Ptolemy II 0.4beta is available for download, see http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/ptolemyII/ptII0.4/ If you are running Netscape Communicator, or Microsoft Internet Explorer, and have the JDK1.2.2 plugin installed, then you can run the applet demos. Other users will need to download and install Ptolemy II to run the applets. The beta version of the release notes are as follows: --start-- Ptolemy II 0.4beta Release Notes -------------------------------- Ptolemy II 0.4beta is a release of the Ptolemy II Java classes and the Ptolemy II design document Ptolemy II 0.4beta includes applet demonstrations of the domains, but it does not include a GUI. The design document describes the Ptolemy II design and the implementation of the Java classes. The Ptolemy design document is shipped with Ptolemy 0.4, it can be found in $PTII/doc/design. The most recent copy of the Ptolemy II design document can be found online at http://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/ptolemyII/doc/design.html Major Features that are new in Ptolemy 0.4 * Ptolemy II 0.4 supports an XML language called MoML for specifying component-based models. (Edward A. Lee, Steve Neuendorffer and the Ptolemy Team) * The source code for the Finite State Machine (FSM) domain is included. (Xiaojun Liu and the Ptolemy Team) * Major rewrite of the type system. (Yuhong Xiong) * The Discrete Event domain has been tuned for performance. (Edward A. Lee and the Ptolemy Team) * We are moving away from the JDK1.1 collections package and using the JDK1.2 collections classes from java.util. Methods that shipped with Ptolemy II 0.3 that used the JDK 1.1 collections package have been marked as deprecated in Ptolemy II 0.4. It is our intention to remove these deprecated methods in Ptolemy II 1.0 and to no longer ship the $PTII/collections directory. (The Ptolemy Team) * Support for fix point data types. (Bart Kienhuis, Yuhong Xiong) * Various demonstrations have been added, removed and/or rewritten. (The Ptolemy Team) * Commmand line invocation of models via $PTOLEMY/bin/ptolemy. (Edward A. Lee, Christopher Hylands and the Ptolemy Team) Platforms --------- The core of Ptolemy II 0.4 is 100% Java, so it should work on any platform that has JDK1.2. We developed Ptolemy II 0.4 under Solaris 2.5.1 and NT4.0sp3 and later with JDK1.2.2. Ptolemy II 0.4 has also been built and tested under JDK1.3 beta. Ptolemy II 0.4 will not compile under JDK1.1.x. See the Jacl section of the installation page for information about the Ptolemy II test suite Limitations ----------- * The gzipped tar file that contains the Ptolemy II distribution requires GNU tar or WinZip. Solaris 2.5.1 tar will fail to untar this file with a checksum error because the pathnames are longer than 100 characters. If you do not have GNU tar, you can obtain source and selected binaries from ftp://ptolemy.eecs.berkeley.edu/pub/gnu. * Ptolemy II 0.4 does not include a GUI. * This is the first release of the Finite State Machine domain (FSM) which has the following limitations * The FSM design document chapter is not part of the 0.4 beta * There are not very many tests for FSM * MoML support for FSM models is incomplete. * The readFile() parameter function does not work with applets. * The import statement in MoML requires the base attribute. The following will not work: <import source="testClass2.xml"/> Use the following instead <import base="../../.." source="ptolemy/moml/test/testClass2.xml"/> * The JDK1.2.1 Plug-in has a bug that causes the Netscape or Iexplorer process to linger after exiting. The workaround is to turn of the JIT using the Java Plug-in Control Panel, see the Troubleshooting guide for details. This bug may be fixed in JDK1.2.2. --end-- The next step is to update the design doc, I expect this will take 2-3 weeks, after which we will release Ptolemy II 0.4. At that time, I'll announce the release to ptolemy-interest and at other locations. After we release Ptolemy II 0.4, we will release a standalone release of Ptplot4.1 Our current plan is to ship Ptolemy 1.0 in September. Possible features in Ptolemy 1.0 include: * CORBA/Jini work * A GUI called Vergil * Discrete Time (SDF with a notion of time) * Synchronous/Reactive * There will be no deprecated methods in the kernel * The collections directory will not be included * All demos will use MoML and MoMLApplet If you have questions or problems with the beta release, please post them to ptolemy-hackers. -Christopher Christopher Hylands [EMAIL PROTECTED] University of California Ptolemy/Gigascale Silicon Research Center US Mail: 558 Cory Hall #1770 ph: (510)643-9841 fax:(510)642-2739 Berkeley, CA 94720-1770 home: (510)526-4010 (Office: 493 Cory) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted to the ptolemy-hackers mailing list. Please send administrative mail for this list to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
