© 1998 Michael J. Hammel

Blender Manual
Moxy 0.1.2
Quick Image Viewer 0.9.1
GQView 0.4.3
FLTK 19981006
XawTV 2.28
jmk-x11-fonts 1.2
KIllustrator
MathMap
Metro-X 4.3
GNU PlotUtils 2.1.6
Simple DirectMedia Layer Version 0.8
tkscanfax
MAM/VRS

Xi Graphics

- SiS 5598
- NeoMagic, Toshiba, Gateway, benchmarks
- 3D Hardware Support
- Monthly drawing for FREE Accelerated-X

Disclaimer: Before I get too far into this I should note that any of the news items I post in this section are just that - news. Either I happened to run across them via some mailing list I was on, via some Usenet newsgroup, or via email from someone. I'm not necessarily endorsing these products (some of which may be commercial), I'm just letting you know I'd heard about them in the past month.

Blender Manual is now available for ordering
The Blender Manual is available for purchase: http://www.blender.nl/shop/index.html. Looks to be about $49US for a fairly hefty manual.

Moxy 0.1.2
Moxy is a linear video editor, much like Adobe's Premiere. It can load many different file format (Including MJPEG AVIs, P*Ms and JMF) and output AVIs. It comes with some transitions (you can make some yourself, they're plugins) and you are free to contribute code.
http://millennium.diads.com/moxy/

Quick Image Viewer 0.9.1
Quick Image Viewer (qiv) is a very small and pretty fast GDK/Imlib image viewer. Features include zoom, maxpect, scale down, fullscreen, brightness/contrast/gamma correction, slideshow, flip horizontal/vertical, rotate left/right, delete (move to .qiv-trash/), jump to image x, jump forward/backward x images, filename filer and you can use qiv to set your X11-Desktop background.

This version works on Solaris/SunOS again.
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/5235/

GQview 0.4.3
GQview is an X11 image viewer for the Linux operating system. Its key features include single click file viewing, external editor support, thumbnail preview, thumbnail caching and adjustable zoom. GQview is currently available in source, binary, and rpm versions and requires the latest GTK and Imlib libraries.

This release adds copy and move capabilities, the ability to hide the tools area, cancel thumbnail generation by pressing Escape, and more.
http://www.klografx.de/
http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Haven/5235/

FLTK 19981006
FLTK (pronounced "fulltick") is a LGPL'd C++ user interface toolkit for X, OpenGL, and Microsoft Windows. FLTK is deliberately designed to be small, so that you can statically link it with your applications and not worry about installation problems. As a side effect it is also extremely fast.

On September 25, 1998, Digital Domain instructed Mr. Bill Spitzak to discontinue development of FLTK. Shortly thereafter a group of developers for FLTK reincarnated the library on a mirror site so that development could continue. The FLTK web page, FTP site, mailing list, and CVS server are being hosted by Easy Software Products, a small software firm located in Maryland. Easy Software Products develops commercial software and supports free software.
http://fltk.easysw.com/

XawTV 2.28
XawTV is a simple Xaw-based TV program which uses the bttv driver or video4linux. It contains various command-line utilities for grabbing images and avi movies, for tuning in TV stations, etc. A grabber driver for vic and a radio application (needs KDE) for the boards with radio support are included as well.
http://www.in-berlin.de/User/kraxel/xawtv.html

jmk-x11-fonts 1.2
The jmk-x11-fonts package contains character-cell fonts for use with the X Window System. The current font included in this package is NouveauGothic, a pleasantly legible variation on the standard fixed fonts that accompany most distributions of the X Window System. It comes in both normal and bold weights in small, medium, large, and extra-large sizes. Currently only ISO-8859-1 encoding is available.

New in this release of Jim's fonts for X is a set of alternate NouveauGothic fonts with a more traditionally shaped ampersand glyph, for those who don't particularly like the style of NG's regular ampersand.
http://www.ntrnet.net/~jmknoble/fonts/

KIllustrator 0.4.1
KIllustrator is a freely available vector-based drawing application for the famous K Desktop Environment similiar to Corel Draw(tm) or Adobe Illustrator(tm). This version contains a new layer facility as well as some bug fixes and performance improvements.
http://wwwiti.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/~sattler/killustrator.html

MathMap 0.7

MathMap is a GIMP plug-in which allows distortion of images specified by mathematical formulas. For each pixel in the generated image, an expression is evaluated which should return a pixel value. The expression can either refer to a pixel in the source image or can generate pixels completely independent of the source. MathMap not only allows the generation of still images but also of animations.

The MathMap homepage can be found at

> http://www.unix.cslab.tuwien.ac.at/~schani/mathmap/

It includes a user's manual as well as screenshots and examples.

Changes since 0.6:

- Implemented the tagged tuples type system. This is major feature!
- Implemented better error handling by borrowing a piece of code from the current development tree of chpp.

Mark Probst
schani@unix.cslab.tuwien.ac.at

METRO-X 4.3

The following announcement was posted to comp.os.linux.announce by MetroLink, Inc.

> NOW AVAILABLE FOR LINUX/ALPHA!

> The Metro-X Enhanced Server Set from Metro Link is now available for Linux/Alpha. Metro-X provides more speed and more features at a very LOW PRICE!

> Metro-X 4.3 is an X11 Release 6.3 server replacement with all the features you need. It provides support for the fastest, most popular graphics cards on the market today. In addition, Metro-X includes touch screen support and multi-screen support at no extra charge! So what IS the charge? Only $39!

> ===GRAPHICAL CONFIGURATION UTILITY===

> Forget hand editing configuration files or clumsy character-based setup utilities. Metro-X 4.3 includes a state-of-the-art graphical configuration program. ConfigX helps you get up and running in no time.

> ===EXTENSIVE GRAPHICS CARD SUPPORT===

> Want support for the latest, highest-performance graphics cards? Then you want Metro-X 4.3. Check the Metro-X 4.3 cardlist for Linux/Alpha on the web site to see which cards are supported, as well as the available resolutions and colors for each. In addition, as support becomes available for new cards between releases, these updates to Metro-X 4.3 will be made available at no charge.

> ===MONITOR SUPPORT===

> Tired of adjusting your monitor or hand-editing timing parameters? With Metro-X you can relax. Just select your monitor from the list and we do the rest. Even adjusting the image is made easy with a graphical adjustment tool. Using the mouse or keyboard, you simply stretch, shrink, or shift the image placement on the monitor!

> ===TOUCH SCREEN SUPPORT INCLUDED===

> At no extra charge, Metro-X 4.3 includes support for several models of touch screens. These include the serial touch-screen controllers from:

> > - Carroll Touch
> > - EloGraphics
> > - Lucas Deeco
> > - MicroTouch

> ===MULTI-HEADED DISPLAY SUPPORT INCLUDED===

> At no extra charge, Metro-X 4.3 includes support for up to 4 screens per server which can all be controlled simultaneously with a single keyboard and mouse. This allows you to run many applications without overlapping windows. The graphical configuration utility makes it simple to configure multiple graphics cards and even lets you pick the screen layout. You can utilize this feature with many combinations of these cards:

> > - Matrox Millennium
> > - Matrox Millennium II
> > - Matrox Mystique
> > - Matrox Mystique 220

> NOTE: Only one Mystique or Mystique 220 (not both) may be used in the combination.

> ===ROBUST PERFORMANCE===

> Reliability and performance are the foundation of Metro-X. Our customers are using Metro-X in demanding applications from the Space Shuttle to the Battlefield. Metro-X 4.3 incorporates advanced dynamic loader technology which eliminates the need to build servers for specific types of graphics cards. It makes server configuration quick and easy.

> ===METRO OPENGL EXTENSION AVAILABLE SOON===

> Using Metro-X's dynamic loader technology, adding an extension like Metro OpenGL is as easy as installing a package and running a program. This product will be available for Linux/Alpha very soon.

> ===METRO LINK TECH SUPPORT===

> As always, software purchased from Metro Link comes with 90 days of free technical support (via phone, fax, or email) and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

> ===SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS===

> HARDWARE: Metro-X 4.3 requires 14 MB of disk space. 8MB of RAM are required; 16 MB are recommended.

> SOFTWARE: Packages are provided in both RPM and tar/gzip formats. Metro-X 4.3 requires these minimum versions of software: Linux Kernel 2.0.30; glibc 2.0.5c; and XFree86 3.3.1.

> ===AVAILABILITY AND DISTRIBUTION===

> PRICE: Metro-X 4.3 is $39

> AVAILABILITY: Now

> DISTRIBUTION: Metro-X is only distributed via FTP. A postscript version of the Metro-X manual is included. With a credit card payment, the FTP instructions are usually emailed on the same day the order is received. Be sure to include your email address when ordering.

> ===CONTACT METRO LINK===

> www.metrolink.com
> sales@metrolink.com
> +1-954-938-0283 ext. 1
> +1-954-938-1982 fax

GNU PlotUtils 2.1.6

Version 2.1.6 of the GNU plotting utilities ("plotutils") package is now available. This release includes a significantly enhanced version of the free C/C++ GNU libplot library for vector graphics, as well as seven command-line utilities oriented toward data plotting (graph, plot, tek2plot, plotfont, spline, ode, and double). A 130-page manual in texinfo format is included.

As of this release, GNU libplot can produce graphics files in Adobe Illustrator format. So you may now write C or C++ programs to draw vector graphics that Illustrator can edit. Also, the support for the free `idraw' and `xfig' drawing editors has been enhanced. For example, the file format used by xfig 3.2 is now supported.

RPM's for the plotutils package are available at ftp.redhat.com and at Red Hat mirror sites. The following are available:

> ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/i386/plotutils-2.1.6-1.i386.rpm
> ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/sparc/plotutils-2.1.6-1.sparc.rpm
> ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/contrib/SRPMS/plotutils-2.1.6-1.src.rpm

For more details on the package, see its official Web page, http://www.gnu.org/software/plotutils/plotutils.html .

I hope you find this release useful (send bug reports and suggestions for enhancement both to bug-gnu-utils@gnu.org and to me). Enjoy.
Robert S. Maier - rsm@math.arizona.edu

Simple DirectMedia Layer Version 0.8

This library is designed to make it easy to write games that run on Linux, Win32 and BeOS using the various native high-performance media interfaces, (for video, audio, etc) and presenting a single source-code level API to your application. This is a fairly low level API, but using this, completely portable applications can be written with a great deal of flexibility.

SDL has been split into a stable release, 0.8.x, and a development release, 0.9.x. The stable version is very robust, having been extensively tested over the past 3 months. The development version has some exciting features in progress, such as automatically adjusting to display changes, CD-ROM support, and more.

Get it now from: http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/

GIMP lovers, grab your brushes!
The "Official SDL Logo Contest" is now in session. Send your entries, or instructions on downloading your entries, via e-mail to slouken@devolution.com The winner will get his or her logo on the SDL web site, and will get their names in the CREDITS list for the next version of SDL! You can view the contest entries at http://www.devolution.com/~slouken/SDL/contest/.

And if you're wondering.. "what can I really do with SDL?", be sure and download the examples archive, which contains demontrations of:

- Simple sprite animation
- Flame effects
- Organic firework animation
- Playing .FLC and .FLI animations
- Playing WAV and Macintosh sound resources
- Playing .MOD, .S3M, and .XI modules
- Plasma effects and palette animation
- Cut and paste of text and images
- Starfield rotation
- Truetype font rendering with FreeType 1.1
- Dynamic image warping
- Emulating the Prometheus TrueColor API

If you are interested, join the development mailing list by sending e-mail to: sdl-subscribe@surfnetcity.com.au

Enjoy, Sam Lantinga <slouken@devolution.com>

tkscanfax
tkscanfax provides combined GUI for command line scanner driver and mgetty+sendfax, written in tcl/tk. It is a continuation of tkscan-0.8. This version adds mgetty+sendfax GUI combined with tkscan to get fax scanning from tkscan.

It is available from http://muon.kaist.ac.kr/~hbkim/linux/tkscanfax and also from the apps/graphics/capture directory at Sunsite.

There is no documentation at this time. Please send questions, problems, comments or suggestions to Hang Bae Kim <hbkim@muon.kaist.ac.kr>

MAM/VRS

MAM/VRS is a library for animated, interactive 3D graphics, written in C++. It works on Unix (tested on Linux, Solaris and Irix) and Windows 95/98/NT. MAM/VRS can produce output for many rendering systems: OpenGL (or Mesa), POVRay, RenderMan and VRML are supported. It provides bindings to many GUIs: Xt (Motif/Lesstif/Athena), Qt, Tcl/Tk, MFC and soon Gtk. It is covered by the terms of the GNU LGPL. Visit our homepage for more information and to download it:

> http://wwwmath.uni-muenster.de/~mam

Though this is the first public announcement, MAM/VRS has been in active development and use for a long time and is stable. MAM/VRS is not a 3D modeler or a 3D CAD/CAM program, but it ...

- is a C++ 3D graphics library,
- offers a convenient scene graph API to quickly build complex 3D scenes,
- contains many classes to modify or interact with the objects of the scenes, and to create animations,
- is very extensible: support for new renderers, GUIs, shapes, attributes, interaction or rendering techniques etc. can be added easily,
- comes with a tutorial, per-class documentation and many examples.

Xi Graphics

There were a slew of announcements from Xi Graphics posted to comp.os.linux.announce this past month. I've globbed them together here under a single section.- 'Muse

SiS 5598 support

> Xi Graphics made SiS 5598 support available on September 14th, joining the previously supported SiS 6326. Configurations for 1, 2, 3 and 4MB are supported.

> The SiS 5598 is not capable of supporting overlays but does support hardware gamma color correction in all color depths. Maximum supported resolution is 1600x1200@60Hz in 8bpp, and 1024x768@75Hz in 24bpp (packed) operation. Hardware cursor is supported in all color depths. The Accelerated-X Server conforms to the X Window System as measured by the freely available X Test Suite.

> The update, which should be applied against the desktop (AX version) Accelerated-X Server version 4.1.2, is available from the Xi Graphics Anon-FTP site at URL:

> > ftp://ftp.xig.com/pub/updates/accelx/desktop/4.1.2/D4102.013.tar.gz

> Instructions for applying the update and more detail may be found in the URL:

> > ftp://ftp.xig.com/pub/updates/accelx/desktop/4.1.2/D4102.013.txt

> The update may be applied to the freely available Accelerated-X demo at URL ftp://ftp.xig.com/pub/demos/AX412.Linux.tar.gz for customer testing prior to purchase of the product.

NeoMagic MagicMedia, including Toshiba Tecra 800 and the Gateway Solo 5150

> Xi Graphics is pleased to announce the release of support for the NeoMagic MagicMedia 256AV, also known as the NM2200 and the NM2360. This is much faster than previous NeoMagic chipsets as the new benchmarks show. The initial machines explicitly supported are the Toshiba Tecra 800 and the Gateway Solo 5150.

> Benchmark tests were conducted on a Toshiba Tecra 8000 with a Pentium II/266 Mhz processor, making the results broadly comparable with those for the ATI Rage LT Pro announced in August. The Accelerated-X Server, Xaccel, passes the X Test Suite with hardware acceleration in all color depths.

Accelerated-X/OGL

> Xi Graphics, leader in X Window System technologies for Intel Linux and UNIX Systems will be shipping a limited quantity edition Technology Demo of its' new Accelerated-X/OGL product.

> Accelerated-X/OGL is the fifth architecture generation of Accelerated-X and has been specifically altered to provide support for a wide range of 3D graphics chips. The limited edition Technical Demonstration release offers an opportunity for games and other developers to influence the final delivered product. The Accelerated-X/OGL Technology Demo Evolution 1 product features:

> - Only available for threaded OS's:
> - Linux/glibc2
> - Solaris/x86 2.51, 2.6
> - UNIXware 7
> - Fully accelerated 2D Server, X11R6.4 specs
> - OpenGL 1.1.1 libraries, GLX Server extension
> - Hardware accelerated 3D support for:
> - Number 9 Revolution IV aka Ticket to Ride IV
> - Intel 740
> - Real3D StarFighter,
> - Diamond Stealth II G460
> - etc
> - 3Dlabs Permedia 2
> - Diamond Fire 1000 GL Pro
> - ELSA Winner 2000/Office
> - etc
> - 3Dlabs Glint MX & Delta
> - ELSA Gloria-XL
> - Leadtek L2520
> - etc
> - SiS 6326
> - ASUS AGP-V1326
> - etc
> - 8, 15/16, 24/32 bpp if supported by hardware
> - Overlays if supported by hardware
> - multiple concurrent 3D windows, not just full screen
> - Tablet support (Wacom, Summagraphics protocols)
> - Spaceball (6DoF) support for Logitech Magellan
> For this limited edition of the product, please contact devrel@xig.com to apply for a copy. The Xi Graphics Sales are unable to take orders for this product as we expect the demand to significantly exceed the supply!

Monthly drawings for copies of Accelerated-X

> Xi Graphics is pleased to announce that we're giving away free copies of the industry leading Accelerated-X Display Server. These are full, up to date, legal and supported copies of the product.

> To register to win one of the two free copies we're giving away every month, either register for the monthly draw on our web site (http://www.xig.com) or send email following the directions published below. We do, of course, have a motive for this. We want to know what Graphics Board, Monitor, Input devices and Operating Systems you'd most like to use with Accelerated-X and we want to find out about the kind of machine you use.

> To enter the drawing by email, you must complete an entry form for that months draw. Send the email to Andrew Bergin (abergin@xig.com) with the subject "Free Draw Entry" and include in your message the following details:

> > Your Name
> > Your Company or Organisation
> > Your Shipping Address
> > Your Email Address
> > (Optional) Your Web Site Address
> > What make and model of computer, and processor speed
> > The Graphics Card you'd like to use
> > The Monitor you'd like to use
> > Your preferred pointing devices
> > Your preferred operating system

> There will be a new draw every month. You must enter each month to be eligible for that months drawing. Only one submission per person, per drawing will be accepted.

> The winners name may be put on our web site and in other promotional material. Information collected, including your email and physical shipping address, will not be sold to any third party. We may use your address for our infrequent mailings unless you write to ask us to remove your name from the mailing list.

> Xi Graphics will pay the cost of shipping only, including international shipping. Any and all customs charges and/or taxes are the responsibility of the winner.

© 1998 by Michael J. Hammel