BRL-CAD's main source code

With development efforts spanning several years, this major update to BRL-CAD includes considerable progress on infrastructure for graphical user interface improvements, geometry conversion, and physically-based rendering. It also includes hundreds of logic and memory management bug fixes, potential code vulnerability updates, and other issues reported by Coverity and Clang Static Analysis.

This release also overhauls the way 3rd-party dependencies are managed in BRL-CAD. Native build systems are now used in order for updates to be more readily applied, to reduce maintenance overhead, and to set the stage for the aforementioned major feature developments.

• fixed perspective to orthogonal view toggling in archer - Cliff Yapp
• removed 'nburst' rewrite with burst now deprecated - Cliff Yapp
• fixed bot_merge with oriented plate mode bots - Sean Morrison
• bot_dump infers output type from filename extension - Sean Morrison
• readded MGED viewring, sweep, collab, & rateknob menus - Cliff Yapp
• fixed a crash when shaded NURBS brep drawing fails - Cliff Yapp
• added new man pages for brep, process, and ps commands - Cliff Yapp
• added new man page for 3dm-g Rhino3D importer - Cliff Yapp
• improved bot_dump default command help - Chris McGregor
• improved suffix handling for 3dm-g converted primitives - Cliff Yapp
• added -N view obj name option to overlay command - Cliff Yapp
• added man page for MGED Overlaps Tool - Chris McGregor
• major STEPcode updates, using unmodified upstream 0.8.1 - Cliff Yapp
• added aircode reporting support to the lc command - Sean Morrison
• 3dm-g now converts as encountered, not alphabetized - Chris McGregor
• updated Tcl/Tk to version 8.6.12 - Cliff Yapp
• updated netpbm to version 10.73.40 - Cliff Yapp
• updated zlib to version 1.2.13 - Cliff Yapp
• fixed mged -c 'unknown variable' warning dialogs - Sean Morrison
• fixed and improved gqa grid spacing - Daniel Roßberg
• improved mged & archer html command help formatting - Sean Morrison
• fixed archer empty string ("") loading behavior - Cliff Yapp
• rt* tools' -P option accepts negative #core counts - Sean Morrison
• added text label size & rotation angle support to annotation objects - Ali Haydar, Himanshu Nayak, and Daniel Roßberg
• gqa -Ae exposed air report no longer has gapped air - Sean Morrison
• fixed rt framebuffer bug with -g/-G cellsize options - Sean Morrison
• added new idents(5) file format manual page - Sean Morrison
• preserved path prefixes on search cmd results - Cliff Yapp
• new 'material' command and material object infrastructure - Dinges, Connelly, Olivarez, McGregor, Studwell, Wilson

• reduced mged & archer max image size and memory use - Sean MOrrison
• fixed librt handling of object names with '/' chars - Cliff Yapp
• changed fast4-g to not make references to empty regions - Cliff Yapp
• fixed gcv option handling - Cliff Yapp
• updated bundled Eigen dependency to v3.4.0 - Cliff Yapp
• fixed bot_merge crash when bots are of different types - Cliff Yapp
• fixed nirt -L to not require database and objects - Sean Morrison
• fixed bug reading older VOL objects with file data - Sean Morrison
• fixed pixscale bug when scaling images down - Sean Morrison

• Added -matrix search filter for finding comb matrices - Cliff Yapp
• fixed MGED handling of long running subprocesses in script mode - Cliff Yapp, Sean Morrison
• improve documentation for bot modes in bot and search - Cliff Yapp
• added -o output option to GED stat command - Cliff Yapp
• fixed overlay support for drawing multiple files - Cliff Yapp
• fixed file creation for tire command - Cliff Yapp
• fixed mixing object and full path searches in MGED - Cliff Yapp
• fixed launching of ISST graphical viewer - Cliff Yapp

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2021-02-06  Release 7.32.2                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* fixed OSX g-iges crash due to improper memory freeing - Cliff Yapp
* fixed GQA multithreaded plotting file corruption - Cliff Yapp
* added -S structural diff option to MGED gdiff command - Cliff Yapp
* added -v verbosity option to MGED tree command - Cliff Yapp
* added -? option to MGED which command - Cliff Yapp
* updated Archer to set cwd=HOME when run without args - Cliff Yapp
* updated rtwizard to set cwd=HOME when run without args - Cliff Yapp
* updated MGED to set cwd=HOME when run without args - Cliff Yapp
* fixed reporting of MGED "vars" command - Cliff Yapp
* updated MGED to not open non-.g-files as databases - Cliff Yapp
* fixed MGED I/O when running GED subcommands - Cliff Yapp
* added decimation control examples to facetize man page - Cliff Yapp
* changed gcv converter to append to existing .g files - Cliff Yapp
* removed obscure MGED menu entries for unused features - Cliff Yapp
* fixed crash when trying to shade invalid breps - Cliff Yapp
* improved librt CPU timer behavior - Cliff Yapp
* fixed example in saveview manual page - Sean Morrison
* added support for in-database vol primitive data - Sumagna Das
* changed 'mvall' to rename all refs even w/ no object - Sean Morrison
* updated MGED Overlap GUI to run reliably on Windows - Cliff Yapp
* fixed MGED search command crash on empty database - Sean Morrison
* improved performance calculating BoT bounding boxes - Vikram Atreya
* fixed MGED crash closing multiple rt views on Windows - Cliff Yapp
* fixed 'n' key binding override with MGED key forwarding - Cliff Yapp
* fixed mged crash when there are no display managers - Sean Morrison
* added pixcmp -n length flag for subset comparisons - Sean Morrison
* added pixcmp -s same and -d different printing flags - Sean Morrison
* updated non-shape objects list for search shape filter - Cliff Yapp
* added volume type to search -type filters - Cliff Yapp
* applied shorter default title in fast4-g conversions - Cliff Yapp
* improved pixcmp support for subset image comparisons - Sean Morrison
* added subtract subcommand to MGED analyze command - Cliff Yapp
* added intersect subcommand to MGED analyze command - Cliff Yapp
* added summarize subcommand to MGED analyze command - Cliff Yapp
* added quiet (-q) flag to MGED kill command - Cliff Yapp
* added MGED stat command for reporting of object info - Cliff Yapp
* corrected examples in gdiff man page - Cliff Yapp
* fixed help message for -F option on gdiff command - Cliff Yapp
* fixed mged -c bomb attaching to graphical displays - Sean Morrison
* fixed titlebar bug opening .g with filename spaces - Sean Morrison
* added a new 'N' graphics window keybinding to run nirt - Cliff Yapp

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2020-09-14  Release 7.32.0                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This major release of BRL-CAD introduces significant updates to core
library infrastructure.  The update includes restructuring of nearly
all of BRL-CAD's display infrastructure in preparation for upcoming
significant GUI changes.  This release also fixes over fifty of
BRL-CAD's command-line utilities so they work properly on Windows.
This is likely the last major release of BRL-CAD on Subversion
infrastructure with BRL-CAD's imminent migration to Git.

* added basic example to remrt man page - Cliff Yapp, Sean Morrison
* added new 'nburst' version of classic burst tool - Cliff Yapp
* added 'bot set' command for low level BoT manipulation - Cliff Yapp
* report semantic strings for 'bot get' mode/orientation - Cliff Yapp
* added new manual page for the libicv library - Sumagna Das
* added -size filter to MGED search command - Cliff Yapp
* upgraded Tcl/Tk from 8.5.19 to 8.6.10 - Cliff Yapp
* bundled zlib & libpng use API prefix and library suffix - Cliff Yapp
* extensive improvements to OpenCL ray trace pipeline - Rishabh Suthar
* improved rtweight density value warnings - Sean Morrison, Cliff Yapp
* added perception-based hdtv and hdr modes for pix-bw - Sean Morrison
* fixed semi-transparent DM and FB windows on Linux - Cliff Yapp
* improved rtweight manual page - Sean Morrison
* added line reporting TCP listening port to remrt output - Cliff Yapp
* added help options support (-h,-?) to asc2dsp and g2asc - Cliff Yapp
* fixed crash when drawing a VOL with missing data - Cliff Yapp
* facetall.sh script is replaced by MGED facetize command - Cliff Yapp
* dynamic LIBGED command loading in MGED & Archer - Cliff Yapp
* removed MGED "Display Manager" switching menu options - Cliff Yapp
* dynamic LIBDM display manager loading in MGED & Archer - Cliff Yapp
* fixed 'idents' crash when running in a read-only dir - Sean Morrison
* fixed fb tools w/ redirected files and cv on Windows - Sean Morrison
* expanded 'bo' command docs with a DSP input example - Sean Morrison
* fixed 'in' making joint, superell, & script objects - Sean Morrison
* Creo converter always writes out CREO_NAME attribute - Sean Morrison
* improved gdiff -F filtering option behavior - Cliff Yapp
* improved gdiff command verbosity reporting options - Cliff Yapp
* improved Combination Editor button behaviors in MGED - Sean Morrison
* added 'asc' geometry import and export support to gcv  - Cliff Yapp
* consistent usage taxonomy for ident-related commands - Sean Morrison
* added units label to the Archer in-scene scale graphic - Cliff Yapp
* added framebuffer capture option to screengrab command - Cliff Yapp
* added framebuffer writing option to overlay command - Cliff Yapp
* added tree search option to 'whichid' and 'whichair' - Cliff Yapp
* changed 'whichid' and 'whichair' to print ranges of unused IDs
	- Nick Reed, Cliff Yapp
* improved output path sorting of search command - Cliff Yapp
* added "bot extrude" command for making ARB6s from bots - Cliff Yapp
* added 3dm-g failure message about supported versions - Cliff Yapp
* fixed bw-png writing corrupted png files on Windows - Sean Morrison
* added MGED 'dm type' subcommand for reporting DM type - Cliff Yapp
* improved vdeck input support for Windows text files - Sean Morrison
* fixed MGED 'plot' & 'brep plot' commands on Windows - Sean Morrison
* fixed numerous image utilities reading binary input files on Windows
	- Sean Morrison, Cliff Yapp

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2020-07-24  Release 7.30.10                                    ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* added 3dm-g failure message about supported versions - Cliff Yapp
* fixed MGED "in" command support for datums - Sean Morrison
* fixed bw-png writing corrupted png files on Windows - Sean Morrison

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2020-05-08  Release 7.30.8                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* added gchecker tool to generate MGED overlap inputs - Cliff Yapp
* improved behavior of MGED overlap checker GUI - Nick Reed
* fixed startup dimensions of overlap checker window - Nick Reed
* fixed rtedge line drawing color when using -W flag - Cliff Yapp
* added -F option to lint cmd to test specifc solid types - Cliff Yapp
* added support to MGED for zooming with mouse wheel - Cliff Yapp
* fixed solid editing wireframe drawing in MGED - Nick Reed
* added .r suffixes to region names in 3dm-g conversion - Cliff Yapp

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2020-03-19  Release 7.30.6                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* fixed transparent drawing in MGED - Nick Reed
* fixed solid NURBS brep intersection testing - Cliff Yapp
* removed extra blank line after commands in MGED GUI - Sean Morrison
* minor improvement to NURBS ray tracing performance - Sean Morrison
* added "plate" object type filter to search command - Cliff Yapp
* fixed latent logging bug during facetize on Windows - Bob Parker
* fixed bug closing rt framebuffer windows on Windows - Sean Morrison
* added EBM support for reading from database objects - Jeffrey Liu

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2019-12-05  Release 7.30.4                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* enhanced attr list command to support reporting values - Cliff Yapp
* updated FAA Generic Twin example FASTGEN model - Cliff Yapp
* fixed handling of duplicate FASTGEN object names - Cliff Yapp
* update gqa/rtweight man pages to reference mater -d - Cliff Yapp
* overlay command accepts file patterns (e.g., *.plot) - Cliff Yapp
* changed mged escape key binding to reset mouse mode - Sean Morrison
* removed default xXyYzZ0 rate rotation key bindings - Sean Morrison
* improved tessellation of nearly coplanar surfaces - John Anderson
* fixed annotations display on Windows - Daniel Roßberg, Ali Haydar
* fixed rtedge and rtwizard occlusion object edge bug - Sean Morrison
* rt* tools no longer force outputs to be read-only - Sean Morrison
* fixed bug listing annotations with short label strings - Ali Haydar
* improved support for label placement in annotations - Ali Haydar
* fixed bug in annotation object bounding box calculation - Ali Haydar
* fixed an annotation leader line bug affecting display - Ali Haydar
* fixed 'burst' crash when run without options - Sean Morrison
* changed rtweight to not truncate long pathnames - Sean Morrison
* added new ball bearing example geometry model - Sean Morrison
* added new manual page for the clone command - Sean Morrison

Note: 7.30.2-1 corrects a semaphore flag in libbu - no other changes to 7.30.2

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2019-04-03  Release 7.30.2                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* fixed memory leak during obj-g and gcv import - Bojian Wu
* added new manual page for the clone command - Sean Morrison
* fixed crash calculating dsp bounding boxes - Sean Morrison
* fixed Windows temporary file removal for MGED commands (red, etc.)
        - Cliff Yapp
* fixed librt NURBS cache issues under high load conditions
        - Sean Morrison, Cliff Yapp
* added a copy subcommand to MGED's attr command - Cliff Yapp
* fixed a locking condition in MGED's rtcheck command - Cliff Yapp
* added support for >=< prefixes for mater -d get options - Cliff Yapp
* fixed brlman lookup location of html manual pages - Cliff Yapp
* fixed rt -t top-to-bottom parallel rendering option - Sean Morrison
* added a 'flip' normals command to MGED's brep command - Cliff Yapp
* added rtweight support for in-.g density information - Cliff Yapp
* improved usability of vol primitives w/ missing data - Sean Morrison

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2019-04-03  Release 7.30.2                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* fixed memory leak during obj-g and gcv import - Bojian Wu
* added new manual page for the clone command - Sean Morrison
* fixed crash calculating dsp bounding boxes - Sean Morrison
* fixed Windows temporary file removal for MGED commands (red, etc.)
        - Cliff Yapp
* fixed librt NURBS cache issues under high load conditions
        - Sean Morrison, Cliff Yapp
* added a copy subcommand to MGED's attr command - Cliff Yapp
* fixed a locking condition in MGED's rtcheck command - Cliff Yapp
* added support for >=< prefixes for mater -d get options - Cliff Yapp
* fixed brlman lookup location of html manual pages - Cliff Yapp
* fixed rt -t top-to-bottom parallel rendering option - Sean Morrison
* added a 'flip' normals command to MGED's brep command - Cliff Yapp
* added rtweight support for in-.g density information - Cliff Yapp
* improved usability of vol primitives w/ missing data - Sean Morrison

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2019-02-25  Release 7.30.0                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This major release of BRL-CAD is the first release requiring
compiler support for the C++11 language standard when building.
(This change is not user visible, but will be significant to those
using BRL-CAD in their own software development efforts.)

This release introduces a new "-d" option to the mater command,
supporting direct embedding of .density file information in a
.g database for use by commands such as gqa and rtweight.

Also present in this release are a fix for commands that work with
multiple .g files and support for raytracing MGED scenes with large
numbers of active objects.

A number of commands and tools previously listed as deprecated are
removed in this release, including in particular MGED commands
specific to MUVES.

* added rtweight -d option for specifying density file - Cliff Yapp
* added material density management to "mater" command - Cliff Yapp
* use full paths for OBJ objects in "bot dump" command - Cliff Yapp
* added -v high precision option to MGED 'center' command - Cliff Yapp
* fixed crash when using dbconcat and dup together in MGED
        - Cliff Yapp, Sean Morrison
* renamed MGED "ps" command to "postscript" - Cliff Yapp
* removed MGED commands em, e_muves, l_muves, lm, read_muves, t_muves
        - Cliff Yapp
* removed deprecated irprep tools - Cliff Yapp
* removed deprecated fbed and pp-fb framebuffer tools - Cliff Yapp
* fixed rt support for specifying large object lists - Cliff Yapp
* new 'gex' tool for low-level .g file exploration - Tom Browder
* added support for command-line editing of metaballs - Sean Morrison
* added manual page for the 'get' command - Cliff Yapp
* improved speed of "bot chull" convex hull generation - Cliff Yapp

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2018-11-30  Release 7.28.2                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a patch release, applying several logic fixes and build system
corrections.

* fixed incorrect handling of NURBS near-miss points near edges
        - Cliff Yapp, Keith Bowman
* fixed support for large files on 64-bit Windows - Cliff Yapp
* fixed analyze command calculation of BoT volume - Keith Bowman
* fixed problem merging .g files containing dsp data - Cliff Yapp
* fixed infinite loop in OverlapTools GUI - Cliff Yapp

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2018-10-01  Release 7.28.0                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This major release of BRL-CAD incorporates a new feature for caching
of raytrace acceleration structures used when working with explicit
boundary representation (BREP) Non-uniform Rational Basis Spline
(NURBS) solids.  This will result in significant improvements to
run times when repeatedly raytracing BREP solids.

Support for terrain import has been significantly expanded with the
addition of a new Geospatial Data Abstraction Library (GDAL) based
importer to the gcv conversion tool.  GDAL brings with it support for
dozens of different terrain data formats.

Also new in this release are a greatly improved graphical geometry
overlap resolving tool and support in the MGED search command for
an "exec" option which will allow users to execute MGED commands
on search results.

The MGED facetize command for generating polygonal geometry from
BRL-CAD objects has received significant attention, including the
incorporation of a "per-region" conversion mode, new conversion
methodologies and usability enhancements.

* fixed crash mixing flat and full path MGED searches - Cliff Yapp
* improved MGED ls command's help message - Cliff Yapp
* added -exec option to MGED's search command - Peter Pronai
* added new MGED 'lint' command for finding bad geometry - Cliff Yapp
* improved lingering framebuffer CPU utilization  - Sean Morrison
* updated 'draw -S' option to work with shaded objects - Bob Parker
* fixed numerous fb* command bugs w/ X11 framebuffers - Sean Morrison
* extended fbpoint support to more varied framebuffers - Sean Morrison
* improved gqa plot file handling and documentation - Sean Morrison
* improved rt usage reporting with categorized options - Sean Morrison
* removed rt -f framerate option for animating shaders - Sean Morrison
* removed "pixd" support: rt -d option and pixdsplit - Sean Morrison
* fixed fbserv timeout errors on some BSD platforms - Cezar Elnazli
* fixed rtcheck bug handling reversed overlap pairs - Saran Narayan
* new workflow GUI for detecting and fixing geometry overlap errors
        - Sean Morrison, Nick Reed, Saran Narayan
* fixed gqa printing wrong grid size on no overlaps - Saran Narayan
* fixed pix-png creating corrupt PNG files on Windows - Sean Morrison
* added "check overlaps" menu option to Archer - Saran Narayan
* improved 'idents' command portability - Daniel Ramirez, Cliff Yapp
* changed remrt/rtsrv to no longer report overlaps - Sean Morrison
* improved GUI of MGED's Overlap Tool - Saran Narayan
* fixed geopmetry directory building bug in remrt/rtsrv - Sean Morrison
* fixed gcv problem with full paths on Windows - Cliff Yapp
* removed precision limitation in NIRT input parsing - Cliff Yapp
* added new example geometry models: chess and die pieces - Jeff Sieu
* new 'openid' command for listing available region IDs - Nick Reed
* improved triangle mesh error detection for "bot check" command
        - Nick Reed, Cliff Yapp, Jon Engbert
* fixed graphical mode initial page loading in brlman - Cliff Yapp
* added gcv import support for 20+ terrain formats - Cliff Yapp
* added 'bot_dump' command to MGED - Nick Reed
* ported MGED 'screengrab' command to Windows - Nick Reed
* removed spectral tracing: libmultispectral & rttherm - Cliff Yapp
* sped up raytracing by 10% - Cezar Elnazli

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2017-09-22  Release 7.26.4                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This is a patch release, primary focused on updates to the build
system logic.

* upgraded libgdiam to version 1.0.3 - Cliff Yapp
* fixed MGED bindings behavior for c, A, P, and S chars - Bob Parker
* fixed gdiff usage statement - Sean Morrison
* removed anim.txt, sun.txt, tube.txt and movie.txt - Cliff Yapp

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2017-06-10  Release 7.26.2                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Among a variety of bugs fixed, the patch corrects a critical error in
BoT triangle mesh ray tracing.  For improved performance, it also
changes the default frame buffer display behavior to fully buffer ray
tracing images instead of displaying them incrementally.  A variety of
MGED commands see improvements too with 'ls' now supporting listing
objects by their on-disk size and the 'simulate' command applying
forces on objects (e.g., gravity) with greater ease.  Not yet
complete, there is a new interface being developed for resolving
overlaps more efficiently, currently under development and usability
testing with select users.  Lastly, a number of dependencies were
upgraded, including Tcl/Tk, in order to patch security vulnerabilities
and address portability issues.

* upgraded Tcl/Tk from 8.5.9 to 8.5.19 - Sean Morrison
* fixed background color setting in MGED - Cliff Yapp
* upgraded libpng to version 1.6.29 - Cliff Yapp
* upgraded zlib to version 1.2.11 - Cliff Yapp
* reduced 'shade_inputs' flipped normal reporting - Sean Morrison
* numerous 'simulate' command enhancements and fixes - Jon Engbert
* fixed rtweight .density file loading on Windows - Cliff Yapp
* fixed dsp handling of invalid uniform binary objects - Sean Morrison
* fixed brlman problem with viewing benchmark man page - Cliff Yapp
* fixed name of dbfind man page (was listed as 'find') - Cliff Yapp
* added -H option to ls for human readable size reporting - Cliff Yapp
* added -S option to ls command for size based sorting - Cliff Yapp
* improved 'loadview' command view script handling - Sean Morrison
* fixed TIE raytracing for zero thickness BoTs - Cliff Yapp
* added Wavefront OBJ File->Open GUI support in Archer - Cliff Yapp
* fixed attr show error printing large attribute values - Cliff Yapp
* fixed rt support for lights created prior to rel 6.0 - Sean Morrison
* fixed infinite loop bug in when using shadow lights - Sean Morrison
* removed man pages: erase_all, export_body, vrmgr, dall - Cliff Yapp
* fixed MGED 'c' command crash when run with bad arguments - Nick Reed
* added manual pages for the 'brlman' and 'man' commands - Cliff Yapp
* improved gdiff default grid spacing and tolerancing - Cliff Yapp
* updated brlman to support browsing all page categories - Cliff Yapp
* added support for .rtwizardrc configuration file - Cliff Yapp
* renamed MGED gdiff grid spacing -t option to -g - Cliff Yapp
* updated MGED gdiff default drawing options to -l -r - Cliff Yapp
* removed MGED gdiff -R option, now default behavior - Cliff Yapp
* replaced obsolete 'g_diff' manual page with 'gdiff' - Cliff Yapp
* improved 'keep' error message when file is not created - Cliff Yapp
* improved rtwizard window sizing and "RtWizard" titling - Cliff Yapp
* brep command attaches .brep suffix instead of _brep - Sean Morrison
* changed ogl & wgl framebuffer delayed write behavior - Sean Morrison
* upgraded freetype to version 2.6.5 - Cliff Yapp
* fix rtedge foreground/background color options - Jon Engbert
* support rt -C colors specified as 0-255 or 0.0-1.0 - Jon Engbert
* fixed xpush bug leaving stray top-level objects - Nick Reed
* removed MGED wrapper 'mged.bat' batch script on Windows - Cliff Yapp

The "gcv" executable that supports the newer FASTGEN conversion
capabilities isn't installed by default with the 7.26.0 source
tarball.  To enable it, apply the patch file as follows:

(download brlcad-7.26.0.tar.gz and rel-7-26-0-2.patch)
tar -xvf brlcad-7.26.0.tar.gz
cd brlcad-7.26.0
patch -p0 < ../rel-7-26-0-2.patch

BSD binaries were built on FreeBSD 10.3-STABLE amd64
System libz, libregex, libpng and libfreetype were used.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2016-08-08  Release 7.26.0                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This major release of BRL-CAD culminates several years of development
effort to provide robust explicit boundary representation (BREP)
Non-uniform Rational Basis Spline (NURBS) import and ray tracing
analysis support.  Compared to previous polygonal mesh (BoT) methods,
NURBS offer superior interoperability with other CAD systems, faithful
shape-preserving import, and significantly reduced model sizes.  NURBS
may be imported from the ISO STEP (AP203) and Rhino 3DM file formats,
both with improved hierarchy preservation and entity support.

Unprecedented in BRL-CAD's history, this release initiates steps to
significantly reduce complexity and improve usability.  Many features
are being consolidated, reorganized, and removed via BRL-CAD's
deprecation process.  There are widespread documentation system
enhancements including new manual pages, improved command usage,
better help facilities, and more.

This release introduces the 'gcv' and 'icv' tools for geometry and
image conversion respectively.  These plugin-architecture tools are
intended to eventually consolidate and replace all of BRL-CAD's
conversion and processing functionality into an easy universal
interface for users and application developers.  GCV currently
supports import and export of STL, 3DM, OBJ, VRML, and FASTGEN
geometry as well as mesh decimation, facetization, and solidity
testing.  The new FASTGEN exporter implements extensive compatibility
feature mapping for round-trip geometry conversion.

Ray tracing performance on Windows is vastly improved on symmetric
multiprocessing (SMP) multicore and multiple CPU systems.  Implemented
as 'datum' objects, BRL-CAD provides new modeling support for
reference points, lines (axes), and planes.  Major features still
under experimental development include NURBS Boolean evaluation, a new
marching cubes method for polygonal mesh export, rigging joints for
constrained geometry articulation, and an OpenCL-accelerated high
performance ray tracing pipeline.

* mass-deprecation of 121 command-line utilities - BRL-CAD Developers
* fixed bad args crash in metaball 'in' command - Cliff Yapp
* added manual page for lt comb child listing command - Cliff Yapp
* added lt -c option for specifying separation character - Bob Parker
* improved hierarchy preservation in 3dm-g importer - Jon Engbert
* fixed upside down 'screengrab' images on some platforms - Nick Reed
* updated wireframe drawing to respect primitive colors - Cliff Yapp
* updated pixdiff & pixcmp to only compare same sizes - Cliff Yapp
* fixed running archer from read-only filesystems - Cliff Yapp
* fixed patch-g tool and E command infinite loop bug - Sean Morrison
* improved NMG ray tracing fault tolerance - Sean Morrison
* added 3dm-g support for layers and names - Keith Bowman
* fixed issue preserving color/shader info with 3dm-g - Jon Engbert
* added 3dm-g support for mesh objects - Jon Engbert
* added csg implicit hierarchy conversion to brep command - Cliff Yapp
* fixed crash in clone when told to make zero copies - Cliff Yapp
* fixed crash in search when using -above option - Cliff Yapp
* extended nirt to list current and available formats - Sean Morrison
* fixed NURBS wireframe drawing crash - Cliff Yapp
* fixed firing of single rays using the rtshot tool - Sean Morrision
* removed pixread.sh, pixwrite.sh; obsolete hardware - Sean Morrison
* removed cray.sh and sgisnap.sh; obsolete hardware - Sean Morrison
* removed cadbug.sh - use sourceforge tracker - Sean Morrison
* removed any-png.sh - use pix tools - Sean Morrison
* removed librtserver interface - Cliff Yapp
* removed MGED per_line command - Sean Morrison
* updated MGED tops command: default to -g -u behavior - Sean Morrison
* removed MGED -n option; use -c instead - Sean Morrison
* removed MGED commands pl, pov and polybinout - Sean Morrison
* removed UtahRLE image tools - Cliff Yapp
* improved rcodes command feedback in the no changes case - Cliff Yapp
* added brlman -S option to specify man page section  - Cliff Yapp
* modified rtg3 to avoid outputting excessive LOS - Nick Gerstner
* extended burst and rtg3 to output 5 digit ID numbers - Nick Gerstner
* improved draw command manual page documenation - Cliff Yapp
* added lc -m option to report multi-material/los regions - Cliff Yapp
* added new 'icv' image conversion tool w/ pix, bw, dpix, png, ppm
        - Mohit Daga, Cliff Yapp, Sean Morrison, Erik Greenwald
* ported 'burst' tool (batch mode only) to Windows - Cliff Yapp
* removed mged pl command, use plot command instead - Sean Morrison
* improved datum wireframes (yellow) and fixed arrowheads - Cliff Yapp
* added initial manual page for 'burst' ray dispatch tool - Cliff Yapp
* improved wireframe display list performance - Keith Bowman
* added draw -S for simplied wireframes, no subtractions - Cliff Yapp
* added draw -L# to draw bounding boxes for large objects - Cliff Yapp
* added 3dm-g instance reference and definition import - Jon Engbert
* minor rtwizard graphical user interface reorganization - Cliff Yapp
* fixed rtwizard edge and ghosted image bug on Windows - Bob Parker
* ported 'brlman' manual page viewer with GUI to Windows - Cliff Yapp
* added gdiff -h help command-line option - Cliff Yapp
* added facetize -m marching cubes option - Erik Greenwald
* removed -I interactive option from rt/rtedge/remrt - Sean Morrison
* improved pix-bw intensity averaging to closest integer - Cliff Yapp
* removed pix-bw3 & bw3-pix tools, see pix-bw & bw-pix - Cliff Yapp
* fixed pix-ppm to write out all image data - Sean Morrision
* added libnetpbm for ppm image format support in icv - Cliff Yapp
* added new algorithm to bot_decimate (via -f option) - Jon Engbert
* fixed benchmark bug running from paths with spaces - Sean Morrison
* fixed adjust command crash when working with BoTs - Daniel Roßberg
* removed fb-orle, orle-fb, orle-pix, and pix-orle tools - Cliff Yapp
* removed support for RLE v1 and v2 ('orle') image format - Cliff Yapp
* fixed datum type 'in' command unit conversion bug - Cliff Yapp
* fixed rpatch / patch-g line handling on Windows - Daniel Roßberg
* added 'arb8' surface area value to analyze command - Kalpit Thakkar
* added 'part' centroid reporting to analyze command - Brad Hollister
* added new pixcrop utility for cropping pix images - Carl Moore
* preliminary OpenCL-accelerated coherent ray tracing pipeline
        - Jon Engbert, Vasco Costa
* improved point cloud plot visualization - Sean Morrison
* fixed program freezing bug in MGED grouper command - Bob Parker
* added 'rhc' reporting to analyze command - Kalpit Thakkar
* improved command option and manual page consistency - Carl Moore
* added prefatory FASTGEN4 geometry export support - Jon Engbert
* added FASTGEN4 illegal thickness CCONE1 entity import - Cliff Yapp
* improved help message for 'tire' command - Cliff Yapp, Carl Moore
* improved option parsing and output options for gencolor - Carl Moore
* fixed saveview usage help string and running from archer - Nick Reed
* fixed and improved killtree man page - Nick Reed
* fixed composition bugs in pixmatte and pixmerge - Carl Moore
* fixed definition of "light year" in unit conversions - Cliff Yapp
* fixed duplicate name errors in dbconcat - Daniel Roßberg
* modernized documents and improved infrastructure - Hitesh Sofat
* added mirroring support for hrt primitive objects - Isaac Kamga
* added manual page documenting the STEP geometry format - Cliff Yapp
* ported the mged Overlap Tool to Windows - Sean Morrison
* improved NURBS prep performance for UV-remapped surfaces - Nick Reed
* fixed dbconcat -c crash when color table does not exist - Nick Reed
* swapped meanings of search's -above/-below options - Sean Morrison
* upgraded freetype to version 2.5.5 - Cliff Yapp
* updated libregex to apply a fix for CVE-2015-2305 - Cliff Yapp
* upgraded libpng to version 1.6.20 - Cliff Yapp
* added command window option for pasting tree view paths - Nick Reed
* improved 'bb' command digits and units output - Keith Bowman
* improved robustness of bb command oriented box option - Peter Amidon
* added example NURBS B-Rep geometry files from NIST - Cliff Yapp
* removed "high resolution" options from all commands - Carl Moore
* improved performance of archer loading large BoT models - Nick Reed
* added evaluated shaded drawing preference mode and menu - Nick Reed
* fixed .mgedrc creation corruption with closed database - Cliff Yapp
* extensive improvements to NURBS Boolean evaluation - Nick Reed
* added 'bot chull' for creating convex hull envelopes - Cliff Yapp
* new manual page for the g-voxel exporter - Mandarj
* improved performance of lc command - Peter Amidon
* updated manual page for MGED's brep command - Peter Amidon
* new manual page for the g-dot exporter - Shardul Chiplunkar
* added sketch centroid support the analyze command - Peter Amidon
* new Think. Invent. Create. splash screen for archer - Marc Tannous
* improved pix-bw to support dual output streams - Carl Moore
* added list option to attr command - Cliff Yapp
* added globbing support to attr command - Cliff Yapp
* added lc -0 option to return objects in tree order - Sean Morrison
* fixed crash in iges-g importer due to parsing error - Ștefan Mirea
* fixed corrupt output generated by iges-g importer - Ștefan Mirea
* gqa respects LIBRT_BOT_MINTIE environment variable - Ștefan Mirea
* improved behavior of mged's draw command - Ștefan Mirea
* fixed handling of extra whitespace in nirt commands - Ștefan Mirea
* renamed 'make_bb' mged command name to 'bb' - Cliff Yapp
* added g-ply exporter for Stanford PLY geometry format - Rishub Jain
* added ply-g importer for Stanford PLY geometry format - Rishub Jain
* improved rtedge help option output - Carl Moore
* fixed texture mapping crash with bad image dimensions - Ștefan Mirea
* fixed g2asc and asc2g handling of dsp primitive - Cliff Yapp
* rewrote gdiff with improved output & reporting options - Cliff Yapp
* fixed pix-ps -S -W -N output size options being ignored - Carl Moore
* fixed crash exporting mixed mode merged BoT meshes - Sean Morrison
* fixed submodel primitive crash - Cliff Yapp, Sean Morrison
* added fbclear command to archer - Bob Parker
* improved rtwizard command-line mode manual page docs - Cliff Yapp
* support non-.g file import in Archer's file open dialog - Cliff Yapp
* added brep support to g2asc and asc2g - Cliff Yapp
* fixed a CPU affinity locking bug on Linux platforms - Sean Morrison
* renamed g_diff/g_lint/g_qa/g_transfer sans underscore - Cliff Yapp
* removed mged -n option, use mged -c for classic mode - Cliff Yapp
* fixed mged -c crash running view-modifying commands - Sean Morrison
* improved kill, killall, killtree documentation - Sean Morrison
* added killtree -f force flag to kill unconditionally - Sean Morrison
* killtree now defaults to skipping referenced objects - Sean Morrison
* nirt -h option is now help, old -h is -H - Carl Moore
* implemented preliminary NURBS geometry Boolean evaluation
        - Wu Jianbang, Nick Reed, Cliff Yapp
* improved step-g assembly hierarchy import support - Keith Bowman
* fixed rtweight when using the -G grid spacing option - Sean Morrison
* fixed memory leaks in a number of pix utilities - Cezar Elnazli
* improved NURBS ray tracing & tessellation robustness - Keith Bowman
* improved step-g NURBS geometry import robustness - Keith Bowman
* added -f vertex fuse option to obj-g importer - Jon Engbert
* added -v verbose output option to mged 'search' command - Cliff Yapp
* fixed g_lint and pixcount red-black tree memory leaks - Tom Browder
* added conversion time reporting to step-g importer - Keith Bowman
* fixed crash of extrude with special case bezier curves - huskmate13
* improved performance of 'terrain' & numerous shaders - Sean Morrison
* new manual pages for rtexample and brep_simple - Shardul Chiplunkar
* added key binding to reopen/focus mged command window - Emory Huff
* added menu option to restore mged command window - Cezar Elnazli
* improved DocBook documentation output formatting
        - David Wood, Yatharth Agarwal
* added 'search' -params option for geometric parameters - Cliff Yapp
* search command now recognizes hyp and metaball types - Cliff Yapp
* improved spec formatting, added v5 timestamp proposal - Tom Browder
* improved search command documentation examples - Cliff Yapp
* improved archer interface's behavior on start-up - Nick Reed
* added -depth option to mged 'search' command - Cliff Yapp
* initial support for rigging joints and constrained articulation
        - Nick Reed, Keith Bowman, Cliff Yapp, Sean Morrison
* improved 'search' with 'flat' search path modifier - Cliff Yapp
* improved 'search' with above/equal/below depth limits - Cliff Yapp
* improved support for sub-millimeter (tiny) meshes - Keith Bowman
* added comb -S option to stop when object already exists - Cliff Yapp
* improved comb command documentation with many examples - Cliff Yapp
* implemented new 'hrt' heart-shaped primitive object - Isaac Kamga
* added support for multicore / SMP ray tracing on Windows
        - Adrián Calle, Arjun Govindjee, Daniel Roßberg, Sean Morrison

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2015-08-31  Release 7.24.4                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* initial support for datum points, lines, and planes - Sean Morrison

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2014-06-02  Release 7.24.2                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This patch release includes a plethora of significant bug fixes and
improvements to BRL-CAD including fixing ADRT/TIE fast triangle ray
tracing on 32-bit platforms, fixing an issue in our FASTGEN converter
that affected the import of very complex geometry models, upgrading
one of our third-party dependencies (libpng) in response to a
vulnerability report, and improving the 'comb' and 'search' commands
with new options for restructuring and searching geometry.
Enhancements continue to be made to our boundary representation (BREP)
NURBS infrastructure in support of hybrid representation modeling and
improved geometry interchange with other CAD systems.

* improved rcodes output to inform user what changed - Cliff Yapp
* fixed inside command for ellipsoid primitives - Cliff Yapp
* restored suppressed mged output after some commands - Cliff Yapp
* added rtwizard -s square image size option - Cliff Yapp
* documented image size options in rtwizard man page - Cliff Yapp
* added view center specification dialog to rtwizard - Cliff Yapp
* increased rtwizard window size for button visibility - Cliff Yapp
* image conversion -R/-G/-B options now require weight - Mohit Daga
* improved option consistency for image processing tools - Mohit Daga
* improved pipe ray tracing grazing hit behavior - Keith Bowman
* upgraded libpng, now at version 1.6.10 - Erik Greenwald, Cliff Yapp
* improved solid NURBS geometry ray tracing behavior - Keith Bowman
* fix z-clipping bug in mged's X display manager - Cliff Yapp
* added attribute sorting option to the 'attr' command - Tom Browder
* changed 'bwfilter' tool offset option from -o to -O - Mohit Daga
* gattributes section 5 man page renamed to attributes - Tom Browder
* changed 'benchmark' defaults: 2% deviation, 5 frames - Sean Morrison
* improved bwrect to handle redirected input and output - Mohit Daga
* upgraded boost to version 1.55.0 - Tom Browder
* fixed TIE mesh raytrace crashes on 32-bit platforms - Sean Morrison
* fixed pixscale and bwscale to not output ioctl error - Mohit Daga
* improved fast4-g import of numerous region groups - Richard Weiss
* fixed archer hidden line edit getting redrawn as shaded - Nick Reed
* fixed adrt/TIE polygonal mesh memory management bug - Richard Weiss
* fixed fast4-g importer parsing of blank input lines - Richard Weiss
* added -o flag to 'bb' command for oriented bounding box - Cliff Yapp
* allow search to see hidden combs with the -a flag - Cliff Yapp
* added comb -l lift option to change region designation - Cliff Yapp
* improved NURBS ray tracing grazing hit behavior - Keith Bowman
* print current grid information in gqa output - Cliff Yapp
* added -f option for flattening combs to 'comb' command - Cliff Yapp
* added support for -bool operation filtering in search - Cliff Yapp
* added new g-raw geometry converter - Jon Engbert, Daniel Roßberg
* improved g-stl usage and documentation - Jon Engbert
* added -c and -r region flag options to the comb command - Cliff Yapp
* added -p/-P point/line plot options to 'burst' tool - Sean Morrison
* added -w wrapping option to the 'comb' command - Cliff Yapp
* archer respects LIBRT_BOT_MINTIE environment variable - Bob Parker
* new 'cchannel' procedural geometry tool for C-Channel - Emory Huff
* improved 'comb' command error messages - Talwinder Saini
* pl -> plot3 rename for utilities and docs - Tom Browder, Cliff Yapp
* exposed 'coil' command within mged & archer - Alexandrus, Cliff Yapp
* added centroid reporting to 'analyze' command output - Csaba Nagy
* added arb8 centroid 'analyze' command reporting - Silviu Ungureanu
* pipe centroid, volume, & surface area analyze reporting - Csaba Nagy
* added ebm centroid 'analyze' command reporting - Michael Huang
* improved help option consistency across numerous tools - Carl Moore

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2013-06-13  Release 7.24.0                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This major update to BRL-CAD comes after nearly a full year of
development.  This is the alpha release unveiling of Archer/MGED, a
preliminary interface update to BRL-CAD's graphical geometry editor.
As alpha software, this new MGED prototype aims to provide functional
feature parity with the antecedent MGED interface while introducing
various changes.  Included is an integrated graphical tree view, a
single window framework, drag-and-drop geometry editing, information
panels, shortcut buttons, improved polygonal mesh and 2D sketch
editing, level-of-detail wireframes, NURBS shaded display support, and
much more.  Prior to upcoming beta testing where the emphasis will
predominantly be on stability and usability, this alpha status
solicits feedback from the community on capability and features.

This release also includes various improvements to BRL-CAD's ray
tracing infrastructure including CPU thread affinity locking for
faster performance, more consistent grazing hit behavior, expanded
volume and surface area calculations, numerous bug fixes, and more
robust NURBS evaluation.  Following BRL-CAD's interface deprecation
policy (see CHANGES file), the Jove text editor is no longer being
bundled.  Numerous converters receive robustness improvements
including the STEP, Patch, and 3DM importers.

* improved gqa performance on parallel SMP hardware - Richard Weiss
* fixed bounding box size calculation for pipe geometry - Bob Parker
* improved help option consistency across numerous tools - Carl Moore
* 'idents' command no longer reports negative booleans - Keith Bowman
* improved support for NURBS with big uv-domain changes - Keith Bowman
* improved ray tracing behavior for grazing rays - Keith Bowman
* improved robustness of the step-g geometry importer - Nick Reed
* fixed search command bombing on v4 database file - Sean Morrison
* fixed graphics window z-clipping bug in mged - Bob Parker
* fixed mged lesson 15 toy truck 'inside' ordering bug - Sean Morrison
* fixed uninstallable Linux RPM package on Fedora 18 - Jordi Sayol
* improved Mac, BSD, & Windows ray tracing performance - Sean Morrison
* improved Linux ray tracing via cpu thread affinity - Akshay Kashyap
* fixed nirt high object count failure on Windows - Richard Weiss
* added plate mode BoT support to 'bot_merge' command - Richard Weiss
* jove removed, see jove.emacs for compatibility bindings - Cliff Yapp
* added gqa -q quiet option to suppress 'was not hit' - Richard Weiss
* level-of-detail mged configuration dialog, under Tools - Nick Reed
* added level-of-detail wireframe support to mged/archer - Nick Reed
* initial NURBS shaded display and tessellation support - Keith Bowman
* fixed patch-g -f input file permissions failure - Sean Morrison
* improved large file support for the patch-g importer - Sean Morrison
* upgraded libpng to version 1.5.12 - Cliff Yapp
* openNURBS updated to version 5.0 (2012-10-24) - Richard Weiss
* improved BoT mesh editing interface in archer - Bob Parker
* fixed crash when running screengrab in archer - Nick Reed
* fixed memory leak when working with pipe primitives - Daniel Roßberg
* fixed asc2g and mged empty revolve object crashes - Sean Morrison
* improved Linux support for multiple hardware displays - Bob Parker
* fixed crash when parsing invalid shader parameters - Cliff Yapp
* fixed mged 'dbupgrade' -permissions error on windows - Sean Morrison
* fixed infinite loop raytracing subtracted lights - Sean Morrison
* added hyp centroid and volume output to 'analyze' - Aaron Keesing
* added support for wireframe drawing of 'hyp' labels - Bob Parker
* fixed random number SMP bug affecting rt and adrt - Sean Morrison
* added support for editing 2D sketch objects in archer - Bob Parker
* fixed File->New deprecation error in archer - Sean Morrison
* improved Linux platform application and file icons - Jordi Sayol
* modified gqa to report all missed regions - Richard Weiss
* added epa surface area and volume to analyze command - Chris Dueck
* added arbn surface area and volume to analyze command  - Chris Dueck
* added eto surface area and volume to analyze command  - Chris Dueck
* quell pix-png gAMA chunk warning defaulting to unset - Sean Morrison
* fixed mged interactive object translation keypoint bug - Bob Parker
* fixed corrupted tessellation pipe export bug - Richard Weiss
* fixed memory leak in bot_condense - Chris Dueck
* output from g-var no longer prints 'fwrite' messages - Sean Morrison
* fixed gqa to not report overlap regions as zero hits - Richard Weiss
* fixed crash in step-g tool importing AP214 entities - Sean Morrison
* improved 3dm-g output and invalid geometry support - Sean Morrison
* fixed crash revolving empty sketch objects - Sean Morrison
* fixed TIE raytracing bugs shotlining plate-mode BoTs - Sean Morrison
* g_diff gives non-zero return code if .g files differ - Sean Morrison
* fixed typographical errors in numerous tools and docs - Carl Moore
* fixed TIE perpendicular face mesh evaluation failure - Richard Weiss
* added -b option to set tpkg network packet size - Andrei Popescu
* added manual page for existing mged reid command - Richard Weiss
* added manual page for bot_sync, bot_flip, bot_split - Richard Weiss
* added manual page for running rtarea within mged - Richard Weiss
* improved documentation consistency and authorship info - Tom Browder
* new mouse-input unpushed matrix edit option in archer - Bob Parker
* fixed bug during pipe editing with working units set - Bob Parker
* added experimental 'bot_fuse' command to heal BoTs - Richard Weiss

SECOND REVISION: The first posting of the 7.22.0 release of BRL-CAD
for Mac OS X included dependencies to a non-default library causing
MGED to fail to start properly.  This second post fixes that issue.

This is the debut release of BRL-CAD for Mac OS X providing an
improved drag-n-drop installation.  The graphical application launched
by default is BRL-CAD's "mged" geometry editor.  However, also
included within the application bundle is a complete installation of
BRL-CAD's 400+ other command-line applications.  They are located in
the Contents/Resources/brlcad subdirectory of the application bundle.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2012-06-25  Release 7.22.0                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

After many months of development, this release includes hundreds of
fixes for source code defects, logic and memory management bugs,
potential security vulnerabilities, and numerous other issues reported
by Coverity Static Analysis.  While having participated in the
Coverity Scan Initiative since inception in 2006, this release marks a
completion milestone with the review and resolution of all reported
issues, more than 2100 overall.  Every defect was inspected, code
modifications were peer-reviewed, critical features were tested, and
user-visible changes were documented.  Along with other on-going
improvement efforts such as treating all compiler-generated warnings
as errors, time and attention continues to be put forth towards
improving BRL-CAD's maintainability and source code quality.

Development of BREP/NURBS representation support within BRL-CAD
continues to mature with this release including ray tracing
improvements, tighter bounding boxes for better performance, progress
converting from traditional implicit+CSG representations to NURBS+CSG,
wireframe improvements, and a thorough verification and validation
(V&V) review for analysis suitability.  The V&V review compared
BRL-CAD's primitives in implicit, polygonal mesh, and NURBS form
evaluating more than a dozen separate tests looking for differences in
rendering, curvature, presented areas, volume, and more.  The review
identified a couple minor issues that were inspected and fixed but
successfully demonstrated the viability of using our BREP/NURBS
implementation for geometric representation and analysis purposes.

This release introduces numerous major feature developments including
the initial implementation of a new physics simulation capability, a
new ambient occlusion rendering mode, and the integration of rtwizard
into Archer.  The simulation system was developed by Abhijit Nandy
under the European Space Agency's 2011 Summer of Code in Space (SOCIS)
program; and it allows BRL-CAD geometry objects to dynamically
interact with each other (e.g., collision detection, friction) or with
the environment (e.g., gravity).  Ambient occlusion is a shading
method that helps add considerable realism and feature definition to
renderings, enabled within rt using the "set ambSamples=128" command.
The rtwizard rendering interface was extended to work as a
command-line tool (useful for scripting) and was integrated within
Archer as the underlying rendering interface.

Conversion support continues to be a development priority with
significant importer enhancements for the STEP, OBJ, COMGEOM, FASTGEN,
and RAW file formats.  The STEP importer in particular receives
several updates, support for importing assembly hierarchies, and is in
the process of being fully ported to Windows.  This release also fixes
more than 40 user-visible bugs including a significant database
corruption issue.  A database corruption issue was discovered and
fixed affecting 64-bit big endian platforms (e.g., IBM Power Series
supercomputers) when writing out ebm, dsp, vol, and hf primitives.

BRL-CAD's documentation continues to be extended, improved, and
translated due to the sustained efforts of several contributors.
Manual page documentation is now available on Windows through the
'brlman' command and within MGED.  Several utilities and commands that
previously had no documentation now have manual pages; many others
received corrections and improvements.  The introductory article
"About BRL-CAD" is now available in Russian, Italian, and Armenian.

* numerous manual page corrections and improvements - Tom Browder
* integration of rtwizard traits into archer - Bob Parker, Cliff Yapp
* new asc2dsp prep tool for displacement map data files - Tom Browder
* fixed a problem with rt writing pix files on Windows - Bob Parker
* added new raw-g raw triangle mesh to BoT importer - Daniel Roßberg
* added Windows man page support (using html) to brlman - Cliff Yapp
* added support for section numbers to brlman script - Cliff Yapp
* new manual pages for asc2dsp, dsp, asc2pix, and asc2g - Tom Browder
* fixed bug creating binary uniform (binunif) objects - Sean Morrison
* fixed memory corruption bug reading v4 geometry - Sean Morrison
* fixed bug where small raytraces were being rotated - Erik Greenwald
* ios-icon.sh script added for generating IOS icons - Erik Greenwald
* support for implicit to boundary representation geometry conversion
        - Cliff Yapp, Wu Jianbang, Sean Morrison
* added rtwizard support for writing out .png images
        - Bob Parker, Cliff Yapp, Richard Weiss
* fixed region demotion bug in the mged 'red' command - Richard Weiss
* added implicit conversion support to 'brep' command - Wu Jianbang
* improved NURBS raytracing grazing hit & edge behavior - Keith Bowman
* added initial documentation for make_pnts command - Richard Weiss
* fixed gqa crash when specified objects didn't exist - Richard Weiss
* rtedge and rtwizard support multiple occlusion objects - Bob Parker
* fixed mged matrix edit bug selecting the last matrix - Bob Parker
* added 'lc' command to mged for listing region codes - Richard Weiss
* fixed rtedge/rtwizard edge overlay rendering bug - Bob Parker
* fixed 'open: Permission denied' rtedge output file bug - Cliff Yapp
* upgraded libpng to 1.5.10 - Cliff Yapp
* fixed various memory leaks in the comgeom-g geometry importer
        - Tom Browder, Nick Reed
* fixed comgeom-g bug importing ars primitive objects - Tom Browder
* added new command-line invocation support to rtwizard - Cliff Yapp
* fixed BoT mesh hit offset and vanish TIE render bugs - Keith Bowman
* improved nurbs raytracing when shooting from inside - Keith Bowman
* added 'draw'/'e' -m1 option for shading BoTs in mged - Richard Weiss
* expanded docs on mged listeval and 'l' list commands - Richard Weiss
* removed obsolete 'syn' multi sine synthesis tool - Sean Morrison
* fixed memory corruption in vegetation generator tool - Sean Morrison
* fixed ARS bounding box size affecting overlap handling - Cliff Yapp
* fixed bug in fast4-g importer handling HOLE/WALL cards - Nick Reed
* fixed field truncation bug in comgeom-g importer - Tom Browder
* fixed log file clobber bug in the benchmark suite - Cliff Yapp
* enabled new 'select' command for use within mged - Richard Weiss
* added preliminary object 'select' command to archer - Bob Parker
* improved support for the Intel C/C++ compiler (icc) - Sean Morrison
* now sorting top level object alphabetically in rtwizard - Cliff Yapp
* "About BRL-CAD" article translation to Russian - Ilya
* "About BRL-CAD" article translation to Armenian - Karen Mgebrova
* "About BRL-CAD" article translation to Italian
        - Unknown Contributor, Tom Browder
* improved 'adjust' command rgb/color attribute handling - Cliff Yapp
* added initial support for step-g import of assemblies - Keith Bowman
* added a basic SWIG spec file - Erik Greenwald
* fixed referenced object highlighting in archer treeview - Bob Parker
* fixed error handling input reading failure in burst - Sean Morrison
* fixed memory double-freeing issue in shp-g - Erik Greenwald
* added optional scaling parameter to autoview command - Sean Morrison
* fixed extrude object bug rendering at near right angles - Bob Parker
* added -h option to nirt to suppress header printing - Cliff Yapp
* fixed nirt attribute reporting for specified attributes - Cliff Yapp
* fixed ebm/dsp/vol/hf corruption on 64-bit big endian - Sean Morrison
* fixed step-g importer memory management issues - Keith Bowman
* improved tab-completion behavior for mged and archer - Sean Morrison
* fixed pervasive string handling memory leak - Tom Browder
* improved table output formatting for 'analyze' command - Tom Browder
* improved rtweight portability and density file parsing - Tom Browder
* fixed crash in anim_cascade animation tool - Nick Reed
* fixed bug in gif2fb processing non-interlaced images - Sean Morrison
* fixed crash in coil when using -S and -l options - Cliff Yapp
* fixed mged 'make_pnts' command resource contention bug - Nick Reed
* fixed nirt memory leak and scriptfile off-by-one bug - Sean Morrison
* d2-c now handles the imaginary part correctly - Erik Greenwald
* fixed raytracer crash if output file creation fails - Erik Greenwald
* restored mged BoT editing interface functionality - Tom Browder
* fixed mged 'solids' and 'regions' command crashes - Tom Browder
* fixed orientation bug in mged 'ypr' rotation command - Nick Reed
* fixed mged bug setting color via Combination Editor - Nicholas Reed
* fixed numerous xyz/ypr orientation bugs in anim tools - Nick Reed
* improved tessellation of pipe bends for conversion - Richard Weiss
* fixed keypoint vertex bug when editing extrude objects - Nick Reed
* fixed eto error converting hyp objects with asc2g tool - Nick Reed
* fixed mged bug processing edcodes command arguments - Bob Parker
* various improvements to NMG polygonal mesh processing robustness
        - Nick Reed, Sean Morrison, Richard Weiss
* improved bad face handling within the obj-g importer - Nick Reed
* fixed crash during rt -c "ae 35 25" view change - Bob Parker
* added -r BoT orientation option on the obj-g importer - Nick Reed
* added ambient occlusion shading method to rt - Lee Butler
* fixed attribute handling bug affecting v4 geometry - Daniel Roßberg
* reid command now reports the highest region ID set - Carl Moore
* batch script shortcuts now set PATH on Windows - Sean Morrison
* fixed g-obj error when exporting facets - Christopher Pitts
* added 'l' list command to archer so 'g' expands args - Bob Parker
* added length parameter documentation for 'coil' command - Cliff Yapp
* improved performance of boolean evaluations - Richard Weiss
* added support for braces around shader parameters - Nick Reed
* improved boolean evaluation converting to polygons - Richard Weiss
* ported the obj-g geometry importer to Windows - Nicholas Reed
* improved import robustness and parsing of OBJ geometry files
        - Nicholas Reed, Richard Weiss, Mike Tegtmeyer
* added new physics 'simulate' command to mged/archer - Abhijit Nandy
* improved archer bot selection utility with sorted names - Bob Parker
* added 'bb' bounding box command usage within mged - Tom Browder

Note:  There are several bugfix patches to the 7.20.6 release - if 
building from source, apply all patches in order as follows:

(download brlcad-7.20.6.tar.gz and all files with a .patch extension) 
tar -xvzf brlcad-7.20.6.tar.gz 
cd brlcad-7.20.6 
patch -p0 < ../patchfile-1.patch
patch -p0 < ../patchfile-2.patch
etc.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2012-04-30  Release 7.20.6                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* fixed type F picture generation with rtwizard - Bob Parker
* Improvements to NURBS raytracing - Keith Bowman 
* Updated libpng to version 1.5.10 - Cliff Yapp
* Added MUVEStoORCA matrix support to librtserver - Jim Hunt
* fixed BOT raytracing mistakes when using TIE - Keith Bowman
* fixed ARS bounding box size affecting overlap handling - Cliff Yapp
* fixed raytracing crash in 64 bit Windows - Cliff Yapp
* fixed MGED's manual page viewer on 64 bit Windows - Cliff Yapp
* fixed intermittent segmentation fault in MGED - Richard Weiss
* now sorting top level object alphabetically in rtwizard - Cliff Yapp
* improved handling of rgb/color attributes by adjust cmd - Cliff Yapp
* fixed referenced object highlighting in archer treeview - Bob Parker
* added optional scaling parameter to autoview command - Sean Morrison
* fixed extrude object bug rendering at near right angles - Bob Parker
* added -h option to nirt to suppress header printing - Cliff Yapp
* fixed nirt attribute reporting for specified attributes - Cliff Yapp
* fixed ebm/dsp/vol/hf corruption on 64-bit big endian - Sean Morrison
* improved tab-completion behavior for mged and archer - Sean Morrison
* improved table output formatting for 'analyze' command - Tom Browder
* modified rtweight to handle incorrect lines - Tom Browder
* fixed crash in coil when using -S and -l options - Cliff Yapp
* d2-c now handles the imaginary part correctly - Erik Greenwald
* handle path-containing spaces in animation commands - Sean Morrision
* fix rt crash with ambSlow=1 option - Sean Morrision
* fixed pipe crash during tessellation - Sean Morrision
* fixed crash adding extrusion with null sketch name - Bob Parker
* fixed crash during rt -c "ae 35 25" view change - Bob Parker
* fixed mged bug setting color via Combination Editor - Nicholas Reed
* reid command now reports the highest region ID set - Carl Moore
* batch script shortcuts now set PATH on Windows - Sean Morrison
* fixed attribute handling bug affecting v4 geometry - Daniel Rossberg
* fixed g-obj error when exporting facets - Christopher Pitts

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2011-10-30  Release 7.20.4                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* added lighting model visualization options for archer - Bob Parker
* reid command now takes optional -n "incr by" value - Erik Greenwald
* reid command now returns the last region ID set - Erik Greenwald
* improved nirt support for non-UNIX-style text files - Sean Morrison
* added new relos thickness reassignment command to mged - Carl Moore
* support for loading archer plugins with spaces in name - Bob Parker
* added 'exists' object detection command to mged/archer - Cliff Yapp
* added archer BoT split/flip/sync surface cleanup panel - Bob Parker
* added new g-dot exporter for hierarchy visualization - Sean Morrison
* improved g-vrml successful exporting and reporting - Richard Weiss
* added -b BoT dump and -e evaluation option to g-vrml - Richard Weiss
* improved obj-g polygonal import - Nicholas Reed, Richard Weiss
* fixed mged crash after killing an illuminated object - Abhijit Nandy
* tightened default polygonal mesh export tolerance - Sean Morrison
* converted introductory Tcl/Tk presentation to Docbook - Tom Browder
* initial support in archer for editing pipe primitives - Bob Parker
* fixed NURBS raytracing crash due to invalid geometry - Sean Morrison
* fixed memory leak when saving BoT geometry - Nicholas Reed
* improved mged object name globbing support - Sean Morrison
* improved bounding box for rpc, epa, ehy, hyp primitives - Cliff Yapp
* improved handling of degenerate face facetization - Richard Weiss
* add support for .png file output in rtwizard - Cliff Yapp
* improved rtwizard's invocation of rt - Cliff Yapp
* added object path and keep options to conversion.sh - Tom Browder
* 'keep' command includes sketch when keeping revolve - Sean Morrison
* fixed mged 'mater' command inheritance setting bug - Richard Weiss
* fixed mged crash removing comb members during edit - Richard Weiss
* modified archer startup to not require html documentation files
        - Cliff Yapp, Brandon Hinesley
* improved mged/archer/bwish run-time path behavior on Windows
        - Cliff Yapp, Bob Parker
* upgraded libpng to version 1.5.4 - Cliff Yapp
* improved performance of step-g importer - Zach Easterbrook
* fixed browsing mged html help pages on Windows - Bob Parker
* restored mged 'rt' command output to console window - Sean Morrison
* fixed infinite loop bug plotting NURBS wireframes - Sean Morrison
* added new 'ringworld' procedural geometry generator - Erik Greenwald
* fixed mged Manual page item in help menu - Brandon Hinesley

There were some "late-breaking" fixes to this release not present in
the tarball - if building from source, apply the patch file as follows
(using the .gz file as an example):

(download brlcad-7.20.2.tar.gz and rel-7-20-2-r2.patch)
tar -xvzf brlcad-7.20.2.tar.gz
cd brlcad-7.20.2
patch -p0 < ../rel-7-20-2-r2.patch

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2011-07-01  Release 7.20.2                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

* improved fusing of coplanar faces (tessellation) - Richard Weiss
* fixed rtwizard issues with unknown units and freezing - Bob Parker
* fixed problem with mater command setting color - Cliff Yapp
* fixed crash rendering scenes with all invalid lights - Sean Morrison
* improved reliability of ARS tessellation/conversion - Richard Weiss
* improved tessellation performance and reliability - Richard Weiss
* replaced 'erase_all' command with 'erase -r' - Brandon Hinesley
* improved 'ls' command error reporting in archer - Brandon Hinesley
* fixed related object highlighting in archer's tree view - Cliff Yapp
* added closedb command to archer - Brandon Hinesley
* improved behavior of opendb command in archer - Brandon Hinesley
* improved archer/mged manual page browser behavior - Brandon Hinesley
* added man documentation command to archer - Brandon Hinesley
* improved File->New dialog in mged - Brandon Hinesley
* all cmake files now included in dist - Erik Greenwald, Sean Morrison

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2011-05-27  Release 7.20.0                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This release marks the introduction of a new CMake build system for
BRL-CAD.  CMake is cross-platform build system infrastructure capable
of generating native build system logic for a wide variety of
operating systems and compilation environments.  Cliff Yapp has been
diligently working on this adaptation for a number of months in order
to simplify the task of maintaining BRL-CAD on multiple platforms.

Previously, two separate build systems were being maintained: one
system (GNU Autotools) for Linux, UNIX, and BSD platforms (including
Mac OS X); and another separate system (Microsoft Visual Studio) for
Windows.  The new build system supports all platforms (including
Windows) from the same build logic.  This eliminates the need to
manually update multiple build systems and improves BRL-CAD
cross-platform maintainability.

* fixed mged/archer graphics window glitches on Windows - Bob Parker
* improved 'attr' command to work with read-only .g files - Cliff Yapp
* cross-platform 64-bit ISST (cmake-only) - Cliff Yapp, Erik Greenwald
* fixed mged zoom out mouse binding on Linux/*BSD - Cliff Yapp
* fixed step-g importer bug interpolating cubic curves - Keith Bowman
* improved step-g importer ellipse and conic support - Keith Bowman
* improved multiple path handling for search command - Cliff Yapp
* fixed segment splitting tessellation conversion bug - Richard Weiss
* fixed crash during facetization of large models - Richard Weiss
* fixed asc2g bug importing color and other attributes - Bob Parker
* added -q "quiet lookup" option to the 'ls' command - Cliff Yapp
* fixed numerous 'red' command text edit bugs and robustness issues
        - Cliff Yapp, Sean Morrison
* modification of LIBRT spatial partition traversal ordering
        - Sean Morrison, Keith Bowman
* new LIBRT_BOT_MINTIE environment variable override - Erik Greenwald
* changed search output order to shallow followed by deep - Cliff Yapp
* added search support for '.' object list search results - Cliff Yapp
* red -f flag to force overwriting pre-existing combs - Sean Morrison

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2011-04-12  Release 7.18.4                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

After considerable development, this release includes the preliminary
integration of our high-performance Triangle Intersection Engine (TIE)
with BRL-CAD's LIBRT raytrace library.  TIE uses specialized
acceleration techniques for faster raytracing of triangle mesh models.
TIE was experimentally developed over several years as part of
BRL-CAD's Advanced Distributed Ray Tracer (ADRT) tool suite.  As this
is the initial integration, TIE is available but presently disabled by
default.  The engine optimization is configurably integrated with
LIBRT mesh (BoT) raytracing and optionally enabled via settings
available in RT and MGED.  Initial testing of "real-world" models shows
average improvements around 20-60% while individual meshes with high
(1M+) face counts are rendering more than 2000% faster than before.

Also included in this release is the development of a new "shp-g"
geometry importer for Shapefile data.  Shapefiles are a common file
format for storing geospatial vector data commonly used by geographic
information systems (GIS) software.  Shapefiles may be imported as 2D
sketch geometry that can be extruded to a 3D representation.

* fixed units conversion bug with mged 'title' command - Bob Parker
* fixed memory management crash in the dem-g importer - Richard Weiss
* fixed edcolors so it retains and accepts colors again  - Cliff Yapp
* support for applying matrix edits to revolve primitives - Dongxu Li
* fixed mged 'red' command bug on Windows - Sean Morrison, Cliff Yapp
* support matrices over halfspaces within combinations - Sean Morrison
* fixed archer and rtwizard startup failure bug on Mac - Sean Morrison
* fixed bug starting up the Combination Editor in mged - Sean Morrison
* mged 'mater' command interactive prompting restored - Sean Morrison
* added pix2fb and fb2pix screenshot commands to archer - Bob Parker
* fixed bug running nirt on a Windows command terminal - Bob Parker
* improved wireframe updating when editing within mged - Sean Morrison
* added -T bot_mintie BoT optimization options to nirt - Sean Morrison
* fixed Windows display manager bug when drawing strings - Bob Parker
* mged command-click zoom binding for one button mice - Sean Morrison
* removed 'txyz-pl' utility tool in favor of 'xyz-pl' - Sean Morrison
* new shp-g importer for Esri Shapefile geometry files - Sean Morrison
* new 'rt_bot_mintie' option for triggering TIE BoTs  - Erik Greenwald
* integrated optimized TIE BoT raytracing with LIBRT - Erik Greenwald

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2010-12-07  Release 7.18.0                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This release includes the initial release of a new Bag of Triangle
(BoT) editing interface for MGED and Archer.  Nicholas Reed developed
the new graphical user interface (GUI) in order to consolidate the
numerous BoT editing commands and processing steps into one unified
easy-to-use interface.  The new GUI grealy simplifies BoT processing
steps and can save modelers considerable time.

* ported benchmark suite to Windows (requires 'sh') - Erik Greenwald
* improved NURBS wireframes with interior surface lines - Keith Bowman
* additional NURBS raytracing robustness improvements - Keith Bowman
* removed pl-sgi plot tool - Sean Morrison
* expanded rtarea documentation with examples and detail - Cliff Yapp
* improved support for unlimited object counts in mged - Sean Morrison
* fixed 'erase_all' behavior so 'who' gives correct lists - Bob Parker
* fixed idents, solids, and regions output - Bob Parker
* increased performance of facetization and export - Sean Morrison
* fixed NURBS raytrace bug grazing nearly flat surfaces - Keith Bowman
* fixed infinite loop bug converting to NMG and BoT - Sean Morrison
* improved Windows installer desktop shortcut creation - Bob Parker
* fixed running mged external tools (e.g., rt) after 'cd' - Bob Parker
* fixed 'pnts' point cloud primitive memory access bug - Richard Weiss
* new BoT editing interface for mged and archer - Nicholas Reed
* fixed crash during BoT decimation - Nicholas Reed
* improved robustness of CSG boolean tree processing - Sean Morrison
* improved loading of Pro/E export plugin on Windows - Bob Parker
* added ray bundle shooting capability to rtshot - Keith Bowman
* improved robustness of facetization and export - Richard Weiss
* cleaner logging of facetize command BoT failures - Sean Morrison
* removed 'query' command line prompting tool - Sean Morrison
* increased optimized package run-time performance - Sean Morrison
* fixed crash when raytracing multiple frames - Keith Bowman
* fixed mged zap crash while using preview - Keith Bowman, Bob Parker
* added ability to toggle mged status bar via .mgedrc - Rob Shinn
* new mged 'bot' command for accessing BoT properties - Nicholas Reed

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2010-12-07  Release 7.18.0                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

This release includes the initial release of a new Bag of Triangle
(BoT) editing interface for MGED and Archer.  Nicholas Reed developed
the new graphical user interface (GUI) in order to consolidate the
numerous BoT editing commands and processing steps into one unified
easy-to-use interface.  The new GUI greatly simplifies BoT processing
steps and can save modelers considerable time.

* ported benchmark suite to Windows (requires 'sh') - Erik Greenwald
* improved NURBS wireframes with interior surface lines - Keith Bowman
* additional NURBS raytracing robustness improvements - Keith Bowman
* removed pl-sgi plot tool - Sean Morrison
* expanded rtarea documentation with examples and detail - Cliff Yapp
* improved support for unlimited object counts in mged - Sean Morrison
* fixed 'erase_all' behavior so 'who' gives correct lists - Bob Parker
* fixed idents, solids, and regions output - Bob Parker
* increased performance of facetization and export - Sean Morrison
* fixed NURBS raytrace bug grazing nearly flat surfaces - Keith Bowman
* fixed infinite loop bug converting to NMG and BoT - Sean Morrison
* improved Windows installer desktop shortcut creation - Bob Parker
* fixed running mged external tools (e.g., rt) after 'cd' - Bob Parker
* fixed 'pnts' point cloud primitive memory access bug - Richard Weiss
* new BoT editing interface for mged and archer - Nicholas Reed
* fixed crash during BoT decimation - Nicholas Reed
* improved robustness of CSG boolean tree processing - Sean Morrison
* improved loading of Pro/E export plugin on Windows - Bob Parker
* added ray bundle shooting capability to rtshot - Keith Bowman
* improved robustness of facetization and export - Richard Weiss
* cleaner logging of facetize command BoT failures - Sean Morrison
* removed 'query' command line prompting tool - Sean Morrison
* increased optimized package run-time performance - Sean Morrison
* fixed crash when raytracing multiple frames - Keith Bowman
* fixed mged zap crash while using preview - Keith Bowman, Bob Parker
* added ability to toggle mged status bar via .mgedrc - Rob Shinn
* new mged 'bot' command for accessing BoT properties - Nicholas Reed

----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2010-08-04  Release 7.16.10                                    ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The release concludes a phenomenal effort by Jesica Giudice who
meticulously translated approximately 150 pages of MGED tutorial
documentation from English to Spanish.  The 16 tutorials are now fully
converted and work continues on the technical side to develop
stylesheets for publishing corresponding PDF documents on the BRL-CAD
website.

* fixed nirt output formatting in MGED - Cliff Yapp
* rt can now output directly to PNG, among others - Erik Greenwald
* fixed crash-on-exit bug with iges-g importer - Richard Weiss
* fixed framebuffer shutdown and memory management bugs - Bob Parker
* added all remaining shape tools to the Windows build - Sean Morrison
* libpng updated from version 1.4.1 to 1.4.3 - Sean Morrison
* fixed crash tessellating pipes with maximum bends - John Anderson
* mged 'red' command no longer deletes custom attributes - Cliff Yapp
* fixed pixhalve memory leak and corruption on exit - Sean Morrison
* spanish translation for tutorial 9 - Jesica Giudice, Luciano Lamaita
* Tcl/Tk updated from 8.5.6 to 8.5.8 - Cliff Yapp
* spanish translations for tutorials 4-5, 7-8, 10-16 - Jesica Giudice
* fixed extrude object tessellation failures - Östen Lundahl
* added manual page for 'random' number generator tool - Sean Morrison
* added Tktable 2.10 external dependency for archer - Cliff Yapp
* fixed heap corruption writing NURBS sketch objects - Östen Lundahl
* added fullscreen display mode via F5 keybinding to ISST - Cliff Yapp
* restored archer view commands to work without a .g file - Bob Parker
* fixed memory leak in ISST during window resizing - Erik Greenwald
* fixed running multiple framebuffer servers concurrently - Bob Parker
* improvements to the primitive creation menu in archer - Bob Parker
* fixed crash using bot_split on non-"plate mode" BoTs - Bob Parker
* improved NURBS curve evaluation for mged brep command - Keith Bowman
* fixed OpenGL framebuffer Mac refresh bug - Sean Morrison, Bob Parker
* improved archer object list view - Bob Parker

There were some "late-breaking" fixes to this release not present in
the tarball - if building from source, apply the patch file as follows
(using the .gz file as an example):

(download brlcad-7.16.8.tar.gz and rel-7-16-8-r1.patch)
tar -xvzf brlcad-7.16.8.tar.gz
cd brlcad-7.16.8
patch -p0 < ../rel-7-16-8-r1.patch


----------------------------------------------------------------------
--- 2010-04-28  Release 7.16.8                                     ---
----------------------------------------------------------------------

BRL-CAD's ray tracing support for NURBS boundary representation
geometry objects continues to be developed towards providing a robust
foundation for supporting multiple-representation geometry.  This
release includes several NURBS ray tracing bug fixes, robustness
improvements, and trimming enhancements.

MGED receives a lot of attention towards improved stability with
numerous troublesome bugs getting fixed (e.g., "the Mac input bug"),
restoration of behavior for various introspective commands, and
continued feature integration with Archer.  MGED's wireframe display
gets a substantial 5x-10x performance improvement for non-Windows
platforms while MGED on Windows now supports 64-bit releases and
restores command-line scripting support.

Archer gets a user interface facelift with the introduction of a new
geometry browser, list view, buttons, and much more.  As Archer
approaches feature parity with MGED, it gets closer to an official
alpha release status as BRL-CAD's next generation geometry editor.

* find correct libpng version on Mac OS X 10.5+ - Sean Morrison
* fixed bot_dump crash with plate mode BoTs - Bob Parker
* fixed Mac OS X 10.5+ mouse input/rotation bug in mged - Bob Parker
* X11 wireframe performance improvements (dm 'X') - Sean Morrison
* rtarea "-u model" specifies output using local units - Keith Bowman
* new bot_split command separates BoTs into multiple BoTs - Bob Parker
* rtarea output provides various common larger units - Keith Bowman
* rtarea run within mged now displays using local units - Keith Bowman
* re-enabled archer's embedded image framebuffer - Bob Parker
* fixed mged and nirt crashes handling whitespace lines - Keith Bowman
* newly enhanced archer tree view hierarchy visualization - Bob Parker
* fixed nirt backout bug when origin was ahead of model - Keith Bowman
* fixed mged bug calling 'units' without a database - Erik Greenwald
* analyze, cat, dbfind, & 'l' describe selected objects - Cliff Yapp
* openNURBS updated to version 5.0 (2010-04-09) - Cliff Yapp
* improvements and bug fixes to NURBS ray tracing - Keith Bowman
* new button images and tree-view icons within archer - Cliff Yapp
* html man page viewing in archer - Cliff Yapp
* archer tree view colorization for selected objects - Bob Parker
* replacement of tkimg external dependency with tkpng 0.9 - Cliff Yapp
* libpng upgraded to 1.4.1 - Erik Greenwald
* fixed crash with solids/regions/idents mged commands - Sean Morrison
* g-stl and g-egg have new -8 marching cubes option - Erik Greenwald
* fixed mged bug reading from redirected input on Windows - Bob Parker
* fixed partition selection bug in rt -k cut plane - John Anderson
* added NURBS support for transformation matrices - Keith Bowman
* remap_mater mged command to change material codes - Paul Tanenbaum
* MGED help menu lists all commands with documentation - Cliff Yapp
* fixed mged units bug supporting decameter (Dm) units - Bob Parker
* improved robustness of NURBS trimming during raytrace - Keith Bowman
* Improved put_comb command usage and added documentation - Cliff Yapp
* mged finds g/pl asc tools, dbupgrade, and rt on Windows - Bob Parker
* Improve behavior of editor invocation in classic mode - Cliff Yapp
* reorganization of archer buttons, panels, & preferences - Bob Parker
* fix invocation of fbclear from MGED on Windows - Bob Parker
* fixed obj-g crash when importing multiple objects - Sean Morrison
* continued work on MGED Docbook man page conversions - Janine Gettier
* integration of mged authorship dedication into archer - Bob Parker
* improved behavior of mged initialization options - Bob Parker
* 3dm-g importer improvements for hierarchical layering - Keith Bowman
* fixed namspace initialization failure in rtwizard - Bob Parker
* removed the pcd-pix image conversion tool - Sean Morrison
* fixed coil tool -S option, now takes 6 parameters - Cliff Yapp
* fixed g-egg coordinate and polygon format bugs - Erik Greenwald
* improved obj-g import support for object names - Sean Morrison
* fix rtweight bug where incorrect units were reported - Cliff Yapp
* added initial manual page documentation for rtwizard - Sean Morrison
* support for metaball conversion to polygonal format - Erik Greenwald