aseprite/NEWS.txt

===================================
NEWS
===================================

0.6
---

+ Added support to load and save PNG files (through 'libpng').
+ Rewritten the color-selector dialog.
+ Replaced the "List" menu with the tabs selector.
+ Rewritten the File Selector:
  + Preview support.
  + Incremental search.
  + History of navigation (Back/Forward).
  + In Windows: you can visit Desktop, My Documents and My Computer
    locations.
+ Optimized the loading/saving operations (using threads).
+ Restructured all the menus (more user friendly options).
+ Enhanced GUI:
  + more borders for windows and more spacing between widgets.
  + better mouse behavior (now in Windows the mouse is captured).
+ Finally screen scaling supported (with double-buffering). This means
  that you can use a screen of 320x240 between a window of 640x480
  (screen-scaling x2).
+ Fixed other minor problems when you drawn in 'tiled mode' or 'paste'
  the clipboard.
+ New XML format for the menus and keyboard shortcuts.
- Removed a lot of complex functionality:
  - Removed mask-repositories (you can use .msk files instead).
  - Removed menu scripting customization.
  - Removed screen saver.
  - Removed sessions.
  - Removed draw-text (it'll return in next versions).
  - Removed layer-sets (the Film-Editor can't handle them right at the
    moment)
  - Removed mapgen.
  - Removed linked-cels (were complex for the end-user).
  - Also the scripting support is broken, next versions of ASE will
    contain a better set of routines to create scripts.

0.5
---

+ Added features-requested by Carl Olsson:
  + better "snap to grid" support for box-like tools (rectangle,
    ellipse, etc.).
  + floating selection now "snap to grid" also.
  + added a subpixel movement for zoomed-cursors in the editor, to
    known where we are inside the pixel.
+ Better support for the mouse wheel and middle button in the
  sprite-editor (to scroll and zoom).
+ GIF support to save file fully supported by default.
+ Fixed compilation with Allegro 4.2.3 SVN (and fixed a bug in Allegro
  with key_shifts).
+ Now the full-screen or windowed state is remembered (thanks
  to Manuel De Miguel Moreno to report it).

0.4
---

- Removed the console mode.
+ Changed Film Editor shortcut: TAB key.
+ New feature: Each animation frame has duration.
+ New Palette Editor (F4 key).
+ Now sprites support multiple palettes: Each frame can has its own
  color palette.
+ Added support to load GIF files (by Elias Pschernig).
+ Added a combobox to file-selection to handle the bookmarks.
+ Added rotation!!!  Now you can scale and rotate what you paste from
  the clipboard.

0.3.1
-----

+ Fixed the creation of session files when an exception (fatal error)
  happens in Windows.
+ Added es.po and tips.es files.

0.3
---

+ Added session manager (if the program crashes the session is saved
  automatically).
+ Added a tool to draw text (finally).
+ More documentation and tips.
+ Improved the frame adding process.
+ Fixed important bugs.
+ Added a mapgen utility (original code by Johan Halm<6C>n and Anders
  Andersson).
+ Spanish language support (now works in Windows too).
+ Internal code improved (mainly GUI parts, and functions names).

0.2.4
-----

+ More stable undo: with limit and without the strange
  redo-after-overwrite-undo feature.
+ New median filter to despeckle images.
+ Updated alternative support to load/save JPEG files with JPGalleg 2.3
  library, thanks to Angelo Mottola for this.
+ Fixed problems with non-US keyboards: the Alt key can't be used for
  shortcuts.  Some combinations changes:
  + <~> to <`>             (open film editor)
  + <Ctrl+/> to <?>        (mask by color)
  + <Ctrl+~> to <Ctrl+4>   (close current editor)
+ Added Cut, Copy, Paste!
+ Added AutoCrop (before known as Trim).

0.2.3
-----

+ Fixed routine to save JPG files.
+ Fixed and improved various parts of GUI.

0.2.2
-----

+ Added some documentation to write Lua scripts.
+ Film Editor was improved.
+ Fixed errors with the graphics cursor, some keyboard problems, and
  various minor bugs.
+ New tips with text and images.  This will be very useful for
  beginners.
+ Onionskin feature is done.
+ Added (optional) ordered dithering to render RGB images in 8 bpp.
+ New actions: Merge Down, New Frame, Copy Frame, change Image Type!,
  Load Script File.
+ Optimized the drawing speed with tiled mode.

0.2.1
-----

+ Fixed in Windows version: spray and some errors saving file-names in
  the configuration file.
+ Added libintl support and the Spanish translation (only for Linux,
  but I have planned make this usable in Windows).
+ More undo support: insert/remove layers and mask modifications.
+ Filters Convolution Matrix and Color Curve are back.
+ Added more basic operations (with undo support): flatten layers,
  duplicate layer, duplicate sprite, horizontal/vertical flip, crop
  frame.
+ New .ASE format (in alpha status, please test it!).
+ Easy script routines: now are a high-level layer of routines (easy
  to use and understand), and the low-level routine's set (for
  internal or more specific works).
- Removed all the interpolation stuff between key-frames: yes, after
  thinking, this make too hard the animation edition (so the "fancy
  spline interpolation" was removed).
+ Optimized the editor's speed in scroll movements.
+ The Film Editor is almost done for layers and frames handle.
+ Fixed filters using mask with displaced layers.
+ Support to apply filters to various frames/layers at the same time.
+ Added differents screen layouts in main.jid (see FAQ.txt to see how
  change between them).
+ The tool bar is back!

0.2
---

+ Fixed a lot of bugs.
+ Added optional support for JPEG with JPGalleg 2.0 library.
+ Added draw mode: Opaque (normal), Glass (transparent), Semi
  (pattern).
+ Added brush types: Circle, Square, Line.
+ Implemented a fake-palette system to make the GUI usable with any
  sprite palette (mainly to avoid "black-screen" situations when open
  sprites with ugly palettes).
+ The palette editor has more improvements (like the possibility to
  move the selection range).
+ "menus" file modified a bit.  Some keyboard bindings have change
  (and new ones added), you can see the "docs/QuickHelp.html" file for
  more help.  Anyway, I try to leave the compability in the more used
  commands.
+ Full scripting support with Lua-5.0.  Sprites and GUI controllable
  from same scripts, to give you an idea, various of menus actions are
  programmed directly with scripts.
+ Complete selection handle (mask regions).  You can select irregular
  areas (add, subtract, intersect, by color), save and load them in
  the .MSK Animator Pro format.
+ Multiple editors.  Now you will be able to edit an image with zoom
  and see the results in other editors (updated in real-time).
+ New Gfx-core.  All sprite/image/layer/prop/key stuff was
  reprogrammed.  The more big change, was to property/keyframe level
  (the properties can be with lineal or spline interpolation, also,
  have a ending flag to make circular movements or patterns of movement).
+ New GUI.  The look and the internal code was reestructured
  completelly, I made a new GUI library: Jinete (rider).

0.1.2
-----

+ New RLE Gaussian Blur effect (from The GIMP source code).
+ Blender modes are back!: Normal, Multiply, Screen, Overlay,
  Hard Light, Darken, Lighten, Addition, Subtract, Difference, Hue,
  Saturation, Color, Luminosity.
+ Better the GUI look: With colors, this should be less boring :-)
+ Added a graphics selection dialog where you can specify any
  resolution (this could be useful for windowed modes).
+ Back again to the good-and-peaceful-allegro-like makefiles. Ok, ok,
  the GNU style was the worst change in ASE, but now is fixed :-)
- Removed the .DLL or .so capability for plug-ins. After some weeks of
  thinking, I decide to strip off this feature because is too hard to
  do a good system to attach new plug-ins with the current menu
  implementation. The most user are just "user" and don't will copy
  the plug-in and modify the `menus' to add a new entry with a little
  script-string to call the new plug-in action. Also, this save me a
  lot of headaches :-)
+ Added multiple filter application: Now, you can apply effects to
  every layer, to every animation frame, or both.
+ Added the "Recent Files" list.
+ A complete set of scripts routines to handle paths.
+ New selection type: "shrink", to shrink the selection to the current
  layer bitmap bounds.
+ New "trim_sprite" action.

0.1.0
-----

- Removed the `move' tool to displace layers (it was redundant).
+ New interface to load Plug-Ins in a dynamic way (DLL, .so).
+ Complete new support for JPEG files (RGB/grayscale) load/save:
  athwart the Independent JPEG Group's JPEG Library.
+ New actions:
  + trim_layer_bitmap: trim the current layer to the selection bounds.
  + merge_down: to merge the current layer with the next one.
  + make_undo_animation: to make an animation from the undo
    operations (to see all the progression of the graphics).
  + undo_history: to undo/redo various operations.
  + color_curve: to make color conversion effects pixel by pixel.
+ Improved the `Color Replace' command (with `tolerance' and `preview').
+ A new optimized layer-bar, to handle all the keyframe/properties stuff.
+ Various things rewritten to Plug-Ins:
  + file formats,
  + actions for menus (also, now these actions can be used from scripts).
+ Replaced the old `color depth' system to the new `image types':
  From now, an image can be: RGB, Grayscale, or Indexed type.
+ New ASE Library, with a complete new design to handle:
  images, layers, bitmaps, properties, keyframes, etc.
+ Source code to GNU style: with configure.in, Makefile.am, etc.

0.0.7
-----

+ New scripts routines: request(), apply_filter(), load_sprite(),
  and save_sprite().
+ Support to load FLI/FLC and to save FLC files. Yes! Now with ASE
  you can make FLC animations with a good compression performance.
+ Added the posibility to load/save sequences of bitmaps: like ani00.pcx,
  ani01.pcx, ani02.pcx, etc.
+ More undo functionality. I re-wrote the entire `undo' system.
+ New rectangular-selection tool: Now you can cut, copy, paste and clear.
+ New RLE compression for 8 bpp in .ase files.
+ Support to load .ase files of `0.0.6' and `0.0.7 CVS (important stage)':
  I recommend you upgrade all your .ase files to the `0.0.7 release' version.
+ New properties for keyframes: now each keyframe has its position and alpha,
  with this you can make animations of objects moving only the keyframes
  (all the intermediate frames will be calculate automatically).
+ Now the program remember the configuration (through `ase.cfg').
+ Added a new draw-tiled mode.
+ New full-screen editing mode. With resizable layer-bar.
+ Added an options to draw the previous frame in transparent mode.
- Removed the `background' properties of layers: from now, a layer
  will be transparent (masked-blitting) ever. With this are fixed
  a lot of problems with load/save routines in old versions.
+ New `reload_menus' command.

0.0.6
-----

- I still don't recommend you the .ase format (just for temporary usage):
  there are planes to change it.
+ Scripting capability athwart Lua language (http://www.lua.org/):
  now, you can make automatic tasks programming your own scripts
  (included some scripts as example).
+ Independent `alpha' (global transparency) and `blender-mode' for
  each layer (like in GIMP and Adobe Photoshop).
+ Improved the layer/frame-control:
  Now add/remove/move/copy layer and frames are really-very-easy
  with the new layer-panel (like in Macromedia Flash).
+ More easy tool-configuration.
+ New drawing tool: real-pencil, with a unique and original algorithm.
- Removed all the use of the Allegro GUI.
+ New original (and ugly) GUI look:
  now, the colors are in harmony for the eyes.

0.0.5
-----

+ More facilities to handle colors with different `alpha'.
+ New animation control: need test (see `bugs.txt' to report errors).
+ Optimized the color-selection dialog: now you can make gammas
  between *four* colors.
+ Added a `preview' in the apply-filter dialog.
+ New improved gui system (for the users and for the developers).
+ New `tile' and `reload' option for the filters.
+ New view-tile option in tool-menu (for make tileable patterns).

0.0.4
-----

+ Modificable draw properties:
  thickness, alpha color, spray random factor, and spray radius.
+ Undo support for all tools.
+ Multiple drawing tools support:
  pixel, pencil, fill, spray, line, rectangle, and ellipse;
+ New improved layer control.
+ A lot of optimizations in the status bar.
+ New duplicate sprite option.
+ New session manager, for load and save your work. Other utility of this,
  is if the program crash for any reason, it auto-backups your data.
- Bad news: the old .ase format is incompatible with the new one:
  I recommend you don't save in .ase until the 0.1 release.
+ New "visible" property for hide and show the layers.
+ New change color-depth function.
+ Added a set-gfx-mode option in the system-menu.
+ New duplicate layer support.

0.0.3
-----

+ New .ase format (for save the layers).
+ More keyboard shorcuts (with a new `keys.txt').
+ New layers operations: insert, move and remove.
+ RGBA (alpha channel) bitmaps support.
+ New filter capability, with some examples of filters.
+ An incredible new way to create dialogs (for programmers only).
+ More "Windows friendly" text files.
+ New optimized status bar.
+ New improved look of the GUI.

0.0.2
-----

+ New "infinite" Undo & Redo support.
+ Some importants bug fixed.

0.0.1
-----

+ One tool: interactive line.
+ Color selection support.
- Poor palette modification capability.