1 June 2007
Version 0.07 is now available, as source or a i386 precompiled
debian package for your convenience.
New in this release:
Lots of bug fixes (and probably lots of new bugs!)
The dialog for importing multiple images is a bit easier to use, and specifying what preview images to load
makes more sense hopefully. Plus, you can cycle back and forth through the selected files, and fine tune which previews
get loaded with which images.
Linear and radial gradient interfaces should be much easier to use now. They sure are from my perspective, anyway. You can
judge for yourself in this new fangled video tutorial.
The same goes for color and image patches. There is now much greater control over subdividing patches. New is the ability
to merge subpatches back together again, as well as being able to subdivide at an arbitrary point. It's far from perfect, but the point
is that it is much better than it was before.
A new feature relevant for gradient editing is an eye-dropper like color grabber. Pressing the 'g' key in a view window will
start color grab mode. Click down (but not up) in the view window. You can then move the mouse anywhere on the entire screen, and as long
as the button is held down, whatever color is underneath
the mouse will become the current color.
There's a new command line option "--file-format" which lets you extract a sort of pseudocode mockup
of the Laidout file format as known at runtime. If you install any plugins that add object types (ok so what if plugins are not
implemented yet?), these will be included in the file format mockup. That is, they will
be if the developers remember to update that section of code.
25 April 2007
After several months too many, Version 0.06 is now available, as source or a i386 precompiled
debian package for your convenience.
Really not so very much is new, but there are a few notable improvements:
The major new improvement is the ability to import EPS, move them around, and print them out. Now you can typeset music with
Lilypond or layout a whole lot of text
with Scribus or Passepartout,
for instance, then export from those programs as EPS, import those
EPS files, and use Laidout's impositioning to finalize your books, sheet music, and whatever else strikes your fancy!
You can now use template files on startup. This includes the ability to always start Laidout from a default document, thus
bypassing the new document dialog.
Now you can change an image's associated smaller preview image while Laidout is running, instead of modifying a saved file,
and reloading to get the same effect. Also, importing from an image list has been debugged a bit, and there's now a fuller dialog to
help importing multiple images with previews, without needing to remember what the mysterious number buttons in the view window mean.
4 November 2006
After only 2 months this time, Version 0.05 is now available, as source or a i386 precompiled
debian package for your convenience.
Here are the highlights for this release:
There is now the ability to work using small preview images, rather than bogging up memory with hundreds of huge
tiffs.
Now you can import many images from a file list. So you can, for instance, save a directory listing into a text file,
then modify it to have lines like:
/path/to/file /path/to/smaller/preview "description of the image"
You can then easily import
those hundreds of files with appropriate preview images right away. You can include extra settings such as how many images
should be put down per page (a definite number, or as many as will fit), and the default dpi.
The general object tool has been enhanced with what I call a three point transform, in which you can define the
center of scaling/rotation (control-left click), then click and drag any other point, and the objects are scaled and rotated to match where you drag. Or you
can define the center, and also one other constant point (a second control-left click), then clicking and dragging a third arbitrary
point will shear the image to match where you drag this third point, with the first two points staying where they are,
Finally, the Net imposition has been slightly enhanced to show adjacent sides (if available) to the page shown in the
Singles view. Eventually, one will be able to unwrap a net in any way that it can be, but first things first.
4 September 2006
At long last, Version 0.04 is now available, as source or a i386 precompiled
debian package for your convenience.
New in this release is a Palette window, in which you can select a color, and have the selected object
immediately respond to it. Double clicking in the palette window brings up a file browser to let you load
in other palettes, including those from the Gimp. Also, the splittable window system has been fixed up a little, allowing you
to drop panes to other places, and float them off a window. It's not perfect, but it gets there eventually!
There is also a new command prompt window (but only a couple commands!).
