hp2xx-3.4.0 (HPGL converter) released

[mk]

hp2xx-3.4.0,

a new release of the HP-GL converter originally written by Heinz Werntges,
in now available from ftp.gnu.org and its usual mirror sites.

Besides numerous bug fixes over 3.3.2 , this version provides support
for a number of HPGL/2 commands, most notably those related to polygon
drawing. Thanks to  Eugene Doudine, it contains better handling of 
PJL file headers and PE commands. Andrew Bird has rewritten the penwidth
and line style code, adding support for changing penwidth in the course
of a drawing. Many others have provided patches, suggestions and test
files.

I would greatly appreciate receiving bug reports, patches or even sample 
HPGL files. (In the latter case, please make sure that no copyright or 
confidentiality agreements are violated before sending any materials.)

Martin Kroeker, 
address@hidden OR address@hidden

Disclaimer: while i currently work for Daveg GmbH and they have generously 
            waived their rights (as per German employment laws) on the code 
            i wrote for hp2xx, this software is totally unrelated to, and 
            not endorsed by, Daveg GmbH. 
See the file 'copying' (i.e. the GNU GPL) for license and warranty
information.

Changes from 3.3.2 to 3.4.0

New features:

- Support for HPGL/2 commands related to polygons and area fills :
  EP, ER, FP, FT, PM, PT, RA, RR, WG (no user-defined fill types yet)
- WU command support, PW fixed accordingly.
- AT,RT command support (arc through three points)
- New linetype handling including support for line types 7,8,-7,-8 and
  user-defined linetype (UL) (written by Andrew Bird)
- Support for the COmment keyword added (Andrew Bird)
- PD;PU-sequences without pen movement create a small dot now to mimick the
  behaviour of a real pen plotter. 
- Parser improved to be more robust (especially with PE commands),
  cliping (IW) support for PE lines, PJL and RTL control sequence handler,
  type 1 and 2 (anisotropic) scaling support added to SC (Eugene Doudine).
- Rewrote pen property handling - a pen can now change width during a 
  plot (Andrew Bird). Similarly added pencolor changing support (though for
  the postscript driver only - all other modes require a rewrite of the 
  intermediate raster 'picbuf' code).

- Added -S option for selection of TIFF compression mode (Andrew Bird)
- added command line option '-n'/'--nofill' to suppress polygon filling  
- file names may start with non-alphabetic characters (e.g. numbers
  or unix-style path names) now (Michael Kennedy)

- Modified to_pcx to produce PCX mode 5 (truecolor) files in color mode,
  PCX2 in monochrome. (The old PCX2 module is in the 'old' directory, in 
  case this proves to be worse - i have changed a few of the palette 
  definitions to get correct b/w output and primary colors even with this 
  version).
- Output mode 'esc2' for the Epson Stylus series of printers at 720dpi.
  (limited to A4 size for now, and in 'microweave' mode, i.e. using only
   one row of nozzles, which results in exact but very slow printing)
- OS/2 PM previewer now has stderr output redirection to a separate window
  (patch provided by Kazutaka Nishiyama)
- X11 preview generates a warning, but no longer aborts if the window is
  larger than the current screen size 
- Added step-by-step instructions for compiling on Windows NT (provided by
  James D. Shaw)

Bug fixes:
- IW limits were interpreted as plotter units even if scaling (SC) was set.
- PCX output sometimes had dark red background in b/w mode and wrong colors
  in colormap mode (rewrote to_pcx.c for PCX5, see above).
- lines drawn in IW mode had extraneous pen-up moves added, which confused 
  the line pattern generator.
- removed extraneous asterisk in the INFO-DIR-ENTRY section of the
  texinfo doc file (Reinhard Kotucha)
- IW could clip lines just inside the limits due to rounding errors on
  some platforms
- LB text was sometimes incorrectly clipped by IW
- LB text in unsupported character sets was replaced by blanks instead of the
  corresponding characters from set 0.
- changed PostScript 'translate' parameters to adjust plot position on page
- Line pattern length was too long for LT-2
- SC scale factors were not applied to XT/YT tick marks, resulting in
  distorted plots
- PS command with height only and PS with width>height were not treated 
  correctly

including contributions by:
Todd Beverly,David Billinghurst,Andrew Bird,Gerhard Buergmann,Eugene Doudine,
Lars Eriksson,Michael Kennedy,Robert S. Maier,Dan McMahill,Kazutaka Nishiyama,
John Reeve,Wilfred van Rooyen,Jim Shaw

-- 
Dr. Martin Kroeker, daVeg GmbH Darmstadt  CAD/CAM/CAQ  address@hidden
                      Precision Powered by Penguins