Release Notes for JMRI 4.3.2 release

Date: January 8, 2016

From: Bob Jacobsen

Subject: Test version 4.3.2 of JMRI/DecoderPro is available for download.

Notes:

This is a test release. Please post a note if you encounter any new or old bugs! And please back up your JMRI files before installing this, in case you want to go back to an earlier version.

This is the next in a series of test versions. We expect this series to end in the next JMRI production release around the middle of 2016. (See the tentative release schedule)

Some of the changes involved are quite extensive. They may require a certain amount of experience before they are working well. Therefore, this test version should be considered experimental.

JMRI is now only available under the GNU General Public License. For more information, please see our copyright and licensing page.

Known problems with this release

None at release time.

New warnings for this version:

None yet.

Older warnings

See the JMRI 4.2 release note for warnings predating the 4.3 development series. These may be relevant to you if you're updating from an earlier version.

The internals of the Layout Editor have been reworked a bit. Please keep an eye out for any changed behaviors.

The code for handling Panel Editor / Control Panel Editor icons has changed to better deal with rotating icons. This has changed how opaque vs transparent icon backgrounds are handled. Please check your panels to make sure we haven't inadvertently caused a problem, particularly if you've got rotated icons and/or use have custom icons with transparent backgrounds. If there are any problems, please send in a copy of your panel file so we can recreate the problem and fix it.

The configuration is now stored in multiple files within a directory named profile inside a Configuration Profile instead of within the file ProfileConfig.xml. PanelPro and DecoderPro both should migrate from the old configuration to the new configuration seamlessly. See JMRI Issue #69 for more details. Please report any issues at our GitHub project.

The XML schema for decoder files has been made more precise. This shouldn't effect people who just use the JMRI decoder definitions as distributed, because they all work with this more precise version. But if you have decoder definitions of your own, you may have to update them. Ask for help on JMRI Users group if you have trouble. Specifically, the decoder file verification will now reject a few things that it didn't catch before, even though they didn't really work:

• There can be only one label element for a given language on a given variable.
• A variable element has to contain just one type element such as decVal, enumVal, etc.

As a side effect of checking this, the qualifier elements inside a variable now have to be at the front of the contents, and the label, comment and tooltip elements have to be at the back. You can't just sprinkle them around and hope the code finds them (because sometimes in the past the program would miss one; now we require an order we're sure the code will understand).

Mac OS X 10.11 El Capitan requires signed drivers for USB adapters. If you've upgraded from an earlier version, your drivers may not work. That will cause JMRI to throw errors when it doesn't find communications links. To fix this, go to the website for your adapter manufacturer, find the drivers that are listed to work with Mac OS X 10.9 or later, download, and install, then retry JMRI again.

Jython has been upgraded to version 2.7.0 with the following potentially breaking changes:

• The decodeJmriFilename() function is no longer available by default. Use the FileUtil.getExternalFilename() method instead.
• The simple propertyListener object is no longer available by default. Create your own, following the examples provided in the jython folder in the JMRI distribution.
• jmri_defaults.py included in the JMRI distribution is no longer executed by default, but will be executed before any other Jython scipts if included in your User Files location.
• The default behavior of python.cachedir.skip is now true. If using a custom python.properties file, include "python.cachedir.skip=false" in that file.
• Certain Python scripts are too large to be evaluated in Jython. If a script fails with the java.io.IOException: Mark invalid error, set "jython.exec=true" in a custom python.properties file or rewrite the script to be less than 100,000 characters per file. Note that when using "jython.exec=true" it may be desirable to run the included script jmri_bindings.py as a startup action to emulate the evaluation environment used when jython.exec=false.

Decoder definitions that use the "ivariable" form are now deprecated. Definitions included with this release have been converted to the new form. If you have decoder definitions with the older "ivariable" form, they will no longer validate, but can still be used for the first couple of test releases in this series. Please ask on the JMRI users Groups.io group for help converting them, or just drop them and use the current definitions.

The OpenLCB 0.6.4 library in this version has a bug in its alias calculations which prevents JMRI from communicating occasionally. A patch has been submitted to the OpenLCB group, but as they seem no longer interested in maintaining that code, it's not known when this will be fixed. In the meantime, the workaround is to restart JMRI and/or the hardware node(s) and try again; that might allocate different alias values.

Download links:

Please use these links for downloading:

Changes since test release 4.3.1:

The list of included commits is available from our GitHub code repository.

New / Updated decoder definitions

• Identify & Read Type fall back to Paged Mode if the selected mode fails. (Dave Heap)
• HTML can now be used in variable labels. It can already be used in pane text and tool tips. See Advanced Decoder Definitions. (Dave Heap)

ESU

• The ESU decoder file panes have been reorganised in line with better practice. (Dave Heap)

SoundTraxx

• Michael Mosher updated the Econamy definitions from the 1.3 manuals
• Soundtraxx was added as an OEM for the Athearn RTR SD40

ZIMO

• Mark Waters updated files to hide the Version 34 decoders as the v34 updates are included in the v33 files with qualifiers.
• Mark Waters updated files to fix dimming mask meanings inverted, as reported on user group.

Operations

• You can now manually add or delete rolling stock from a built train no matter where in the route the train is. Previously, you could only add cars to a train that hadn't departed its terminal. Now as long as the car or loco's location hasn't been serviced by the train, you can manually modify the train's manifest. Nice feature for operators that run in real time.
• New feature, you can now add a comment for each of the radio buttons in the Timetable window.
• You can now enter a two digit build date for your rolling stock. A two digit date will convert to something built in the 1900s.
• You can now force a track length to be shorter than the track space consumed by your rolling stock. This allows you to make length adjustments without having to remove the cars or locos sitting on the track.
• Fixed a problem where operations would lockup during a train build if "Auto HPT" was selected for loco assignment, and no cars were assigned to the train during the build, and the assigned loco weight was set to zero.

Panel Editors

• Layout Editor panel files are validated against XML Schema. These schema were improved to catch several kinds of internal inconsistencies.

Scripting

• Several improvements to the scripting windows
• ECMAScript is now consistently referred to as that, instead of sometimes being called JavaScript

Miscellaneous

• Updated the libUSB (for misc USB device support), and enabled use on 64-bit MacOS X systems
• Updated the Joal library to now correctly load WAV files that contain metadata at the end of the file
• Herve Blorec improved the French translations
• The stop aspect for Danish signals was improved
• The "Monitor" panes in several systems weren't obeying the "always on top" check box, fixed.

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