Release Date: May 27, 2021

First of all, I’d like to say a big “Thank you” to all users who struggled with severe bug in Antares, but how did not resign and reported them as issues. I’m well aware of how annoying it is to work with a application that produces bugs, and I am so thankfull for all the effort you put into reporting them. Without you, it would hardly be possible to improve Antares and to make it better with every release.

Thank you very much!

With that being said, Release 0.6.0 is a stability release that contains lots of bug fixes, some of them being fixes of severe bugs deep down in the core of the system that were the cause of a lot of unexpected errors.

But although release 0.6.0 is much more stable than the previous one, surley this is not the “end of all bugs in Antares”, and I hope that you will continue to report any bugs you encounter in the future.

An important note about a breaking change: With issue #121, the startup behaviour of latches and flipflops has been changed. Note that this change might alter the behaviour of your existing circuits.

Features

  • #81: Add ‘Bit Width’ property to NOT gate: The user can now select the bit width of a NOT gates input and output.

  • #109: Improve Logging: The log output produced by Antares has been restructured such that “Debug” log produces a consistent “user action trail”. If an unexpected error occurs, this user action trail is now included in the text the user can copy/paste when opening issues. In addition, “Debug” logging is now enforced when Antares starts, at least for the next couple of releases.

  • #114: Continous overline on port names: Up to 0.5.2, Antares used single unicode characters to produce overlines, which didn’t produce a continuous line over multiple characters. Because this is a general problem for which a proper solution requires a lot of effort, Antares now contains a compromise solution: If the entire text is to be negated, Antares programmatically draws a line at the upper edge of the text’s bounding box.

  • #121: Why are all Flipflops high on startup?: Due to an arbitrary choice, most of Antares’ latches and flipflops settled in “on” state on startup. Users requested to change this, so that latches and flipflops start in “off” state. Note that this change might have an impact on the behaviour of your existing circuits if they use latches and flipflops from Antares’ standard library!

Bugfixes

  • #76: Application is crashing randomly: Produces unexpected errors when deleting wires, connecting components and when performing copy/paste.

  • #80: Main application window icon does not show Antares logo (Windows): The windows showed the standard Java logo instead. This has been fixed.

  • #87: Graphical glitch with text when starting simulation: The text of label components was sometimes not properly clipped to the drawing area and was drawn over neighboring UI components.

  • #89: Changing label for ROM or RAM crashes: When the user tried to exchange the standard label of a ROM or RAM with his own custom label, an error occured.

  • #90: Changed label of subcircuit is not read: Changed labels in subcircuit symbols where stored, but not correctly read back from storage.

  • #91: Error when creating wire junction in ‘Block’ style: When the user tried to create a wire junction from a wire that was drawn with style “Block”, an error occured.

  • #92: Memory display scrambled after property change: A memory component can optionally display its contents in the symbol. When changing the properties “Address Bit Width” or “Data Bit Width”, this display was scrambled.

  • #93: Some combination of deleting wires can cause a junction to still exist: While this problem was not consistently reproducible, a lot of bugs have been fixed that might have been the cause of this problem. Also, as a defensive measure, it is now possible to delete an unconnection junction point. Even so, please open an issue if this problem should occur again.

  • #94: Moving small circles in symbol view does not work: Due to a bug in calculating the sensitive area of rectangular object’s edit handles, it was nearly impossible to move a small circle.

  • #96: ‘Open Subcircuit’ does not work when simulation is running: The context menu was always disabled due to a bug in the authorization subsystem.

  • #97: Sum symbol in Full Adder symbol shows broken: Due to wrong character set handling when cloning components, the Full Addres showed a broken text instead of the correct sigma character.

  • #99: Mixed languages in UI controls: Some were in the application preference language, while others were in the operating system’s language. This has been fixed.

  • #100: After editing component A used in component B, error when opening B.: If the user removed a port from a component A that was used and connected in circuit B, an error occured when opening B. Antares now detects this situation and displays the dangling wire to the missing port of A in error state (red color).

  • #102: How do you import a project?: When importing a project that is already present, Antares produced an error. The user is now asked whether he wants to replace the existing project.

  • #108: Error when double-clicking clock component while simulation is running: This has been fixed.

  • #110: Error in repeated paste after deleting firt pasted part: If the user copy/pasted a component, deleted the pasted component, and then pasted again, an error occured in the system that calculates offsets for pasted components.

  • #111: Error when selecting multiple components and deleting them: This has been fixed.

  • #116: “Wire attach ball” stays in circuit after newly created wire is deleted”: This has been fixed.

  • #124: “Odd wiring behaviour”: When creating complex wirings, Antare’s layout algorithm felt stressed and produced odd layouts, especially in relation with junctions. The new layout algoriths tries to keep the wire from which junctions are created much more stable, and it also tries to avoid non-rectangular solutions.

  • #125: Inconsistent Redo state when cancelling “Create wire junction”: This severe bug in the core of the undo/redo system might have been the cause of some of the “hard to explain” unexpected errors.

  • #127: Error when deleting wire while creating it: If the user pressed DEL (or BACKSPACE on Mac) while creating a new wire, an error occured. Antares now refuses to delete a wire while it is under construction.

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