Beast 0.11.0~rc1 and Rapicorn 17.0.0~rc1

[Tim Janik <timj gnu org>]

It's rather hot here and I finally managed to push out the rc1 release tarball
after more than a week of fiddling with git archive, dist rules and bug fixes:

        https://dist.testbit.org/beast/testing/beast-0.11.0~rc1.tar.xz

This candidate brings a truckload of new stuff like soundfont support thanks to
Stefan, true multi threading for the DSP module calculations, faster startup
times and a number of bug fixes. We are also starting to install/package the
experimental ebeast code, but that's not yet fully working and has major
changes in the queue for upcoming releases. The long non-functional Scheme
scripting backend has been removed, the plan is to support more former-script
functionality in the UI and in the distant future possibly allowing JS scripts
that also have access to UI components. Building distributions now uses git
archive which avoids tedious updates of EXTRA_DIST before releases (EXTRA_DIST
is now only needed for release tarball files that are *not* in git).

Notably the packaging scheme has been changed so that Beast is now installed
under $prefix/lib/beast-VERSION and optionally supports --with-pkgroot which
allows to build Beast as /opt/beast-VERSION. Symlinks are provided from /usr
or $prefix subdirs like bin/ and mime-info/ into the Beast package dir as
needed. This enables binary package builds under /opt/beast-0-11 with symlinks
installed in /usr, like e.g. google-chrome-stable*.deb does it. For starters,
the first binary package is here:

        https://dist.testbit.org/beast/deb/beast_0.11.0~rc1+441.g0f0fa_amd64.deb

Numerous additions also went into the new Rapicorn release, but pace will be
slowing down here to put more focus on Beast in the future. A binary build of
the Rapicorn tarball is integrated into the Beast binary package, as Beast is
the only known user of Rapicorn atm:

        https://dist.testbit.org/rapicorn/rapicorn-17.0.0~rc1.tar.xz

The release NEWS of both tarballs are appended, give it some testing, especially
the new binary package, so we can fix remaining warts and push a .0 release
after a couple days.


Beast 0.11.0~rc1:

* Added Soundfont support so Beast can play .sf2 files [stw]
* Execute the DSP engine multi threaded with `nproc` many threads.
* The startup time could be reduced significantly.
* Build all plugins with SIMD support always enabled.
* Started alternate HTML/JS GUI based on electron.
* Improved IDL representation of old procedure types.
* Removed guile dependency.
* Removed 'extern "C"' left overs
* Fixed NULL string crashes [stw]
* Fixed signedness bug in FFT windowing [stw]
* Improved generated documentation.
* Sources were ported to Kubuntu-16-04  [stw]
* Manual pages are updated and are converted to Markdown.
* Improvded diagnostics, build and audio testing toolchains.
* Fixed MIDI voice allocations taht could lead to premature voice shortages.
* Majorly improved Docker build setup.
* Require srcdir=destdir upon distcheck.
* Tarball/git dependencies now include Rapicorn 16.0.2~rc1.
* The Beast project now provides Debian binary packages at:
  https://testbit.eu/pub/dists/beast/debs

Rapicorn 17.0.0~rc1:

* Support clang++-3.6.2.
* Fixed uild on Arch linux [milkmiruku]
* Fixed build on Kubuntu 16.04 [stw]
* Fixed bad_weak_ptr exceptions.
* Added support g_main_context() integration.
* Improved the quality of rendering stretched SVG files.
* Fixed spacing calculcations, text block creation and resizing priorities.
* Parse .ini files from $XDG_CONFIG_HOME, $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS and /etc/rapicorn/.
* Support selectable container children.
* Support Capturing event phase.
* Automatically allow shrinking for all spreading widgets to preserve others.
* Fixed focus movemenet to (partially) obscured widgets.
* Use viewport window relative coordinates for all widgets.
* Simplified code in several places.
* Improved rendering speed significantly.
* Introduced SelectableItem for lists and remove some dated code.
* Cleaned up the ancestry cache handling and allow Window.destroy().
* Simplified ThemeInfo and styling.
* Added support for SVGs in the widget factory.
* Use 16 bit for widget states and add TOGGLED and STASHED.
* Fix the SVG ink rectangle where libsvg only exports ints instead of doubles.
* Add ElementPainter: with 'element' and 'filler' properties to render SVGs.
* Allow normal buttons to toggle.
* Added ShapePainter that can render circle, diamond, square and star.
* Support a Button.label property.
* Add a RadioButton implementation.
* Improved filewview UI.
* SVG theme updates.
* Use <Element id="some-identifier" declare="new-element"/> in XML UIs.
* Added Widget properties acceleratable, hover, panel, receives_default.
* Also add Widget properties selected, insensitive and active.
* Consistently use int for size calculations everywhere.
* Optimized resizing and invalidation region calculations.
* Cleaned up the code and build rules in several places.
* Support fine grained size negotiations.
* Support per widget offline surfaces.
* Better documented ABI versioning affects.
* Improved documentation.
* Added test categorization and numbering.
* Build Rapicorn via non-recursive sub Makefiles.
* Fixed use-after-free in DisplayWindowX11.
* Avoid overlinking in rapicorn.pc.
* Require srcdir=destdir upon distcheck.
* Added backtrace generator via addr2line.
* Added support for notifications from Aida remote calls.
* Added support for event loop source groups.
* Majorly improved Docker build setup.


-- 
Yours sincerely,
Tim Janik

https://testbit.eu/timj/
Free software author.