[ff3d-users] Version 1.0pre7 released

[Stephane Del Pino]

Dear ff3d's,

Version 1.0-pre7 has been released today. It comes with a collection of bug 
fixes and some new features (see changes summary).

configure script
================
Few configure options have changes (especially autogen use have been removed 
to provide a common command line parser), so source builder may use 
'./configure --help' for more details. Documentation should be also up to 
date on that particular point (http://www.freefem.org/docs/freefem3dDoc.pdf).

Mac-OS-binaries
===============
For the first time since a long time, Mac-OS-X binaries are distributed, see 
beelow.

What's next
===========
Development should now consider documentation and bug fixes only, unless some 
critical enhancements are asked.

GUI?
====
No decision has been taken concerning ff3d's GUI, three options are to be 
considered, and feedback would be appreciated concerning this particular 
point. Knowing that Editor integration is already almost finished, here are 
the options:
1- wait for version 1 to be released before preocuping of the GUI,
2- only plug the text editor (needs a few fixes in the multithread 
   management),
3- integrate also VTK's window.
Since ff3d has no particular hurry constraintes, every ones' opinion is 
welcome.

Changes summary
===============
Here comes a summary of what changed in 1.0pre7. To get more information check 
ChangeLog file.

Bugs fixed in 1.0pre7:
* fixed Debian Bug#293018: g++-4.0 compilation issue
* closed Bugs (see http://savannah.nongnu.org/bugs/?group=ff3d)
  #11330: fixed compilation without autogen
  #11331: libtool.m4 file is now part of the distribution
* fixed mesh file checking. Bad vertices numbers could lead to
  segmentation fault when dealing with quadrilaterals, tetrahedra or
  hexahedra meshes
* improved mesh reading: uses fscanf instead of ifstream. Reading
  meshes files has been speed-up by a factor at least 10.

New in 1.0pre7:
* Added periodical Cartesian mesh support! The syntax makes periodic
  computations very easy: 'mesh M=periodic(givenMesh,0:1[,...]);'
  where '0:1' means that faces 0 and 1 define periodicity. Faces
  numbering is as usual 0=xmin, 1=xmax, 2=ymin, 3=ymax, 4=zmin,
  5=zmax.
* Added support for reading gmsh version 1 meshes.
* Added 'finemesh' and 'coarsemesh' keywords. These keywords modify
  the behavior of ff3d. 'finemesh;' instruction tells ff3d to built
  precisely intersections of objects when building surface meshes.
  This was the previous behavior. 'coarsemesh;' is now the default
  behavior, it leads to non computing triangles intersections. This
  produces sufficient meshes for fictitious domain methods and is
  much stable and faster.
* ff3d now uses exception mechanism. This allows better error messages
  and is necessary to the creation of the future GUI.
* Multi-threading support really began in this release. This will as
  well serve the GUI management and performances enhancements.
* AutoOpts was dropped in this release, command line is now parsed by
  hand. There are two reasons for this. First concerns portability,
  end-users had to install autogen and libopts to access some
  functionalities. The second reason is more important: it seems that
  it was not easy to mix the use of both AutoOpts and Qt; I decided to
  let down the first. The problem is that info and manual pages are no
  more autogenerated.

Getting it
==========
To get the sources proceed as follow:
- cvs users:
  Getting 1.0pre7 release:
    cvs update -r v1-0pre7
  To keep in touch with the cvs tree use more likely
    cvs update -A
- getting tarballs, check the following url:
  http://www.freefem.org/ff3d/sources/
- windows and Mac-OS-X binaries are available at
  http://www.freefem.org/ff3d/binaries.html

Best regards,
Stephane.

--
Stéphane Del Pino          Tel: (33)144277170 - Fax: (33)144277200
Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions - Université Pierre et Marie Curie
-+-
http://www.freefem.org

-- 
Stéphane Del Pino          Tel: (33)144277170 - Fax: (33)144277200
Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions - Université Pierre et Marie Curie
-+-
http://www.freefem.org