. Upon each event occurence, execute the corresponding action. This function returns the window but does not start an event loop, which can be done separately by calling eventLoop. The point is to allow a program to insert some other calls, e.g., to set the window title, add menus, etc. See tryEffects, effects1 and effects2 in demos\Test.hs.
  • Added functions for multiple simultaneous animation windows: displays, displayGs, displayGUs.
• Bug fixes:
  • Initial mouse position now outside of window (was thought to be in the center).
  • Zero-scaled text image is now invisible. (Win32 note: createFont interprets font height==0 as a request to choose a default size.)
  • Time transformation now treats colorG correctly
  • 2D rotate and scale of rendered geometry now work
  • Fixed handling of window Quit. Now we sample and do effects one last time before destroying the window. Allows things like file save on quit.
• Bug: if synthetic images are too big, the DDraw CreateSurface call dies, taking the process with it. Clipping synthetic images before rendering should fix the problem.

1.09 Dec 5, 1997

• There's now a Fran user's manual, in UsersMan.htm
• Added Roids, a start at an Asteroids game. Much still to be done.
• As of very recently, Fran works with GHC, thanks to tons of help from Sigbjorn Finne. Performance is much better. If you're feeling brave, see docs\HowToGHC.txt.
• Added charPress and charPressAny which return ASCII characters instead of the VKey
• Added setWinSize to set the window start-up size.
• Changed the behavior-level versions of functions like vector2XYCoords to return a pair of behaviors, rather than behavior of pairs. Now you don't have to apply pairBSplit to the result. The old versions are still around, but are given names like vector2XYCoordsB.
• Added partial support for Enum (e.g., [0, dt ..]). For now, only works for contant behaviors. I don't know how to do the more general case.
• Added Rect and RectB types. Added ImageB crop function that uses them. This turned out to be harder than I thought, but it worked out nicely. You can do some very cool effects with it. See crop1, .. crop6 in Test.hs.
• Generalized move, moveXY, etc to work on Transformable2B types
• Change binding strength of several infix event operators so they cascade without parentheses. All of the following are now "infixl 3": ==>, -=> , `handleE`, `filterE` , `withElemE`, `withElemE_` , `withPrevE`, `withPrevE_` , `suchThat`, `suchThat_`, `snapshot`, `snapshot_`, `whenE`.
• Added sound pan function. (Note that panning and volume adjustment also happen automatically with movement and scaling of images with embedded sounds.)
• Fixed bug with negative sprite scaling and off-screen motion. Had to do manual clipping to avoid what seems to be a DDraw bug.
• Added several display functions. Use displayU instead of disp.
• Misc: replaced smaller/bigger by stretch; introduced turn3, move3, stretch3; added spin3 and spiral3D in Tutorial.hs.
• Improved robustness. If DirectDraw takes away a drawing surface, Fran restores it instead of crashing! When the DirectSound device cannot be opened, keep trying, using abort/retry/ignore dialog.

1.06 Oct 14, 1997

• src\Color.hs: Changed hue in HSL from degrees to radians, for consistency with angles. Fixed colorHSL to map hue properly to [0,2*pi)
• Added solidImage :: ImageB
• Some preparation for GHC compatibility (VectorSpace.lhs and Behavior.lhs)
• demos\tutorial.hs: added moreKids.hs, which is a crazy animation! In Tutorial, try "displayU moreKids". Click deliberately and watch carefully.
• Sokoban3: new artwork -- need Pentium 5 to run this fast :-)
• UtilsB: added toggle, leftButton, rightButton, importX. Renamed nextUser to nextUser_, and added a new nextUser.
• Many import changes for GHC compatibility

1.05 Oct 7, 1997

• Added sound and 3D, and "flipbook" 2D animation, all using DirectX. The implementation incorporates a "temporal sprite engine" for very smooth 2D motion and scaling (if you have DirectDraw hardware acceleration). The 3D support is "preliminary", and could use a lot more work. (untilB doesn't work quite yet.)
• Behaviors are represented by memoized functions from time streams to value streams.
• Added demos directory. Check out Tutorial.hs, Mover.hs, and Sokoban3\SokoDemo.hs.

0.81 Nov 11, 1996

• Integrated lots of changes from Alastair Reid. He updated rbmh to a newer Hugs version, and making various improvements, and rewriting PrimInteract.hs to be much simpler. (Thanks, Alastair!!)
• Turned Samples.hs into a literate program, Tutorial.lhs with lots of prose. Please try it out and let me know what you think.
• Re-introduced fuzzy/interval analysis, and reimplemented predicate to use it. Renamed old version to predicate'. It's still useful because predicate doesn't handle untilB and (thus) integral yet.
• Replaced point and vector arithmetic names with operators, based on the names that were in UtilsB.hs
• Replaced point and vector arithmetic names with operators, based on the names that were in UtilsB.hs. Added ^+^ and ^-^, although for specific vector space types, + and - should be defined as well.
• Added mouseTrailWords for making dancing word lists in Tutorial.lhs Made trailWords and mouseTrailWords take an explicit color argument
• In ShowImageB.hs, removed times, which was motivated by an earlier representation. No more unsafeIntereaveIO! Also simplified timeSinceMS a lot, thanks to Alastair. I don't remember why I had the complicated version. Made draw simpler, by not using times.
• In ShowImageB.hs, added flag presentation, normally False. Make True for a (e.g., PowerPoint) presentation. Makes the window stay on top, but in a corner. Also, resizing the window scales the animation.
• In ImageBTest.hs, renamed viewStretch to viewStretchBmpFile, and made it use viewStretch in UtilsB.hs. The directions self-destruct after three seconds.
• Renamed Pick2Image module to PickImage.
• More and corrected Forceable instances.
• Decoupled import vs display pixels-per-unit. See bitmapPixelsPerLengthHorizontal in Image.hs, vs screenPixelsPerLengthHorizontal in ShowImageB.hs, and similarly for vertical.
• Misc small improvements to Integral.hs. Better factored now. Removed the scale-by-zero trick, moving it outside of the recursion. Switched implementation to work more natively at the behavior level, removing the explicit lifting in linearPart. Still does a sampling of the integrand, which it would be nice to eliminate somehow.
• Made all Win32 dependencies explicit through qualified import, in preperation for Thomas Nordin's GHC green card.
• Noticed that map is defined on IO. Tweaked viewSize calculation in ShowImageB.hs to use map. I wonder why Monad isn't defined as a subclass of Functor, since IO's definition of map does not seem IO-specific.

0.8 Oct 31, 1996

• Made this version just before giving a talk at the Oregon Center for Advanced Technology Education (OCATE).
• Added a few small images to Media\, thanks to Pixel Monkey.
• A bunch of new examples in a new source file Samples.hs. These are the OCATE talk examples. Try them out!
• Added Force.hs, which defines a Forceable type class. Helps when lazy evaluation causes space leaks(Anthony Daniels)
• More helper functions in UtilsB.hs: TurnRight, TurnLeft, move, biggerXY, smallerXY, and wiggleRange. Removed moveHorizontal and moveVertical. Removed color from the showIm functions. Added atRate (synonym for integral).
• Added point and vector operation synonyms. .+^ .-., *^, and ^/.
• Text display now centers.
• Text now scales and rotates properly !!!
• Made default font be times roman, rather than "system"
• Noticed that i21, i22 now work nicely. Sigbjorn made these ones, and apparently the version 0.7 changes let them work properly. Try them -- they're delightful!
• Added lbr, rbr, and simplified lbp and rbp
• Doubled pixels-per-unit. You'll notice that the demo window is now bigger.

0.7 Oct 25, 1996

• Re-introduced Sigbjorn's monadic event combinators. See especially >>, >>=, +>>=, and joinEvent. These are very useful and complement the previous set. The event combinators suchThat and filterEv, which were previously primitive, are now derived. Even predicate is defined in terms of >>. (Interval analysis still not restored.) Check it out!
• Big change in representation of behaviors and events. A behavior is no longer maps time streams to value streams, but rather maps a single time to a value and a new behavior. Simon PJ recommended this representation as being neatly deforestable by GHC. (Sigbjorn also suggested it a while back.) Similarly, an event takes a query time tq and returns either a time/value pair (te,x) with te<tq, or a new event (non-occurrence).
• Rewrote integral to be a recursive reactive behavior. Still uses Euler's method :-( but now is piecewise-linear between steps.

0.6 Oct 25, 1996

• Changed several of the examples in ImageBTest.hs to use the *=> operator, whose second argument consumes just the event time, ignoring the data.
• Added regularPolygon and star in Image.hs and ImageB.hs.
• Added bounce1', a new version of bounce1, in ImageBTest.hs. The new one is simpler, but doesn't yet work, probably because of too much self-reactivity (snapshotting and/or predicate).
• Added UtilsB.hs. Ad hoc collection of definitions. These are here for introductory use, to make it easier to do some simple things. I'd like to make it so that kids can use this simple vocabulary.

0.5 Oct 8, 1996

• Added pairBSplit for taking apart pair-valued behaviors. Sample use:
  (wWidth, wHeight) = pairBSplit (vector2XYCoords aVecBehavior)
• Added projects.htm, listing non-trivial RBMH-related projects.
• Fixed error in interpolateColor found by Gary Shu Ling.
• Added ^* and ^^*, lifted versions of ^ and ^^. Added lifted ^ and ^^ (exponentiation).
• Added +, -, and negate on vectors (via a Num instance).
• Fixed the view transformation so that the origin is always in the window center. (!)
• Added a frame to the bouncy ball examples i23 and i24.
• Added a lot of number operator overloadings and functions, and checked in Behavior.hs. Several couldn't be lifted because of their types, and so have names like "roundB" instead of "round". If you try using something like "round", you'll get a helpful error message.
• Added dispFps to ImageBTest.hs. This variant of disp shows the frames per second.
• Re-activated frames-per-second counting. See dispFps in ImageBTest.hs.
• Added showB, a lifting of show.
• Integrated Gary's fix for viewSize behavior.
• Added example i37 showing a use of viewSize to stretch an image to fit the window, based on a similar function of Gary's.
• Added a frog image Media\frog.bmp from Sandra Loosemore's frog page.

0.4 Sept 20, 1996

• Changed polyline from being a filled polygon to be a set of connected line segments. Added polygon for describing n-sided filled polygons. The inside of a polygon is filled with the (outermost) color specified with the withColor combinator, i.e., withColor red (polygon ls) draws a red polygon. (default is white). Line segments are drawn with a white pen.
• Switched color transformation combinators from using RGB color space to HSL (removed mixRed,mixGreen,mixBlue).
• Added a fourth control point argument to bezier, instead of having the origin2 be the implicit first control point.
• Added a bunch of demos that uses polyline, polygon and bezier.

0.3 Sept 17, 1996

• Added StaticTypes module, which just packages up the static modeling types. Recommended use: "import qualified StaticTypes as S". (As in ImageBTest.hs.)
• Added predicate for events based on boolean behaviors.
• Added bouncing ball examples i23 and i24 to ImageBTest.hs. For i24, do a left-click to add a new ball. They disappear after five seconds.
• Switched all ImageBTest examples to be functions of start time, to eliminate space leak (CAFs) and to make them temporally composable.
• Added keyboard event primitives primKP and primKR in PrimInteract.hs, plus a higher-level version keyPress in Interaction.hs. Changed i8 in ImageBTest to use it.
• Added allDemos to ImageBTest. This new "super demo" combines all of the others. run "disp allDemos" to see them all, and press <space> to go on to the next item.
• Added lifted list formation and extraction: nilB, consB, headB, tailB.

0.2 Sept 16, 1996

• Added timeTransform to Behavior.hs. Warning: the implementation of untilB assumes that the given time stream does not go backwards across events. We cannot guarantee this property, so be careful! Before, we've said to use only monotically non-decreasing time transforms, but non-monotonic ones are very useful at times, and untilB is the only construct that has trouble with them. (Even integration doesn't mind.)
• Changed ImageTest.lotus to take take the number of rings as an argument, rather than doing using many of them. Added example ImageBTest.i18 to show it off. Still pretty slow. :-(
• Major change to the representation of events.
• Added some neat examples of Sigbjorn's, involving time transforms. See i19, i20, and i21 in ImageBTest.hs. Unfortunately, time transformation works badly with external events, and thus with the mouse position behavior, to i20 and i21 are quite jerky.
• Renamed constructors Vector2 and Point2 to Vector2XY and Point2XY.
• Re-implemented integral so that recursive systems (ODEs) work efficiently! Try "disp (i17 0)" in ImageBTest, and move the mouse around. The eyes are connected in a chain of springs. Introduced the t0 argument to to avoid a space leak problem. This change should be done throughout ImageBTest.
• Removed determinant common-subexpression from inverse2.
• Renamed lerp2 to linearInterpolate2.
• Added RBMH module, which imports all the individual parts of RBMH, and reexports those appropriate for a casual user. (Thanks go to Alastair Reid for these last three items.)

0.1 Sept 9, 1996

• Fixed inverse2 bug that messed up screen-to-world mapping
• Fixed RenderImage.draw to catch all errors and print "Win32 drawing error" instead of bombing. When you start seeing this message, you can kill the animation window.
• Changed ImageBTest.smoothGrowShrink to scale by "exp (integral (changingRate t0) t0" instead of "1 + integral (changingRate t0) t0". The result looks better the new way and never does negative scaling.
• Added a bunch of fun examples to ImageBTest. These examples are eyes that look at the mouse and one that chases it. See i12 to i16.

0.0 Sept 8, 1996

• First release