[Kde-announce-apps] Zhu3D 2.7.9

[Heinz van Saanen]

Name: Zhu3D
Version: 2.7.9
Type: Scientific
Depend: Qt 4.x
License: GPL
More Info:
http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=43071

Description:
 With Zhu3D you interactively can view and animate
functions, isosurfaces and a further independent
parametric system. Numerical solutions of an
equation system can be found with a precise and
reliable adaptive random search. The OpenGL-viewer
supports zooming, scaling, rotating and
translating as well as filed lightning or surface
properties. Special effects are transparency,
textures, fog and motion blur.

You have up to eight independent lights or
spotlights, background settings, miscellaneous
wire-modes or global illumination models. Pictures
are rendered as PNG, JPG, PDF or PostScript and
can be of arbitrary size. For textures Zhu3D
recognizes nine common formats. Isosurfaces you
can be visualized with different volume-based
algorithms.

Zhu3D runs under Linux/Unix, Windows 98-XP and Mac
OS X and is localized for English, German,
Spanish, French and Chinese. It supports different
CPU's as well as different API's like KDE, Motiv,
Gnome or Windows. All settings can be changed
dynamically at runtime. The application comes with
extended help files and a lot of examples.

COMPILING:

All you need is Qt 4.1 or later and support for
OpenGL 1.2, what can be a software implementation
like Mesa. The qmake easily can be taylored for
special needs, what supports packagers.

HARDWARE:

For basic viewings even an old and slow PC without
hardware accelerated OpenGL is sufficient.
However, enabling goddies like animation, big
textures and especially motion blur is a challenge
for every GPU out there. On the other hand
isosurfaces with dense meshes need a lot of
CPU-power.

VERSIONS:

Whatever ends with an odd number, is considered as
"pre". Those versions are not intended to be
unfinished or buggy, but my testing capabilities
are limited to my own HW/SW-configurations. So
especially packagers may wait for an even number.
This happens after a significant amount of
downloads and no major problems reported. A
complete Windows version is available - special
thanks to Victor Fernandez, who is hosting this!

WINDOWS VISTA:

As probably most of you, I did not install the
marvellous Vista:-) Anyhow I would be interested,
if Zhu3D works with it as it should. A newer
Windows version is online now. If you can test it,
please give me a short e-mail notice.


Have fun, Heinz van Saanen

Changelog:
 What is new in 2.9.0

- Replaced recursive OpenGL-parser with the
bytecode-version from Warp. With some additional
tuning the average speed gain is between
300%-500%. Especially important for costly
isosurfaces on slower machines
- Raised upper limit for isosurface grid
- The parser syntax changed slightly. E.g:
2X*SIN(XY) must be written as 2*x*sin(x*y) now
- To stay compatible added all missing functions
to the Warp-parser and introduced the $ sign for
constants there
- New parser functions are: floor(), ceil(),
cot(), csc(), sec()
- Added new functions to recursive parser, which
is still in use for solving due to it's precision
- In parameter mode the Z-grid buttons
consequently are disabled now
- Some code shrink measurements
- Completely reworked examples for new syntax
- Loading a zhu-file always starts with a blank
viewer window now. This avoids worrying
intermixing of old/new views during build up
- Small changes in menu entries/GUI to reflect
real meanings better
- Improvements for Chinese GUI-translation.
Special thanks again to Yanqing and Henri Girard
for maintaining this translation
- Enabled the nicer Zhuz3D-logo in GUI/menu
entries too now
- The combobox under "Settings/General/Language"
did not retranslate it's own language entries
immediately. Fixed
- Clean ups in ./src for readability and
unifications

What was new in 2.7.8

- Changed to a backward compatible language
picking strategy, which prevents a one-time
language change after an update. NOTE: This is a
change for distribution packagers mainly and is
released to ensure a stringent version policy. For
"normal" 2.7.6 users there is NO real need for an
update! You may have to change your language
setting when updating the next time however.
Distributors are asked to cancel 2.7.6 and to use
2.7.8 instead, what avoids problems with future
updates as described above.  For any fresh
installs all these things are completely
irrelevant. Thanks to Darwin Bautista who pointed
this out

NOTE: The packages below may be behind the
original src.tar.gz of course.