Editing Release Notes for FM Lite 0.4.10

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1. New Features
---------------
1.1 The "Make..." button, which creates a standalone filter, now works on
    Windows NT 4.0 (but not on Windows 95).  Note, however, that the Make
    button is still non-functional (by intent) in the "crippled" Beta test
    version.

1.2 Three new built-in functions have been added to FM:

((appendEllipsis))(s)   Returns string s with an ellipsis ("...") appended.

((stripEllipsis))(s)    Returns string s with any trailing ellipsis removed.

((formatString))(s)     Returns string s with the following substitutions made
                        for the designated 2-character substrings (all of which
                        begin with "!"):

substring   is replaced by
        ---------   -----------------------------------------------
            !!      "!"  (i.e., a verbatim exclamation point)
            !A      text specified by the Author key
            !a      text specified by the About key
            !C      text specified by the Category key
            !c      text specified by the Copyright key
            !D      text specified by the Description key
            !F      text specified by the Filename key
            !f      the current Filter Case (e.g., "Flat image, no selection")
            !H      the name of the Host application (e.g., "Adobe Photoshop")
            !M      the current Image Mode (e.g., "RGB Color")
            !T      text specified by the Title key
            !t      text specified by the Title key, with any trailing ellipsis removed
            !V      text specified by the Version key

Caution: Other substrings beginning with "!" are reserved for future
                 use.

You do not usually need to call formatString() explicitly, since it is
        implicitly applied in the following cases:

- when displaying the text label for a dialog control,
            - when displaying the items in a LISTBOX or COMBOBOX control,
            - when displaying the dialog caption in the title bar,
            - when displaying text in a Message Box via the msgBox(),
              Info(), Warn(), Error(), ErrorOk(), YesNo(), or YesNoCancel()
              built-in functions,
            - when displaying the About text in the About dialog box.

For example, the default Dialog text is "!t (!f) [!M]", which formatString()
        translates to something like "Filter Title (filter case) [Image Mode]" at
        run time.

1.3 An "About" key has been added to allow the Filter Designer to specify the design
    and content of the About box that is displayed when selected from Photoshop's
    Help/About Plug-in... menu item.  The syntax for the About key specification is
    similar to the syntax for the Dialog key, and allows the FD to specify the
    size, background, and text of the About box.  However, in this release all
    subkeys are ignored except the Text subkey, so only the Text subkey is documented
    here.  The background of the About box is set to a default bitmap image in
    this release, and the About text is horizontally centered within a static
    text box which has room for approximately 5 lines of 40 characters each.
    The About text will be formatted by the formatString() function described
    above before being displayed.

Syntax
    ------

About: [Text = ] "quoted string" [other subkeys, ...]

The default About text is "!t Plug-in !V\n!C\n!c\n!A", which translates to
    something like:

Filter Title Plug-in 1.0
                                Category
                            Copyright Notice
                              Author's Name

Note that clicking the FM default logo also displays the About box.

1.4 An "Embed" key has been added to allow the Filter Designer to specify a set
    of resources that are to be embedded in the standalone filter generated by
    the Make button.  Embeddable resources include bitmap files, metafiles, and
    wave files.

Syntax
    ------

Embed: <resource> = "filename" [, ...]

where:

<resource>  specifies the type of resource to be embedded, and may be
                "Bitmap", "Metafile", or "Wave" (only "Bitmap" is implemented
                in this release).

For example, if your filter uses "crazy glue.bmp" as a background
    image for the dialog, your Dialog specification might look something
    like this:

Dialog: ... image="crazy glue.bmp" ...

If you "Make" this into a standalone filter, the standalone filter
    will search for the external bitmap file "crazy glue.bmp" in order
    to draw the background.  If you move the standalone filter to
    another location without also copying the "crazy glue.bmp" file to
    the same directory, then the standalone filter might not find
    the "crazy glue.bmp" file, in which case it will revert to using
    the specified (or default) background color or gradient instead
    of the bitmap.  Even worse, the standalone filter might find a
    *different* file named "crazy glue.bmp", with unexpected results.
    
    To avoid such problems, use the Embed key to tell FM to embed any
    such external files as resources in the standalone filter.  Then you
    need distribute only the single .8bf file, which will be completely
    self-contained.

In the above example, you would add an Embed specification following
    the Dialog specification, similar to:

Dialog: ... image="crazy glue.bmp" ...
        Embed: bitmap="crazy glue.bmp"

In a multi-filter example, where the background bitmap is changed for
    each individual filter by calls to ((setDialogImage))(), you would specify
    a complete list of all the bitmaps you want to embed:

Dialog: image="patternwav.bmp",stretched

Embed:  bitmap="patternwav.bmp",
                bitmap="pattern2.bmp",
                bitmap="zigzag.bmp"

1.5 A new FF+ statement, _eval_FFP{}, has been added to simplify the creation
    of a multi-filter from a collection of Filter Factory source codes.

Syntax
    ------

<FFP_statement> ::=
            "_eval_FFP" "{" <FFP_eval_specification>* "}"

In other words, within the braces you can include any or all of the following
    FF+ key specifications, and these will be evaluated at filter run time rather
    than at compile time.:

_eval_FFP {
                Category: ...
                Title: ...
                Copyright: ...
                Author: ...
                Filename: ...
                Description: ...
                Version: ...
                Dialog: ...
                Ctl[n]: ...
                Val[n]: ...
                R: ...
                G: ...
                B: ...
                A: ...
            }

For example, the statement:

_eval_FFP {
            Dialog: "My Filter", Color=blue, NoTitlebar, Drag=background,
                    Pos=Screen(Center)
        }

will be translated into the appropriate set of calls to the FM built-in
    functions ((setDialogText))(), ((setDialogColor))(), ((clearDialogStyle))(),
    ((setDialogDragMode))(), and ((setDialogPos))(), which may then be executed at
    run time as desired.

1.6 FM can now display Windows Metafiles (with or without an Aldus placeable
    header) and Win32 Enhanced Metafiles on the surface of the dialog box.

2. Changes
----------
2.1 The FilterMeister Lite/Beta plug-in now appears in the host application's
    plug-in filter menu under the category "FilterMeister", not "AFH".

2.2 The default Category text is now "FilterMeister" rather than the null string.
    The default Title text is now "My Filter" rather than the null string.

2.3 The default Dialog text is now "!t (!f) [!M]" (see 1.2 above).

2.4 Ellipses are automatically added or stripped from the filter Title text
    as necessary for display in various contexts.

2.5 'switch' statements are now implemented.

2.6 'return' statements are now implemented (but only for integral/Boolean return
    types).

2.7 Advanced Edit Mode is deleted from the Beta test version.

2.8 The "Find..." button has been disabled for now.

2.9 The "Help..." button has been renamed "About...".

2.10 FM should now recognize the host signatures for Corel Xara and Adobe
     Illustrator 7.

2.11 Elementary casts of the form (short), (int), (long), (bool), (float), and
     (double) are now implemented.  (More complex casts are still not allowed.)

2.12 The FD is now prompted to save his/her modified source code when necessary.

2.13 The source image is now always copied to the destination image before each
     filter run.

2.14 FM-generated filters can now be applied to empty layers in the Editable
     Transparency cases.

2.15 If FM can't load the file specified for the dialog background bitmap, you
     are no longer given a choice of retrying or ignoring the error.  Instead,
     an error message is displayed and the bitmap is ignored.  The background
     is painted using the specified or default dialog color or gradient, and
     no further attempt is made to load the bitmap file.  (In a standalone
     filter, the action is the same, but no error message is displayed.)

2.16 When importing a .8bf Filter Factory filter module, FM no longer tries
     to load the secondary dynamic link libraries required by that module.
     In particular, it is not necessary to have plugin.dll installed on your
     system when importing a 48KB Filter Factory module.

3. Bug Fixes
------------
3.1 In a STANDARD slider control, the numedit buddy control wasn't initialized
    properly when the initial control range did not include 0.  This has been
    fixed in 0.4.10.

3.2 Specifying the MaxBox subkey in a Dialog specification allowed a user to
    show the Advanced Edit Mode controls in the Beta version.  To prevent this,
    the Beta version now ignores the MaxBox subkey.

4. Known Problems
-----------------
4.1 Non-constant specifications such as "range=(0,X)" do not work as expected
    in standalone filters.

4.2 ToolTips don't work on Windows NT.

4.3 When importing a .8bf Filter Factory filter module, special characters such
    as '\' are not properly escaped in the filename contained in the generated
    Description specification.

4.4 Filters with no user-adjustable controls should not display a filter dialog
    box.

4.5 The 'return' statement should be allowed in a ForEveryPixel handler.

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