Visual Thought 1.2 Release Notes
15 October 1995

Confluent, Inc.
132 Encline Court
San Francisco, CA 94127-1838


Welcome!
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Welcome, and thanks for purchasing Visual Thought, the premier
multipurpose diagramming and flowcharting tool for UNIX systems.  You
can use Visual Thought to create many kinds of drawings: software
diagrams, flowcharts and other kinds of flow diagrams, org charts,
network diagrams, business graphics, illustrations for documentation,
and much more.

These release notes contain the important changes between versions 1.1
and 1.2 of Visual Thought, as well as other important introductory
information, such as how and where to get help.


Installation and Licensing
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Complete instructions for installation and licensing are provided in
the "Installation and Licensing Guide" booklet accompanying the
CD-ROM.

Please feel free to send e-mail to vthought@confluent.com or call us
at 415-586-8700 or 800-780-2838 if you ever have any questions while
installing or licensing Visual Thought.


Support
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you or your organization purchased Annual Support Contracts for
Visual Thought, we always stand ready to answer your questions or fix
your problems.  Send e-mail to vthought@confluent.com at any time or
call us at 415-586-8700 or 800-780-2838.


Copyright information
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Several independent software packages are incorporated in Visual
Thought or included in the Visual Thought distribution.  The text file
copyrights.txt contains the copyright notices for these software
packages and the permission notices authorizing their distribution.


Web Site
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Confluent now has a World Wide Web site!  To see what's new with
Visual Thought, or keep abreast of new developments at Confluent,
visit our Web site at http://www.confluent.com/.  We look forward to
seeing you there!


Usage Notes
----------------------------------------------------------------------
This section lists a few brief usage notes that we felt were important
for you to know.  For a complete discussion of Visual Thought's
features, please refer to the "Visual Thought User's Guide" or to the
online Guided Tour, available through the Help menu.

* Getting Online Help

Online help is just a click away.  Click the "?" button in the hot
button bar or choose the Help->Overview menu item to bring up the
Guided Tour Overview, a graphical index to Visual Thought's hyperlink
help system.

The Guided Tour is your resource to all kinds of help for Visual
Thought.  It contains a detailed explanation of program features, easy
access to the extensive suite of examples and palettes, and an FAQ
slide that will answer many of your installation, licensing, and usage
questions.  From the FAQ slide, you can browse a text or HTML list of
Frequently-Asked Questions, all available technical notes, and these
release notes.

When you need help, read the FAQ!

* Entering Text in Objects

Manipulating text in Visual Thought objects can be done quickly and
simply.  Here are shortcuts that you will want to use:

 - To enter text into an object, double-click on it from Select mode.

 - To move the text edit focus from object to object, type Tab,
   Shift-Tab, or the Ctrl key plus any of the four arrow keys.

 - To exit Text mode and revert to Select mode at any time, press Esc.

* Entering Text in Dialogs

Most Visual Thought dialog windows have text fields, into which you
can type text.  To enter text in a text field, first click in it to
move the keyboard focus to the field, then type.  To tell Visual
Thought that you are finished typing, it is important to press Return
or Tab.

* Detaching Connections

There is currently no direct method available for detaching the end of
a connection from an object and attaching it to a different object.
The fastest way to detach a connection is to cut it (Ctrl-X), paste it
(Ctrl-V), after which both ends are free, and drag the ends of the
connection to reconnect them.

* User Preferences

Visual Thought recognizes the following preferences:

  background        : background color used to draw dialogs
  encoding          : enable printing of ISO-8859-1 characters above 127
  font              : font used to display text in dialogs
  foreground        : foreground color used to draw dialogs
  informtranslators : generate messages for unavailable translator commands
  laf               : look-and-feel used for interface appearance and behavior
  limittoscreen     : move opened windows entirely on-screen
  monochrome        : display only black and white on monochrome monitors
  nosoundalert      : disable alert indicating unavailable audio control device
  printclass        : type of PostScript printer (standard or color)
  printcmd          : command for printing PostScript documents

For more information on using preferences and detailed descriptions,
see the file note_preferences.txt.

* Colormap Problems

Visual Thought can exhibit the following problems related to X
colormap problems:

 - Visual Thought fails to start, issuing an "arithmetic exception" or
   "floating exception" error message

 - Visual Thought issues warning messages regarding colormap problems

 - Colors flash when the window focus changes

 - Colors are dithered due to insufficient available colors

For more information and instructions to fix these problems, see the
file note_colormap.txt or consult the Guided Tour from the Help menu.

* Incorrect Window Colors

Visual Thought uses light gray for the default window background
color.  When Visual Thought is first started, the majority of the
Inspector window should be displayed in this color.

If the color of the initial Inspector window is not light gray, the X
server may be using a standard colormap that cannot be properly
interpreted by Visual Thought.  This is often a problem on HP-UX
systems.  For more information and instructions to fix this problem,
see the file note_colormap.txt.

* Window Overlap

The Visual Thought interface depends on access to multiple windows
(i.e., Main, Inspector, Palettes, Views, and various auxiliary
dialogs).  Visual Thought places these windows at positions designed
to provide for efficient user access.

On some window managers (e.g., vuewm, mwm), the default behavior is to
automatically place newly created windows at positions determined by
the window manager, without regard to the positions specified by the
application.  Such automatic placement of Visual Thought windows
results in window locations that provide a very inconvenient user
interface.

This problem can be prevented by adding an entry of one of the
following forms to the X server resource database (e.g., by adding it
to the file ~/.Xdefaults) and restarting the window manager:

  Mwm*clientAutoPlace: false  (for mwm)
  Vuewm*clientAutoPlace: false  (for HP VUE)

After the window manager is restarted, the presence of one of the
above entries in the X server resource database can be verified with:

  xrdb -query | grep clientAutoPlace

* Using Audio on HP-UX

The use of Visual Thought audio capabilities on HP-UX requires that
the NCS Local Location Broker Daemon (llbd) and the audio server
(Aserver) be running on every system that is involved with the audio
operation.

The AUDIO environment variable specifies the host where Visual Thought
looks for the audio server.

For more information on using audio on HP-UX, see the file
note_hpaudio.txt.

* Technical Notes

A variety of technical notes are provided in the following Confluent
directory (assuming Visual Thought has been installed in
/usr/local/confluent):

  /usr/local/confluent/doc

The technical notes contain detailed information and instructions to
fix problems related to using Visual Thought.  You can also always
read the technical notes from the online Guided Tour, accessible
through the Help menu.

The following technical notes are currently available:

  File                  Subject
  ----                  -------
  note_colormap.txt     Colormap Problems
  note_export.txt       File Export Formats and Plug-In Translators
  note_hpaudio.txt      Using Audio on HP-UX
  note_license.txt      The Confluent License Server
  note_packinfo.txt     Mailing Compressed Directories and Binary Files
  note_path.txt         Path Problems
  note_preferences.txt  Visual Thought Preferences


Changes Since Version 1.0
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If you are upgrading from the 1.0 release of Visual Thought, you
should read the file release_11.txt in addition to the remainder of
these release notes.  The file release_11.txt documents the changes
between the 1.0 and 1.1 releases.


Changes Since Version 1.1
----------------------------------------------------------------------
In version 1.2, we've fixed a number of bugs and made a few
enhancements, but primarily, the intent behind this release is to
support HP-UX in addition to SunOS and Solaris.  The following changes
were made between the 1.1 and 1.2 releases.


Summary: Runs only on SunOS and Solaris

Visual Thought 1.1 ran only on SunOS 4.1.x and Solaris 2.x systems.
It now runs on SunOS 4.1.x, Solaris 2.x, and HP-UX 9.x.


Summary: Crash saving text with an empty paragraph at the end

Visual Thought occasionally crashed while saving a document containing
empty paragraphs.  The problem occurred if an empty paragraph at the
end of the text was justified differently than the immediately
preceding paragraph.  A crash no longer occurs in this case.


Summary: Crash exporting curved objects with large coordinates to EPS

Visual Thought crashed if curved objects (e.g., curved connections,
shapes with curved boundaries) located at positions greater than
approximately 4000 points were exported to Encapsulated PostScript
(EPS).  A crash no longer occurs in this case.


Summary: Crash opening attachment file chooser in Inspector Attachments panel

Visual Thought sometimes crashed if a file path was entered in the
Attachment File field in the Inspector Attachments panel and the Set
button was pressed to open a file chooser.  Crashes occurred if the
file path did not contain a directory (e.g., "file.txt") or was a file
in a Visual Thought document directory (e.g., "file.vthought/vthought.txt").
Crashes no longer occur in these cases.


Summary: Crash activating Visual Thought document attachment

Visual Thought crashed if a Visual Thought document name without a
directory (e.g., "file.vthought") was entered in the Attachment File
field in the Inspector Attachments panel and the attachment was
activated by pressing the Activate button or the attachment button on
the object in the View.  A crash no longer occurs in this case.


Summary: Crash closing a View from the window manager

Visual Thought crashed if a View window was closed a second time using
the window manager while an alert was displayed asking whether to save
the document displayed in the View window.  It is no longer possible
to close a Visual Thought window while an alert is displayed, so this
case can no longer occur.


Summary: Crash when deselecting an object while playing its sound

Visual Thought crashed if an object was deselected while its attached
sound was being played through the Sound Editor.  A crash no longer
occurs in this case.


Summary: Changes to documents lost when fatal errors occur

Changes to documents were lost if Visual Thought crashed due to a
fatal error.  A typical example is a "BadAlloc" error generated by the
X Windows server when it has insufficient memory to allocate a
resource.  Visual Thought now automatically saves new copies of any
documents with unsaved changes in case of detectable fatal errors,
ensuring that you don't lose any work.


Summary: Parsing errors when the radix character was not a period

Parsing errors occurred when documents were opened and during
interpretation of some numeric input fields if the radix character was
not a period.  The radix character is part of the locale defined by
the LC_ALL, LC_NUMERIC, and LANG environment variables.  These errors
no longer occur.  All numeric fields now use the radix character
defined by the locale.


Summary: Disappearance of object when resizing a group with zero size

Resize of a group with zero width or height caused the group object to
disappear.  It is no longer possible to create a group with zero width
or height, so this case can no longer occur.


Summary: Connections with less than two points prevented open of documents

Connections with less than two points were sometimes saved in a
document.  When the document was later opened, the presence of these
connections caused errors which caused the open to fail.  Connections
with less than two points are no longer saved in documents.


Summary: Printer choice in Print dialog ignored on Solaris

Output generated with the Print dialog was printed on the wrong
printer on Solaris in some situations.  The output was printed on the
default printer, rather than the printer chosen in the Print dialog,
if the file /usr/ucb/lpr was not in the command search path when
Visual Thought was started.  Output is now always printed on the
printer chosen in the Print dialog.


Summary: Some objects not centered on the grid when dragged from palettes

Some objects dragged from palettes were off-center from the grid by
one pixel in the drop View when grid snap was turned on.  This
occurred for the node objects in the Circuit and Logic palettes and
for any other object centered on a palette grid with a size of three
times the palette grid spacing.  These objects are now properly
centered on the grid in the drop View.


Summary: Objects pasted outside document boundary

Objects could be pasted outside the boundary of a document.  These
objects were sometimes difficult to remove and caused warnings when
the document was opened.  The location of pasted objects is now pinned
at the document boundary.


Summary: New Encapsulated PostScript Interchange (EPSI) export format

The Encapsulated PostScript Interchange (EPSI) format has been added
to the Export file chooser.  This format consists of Encapsulated
PostScript with the addition of a device-independent screen preview
bitmap.  The screen preview allows applications (e.g., FrameMaker)
that import EPSI files to display the bitmaps on the screen.


Summary: New FrameMaker Interchange Format (MIF) export format

The FrameMaker Interchange Format (MIF) format has been added to the
Export file chooser.  This format consists of top-level MIF graphic
objects corresponding to the exported Visual Thought objects.  In
FrameMaker, MIF files can be imported with the File->Import->File...
menu item.  The primary advantage of importing MIF instead of EPS or
EPSI into FrameMaker is that you can see the exact graphical
representation of your diagrams on the screen (for systems not
supporting Display PostScript).


Summary: New Visual Thought Export (VTX) export format

The Visual Thought Export (VTX) format has been added to the Export
file chooser.  This format consists of the Visual Thought document
file format, as described in Appendix H of the "Visual Thought User's
Guide."

Since VTX files contain all the object information in a Visual Thought
document, including the connectivity between objects, you can define a
translator to convert to any other format requiring that semantic
information.  For example, with the appropriate translators, you can
generate HTML for World Wide Web pages, input files for CASE tools,
simulators, or other graphics packages, and even input files for your
own proprietary programs.


Summary: Many new export formats, including JPEG, TIFF, and XWD

The following new export formats have been added to the Export file
chooser:

  Microsoft Windows Bitmap (bmp)
  JFIF-style JPEG (jpg)
  Macintosh PICT (pct)
  Portable Document Format (pdf)
  Portable Bitmap (ppm)
  Sun Raster (ras)
  Irix RGB (rgb)
  TrueVision Targa (tga)
  Tagged Image File Format (tif)
  X11 Bitmap (xbm)
  X11 Pixmap (xpm)
  X11 Window Dump (xwd)
  AVS X Image (avs) - disabled
  Group 3 FAX (fax) - disabled
  CompuServe GIF89a (gif) - disabled
  Magick Image File Format (miff) - disabled
  MTV Raytracing (mtv) - disabled
  ZSoft PC Paintbrush (pcx) - disabled
  VICAR Image (vicar) - disabled

Files with these formats are generated by transparently translating
native raster files, in GIF87a format, with the ImageMagick convert
program, as defined in the new Translators configuration file.  The
formats marked "disabled" are disabled by default, but can be enabled
by making the minor modifications described in the Translators file.

Additional export formats can be supported by adding appropriate
format and translator definitions to the Translators configuration
file and making available the necessary format translation programs.
For more information, see the file note_export.txt.


Summary: New Translators configuration file for Export file chooser

The Translators configuration file has been added to define the file
formats and format translations available through the Export file
chooser.  The system version of this file resides in the system config
directory in the Visual Thought installation directory (e.g.,
/usr/local/confluent/vt-1.2/sunos-4.1/config).  The user version of
this file resides in ~/.vthought.  These files can be modified to add
or change available file formats and format translations.  For more
information, see the file note_export.txt.


Summary: Previous file name used as default for Save As and Export file choosers

The name of the previous file saved with the file chooser was used as
the default file name for the Save As, Export, and Save As Postscript
file choosers.  This sometimes made it easy for the user to overwrite
an old document with a current one.  The default file name for these
file choosers is now the title of the current document (associated
with the focused View), with the appropriate suffix added.


Summary: New relative paths and environment variables in attachment paths

File paths specified in the Attachment File field in the Inspector
Attachments panel may now be relative and may contain environment
variables and the symbols "~", ".", and "..".  Relative paths are
interpreted relative to the directory containing the document in which
the attachment is being made.


Summary: Example and palette documents used absolute attachment file paths

The example and palette documents (e.g., the Guided Tour) provided
with Visual Thought used absolute paths for attachment files in
previous releases.  This caused the attachments to fail or work
incorrectly in documents copied to another directory path.  All
attachment file paths in these documents are now relative, so the
documents can be copied successfully.


Summary: New Help menu and Help hot button

A Help menu and a Help hot button have been added to the Main window.
The Help->Introduction... menu item opens the document
examples/GuidedTour/Top.vthought.  The Help->Overview... menu item and
the Help hot button open the document examples/GuidedTour/Overview.vthought.


Summary: New technical notes and frequently-asked questions

A series of technical notes and answers to frequently-asked questions
have been added to the doc directory in the Visual Thought
installation directory.  Links to these text and html files are
provided in the document examples/GuidedTour/FAQ.vthought.  You can
open this document from the online Guided Tour, accessible through the
Help menu.


Summary: New HP Fusion and Jacobson Use Case (Objectory) shapes

The Shape list in the Inspector Shape panel now includes shapes for
the HP Fusion and Jacobson Use Case (Objectory) diagramming notations.


Summary: New double, inward, and Entity-Relationship connection arrowheads

The Arrow lists in the Inspector Shape panel now include arrowheads
for Entity-Relationship diagrams and double and inward-pointing
arrowheads for most arrowhead shapes.


Summary: New Gane & Sarson, HP Fusion, and Jacobson Use Case palettes

New palettes have been added for creating Gane & Sarson, HP Fusion,
and Jacobson Use Case (Objectory) diagrams.


Summary: New HP Fusion and Jacobson Use Case (Objectory) examples

New examples have been added illustrating the HP Fusion and Jacobson
Use Case (Objectory) object-oriented methodologies.


Summary: New computer network example and clipart palette

A new computer network example and a drag-and-drop palette containing
computer network component clipart have been added.


Summary: Right portion of menu buttons unresponsive in Page Layout dialog

The right portion of the Paper Type and Units menu buttons in the Page
Layout dialog did not respond to button clicks for the Motif
look-and-feel.  The entire menu buttons now respond to button clicks.


Summary: Equal-sized segments not selectable on curved connections

Segments of curved connections could not be selected if the segments
were bounded by segments of the same horizontal or vertical size.  All
segments of curved connections can now be selected.


Summary: Arrowheads not fully selectable on curved connections

Curved connections could not be selected by clicking on the center of
their arrowheads.  The entire length of arrowheads on curved
connections can now be selected.


Summary: Dashed arrowhead outlines for dashed connections

Some arrowheads were drawn with dashed outlines if the connection line
was dashed.  All arrowheads are now drawn with a solid outline.


Summary: Larger Shape and Arrow lists in the Inspector Shape panel

The Shape and Arrow lists in the Inspector Shape panel have been
lengthened so the Shape panel completely fills the Inspector window.


Summary: Incorrect colors saved in exported GIF files

Incorrect colors were sometimes saved in exported GIF files.  These
files now always contain the correct colors, as displayed on the
screen.


Summary: Color raster images exported to EPS as gray scale

Color images were always exported to Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)
using gray scales.  Color images are now exported to EPS in color if a
value of "vprintColorPS" is specified for the printclass preference.
For more information, see the file note_preferences.txt.


Summary: Windows displayed partially off-screen when documents opened

When a document is opened, the View or Palette windows associated with
the document might be displayed partially off-screen.  This depends on
the screen size and the window locations stored in the document.  It
typically occurs when standard Visual Thought examples and palettes
are displayed on a small screen.  The limittoscreen preference can now
be specified to cause all windows associated with an opened document
to be displayed entirely on-screen.  For more information, see the
file note_preferences.txt.


Summary: Window not redrawn on some displays when scrolled from a popup menu

On displays without Backing Store, the View window was not always
completely redrawn if a menu was popped up over the window and
selection of a menu item caused the View to be scrolled.  The window
is now completely redrawn in these cases.


Summary: View rulers incomplete after resize for some window managers

On some window managers, the View rulers were not enlarged when a View
window was resized to a larger size.  The rulers are now drawn
correctly when a View window is resized.


Summary: View scrollbars not correct after resize for some window managers

On some window managers, the View scrollbars were not updated properly
when a View window was resized.  The scrollbars are now updated
correctly when a View window is resized.


Summary: Inspector window border missing for some window managers

On some window managers, there was no border on the Inspector window.
The Inspector window now has a border in all cases.


Summary: Inspector and all View windows opened with the Main window

Opening an iconified Main window caused all iconified Visual Thought
windows to be opened.  This behavior has been changed so that
iconified Inspector, View, and Palette windows are now only opened
with the Main window if they were iconified with the Main window.


Summary: Windows not completely redrawn when the Main window was opened

Opening an iconified Main window occasionally opened, but did not
completely redraw, other Visual Thought windows.  All windows should
now be completely redrawn when they are opened.


Summary: Overlapping initial startup windows for some window managers

On some window managers, the four initial windows displayed during
startup partially overlapped one another.  The initial windows no
longer overlap.


Summary: Default numeric input values with units not scaled properly

Invalid user entries in some numeric input fields were replaced by
default values that were not scaled to account for the current
measurement units.  This problem occurred for the Size fields in the
Inspector Position panel, the Dimensions and Margins fields in the
Page Layout dialog, and the Spacing field in the Grid dialog.  The
default values placed in these fields are now properly scaled.


Summary: Rotation angles outside valid range after undo of large rotations

The rotation Angle field in the Inspector Position panel was set to
values outside the range 0 to 360 after undoing some object rotations.
This occurred if the angle of the object was changed by dragging the
rotation knob through multiple revolutions.  The rotation angle is now
always displayed in the range 0 to 360.


Summary: Only 8 kHz sample rate and u-law encoding supported for sound files

The only sound file format supported was a 8 kHz sample rate with
u-law encoding.  Sound files can now contain any sample rate and use
u-law, A-law, or 8-, 16-, 24-, or 32-bit linear PCM encoding.  For
internal representation, sound files are resampled at 8 kHz and stored
using u-law encoding.


Summary: Play of some sounds never stops

Play of a sound could fail to stop for some sound lengths.  Sound play
now stops in all cases.


Summary: Sound Editor meter incorrect when playing part of a sound

The Sound Editor meter showed the incorrect play volume when playing a
sound selection beginning after the start of a sound.  The meter now
shows the correct volume in all cases.


Summary: Large horizontal scroll increments in the Sound Editor

The horizontal scrollbar increments in the Sound Editor were too large
for sounds longer than approximately one second.  The increments are
now correct for sounds as long as approximately 100 seconds.  The
increments increase proportional to the length for sounds longer than
100 seconds.


Summary: Name of sound file cleared for Copy in Sound Editor

The name of an attached sound file was cleared when a Copy was
performed in the Sound Editor.  The sound file name is no longer
cleared in this case.
