Week highlights: new releases of HDRView, LibreCAD, and cabbage; new features in GIMP and Ardour; FreeCAD’s alternative Ribbon UI gets an update.
GIMP
The DDS plugin now support loading files with BC7 compression. CmykStudent read the docs, looked up the implementation in ImageMagick, and wrote the code. This is a new feature, which seems counter-intuitive for something that has had two release candidates, but there you go.
HDRView 2.1.0
Wojciech Jarosz made a new release of HDRView.
Here are some of the changes:
- Restored support for writing OpenEXR images.
- Added reading/writing support for Ultra HDR JPEG images.
- Improved the Images and the Info panels.
- Three mouse modes/tools: 1) Pan and zoom, 2) Rectangular selection, and 3) Pixel/color selector
- New Pixel inspector panel for editing selections and showing color info for the hovered pixel.
Builds are available for Windows and macOS.
FreeCAD
Developers are slowly getting back after the winter holidays. There’s some new work on defeaturing in FEM and some much welcome improvements in BIM. But overall, things are a bit on the slow side, especially compared to the PR merging rush in December.
Meanwhile, Paul Ebbers released Ribbon UI v1.6.0, an addon that changes the regular UI of the program to Ribbon-like UI. It still has some rough edges, but it’s all coming together, one release at a time:
- It is now possible to set the tabs to “Icons only”.
- Layouts for specific workbenches can now be imported.
- The application button is redesigned and simplified and now has Alt+A for shortcut.
- The size for quick access toolbar buttons, tab bar and right toolbar buttons are now set by one setting.
- Text for medium and large button can now be shown on two lines
- With drop down buttons: when text is enabled, the click area for showing menus is increased by including the text
There doesn’t seem to be any agreement that this could become either default or optional UI. So if you are in the anti-ribbon camp, fear not.
LibreCAD 2.2.1
It’s been two years in the making. The release also marks the return of Dongxu Li to development after a 7 years long hiatus.
What’s new:
- Native builds for Win64 and SnapCraft.
- Experimental support for the parabola geometry primitive.
- Support for RTL text (unfinished for numbers).
- Hatching area now displayed in the dialog for existing hatches.
- Layer tree, pen pallet, and many new drawing methods.
- Hovering effect for entities.
- Rendering implementation cleanup for performance and consistent appearance.
- More GUI and command line improvements.
You can get your downloads here.
Ardour
In a semi-expected turn of events, there is now alpha-quality code for opening MIDI regions in a pianoroll window. There’s literally just the window that shows nothing except the pianoroll, the timeline, and some controls. You can’t even see MIDI events. But if you’ve been around long enough and you know about Paul’s reluctancy to implement this feature, you know how much it means.
On a related note, the team recently backported the New/Recent/Open dialog from LiveTrax to provide a better UX for users. The dialog has some resizing issues, but those will be ironed out long before v9.0 knocks at your door.
alphaOsc
Gordon JC Pearce, who was among readers of an long-running thread at KVRAudio about Alpha Juno oscillators, took matters into his owns hands and wrote an open-source (ISC License) implementation with DPF for UI.
As Gordon says, it has no antialiasing or anything, it’s literally just the oscillator. Enjoy!
Cabbage 2.10
Rory Walsh published the end-of-life release of Cabbage, a framework for audio software development based on Csound. The decision to drop Cabbage was apprently made in response to EULA changes by JUCE developers last year, there is a forum thread about that where Rory discusses the future JUCE-free direction for the project. Cabbage was good for ya, but for now, this is the end of the Cabbage.
Artworks
ASC Nexus - Vana Subcity by Ludvík Koutný, made with Blender and Unreal Engine for the Nexus project by Aaron Sims Creative:
The King of The Sea by Bruna Queiroz, made with Blender:
Speedpainting 01122024 by Sylvia Ritter, made with Krita:
Bubble Planet with Electric Ramps by Artem Katalkin, made with Blender and Photoshop:
Neon Tears by Haider Ali, made with Blender:
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