Ffgo

[BUGFIX] Fix crash at initialization when Pillow is not installed (bug
introduced in 1.2.0). (Florent Rougon)

[FEATURE] New logging system. Automatically write a log file containing the
start and end date, OS, FFGo and Python versions, and all other
usual messages (including exceptions and FlightGear messages). The
log file is ~/.ffgo/Logs/FFGo.log (%APPDATA%/FFGo/Logs/FFGo.log on
Windows). It is automatically rotated at application startup,
keeping at most ten log files (FFGo.log, FFGo_1.log,
FFGo_2.log, ..., FFGo_9.log). (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Support command line options --help and --verbose. (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] New command line option --log-level to choose the log level for
terminal output (defaults to 'notice', which makes the terminal less
verbose than the log file by default). Run 'ffgo --help' to see the
available log levels. (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Add logging calls in a few key places to help debug problems. FFGo
logs things such as XML parking/groundnet files about to be parsed
(among others) with level 'info' or above to make it easy to spot
the culprit in case there is a problem. Thus, in such a case, you
can either look into the log file or rerun FFGo in a terminal, like
this: 'ffgo --log-level=info' or 'ffgo --log-level=debug' (also
possible with ffgo-launcher.py, of course). (Florent Rougon)
[BUGFIX] Exceptions raised from a Tkinter callback cause an error window to
appear, not only a traceback on the terminal. (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] New command line option --test-mode for developers, useful for
running test code from the FFGo GUI. (Florent Rougon)
[BUGFIX] Improve parsing of XML files (parking/groundnet and scenario files).
This should work better in a few cases and make it clear there is an
error when one of these files is really invalid. (Florent Rougon)
[BUGFIX] Small fixes with respect to file operations (be explicit about the
encoding... this notably affects USER_DATA_DIR/apt, which can have a
few non-ASCII airport names such as EDRZ = Zweibrücken; properly
use writelines() in Config.makeInstalledAptList() too...).
(Florent Rougon)
[BUGFIX] Improve parsing of directory names under <scenery_dir>/Terrain for
those using the 'Show installed airports only' option. Some custom
scenery directories may have subdirs such as
'Scenery/Terrain/e020n50/e020n52.old'. Ignore them instead of
raising an exception because "52.old" is not an integer.
(Florent Rougon)
[USABILITY] Display an explanation when building airport lists. The operation
may be a bit long and freezes the interface. Display a window so
that the user knows what is happening and patiently waits.
(Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Update the French translation of the interface. (Florent Rougon)

[USABILITY] Show the FlightGear arguments and output in the default
configuration (i.e., the Command Window and the Output Window). This
will hopefully improve the first-time user experience.
(Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Slightly better algorithm for preparing the fgfs command line.
Mostly: order of the UI-exposed options such as airport, aircraft,
parking, etc. as well as avoid passing empty '--fg-root=' or
'--fg-scenery=' options unless they are written as is in the Command
Line Options Window. In other words: an empty field in the
Preferences dialog for FG_ROOT or FG_SCENERY will not by itself
cause an empty '--fg-root=' or '--fg-scenery=' option to be passed
to 'fgfs'. (Florent Rougon)
[USABILITY] Document the following new parameters in the 'presets' file:
SHOW_FG_COMMAND, SHOW_FG_COMMAND_IN_SEPARATE_WINDOW,
FG_COMMAND_GEOMETRY, SHOW_FG_OUTPUT,
SHOW_FG_OUTPUT_IN_SEPARATE_WINDOW and FG_OUTPUT_GEOMETRY. These
parameters were already present in FFGo 1.0.0 but not in FGo! 1.5.5.
(Florent Rougon)
[“BUGFIX”] Distribute images derived from the CC0 helicopter image under the
CC0 license too. The original intent was to distribute the images
under the same license as the rest of FFGo for unity, i.e. WTFPL
version 2. I think it was, and is still legal to do under most
juridictions. However, legal matters being what they are, the safest
course of action IMHO is to publish the derived images under the
same license as the original image, i.e. CC0 1.0 Universal.
(Florent Rougon)
[BUGFIX] Improve restoring of geometry upon reset (“reload config”). Before
this change, and contrary to the Command Window and Output Window,
the dimensions of the main window were not restored when using the
“Reload config” button; they were only restored at program startup.
Of course, something can only be restored if it has been previously
saved! (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] New option to save the main window position. For user convenience,
as well as consistency with the Command Window and Output Window,
add a new check box in the Miscellaneous tab of the Preferences
dialog to tell FFGo to “Remember the main window position” whenever
saving to a configuration file or using “Save & Quit”. This option
is enabled by default in FFGo. This means that the whole geometry of
the main window 'widthxheight+x+y' is saved as WINDOW_GEOMETRY into
the configuration file, instead of its size only ('widthxheight').
To revert to the previous behavior, simply uncheck “Remember the
main window position” in the Preferences dialog. This option
corresponds to SAVE_WINDOW_POSITION in the configuration file.
(Florent Rougon)
[USABILITY] Mention the FG_BIN name in the tooltip for the fgfs executable
path. This is likely to be helpful to new users, because FG_BIN is
used in the hint displayed when fgfs can't be executed, but new
users might not know what this refers to. (Florent Rougon)
[USABILITY] Improve installation instructions. Most notably, make the suitable
changes now that Debian packages are available for FFGo and
CondConfigParser. (Florent Rougon)

[FEATURE] Import the code from FGo! 1.5.5 onwards (Python 2 at that time)
into a Git repository. (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Port the code to Python 3. (Robert)
[FEATURE] Add the file docs/INSTALL/INSTALL_en to guide users through the
process of installing the dependencies. (Florent Rougon)
[BUGFIX] Fix typo in "help_it" file. (Philip Lacroix)
[FEATURE] Add conditional config based on CondConfigParser. This is
documented for FGo! users in docs/README.conditional-config/.
(Florent Rougon)
[BUGFIX] Fix logic behind the Reset button. (Robert)
[FEATURE] Add keyboard shortcuts for "Run FG" (Ctrl-f), "Reset" (Ctrl-r) and
"Save & Quit" (Ctrl-q). (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Move the "FG is running..." message from the separate "info" window
to the main window. (Florent Rougon)

* The separate window was annoying, because when switching from a
workspace with FlightGear on top and FGo! below, to another workspace and
back to the initial workspace, the "FG is running..." little window
appeared on top of FlightGear, which prevented the user from controlling
it until he explicitely switched to FlightGear's window.

* The "FG is running..." message is now displayed in red in FGo!'s main
window (in a Label widget) instead of the separate InfoWindow. When
FlightGear is not running, this message is replaced by a "Ready"
indication in green.

* This new behaviour allows to interact with FGo! while FlightGear is
running, except for the things that rely on stuff started in
App.startLoops(). Among others, it makes it possible to modify the
configuration before the fgfs process is completely terminated. It would
be possible to keep the loops running even after FlightGear has been
started, but that would sacrifice a small amount of performance, for IMHO
very little benefit. I prefer freeing the CPU as much as possible for
FlightGear.

* As a bonus, the new Label widget indicates the exit status of the last
FlightGear run, or the signal number in case the fgfs process was
terminated by a signal.

* While FlightGear is running, the "Run FG" button is now greyed out.

[FEATURE] Add preview of FlightGear command. (Robert & Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Add FlightGear output window and log saving.
(Robert & Florent Rougon)
[USABILITY] Remove everything related to running a standalone TerraSync
program in the background. As TerraSync has been integrated into
FlightGear several years ago, this feature was probably more
confusing than useful to users nowadays. (Robert & Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Allow the command preview and FG output windows to be detached,
reattached and hidden. Store their geometry when reattaching,
closing them or choosing "Save & Quit" to be able to restore it when
they are later shown again. (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Improve initialization of locales and translations at application
startup. (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Change USER_DATA_DIR to ~/.ffgo on Unix, %APPDATA%/FFGo on Windows.
(Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] New dialogs at application startup to offer to copy FGo!'s config
file to USER_DATA_DIR when this is safe, start with "factory
defaults", or abort. (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Rename the 'fgo' script to 'ffgo' in order to avoid confusing users
concerning the FGo! program distributed by Robert Leda.
(Florent Rougon)
[USABILITY] Allow closing the Preferences window with the Escape key.
(Florent Rougon)
[USABILITY] Rename the 'Reset' button to 'Reload config', which is more
self-explanatory in my opinion. Add a tooltip to this button that
indicates the config file path. (Florent Rougon)
[USABILITY] Add menu entries in the File menu to reload the config file and to
run FlightGear. These entries show the new keyboard shortcuts.
[FEATURE] Help files: update installation instructions, add description of new
features and add a tip about config file reloading.
(Robert & Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Add top-level README.rst and move first sections of
data/help/help_en to it. (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Update data/config/config_en: slightly reorder, improve wording
(IMHO), remove reference to now-invalid URL (list of callsigns in
use), introduce new options, give hint about
'fgfs --help --verbose'. (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] New ffgo.svg icon and new thumbnail.jpg (with xcf source).
(Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Add Makefiles to automate generation of many files
(messages.pot, *.po and *.mo files, ffgo.png in all sizes from
ffgo.svg, HTML rendering of docs/README.conditional-config.source,
release tarball...). (Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Rename messages.{pot,po,mo} to FFGo.{pot,po,mo}. This will make it
much easier for downstream distributors to create FHS-compliant
packages with .mo files in /usr/share/locale/<locale>/LC_MESSAGES/
(which is shared by all programs on a given system, therefore using
such a generic name as 'messages' is unacceptable there).
(Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Improve the thumbnail situation. cf. the Git log for
6bf65f453ba28920397371d932b3b2ef491827bc for details (information
maybe relevant to packagers but not users; in short,
data/pics/thumbnail.ppm is replaced by
data/pics/thumbnail-no-Pillow.gif and data/pics/thumbnail.jpg by
data/pics/thumbnail-not-avail.png, and the two new files are both
automatically generated from their respective sources).
ImageMagick's convert program is now required by the Makefiles when
installing from the Git repository. (Florent Rougon)
[BUGFIX] Fix a bug introduced in 1.0.0b2 that would prevent FFGo from working
properly when Pillow is not installed. (Florent Rougon)
[BUGFIX] Include FFGo.pot in release tarballs. It is not needed by FFGo, but
may be useful for people wanting to add new translations.
(Florent Rougon)
[FEATURE] Add Setuptools packaging. This will make it easier (once you have
learnt how to use pip) to install, upgrade, remove, or check when
FFGo or one of its dependencies has a newer upstream version. Please
read docs/INSTALL/INSTALL_en for user-level details and the Git log
for developer-level details. This change impacts a lot of files.
The top-level 'src' directory is renamed to 'ffgo' (necessary to be
able to install FFGo with 'pip install --editable'). The 'data'
top-level directory is not top-level anymore: moved under the
top-level 'ffgo' directory. This should improve FFGo's portability
to non-Linux platforms with a minimum of platform-specific code.
(Florent Rougon)
[BUGFIX] Fix missing import for a Windows-specific code path (this prevented
FFGo from starting under Windows; I hope that is the last remaining
problem of this kind on Windows. I definitely need testers for this
platform. Please report on your experiences!). (Florent Rougon)
[USABILITY] Improve tooltips of the Preferences dialog. (Florent Rougon)
[USABILITY] Use CRLF line endings for the top-level README.rst file as well as
for docs/INSTALL/INSTALL_* because the Windows Notepad program
used not to be able to read LF line endings (ahem). Is it still
the case in 2015? These files should be enough to get users
started. (Florent Rougon)