VHIST 1.84.0, Jun 28 2013

• vhistify - replaced an image used by the vhistify examples

VHIST 1.83.0, Jun 21 2013

• vhistify - added vhistify, a Linux tool which automatically generates VHIST files for existing workflows. It uses the Linux program "strace" to monitor your processes and derives lots of interesting and valuable information. Vhistify does not require changes to existing tools. See the vhistify tutorial for more information about vhistify.
• pyvhist - UserValue class has a verbatim parameter to prevent conversion of strings to the json format.

• pyvhist - Documentation contained a broken link - FIXED.

VHIST 1.82.0, Jun 4 2013

• pyvhist - added a new Python library to create VHIST files from within Python programs. The programming interface of pyvhist is not final, yet. Some parts of the interface might change in the future, although we try not to break things.
• Ubuntu Package - we created a .deb package for Ubuntu. Tested with Ubuntu 10.04 and Ubuntu 12.04. The package might also work on Debian and other Debian based distributions.

VHIST 1.81.0, May 28 2013

• vhistadd - vhistadd did not work with Python 2.4 but required Python 2.6. FIXED.

VHIST 1.80.0, May 24 2013

• vhistadd
  • Unit Support - Added options -w and -W to vhistadd to supply user attributes with associated units.
  • Previews in PDF - Added support for preview images within the PDF view of a VHIST file. Supports png and jpeg images out of the box. In case the Python Image Library is installed on your system, other image formats are supported, as well. For the built-in Python support, we use the pypng library (https://github.com/drj11/pypng).
  • Title Page - The title page contains a hint on how to adjust it's content for your institute.

• VHISTzard
  • Search Bars - Added search bars to text browsers in VHISTzard.
  • New Template - Added new VHISTzard template "orange"
  • Recent Files - Added recent files to VHISTzard.
  • Syntax Highlighting - "Run VHIST Arg-File" also highlights -w and -W.
  • Removed zlib Dependency - On Windows, the zlib is no longer shipped with the installer. Instead, Qt's internal zlib is used.

• matvhist - matvhist deletes temporary files and directories automatically.

• vhistadd - Some PDF viewers stumbled upon a completely empty info object. FIXED.
• vhistadd - Keys and values which contain line breaks were not correctly displayed on a PDF page. FIXED.
• unittests - The unittest runner had wrong permissions. FIXED.
• vhistzard - Crashed when loading some VHIST files. FIXED.
• matvhist - Failed to execute vhistadd because of missing executable permissions. FIXED.
• matvhist - Previews from figures where scaled incorrectly when Matlab's papersize was given in centimeters or points. FIXED.

VHIST 1.71.0, Jul 19 2011

• Documentation - Restructured the documentation.

• Windows Installer - some dlls were missing in the Windows Installer - FIXED.
• VHISTlib - Doxygen documentation could not be created because of a missing file - FIXED.
• VHISTlib - VHISTlib did not compile on Solaris - FIXED.
• VHISTlib Release - Library documentation is now part of the VHISTlib zip archive.
• Documentation - some links in the VHISTzard documentation did not work - FIXED.
• Homepage - some links on the Homepage did not work - FIXED.

VHIST 1.70.0, Jul 8 2011

• VHISTlib - added first release of vhistfindlib, a library for finding VHIST files with specified properties.

• VHISTzard - added a new tool "Find VHIST files", which utilizes the new library.
• VHISTzard - The "View VHIST file" tool now supports multiple previews per workflow step and file.

• matvhist - a first version of our Matlab (TM) bindings for VHIST have been added.

• Qt libraries - the binary distributions (MS Windows, MacOS X) have been upgraded to Qt version 4.7.3.

• VHIST - several small bugfixes/improvements:
  • User-defined attributes did not necessarily appear in the order they where defined - FIXED.
  • Embedded files in VHISTzard are now displayed hierarchically.
  • Links to documentation in VHISTzard should work now.
  • Reworked and updated parts of the documentation.
  • Some speed optimizations when loading VHIST files with VHISTzard.
  • Argfiles are now "Syntax Highlighted" in "Run VHIST Arg-File" dialog.
  • Run/Edit Buttons in "Create VHIST Argfile" and "Run VHIST Arg-File" dialogs did not work - FIXED.

VHIST 1.61.0, May 02 2010

• VHISTlib - small changes for improved integration with external applications, in particular, VINCI.

• HTML documentation - will now use the new HTML documentation for displaying Help.

VHIST 1.60.0, Jan 26 2010 (internal prelease)

• VHISTlib - added first release of vhistdifflib, our new library for comparing VHIST files. The library supports:
  • loading VHIST files (including recursively extracting and loading VHIST files embedded inside other VHIST files).
  • organizing them as trees of workflowsteps.
  • comparing two VHIST trees and calculating the transition from one tree to the other (similary to a normal text diff).
  The library is currently not documented. vhistdifflib will be used by VHISTzard in the future.

• Documentation - The Users' Guide has been rewritten and updated using Emacs Org-Mode (http://orgmode.org/).

• Qt libraries - the binary distributions (MS Windows, MacOS X) have been upgraded to Qt version 4.6.2.

• VHISTzard - several small bugfixes:
  • Files with the extensions .vhist or .pdf are now loaded using the "Extract from VHIST File" dialog.
  • Moved the tool options inside the main menu from "File" to "Tools"
  • Improved find bar usability in "Extract from VHIST file" dialog.
  • Long file- or sectionnames in the statusbar inside the "Extract from VHIST file" dialog will not expand the left part of the dialog but will be elided.

• vhistadd - newer version of Python complaining about deprecated modules. FIXED

VHIST 1.50.0, May 25 2009

• VHISTlib - during the last six months, the main focus of development was this library which allows to analyze, extract and validate VHIST files. It has been written in C++ and only depends on Trolltech's Qt framework - it works on MS Windows, MacOS X, Linux and Solaris 10. The full source code is available under the LGPL license.

• VHISTzard (VHISTit)
  • now uses the VHISTlib to quickly scan a VHIST file's structure (performance is linear with the number of sections and almost independent of the VHIST file's size).
  • now uses the VHISTlib to extract and validate embedded data.
  • Preferences - a new dialog has been added to manage all preferences in a central location.

• VHISTzard (VHISTez)
  • internal changes - this module which assists with creating VHIST files has undergone a complete overhaul, with many internal improvements. It now also uses the VHISTlib.
  • file paths - management of file paths has been simplified: VHISTez can now optionally interpret all paths as being relative to the first output VHIST file.
  • popup menus - have been completely redesigned: menu entries are now enabled and disabled instead of being added or removed from the menu. Any menu option will now also reflect the current settings.
  • new options - the options Preview WS, Preview and Thumbnail options now work as described in the manual.
  • VHIST files tab - there is no dedicated section for appending to a VHIST file anymore, this functionality was moved to a single option for the VHIST root file.
  • Append Mode - now works as advertised: enabling the append mode will configure the output to be the same as the root file.

• vhistadd - added -stdin option to supply a commandline via stdin.

• Qt libraries - the binary distributions (MS Windows, MacOS X) have been upgraded to Qt version 4.5.1

VHIST 1.26.0, Oct 25 2008

• VHISTzard - the parser has been made more robust and can now also handle certain types of inconsistencies, missing data and damages in VHIST files.

• VHISTzard - the Online Help when started via the Help menu or by keyboard shortcut (F1) resulted in an error message (a component was missing from the distribution). This bug only affected the MS Windows version. FIXED.
• VHISTzard - the character set for keywords includes alphanumerical characters, "_" and ":", but the latter may not be the last character of a keyword. This was not handled correctly when processing templates, the ":" in "$MYKEYWORD:" is now no longer considered a part of the keyword. FIXED.
• vhistadd - a minor inconsistency existed in the created PDF output. FIXED.

VHIST 1.25.1, Oct 21 2008

• VHISTzard - added a progress bar to display the overall validation status. Validation can now be stopped and later be restarted via the menu entry in the Edit menu.

• VHISTzard - adapted the MD5 implementation (grateful acknowledgements to L. Peter Deutsch for the original code) so VHISTzard will now compile and run on Solaris 10 SPARC (big endian), including validation.

• VHISTzard - a new template dump-all.htm has been added (available via the template menu above the VHIST browser) that lists all available key-value pairs (useful for debugging).
• VHISTzard - now supports user-defined attributes in templates. If a key-value-pair has been defined as ("MyKey", "MyValue"), the placeholder $USR::MYKEY in a template will yield "MyValue". Observe that keys will be converted to uppercase, and "$USR::" is prepended to the original key to avoid collision with built-in keys. A key-value-pair for a file will be mapped to a key with pattern $USR::MYKEY[*] in analogy to other placeholders for files (use $USR::MYKEY[3] if you want to refer to a particular file, here: the third one).
• VHISTzard - cosmetic improvements in the PDF and the online version of the VHIST Users' Guide.

VHIST 1.24.0, Oct 14 2008

• VHISTzard - validation of sections and images has been added as (optional) background process. After loading a VHIST file, VHISTzard will analyze each section in turn and indicate the result with a check mark. Each embedded file is then validated and also marked with a check mark - any failed validation is marked with a red cross.

• VHISTzard - some internal parameters have been optimized. As a result, most VHIST files should now open more than twice as fast as before.

• VHISTzard - the log widget (below the VHIST browser) now features a right-click menu to adjust the font size.
• VHISTzard - font sizes are now persistent between VHISTzard sessions due to a settings file which will later also allow to save other customizations.

• vhistadd - the md5file option did not work in the last release. FIXED.

VHIST 1.22.0, Oct 06 2008

• VHISTzard - added buttons for increasing and decreasing the font size, resp., of the VHIST browser (zoom in/out). We now also have corresponding entries in the Edit menu.
• VHISTzard - when dragging files onto VHISTzard, in some cases (e.g. when dragging files directly from Outlook on MS Windows) VHISTzard will now immediately reject dropping when the operation is not possible.

• VHISTzard - depending on the number of embedded files, switching from other applications to VHISTzard could take a considerable amount of time (up to several seconds in extreme cases). We found that (thanks, Michael!) this was due to an inefficient way of resolving URLs and only affected the MS Windows platform. FIXED.

• VHISTzard - the MS Windows distribution of VHISTzard also contains the full source code of VHIST core and VHISTzard. Two header files related to the included zlib library had unsuitable line endings. FIXED.

VHIST 1.21.0, Oct 05 2008

• vhistadd - new pre-defined flag thumbnailonly which is similar to the thumbnail flag but can be used to hint that this thumbnail image should be used in the context of the next file and that no detailed information about this (illustrative) image is required (or, indeed, desired) as all relevant data will be supplied by the next image's attributes.
• vhistadd - any pre-defined flags related to preview- or thumbnail-images will now also be listed in the human-readable part of the PDF version.
• vhistadd - template black-and-white.htm has been modified to take advantage of the new thumbnailonly flag, see its "files" section at the bottom.

• VHISTzard - did not use the new pre-defined flags to recognize preview- or thumbnail-images. FIXED.
• VHISTzard - contained obsolete template "no-vhist.htm", removed. FIXED.

VHIST 1.20.0, Oct 01 2008

• VHISTzard - scanning a VHIST file and analyzing its structure (finding and parsing each section's XML summary file) is now independent of the VHIST file's size (it depends, however, on the number of sections): scanning a file of 1 GB size can take less than one second on a current system and only uses a moderate amount of memory - excellent job, Andreas!
• VHISTzard - exracting embedded data does no longer require to keep potentially large amounts of data in memory. If required, zlib will be used directly to handle "inflation" of compressed data.

• VHISTzard - now contains a search function to find text in the current VHIST file in a user-friendly fashion, the usual shortcuts are available (see "Edit" menu).

• VHISTzard - documentation now contains technical information on html templates, including new $EVENODD feature for creating table rows with alternating background colors.
• VHISTzard - in addition to exporting the current VHIST listing as PDF file, you can now also export in HTML and Plain Text format. Another "flavour", Raw HTML, is useful for debugging a template.
• VHISTzard - modified template "black-and-white.htm" to take advantage of new $EVENODD feature.
• VHISTzard - added Version History (the contents of this file) to the online help.
• VHISTzard - added keyboard shortcuts to efficiently change between the three modules of VHISTzard for viewing and extracting data from VHIST files (T), Editing/assistance of Arg files, Running Arg files (see "File" menu).
• VHISTzard - added keyboard shortcut to reload current template and apply it to the current VHIST file (U), see File menu. This feature is mainly useful when creating a new template.
• VHISTzard - binary distribution for Mac OS X is now based on Trolltech's Qt 4.4.3.
• VHISTzard - binary distribution for MS Windows is now based on Trolltech's Qt 4.4.3.

• VHISTzard - automatic thumbnail icons could not be displayed as the "template://" URL was not resolved correctly. This bug only affected the MS Windows platform. FIXED.
• VHISTzard - "file":"Open Template Directory" did not open any directory on MS Windows. FIXED.
• VHISTzard - all templates suffered from a minor bug that required changing "#ifdef $UNCOMPRESSEDSIZE" to "#ifdef $COMPRESSEDSIZE". FIXED.

VHIST 1.19.0, Sep 17 2008

• VHISTzard - added a new tool, unVHIST, to view VHIST files and to extract embedded data in a (very) user-friendly manner. Generated reports are based on HTML-templates (which can be customized for specific use cases) and can contain PNG or JPEG images (in a preview or thumbnail context) that have been embedded in a VHIST file.

• vhistadd - an append option (-A) was added to the command line interface of vhistadd. With this option, extending an existing VHIST file by one section is much more comfortable.
• vhistadd - added support for embedding preview/thumbnail images to vhistadd.
• VHISTzard - added support for embedding preview images to the "Create VHIST Arg File" (VHISTez) dialog of VHISTzard.
• VHISTzard - simplified VHIST root file handling in the "Create VHIST Arg File" (VHISTez) dialog of VHISTzard.

• VHISTzard - when creating VHIST Arg files, the "filetype" key was not spelled correctly. FIXED.

• VHISTzard - several inconsistencies exist when creating VHIST Arg files, the tool is currently undergoing some internal re-structuring, we apologize for the inconveniences.

VHIST 1.13.0, Jul 28 2008

• VHISTzard - added a menu item to VHISTzard to install and run the examples.
• VHISTzard - added an edit button to the "Run VHIST Arg File" dialog which opens the current file for editing.
• VHISTzard - added a "save and open" button to the "Create VHIST Arg File" dialog which directly opens the Arg File in a run dialog within VHISTzard.
• VHISTzard - added a welcome dialog to VHISTzard which points users to the examples and documentation.

VHIST 1.12.1, Jun 26 2008

• Win32 installer - some important libraries (DLLs) in the Windows distribution were missing due to a bug in our build system, so VHISTzard did not run on systems without an additional Qt installation, sorry. FIXED.

VHIST 1.12.0, Jun 24 2008

• MacOS X installer - a new standard installer (dmg) that installs a ready-to-run version of VHISTzard, all sources and the full documentation.

• VHISTzard - running an arg-file from VHISTzard failed on Linux/Unix if the executable flag of vhistadd.py was not set. FIXED.
• VHISTzard - building VHISTzard from source on MS Windows did abort with a missing-file-error. FIXED.
• VHISTzard - pressing the F1 key did not open the documentation. FIXED.
• VHISTzard - version and date placeholder in VHISTzard source code of the MS Windows release had not been replaced. FIXED.
• examples - some sample files needed for running the example VHIST arg-files (vcmd) had been missing. FIXED.

VHIST 1.11.0, Jun 20 2008

• vhistxl - caused an error when extracting files in certain circumstances. FIXED.

• Microsoft Windows Installer - printed VERSION placeholder instead of correct version information. FIXED.

VHIST 1.10.0, May 25 2008

• VHISTzard - a new user-friendly GUI Tool that assists in creating and executing vhistadd arg-files. It was designed to combine very well with any commandline usage of VHIST.

• MacOS X Version - a standalone Mac OS X bundle with a standard Mac installer (dragging a file into your Application Folder) is now available for download.

• Microsoft Windows Installer - The installer for the MS Windows platform was updated to reflect the current version of VHIST.

VHIST 1.04.0, Mar 17 2008

• Examples - Added samples which show how to use vhistadd.

• setup.py - VHIST binaries were not executable. FIXED
• setup.py - setup script is much more robust now.
• setup.py - Microsoft Windows support is disabled now. Please use the Microsoft Windows package instead.

• vhistadd - vhistadd did not work when called via a symlink. FIXED.

• General - removed superficial gen_unittest_runner.py file.

VHIST 1.03.0, Feb 11 2008

• setup.py - a Python script has been added that assists with installing VHIST (it will create all required paths and optionally create symbolic links). It will work on MacOS X, Linux and Unix in general, it also supports installations on the MS Windows platform (however, you might prefer to use the standard installer included in the MS WIN32 distribution).

• vhistez 1.03 - the user-friendly GUI tool to configure vhistadd commandlines can now import VHIST command-files in addition to creating them. Apart from being part of our test framework, this feature is useful for modifying existing workflow setups.

• Unit tests - have now been included in all distributions. Interested users will find a test suite (unittest_main.py) in the bin directory.

• vhistadd - you can now also use environment variables within commandline files. Variables are specified either as $VARIABLE or as ${VARIABLE}.

VHIST 1.02.2, Nov 30 2007

• vhistez 1.02 beta - a user-friendly GUI tool to configure vhistadd commandlines is now included as ready-to-run binary in the MS Windows installer (s.b.), also as source code for all platforms (based on Trolltech's Qt 4).

• Installer for MS Windows - we have created a standard installer to install VHIST on MS Windows (based on NSIS 2). Installation does not require administrator privileges and really only amounts to a convenient way of copying files: VHIST does not have to be installed, it is a ready-to-run distribution. Binaries, libraries, documentation and sources are included - neither Python nor Trolltech's Qt are required as separate packages.

• vhistadd - customization options (1) - you can now provide an environment variable VHISTADD_ARGS: if set, its contents is treated as if it was entered as commandline input. This is useful for site-wide settings like the text presented on a VHIST file's first page, see the "Customization" section in the VHIST User's Guide.
• vhistadd - customization options (2) - by default, the template for a VHIST file's first page is res/title.txt. If a directory vhist_common is present in the same directory as vhist_102, the VHIST root directory, vhistadd will use vhist_common/res/title.txt instead.

VHIST 1.01.0, Nov 12 2007

• vhistadd.py - commandline files can now contain comment lines (marked by #). In addition, vhistadd now uses an improved method to compute linebreaks for very long lines (e.g. path names).
• vhistxs.py - numbering of files starts with 1 (same as in vhistxl).

• vhistadd.py - in certain circumstances produced an unnecessary (mostly empty) page in the PDF output. FIXED.

VHIST 1.00.1, Oct 22 2007

• VHIST Users' Guide - added more examples, cosmetic improvements.
• VHIST White Paper - cosmetic improvements.

VHIST 1.00.0, Oct 19 2007

• vhistadd.py - (VHIST Core) a commandline tool (Python) with many options for generating VHIST files. Please refer to the VHIST Users' Guide for a full description of all options. A user-friendly GUI tool for configuring VHIST commandline parameters is in preparation.
• vhistxs.py - (VHIST Core) a minimum Python program for extracting embedded data from a VHIST file.
• vhistxl.py - (VHIST Core) a commandline tool (Python) which can validate individual sections of a VHIST file, generate a listing of embedded data and extract selected files using MD5 digests to ensure data integrity.