announcing swarm-960218 and swarmdocs-960218

[Nelson Minar]

I'm happy to announce a new version of Swarm, swarm-960218, as well as
updated documentation. As always, you will find the code, as well as a
list of changes, on the Swarm release web page:
  http://www.santafe.edu/projects/swarm/release/
You will need authorization to read these pages:
  username swarm-beta
  password AlanTuring
Please do not give this password out to other people: for the current
beta test period, we want to control the set of people who use Swarm.

Here's a text copy of the changes.


New Features

The big new feature here is some really nifty probe support. On one of the
spatial demos (heatbugs, for instance), try clicking with the left button on
one of the agents. Also try clicking with the right button on one of the
object fields inside a probe window. Fun stuff!

Changes Required to Applications

Only minimal changes should be required to bring typical applications up to
date with the latest release of Swarm:

   * A new display method should be scheduled in any Swarm applications
     using probes. From apps/heatbugs/main.m:
     [displayActions createActionTo: probeDisplayManager message:
     M(update)];
     this updates all probes that are currently on screen.
   * For children of the Ca2d class, method step has been renamed stepRule

Changes to Swarm Libraries

This is only a partial list.

Makefiles
        o OPTFLAGS is now used when linking (allows the linker to link
          special libraries for profiling, etc.)
        o New .h.xm rule added to Makefile.conf, used for preprocessing of
          source files in some libraries.
support/defobj
     Major revision, Few user-visible changes, but the underlying
     organization has been changed a lot. (The changes include new support
     for modules and easier use of the class creation framework. These
     changes will enable the pending revamp of the collections library.)
support/defobj/objc.patch
     New file. This is optional: apply objc.patch to the objc runtime
     sources from gcc. Then compile, and you will get a new version of
     libobjc that raises an error when you send a method to nil.
support/collections
        o indices now support -drop directly, no need to remember the zone
          for a -dropFrom:.
        o removeAll and deleteAll messages added for all collections.
          removeAll removes all members but does not drop them; deleteAll
          removes and drops all members.
        o pending interface changes leading to a final form of the
          collections library, but no change yet to current implementation.
support/tkobjc
        o Raster now supports a callback on button clicks.
        o Widget now has two new methods, getTopLevel and setWindowTitle:
          (char *) s
swarmlibs/swarmobject
        o Probe has been renamed VarProbe (in anticipation of MethodProbe)
        o New internals for Probe support
        o new methods on SwarmObject for getting instance name, various
          probe data structures
swarmlibs/space
        o CA library now uses stepRule, not step, to update the CA.
        o getOffsets method added to Discrete2d, used for fast access to
          underlying data structures.
        o Value2dDisplay now is more polite about reading the data out of
          the Discrete2d it's plotting
        o New class, Object2dDisplay, handles displaying a list of objects
          and also handles making probes on mouseclicks.
swarmlibs/simtools
        o New display widgets for probes
        o New global object probeDisplayManager keeps a list of all active
          probes. Schedule a call to [probeDisplayManager update] in your
          display loop to have probe displays update.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nelson Minar <address@hidden>
Last modified: Mon Feb 19 00:24:36 MST 1996