[Pmwiki-users] Important, please read if you happen to use PmWikiDraw: Major new changes.

[Ciaran]

Hi,
If you've installed PmWikiDraw you're probably aware that it is a port
of the original TmWikiDraw plugin from the TWiki system.  Myself and
Knut have moulded it (quite successfully imho) into PmWiki in a fairly
usable form.  However this plugin is in effect 4 years old, and the
JHotDraw framework that it is based around has moved on considerably
in this time and taken on many new features and bug fixes.

The long and the short of it is I've re-written PmWikiDraw to use the
new JHotDraw framework.  From this we get all sorts of funky features
such as
     * Undo / Redo on all operations
     * New controls such as Diamond, split connectors, zoom, etc
     * Grid alignment/snap etc 
     * The ability for a PmWiki Admin to setup images that users can re-use in 
        their drawings.  This images can be scaled and connected to as all other
        objects in the drawing can be.
      * Copy and paste between two instances of PmWikiDraw
      * Much more powerful menu system, meaning (hopefully) I'll be
able to offer
        a colour browser rather than just a list of colours.
      * The ability to print drawings from within the app.
      * etc, etc.

Which is all good. However as with all major changes there's a
downside.  All this new functionality is based around the Java-Swing
model, rather than the Java-AWT model, obviously this means that the
clients now need to be Java 2 based rather than Java 1.  This to all
intents and purposes means an install of a minimum of jre1.3 on the
clients.
I had hoped to offer both PmWikiDraw1 + PmWIkiDraw2 to the browser and
with some html trickery transparently select the correct applet for
the target system.  And while this is possible, it turns out there is
a much greater stumbling block in the way:

The file formats have changed between PmWikiDraw 1( Current) and the
new PmWikiDraw (PmWikiDraw2 in this email).  This means that any
drawings that are currently on the system cannot easily [possibly
transferable via scripting if its a serious issue for anyone] be
transferred to be editable in the new PmWikiDraw.  I am very sorry
about this, I hadn't realised this would be an issue until quite
recently :(   I'm warning people now so they don't invest too much
time in any current drawings they may have.

On the website (http://www.wombatinvasion.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?pagename=Main.WikiSandbox)
You can test out the new version of PmWikiDraw to see the improvements
etc, however you cannot yet download the new PmWikiDraw the archives
on the site are the same archives that were released the day before
yesterday.  I still need to test the new PmWikiDraw some more, but
will release it before Monday.  I'm really sorry about this change,
but the underlying framework changed its package structure which is
apparently referenced directly in the file format (*sigh*).  On the
plus side the new PmWikiDraw will (due to the new style of things) be
capable of offering SVG support in the near future, which will be
very, very neat!

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have, any admins who are
using and have several drawings, please contact me and I'll see if I
can come up with something to automatically convert the drawings for
you :)

-- 
- Ciaran