New releases of the following areaDetector modules are now available. 

 

ADSupport R1-4

areaDetector R3-2

ADCore R3-2

 

****************************************************************************************

These are the major items from the R1-4 release notes for ADSupport:

 

* Added support for Blosc filter library.  This is used by NDFileHDF5.  Thanks to Xiaoqiang Wang for this.

* Fixed a bug in GraphicsMagickSrc.  The symptom was an assertion failure when exiting the IOC.  This occurred

  on both Linux and Windows.

* Fixes to Makefiles in GraphicsMagickSrc to allow it to be built with external libraries  for jpeg, tiff, xml2, and zlib.

* Fixed Darwin support in tiffSrc.

* Fixed several problems on vxWorks.

* Fixed .gitignore file.  It was previously ignoring all include/ directories, but those in GraphicsMagick

  should not be ignored.

 

****************************************************************************************

These are the major items from the R3-2 release notes for ADCore:

 

### NDPluginStats

* Previously the X axis for the histogram plot was just the histogram bin number.

  Added code to compute an array of intensity values and a new HistHistogramX_RBV waveform record which

  contains the intensity values for the X axis of the histogram plot.

  This uses a new NDPlotXY.adl medm screen which accepts both X and Y waveform records to plot.

 

### NDPluginFile

* Changed the way that capture mode is implemented.

  Previously it created NumCapture NDArrays using the "new" operator.

  As NDArrays arrived it copied the data and attributes into these arrays.

  This had several problems:

  - The NDArrays were not allocated from the NDArrayPool, so memory limits were not enforced.

  - Because they were not allocated from the NDArrayPool if they were passed to other functions

    or plugins there would be problems with attempts to call NDArray::reserve() or release().

  - The copy operation is inefficient and not a good idea.

  The change was to simply allocate an array of NumCapture pointers.  As NDArrays arrive

  their reference count is incremented with reserve() and the pointer is copied to the array.

  After the files are written the cleanup routine now simply decrements the reference counter

  with release(), rather than having to delete the NDArray.

  The new scheme is much cleaner.  It will require setting the memory and array limits

  for the NDArrayPool to be large enough to buffer NumCapture frames, whereas previously

  this would not have been required.  It may thus require some changes to startup scripts.

 

### NDFileHDF5

* Added support for blosc compression library.  The compressors include blosclz, lz4, lz4hc, snappy, zlib, and zstd.

  There is also support for ByteSuffle and BitShuffle.

  ADSupport now contains the blosc library, so it is available for most architectures.

  The build flags WITH_BLOSC, BLOSC_EXTERNAL, and BLOSC_LIB have been added, similar to other optional libraries.

  Thanks to Xiaoqiang Wang for this addition.

* Changed all output records in NDFileHDF.template to have PINI=YES.  This is how other plugins all work.

 

### NDPluginOverlay

* Improved the behavior when changing the size of an overlay. Previously the Position was always preserved when

  the Size was changed. This was not the desired behavior when the user had set the Center rather than Position.

  Now the code remembers whether Position or Center was last set, and preserves the appropriate value when

  the Size is changed.

* Overlays were previously constrained to fit inside the image on X=0 and Y=0 edges.  However, the user may want part of

  the overlay to be outside the image area. The location of the overlay can now be set anywhere, including negative positions.

  Each pixel in the overlay is now only added if it is within the image area.

* Fixed problems with incorrect drawing and crashing if part of an overlay was outside the image area.

* Removed rounding when setting the center from the position or the position from the center.

  This was causing the location to change when setting the same center or position.

* Changed the cross overlay so that it is drawn symmetrically with the same number of pixels on each side of the center.

  This means the actual size is 2*Size/2 + 1, which will be Size+1 if Size is even.

 

### Operator displays (medm, edm, caQtDM, CSS-BOY)

* Fixed medm files in several ways:

  - Text graphics widget sizes are set to the actual size of the text.  medm will display text outside the widget if it

    is not large enough, but other display managers will not.

  - Text update widgets were set to the correct datatype.  medm will display an enum widget as a string even if

    the datatype is set to "decimal" rather than "string", but other display managers will not.

  - Text widgets in titles that use macros (e.g. $(P)$(R)) were set to be as large as possible so they can display

    long PV names with display managers that won't display text outside of the widget.

* Added ADApp/op/Makefile.  This Makefile runs the conversion tools to convert the medm adl files to edl for edm,

  ui for caQtDM, and opi for CSS-BOY.  A RULES_OPI file was added to synApps/support/configure to support this.

  If that RULES_OPI file is not found the Makefile does nothing. If the RULES_OPI file is found then a CONFIG_SITE

  file in synApps/configure or in EPICS base must define these symbols:

 - ADL2EDL is the path to adl2edl for edm

  - ADL2UI is the path to adl2ui for caQtDM

  - CSS is the path to css.  It must be a recent version that supports the command

```

   css -nosplash -application org.csstudio.opibuilder.adl2boy.application

```

* The edl/autoconvert, ui/autoconvert, and opi/autoconvert directories contain new conversions of all of the medm files.

* The edl, ui, and opi directories are intended to contain manually tweaked versions of the files.  Many of the

  files in these directories have been removed, either because they were actually old autoconverted files, or because

  they are obsolete and the new autoconverted files are better.

 

****************************************************************************************

These are the R3-2 release notes for areaDetector:

 

* Requirements:

  - ADCore R3-2

  - ADSupport R1-4 or higher

  - asyn R4-32 or higher

  - EPICS base 3.14.12.4 or higher

* Added the blosc compression library to ADSupport and to the NDFileHDF5 writer in ADCore.

* Added capability to automatically convert medm adl files to edm edl, caQtDM ui, and CSS-BOY opi files.

  This is done by running make in the yyyAPP/op/ directory.  The files are placed in the edl/autoconvert

  ui/autoconvert, and opi/autoconvert directories.  This will keep these files up to date with the medm files.

****************************************************************************************

 

The home page is here:

http://cars.uchicago.edu/software/epics/areaDetector.html

 

The top-level documentation is here:

http://cars.uchicago.edu/software/epics/areaDetectorDoc.html

 

Installation instructions are here:

https://github.com/areaDetector/areaDetector/blob/master/INSTALL_GUIDE.md

 

areaDetector release notes are here:

https://github.com/areaDetector/areaDetector/blob/master/RELEASE.md

 

ADSupport release notes are here:

https://github.com/areaDetector/ADSupport/blob/master/RELEASE.md

 

ADCore release notes are here:

https://github.com/areaDetector/ADCore/blob/master/RELEASE.md

 

Mark