hp2xx-3.4.4 (HPGL converter)

[mk]

hp2xx 3.4.4,

the latest release of the HPGL plotfile previewer/converter, is now
available from ftp.gnu.org and its usual mirror sites.

MD5 checksum for hp2xx-3.4.4.tar.gz is 18808580d24b7caf2c4c7045c093329f

This is mainly a bugfix release to correct some problems found in 3.4.3.
In addition, it provides a tentative framework for truetype font support
and a few other minor enhancements.
As always, suggestions and bug reports are appreciated.

Martin Kroeker,
address@hidden  or  address@hidden


New features in 3.4.4:

- Experimental support for truetype fonts (needs a fixed-width truetype
  font such as the monospace Bitstream Vera from www.gnome.org/fonts,
  fontlib, and '-DSTROKED_FONTS=\"/path/to/this/truetype/font.ttf\"' in the
  DEFINES section of the Makefile). Depending on the font, this should
  produce better-looking text than the default stick font at the expense
  of higher CPU and memory consumption. Support for non-ASCII characters
  is lacking, and the rendering is at the mercy of the still imperfect
  polygon rasterizer.
- Support for the rectangle mode of the PE statement (Eugene Doudine)
- NR is now recognized as an image terminator in multi-plot files.
- DXF output provides optional translation of pen number and/or width
  into DXF group 62 line attributes (Georg Viehoever).
- The error handler now tries to report the offending HPGL command sequence,
  not just its position in the input stream
- New option for mapping pen 0 commands to another pen, to avoid changing
  the background color in raster output modes.

Bugs fixed:
- penwidth was erroneously set to the default 0.1 mm after drawing a label
- xfig and rgip output did not yet handle the changed pencolor and width
  settings
- polygons sometimes had the wrong sections filled in for some of the
  scanlines
- forcing penwidth via the -p commandline option no longer worked for
  the conventional values between 1 and 9
- PJL parser now handles input lines of up to 256 characters
- polygon sides could escape clipping in some circumstances
- WG support was broken in 3.4.3 (coordinate error resulted in odd shapes)
- simplified HPGL output would write very small numbers in exponential
  notation, which is not allowed by any HPGL standard.
- DT handling was both incorrect and incomplete
- pdf and eps modes were using much too large miter limits
- exporting to raster modes could fail in some circumstances due to
  wrong linewidth corrections being applied in the raster buffer.
- arcs drawn with 'deviation distance' chord tolerance parameter were
  drawn as acute angles or even crashed hp2xx
- PNG export of color graphics was broken in 3.4.3
- SP command in PE mode did not update the internal pencount, potentially
  leading to use of a reduced color palette in the raster modes.
- Using -h,-? or even -help no longer generates an error message before the
  usage text is shown.

-- 
Dr. Martin Kroeker, daveg gmbh Darmstadt  CAD/CAM/CAQ  address@hidden
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