Slim Release Notes

Summary of Changes to Slim 1.1b2

• Fixed bug resulting in missing or miswired connection.  This occurred when drag/dropping an appearance network from one palette (src) to another (dst). Appearances in the src were mistakenly rewired to the copies in the dst.
• Minor changes to Environment Map templates.
• Support to prevent palette collision detection. Bad things would occur when importing a Maya file with an internal palette multiple times.

• Fixed problem with the spot (light) template. Since it works in degrees the default expression for coneangle and penumbraangle must convert these values to degrees.
• Fixed bug where parameters with expressions weren't always generating correct references to the parameter list value.
• Changed connection menu behavior.  Now if you have lots of potential connections, you'll see menus that don't go offscreen.
• Added support for drag/drop from palette to connection button.  The result is a new connection between the parameter and the function.
• Fixed problems with appearance filters. Now you can type a filtername without deleting appearances.
• Changed the save behavior when running in server mode. Now external palettes are automatically saved each time the Slim Client (eg: Maya) performs a save.
• Added support for storing Slim format information in files with extension .sli.
• Added Palette Editor operations: Expand All, Contract All.
• Changed palette display. Now to rearrange palettes, be careful to drag/drop palette items onto the empty space. As with subpalettes, you can now drop appearances onto collected appearances.
• Moved most key bindings to RAT.scheme and Slim.scheme. You can override these settings by placing your overrides in scheme files in your preferences directory.
• Changed the prefs directory. Now it's named RAT4.1 due to some incompatibilities between RAT4 and RAT4.1 prefs.
• Changed prefs loading semantics. Only prefs that are changed by the user now appear in a .prefs file. No longer do prefs need to be locked to prevent them from appearing in a user's prefs file. Added support for prefs versioning which'll allow prefs stored in user's prefs files to be overridden by administrators.
• Fixed bug in appearance drag/drop. It should be faster now.
• Added more support for the FullPaths preference. External palette references now can be controlled via your FullPaths pref.
• Added Edit Master menu to Palette Editor's appearance menu. Use this to change a raft of app masters from Global to Local or vice versa.
• Fixed bug drawing callgraph of collected appearances.
• The Simple and Combine displacement templates now have the new parameter "Use Shading Normals", which resmooth the calculated normals after displacement. This is useful for polygonal geometry. If you have any displacement shaders in old palettes, you must invoke the Appearance->Reload command on them due to this change.
• Added clipping planes to Slim swatch rendering. This eliminates warnings caused by large default clipping plane values.