History

Version 4.8 - 8 August 2011

Changes:

• WinFIG has now rulers. They can be turned on or off in the "grid & metrics dialog".

Bug fixes:

• I made a small change to the PostScript and PDF export in fig2dev. I post this under "bug fixes", because I rather see it as a bug fix than merely a change. The hyphen character '-' was translated to a "/minus" character in PS, which is more like '−' and therefore longer than the hyphen being used in WinFIG and Xfig. As a result the length of the whole text object would change when exported to PS/PDF. That made it difficult to precisely position such text objects.

Version 4.71 - 14 March 2011

Changes:

• WinFIG loads the Helvetica Narrow fonts using font family NimbusSanLCon. The result is closer to what a PostScript interpreter produces.

Bug fixes:

• WinFIG crashed in the following scenario: open the Library-Window, don't select a folder, hit refresh, click on one of the "empty" objects on the right side.
• fig2dev now sets the locale to "C" when reading FIG files. This will prevent any trouble with locale-specific number formats.
• Text objects could have wrong dimension values written to the FIG file. WinFIG did not correct the length value by eliminating the current zoom factor when saving the figure. So, saving while zoom is at 100% would write different dimensions than saving at a zoom of 200%.
• The fonts button in the text attributes (right side) that opens the fonts dialog did not show the current font weight, style and stretch.
• Circles and ellipses (drawn by radius) could not be moved by holding them on the center marker.

Version 4.7 - 01 February 2011

Changes:

• There are two new toolbar buttons for adding normal and tangent lines to shapes. The length can be set in the function attributes on the right side.
• Windows only: The path to the ghostscript executable can be configured in the preferences dialog (on the "Other" page). The default setting is still to let WinFIG determine the path, but some users reported problems with the detection. In that case locate gwsin32c.exe on your computer and enter the full path (i.e. c:\Program Files\gs\gs9.00\bin\gswin32c.exe). Note that there is also a gswin32.exe. Use the version with the "c" in the name, because that is meant for quiet execution in the background. The other version will work too, but pops a window up each time it is called.
• fig2dev now contains the latest changes from patchlevel 3.2.5d

Bug fixes:

• Some minor fixes only.

Version 4.621 - 05 October 2010

This release only affects the Linux version.

Bug fixes:

• The program could crash after closing the "save file" dialog.

Version 4.62 - 04 September 2010

Changes:

• I changed the command line for calling LaTeX, which is used for rendering LaTeX formatted text objects. The old command did not work in all environments, perhaps due to directory access rights issues. The old command was:

  latex -quiet -job-name OUTFILE INFILE

  The new command is:

  latex -quiet -output-directory TEMPDIR -job-name OUTFILE TEMPDIR/INFILE

  The output directory for the temporary files is now explicitly set and the preferences dialog allows setting either the system default temp directory or any other directory. The system default on Windows is: c:\Documents and Settings\user\Local Settings\Temp
  ...where "user" is the login name. Most users will not have to change anything here, but it gives you better control in case of problems. Note that "job-name" in the above command is the name of the output file, but without path. The effective full path is TEMPDIR/OUTFILE.

Version 4.61 - 20 June 2010

Bug fixes:

• The -F option was added to all export drivers causing some export formats to fail. It should only be added to those that can handle it.

Version 4.7 - 29 July 2010

Changes:

• PSTeX and PDFTeX export was sometimes putting the complete absolute path of the overlay PS or PDF file in the \includegraphics{...} command, i.e.
  \includegraphics{C:\files\foo.ps}
  I changed this to only use the file name without the full path. That makes it easier to use the files on Unix systems.

Bug fixes:

Version 4.6 - 15 June 2010

Changes:

• The export driver for PSTricks now supports the new arrow types. Thanks go to Gene Ressler for applying the necessary changes to his driver and for providing the updated code. PSTricks provides a powerful way of integrating graphics into LaTeX documents.
• I added the Gerber (RS-247-X for CAD drawings for printed circuits) driver that was recently introduced in transfig 3.2.5c. I don't really know what this is and how to check if everything is exported ok, but probably it's quite useful for some people. See Wikipeda for more info on Gerber files.
• The base for font sizes is now 72dpi per default to ensure compatibility with PostScript. That means a 26pt font has the same height in WinFIG and PostScript. Previous versions were using a base of 80 dpi, which made it necessary to scale the font size from 80 dpi to 72 dpi on export, i.e. a 26pt font would have to be 23.4pt in PostScript or PDF to have the same height as in WinFIG.
  If that option is checked, WinFIG will also automatically add the -F option to the export parameters (for fig2dev) on export.
  I added a check box to the configuration dialog that allows switching back to the old 80 dpi base. By unchecking it you can still open your old documents in a compatibility mode.

Bug fixes:

• Rounded dots are now displayed correctly.
• Objects were deselected after aligning them.
• It was not possible to select a user defined color if it was the only one available in the drop down box.

Version 4.5 - 21 March 2010

Changes:

• I added the "new" arrow heads from Xfig.

Bug fixes:

• A crash was reported on Vista. Saving a figure with text long objects (more than 15 characters) would crash the program. I could not reproduce the problem, but I made a small change that solved the problem for the user who reported the error.
• WinFIG could crash after the following steps: opened a figure from the "recent files" that does not exist. Then go to the "Window" menu in the main tool bar.

Version 4.4 - 4 March 2010

This is a quick bug fix release. Even though it follows two days after the previous release, I think the issues solved are important enough to release this followup immediately.

Bug fixes:

• Compound objects could only be moved by grabbing them on the edges, but not by grabbing them on the corners. Quite an annoying bug that was there since version 4.0 final.
• A refresh problem was removed that occured when a compound had smart links to objects outside the compound.

Version 4.3 - 2 March 2010

Changes:

• I didn't really like that when opening a compound object everything around it disappears. I made this behaviour configurable ("Preferences->Other") and added options to show the figure outside the compound either dimmed, gray, hidden or normal.
• Usually WinFIG writes the log file "winfig.log" to the program directory. This may not always be possible, i.e. under Windows 7 WinFIG does not have write privilege for its own folder. In that case the log file is now written to the user's temp directory, which is normally c:\Users\xxx\AppData\Local\Temp where xxx is the user name. Check the log file if you have problems showing LaTeX text, reading graphics etc.

Version 4.2 - 7 February 2010

Changes:

• The "update attributes" function now shows a list of check boxes to select the attributes, which shall be updated to the current values.

Bug fixes:

• The path that constitutes an arc was limited to 1000 points resulting in incomplete arc objects when they are big.
• A possible crash when creating picture objects from unrecognized file formats.
• Selecting more than one object and the shift-unselecting one of them made them all "stick" to the mouse cursor.

Version 4.1 - 24 December 2009

This release contains some features requested by users. Finally I had time to take care of some of them and I really think they increase the usability in some areas. Thanks alot for the suggestions.

Changes:

• Figure export can be repeated using the same settings as before without going through the process of opening the expor dialog, setting export properties, saving changes etc. The "Export Again" is called from the "File" menu or via Ctrl-E hotkey.
• An additional option for the pdftex and pstex export was added. The background is that the pdftex and pstex exports write a LaTeX file that is not a complete LaTeX file that can be processed by pdflatex/latex. Instead, this is usually later embedded into a bigger LaTeX document using the \input directive. But sometimes it may be desirable or comfortable to just create a simple document without being required to manually create a LaTeX wrapper document and calling pdflatex or latex command etc. To achieve that I added one more option to the pdftex and pstex exports: "Export both parts and create a PDF document via pdftex"
  
  If you choose that option WinFIG will write a dummy LaTeX document that contains the required LaTeX declarations for a minimal, translatable document as well as the \input statement and will also call pdflatex/latex on it. The result will be the PDF document containing all the graphical elements of the drawing as well as the LaTeX formatted texts. You can edit the dummy document by clicking on "Edit TeX envelope". This allows you to add any customized LaTeX code you want there. WinFIG takes care of page size and orientation by replacing the tokens PAPERSIZETOKEN and PAGEORIENTATIONTOKEN with the correct values.
  
  Additionally you can check the "open in PDF/PS viewer" box to open the document immediately in a PDF/PS viewer. The PDF/PS viewer command can be configued in the "Other" tab of the "Preferences" dialog.
  
  As a summary: WinFIG can now execute the following tool chains:
  
  fig2dev (graphics)->fig2dev (texts)->pdflatex->PDF viewer
  fig2dev (graphics)->fig2dev (texts)->latex->dvips->PS viewer
  
  Perhaps this new function is a little bit too well hidden, but I put it there, because logically it belongs to the pdftex and pstex exports.
• I added the LaTeX fonts to the Fonts dialog in order to allow LaTeX users to use them in their drawings.

Bug fixes:

• The internal steppings for the magnetic grid were calculated on startup, but not updated when changing the grid unit from metric to inches or vice versa later. Therefore the magnet did not work properly when changing the unit without restarting the program.

Version 4.02 - 29 November 2009

This release only contains modifications in the export module (fig2dev). I applied the changes that were made in fig2dev Version 3.2 Patchlevel 5a (June 2009), so it's up to date with the original Unix version. WinFIG itself is unchanged.

Version 4.01 - 26 November 2009

Changes:

• I was not satisfied with the way the snap-to-grid was working when moving objects while the magnet is activated. It was snapping the point where the object was hit by the mouse, but that usually makes it difficult to align the object in a way that it's boundaries match the grid in horizontal and vertical direction.
  So I changed this. Now when you click on an object WinFIG determines if this click is close to the left and upper, left and lower, right and upper or right and lower boundary of the object and aligns these two sides of the object to the grid. That makes it very easy to i.e. align the left and upper side of a rectangle to the grid by grabbing it close to the upper left corner or align the right and lower side of a rectangle to the grid by grabbing it close to the lower right corner. It's very intuitive and much better than what is was before.

Bug fixes:

• The antialiasing setting was not saved in the preferences.
• An issue regarding the calculation of text boundaries was solved. It caused wrong results with the align function when the zoom was higher than 100%.
• LaTeX formatted texts are inspected for characters with descent (g, j, p, q, y, Q). This is used when calculating the vertical alignment of the preview texts when "Render 'special' texts using LaTeX" is activated. It's still a workaround, but should work in most cases.
• The PostScript export (via fig2dev) was applying some modification to the line width. The result was that line widths were sligthly different in the PS file from what they a in WinFIG. I think it was a very old workaround for something Xfig related. I removed that piece of code.
• I made a small correction to the way WinFIG deals with line widths. The FIG files hold the line width in display resolution (i.e. 10), and that refers to a fixed display resolution of 80 dpi. This is traditional Xfig behaviour, but WinFIG uses the real display resolution for rendering and thereby allows a 1:1 scale. That means an inch or cm on the screen is really an inch or cm.
  But many displays nowadays use a 96 dpi resolution and in that case there needs to be some adjustment for the difference between the reference 80 dpi and the 96 (or whatever) display dpi. Otherweise the lines are slightly too thin, because a 10 pixel width line is thinner on 96 dpi than on 80 dpi. In most cases the difference is negligible, but can be annoying when figures need to be very precise.

7 November 2009 - Version 4.0 final

I did not receive any reports about serious bugs, so I think the v4.0 has matured enough to advance from beta state to final.

Changes:

• Use the scroll wheel while holding the Control key to zoom in/out in 10% steps.
• Some minor optimizations to reduce the number of required screen refreshes.

Bug fixes:

• It was possible to scroll the canvas down using the scroll wheel when no scrollbar was shown. But scrolling should only be possible withing the ranges that are defined by the scrollbars, which get their values from the page size.

29 October 2009 - Version 4.0 beta 3

Changes:

• I added a drop down box for some zoom presets. This is and alternative to pressing "+" or "-" multile times. There is also a "zoom to fit", which zooms in or out so that the drawing fits into the window.
• I added the Qt plugin libraries for image loading to the setup.

24 October 2009 - Version 4.0 beta 2

Changes:

• Good news for all Linux users. This is the first release that is also available for the Linux platform. If someone sponsors me a Mac I will also provide a Mac version.

Bug fixes:

• EMF export via fig2dev is now working.
• LaTeX formatted text were not correctly placed. The font descent was not factored in when calculating the y-coordinate.
• Some more minor bug fixes.

Version 4.0 beta 1 - 27 September 2009

This release is a major redesign. I switched from Microsoft Foundation Classes to Nokias (former Trolltechs) Qt framework. It was a major effort to move everything to Qt, but I think it was the right step going forward and the future development will benefit from that. I already outlined the reasons in my blog:

• It has the much nicer programming model
• MFC seems almost abandoned by MS. There doesn’t seem to be much commitment to continue and really develop MFC now that .NET and C# are Microsofts favorite horses.
• MFC user interface programming is a pain
• Qt is platform independent
• Qt supports anti-aliasing for nicer graphical rendering
• Qt provides a more comprehensive widget set and it’s easier to create custom widgets.
• I also hope to get some graphics performance gains possibly trough using the OpenGL paint device as an configuration option (not yet implemented).
• It is very likely I will be able to provide a Linux version.

Changes:

• Using Qt as the application framework.
• The user interface is more modern (themes, resizable dialogs where useful).
• Render with anti-aliasing for smooth lines and shapes. This is slightly slower and can be switched off in the Preferences dialog.
• EMF export is not available right now, because this is not available within Qt. I will try to find a solution for this. Right now users who really need EMF output can only use the old WinFIG.
• Redesign of the Export dialog. The export formats are now selectable from a list.
• Some changes of the interface logic, i.e. the buttons for the constraint modes (free, LaTeX, Manhattan etc.) have been merged into a drop-down button in the tool bar.
• WinFIG now comes with a setup program. It is possible to keep old installations by just renaming their folder, i.e. name your old WinFIG C:\Program Files\WinFIG3. That will allow you to switch back to the old WinFIG in case you prefer that one.
• WinFIG 4 uses a different keyfile encoding. All registered user are entitled to receive a free keyfile for WinFIG 4. Just write me a mail and I will send you the updated keyfile.

Version 3.04 - 22 September 2009

Bug fixes:

• Possible crash when hitting a tool button while no document is open.
• The copy-rotate function was delivering odd results.
• Some more minor bugs.

Version 3.03 - 13 August 2009

Changes:

• LaTeX preview of text objects with LaTeX syntax is a little bit faster (about 25%).

Bug fixes:

• The Y margin size switch in the PSTricks export options was using -x instead of -y.
• WinFIG could crash when opening the font selection window, then changing the drawing tool, then selecting a font in the window.
• Working with custom arrow parameters for thickness, width and height was delivering odd results.

Version 3.02 - 21 June 2009

This is just a small bug fix release.

Bug fixes:

• Unter certain circumstances it was possible to connect a point of a closed polygon or spline to another object. This should only be possible with end points of open paths.
• fig2dev crashed when exporting a figure that contains 256-color images like GIFs or PNGs.
• It was possible to delete custom colors, even if they were being used in the figure.
• Opening the user color dialog could crash the application.
• Some other minor bug fixes.

Version 3.01 - 22 February 2009

Bug fixes:

• Arcs could not be selected when the figure was shifted using the scrollbars.
• Horizontal and vertical centering delivered wrong results when objects had been selected via shift-select. Note that the last selected object is the fixed reference for the alignment calculation. When you select objects using a frame, the bounding box of all selected objects is the reference.
• Selecting a user color did not change the current object. It was only used for the next new object.
• The Dash length/Dot gap value was increasing with each new object when the line width was >1.
• I fixed the print function, but I still strongly recommend to print via PS export and GhostScript. This will deliver much better results, because GhostScript can do all the nice rendering things like anti-aliasing, high-quality curves etc.

Version 3.0 final - 14 December 2008

Changes:

• Moving an object with cursor keys while the magnet is active will now align it with the grid instead of just moving by one pixel. The reference is the boundary of the selected object(s) in the moving direction, i.e. moving right, the right side is aligned, moving left, the left side is aligned with the grid. Using the cursor keys allows aligning objects with the grid in only either X or Y direction, whereas using the mouse aligns in both directions. Holding the Control key down while hitting a cursor key will move the object by 1 pixel as in the previous release. So, it's not necessary to turn the grid off for fine adjustments.
• Holding the Control key down limits movements to the horizontal direction. The left Alt key works vice versa, limiting to vertical movements. Both are useful for moving points or objects along one direction of the coordinate system, but not the other.
• WinFIG now saves the settings for grid and magnet.

Bug fixes:

• WinFIG finally handles custom colors correctly.

Version 3.0 beta 4 - 1 December 2008

Bug fixes:

• WinFIG crashed when activating the Rotate left/right tool.
• Fixed a bug in fig2dev. The LaTeX export did not produce correct output for splines.

Version 3.0 beta 3 - 25 October 2008

Changes:

• I was not satisfied that it requires permanent switwching between various functions to create compounds, align objects etc. Therefore I changed the handling of the following functions:
  • create compound
  • open compound
  • break compound
  • convert line/spline
  • edit picture object/text
  • align
  I moved the buttons to new toolbars next to the standard toolbar at the top. The buttons react on the currently selected object(s). This allows using them without changing between commands, i.e. to create a compound object, just hit the "glue" button and the currently selected objects are glued together. There is no need to switch between functions. This reduces the number of clicks, which are necessary. I think this usage pattern is more intuitive and also more similar to other applications that deal with manipulating objects.
  As a side effect the main toolbar has less buttons, which now fit in just two columns.

Bug fixes:

• Program crashed when doing the following: activate "copy objects" button, drag the new object around, but cancel with right mouse button, switch back to "select objects".
• Magnet did not work when copying objects.
• The elastic box was not showing when creating a picture object.
• The caching of the LaTeX bitmaps of text objects was turned off, which caused a reload of the bitmap each time when moving a text object. This resulted in a considerable delay.

Version 3.0 beta 2 - 19 October 2008

Changes:

• fig2dev only recognized AFPL Ghostscript installations, not GPL Ghostscript installations. Therefore those export formats that require GhostScript did not deliver results when a GPL Ghostscript is installed.

Version 3.0 beta 2 - 14 October 2008

Changes:

• Project migrated to Visual Studio 2008.
• Grab arcs and splines at their outline instead of only at their support points.
• Includes latest gdiplus.dll.

Bug fixes:

• Nested compounds were not loaded correctly. Possible loss of data!

Version 3.0 beta 1 - 24 September 2008

Changes:

• Opaque moving of objects. Objects show their original shape and style while moving.
• Winfig now can create smart links. That means, end points of lines or splines can connect to other objects and follow their movements. This should be very useful for diagrams, graphs etc.
  Example:
  
  The circle A was moved from left to right. The arrow follows automatically. The blue dots mark the connections. Currently the following connections are possible.
  From end points of:
  • lines
  • splines
  To any position on the outline of:
  • boxes
  • closed polygons
  • circles
  • ellipses
  Connections to open objects are not possible. This is to reduce complexity caused by circular dependencies. Smart links are specific to WinFIG. Xfig will treat the connections as ordinary lines. So, if you work on a drawing in both, WinFIG and Xfig, you may lose the information about the links and have to reconnect them manually after re-importing to WinFIG. WinFIG offers a new menu item "Create Smart Links" in the "Edit" menu. This action will try to find possible connections between objects as described above.
  
• fig2dev contains an update to the PSTricks driver (see Gene Ressler's home page) in the Links section.

Bug fixes:

• pictex export did not work, because fig2dev.exe crashed.
• spline curves were slightly different from Xfig and PS export.

Version 2.2 - 29 October 2007

Changes:

• WinFIG determines the available GhostScript installation at startup by searching the registry. So far it only considered AFPL GhostScript. Now it also searches for GPL Ghoscript.
• When more than one version of GhostScript is installed, i.e. 8.53 and 8.54, it was using the first one that appears in the registry. Now WinFIG will use the last one, which usually leads it to the higher version number. Make sure you keep your registry up to date after downgrading a GhostScript installation or WinFIG will still try to use the later one!
• The aforementioned changes also apply to fig2dev, since it also calls GhostScript for several tasks.
• Changed the default for LaTeX Preview to "off". Existing installations are not affected, because the default is only used upon the very first start.
• The toolbar with the object attributes now has a button to open a dialog for direct coordinate input. You can enter point coordinates for line segments, ellipse radiusses, box, width etc. Input can be in cm, in, at display coordinates (usually 96 dpi) or FIG coordinates (1200 dpi).
  Note that your input may be slightly modified. For instance when you enter a circle radius of 3 cm, it will be changed to 2.9993 cm. The reason ist that WinFIG uses discrete coordinates at a 1200 dpi base. That means 3 cm is 1.18110236 inches, which is 1417.322832 points. This rounds to 1417, which is 1.18083333 inches, which is 2.9993 cm.

Bug fixes:

• The program crashed when checking the "special" flag for a text object while LaTeX rendering was activated and no LaTeX was installed.

Version 2.13 - 30 August 2007

Bug fixes:

• The program crashed after adding an object, then undo, then edit any attributes.

Version 2.12 - 26 July 2007

Bug fixes:

There were some problems regarding LaTeX formatted texts that have been solved:

• Center or right justification was not displayed correctly.
• The rotation angle was not applied. This could be solved partly only, because LaTeX texts are rendered by generating temporary bitmaps, but GDI only supports rotating bitmaps by multiples of 90 degree. Therefore LaTeX formatted texts are only shown at 0, 90, 180 and 270 degree. All other values between will cause the text to display the standard way without LaTeX rendering.
• The font size command was missing in the temporary LaTeX file that is used for generating the bitmap.
• They were not dimmed when the layer was deactivated.

Version 2.11 - 23 July 2007

Bug fixes:

• There was an annoying error dialog showing up when no LaTeX is installed an LaTeX rendering is activated. The dialog always opened up again.

Version 2.1 - 22 July 2007

Changes:

• Render text objects with activated "special" flag by calling an external LaTeX processor. That allows WYSIWIG display of LaTeX formula. I think it is a nice feature for all that use WinFIG for exporting to LaTeX. For more info see the Readme file.
• Show Objects comments as tool tips.
• New figure properties dialog. Currently only showing the figure comment.
• Added a tab for PDFTeX export to the export dialog. Also, changed the suffix of the graphics file generated by pstex to eps and pdftex export to pdf. This allows an include directive like:
  \includegraphics{foo.eps}, which is more clear than \includegraphics{foo.pstex},
  and might also prevent some trouble with unknown file format errors.

Version 2.0 final - 26 June 2007

I did not receive any severe error reports, so I think I can call this v2.0 final.

Changes:

• Arrow width, height and outline thickness can now be modified.
• The button that opens the font selection dialog has been changed to an image button that shows the current font.

Bug fixes:

• Arrows don't protrude over the end of lines anymore. Now the arrow tip is at the end point of the line.
• Default arrow dimensions were slightly smaller than in Xfig.
• Fixed a memory leak of about 20 byte every time an object property was changed.

Version 2.0 beta 2 - 10 June 2007

Changes:

• Using Gdiplus::Image instead of CImage for reading picture files both in WinFIG and in fig2dev. That has some implications:
  • The external tool giftopnm is not anymore needed by fig2dev.
  • WinFIG and fig2dev can handle EMF and BMP files. Note that this is not supported by Xfig or by fig2dev on Unix platforms.
  • WinFIG can handle 24 Bit PNG images.
  • The PostScript outbut may be larger, because 24 Bit PNG data is not stored as compressed data in the PS code.
• The "del" key can now be used to remove objects.
• I prepared a set of PostScript 1.0 fonts from GhostScript 8.53. With that WinFIG can display text objects identically to the PostScript export. Furthermore, they enable WinFIG to calculate the correct bounding box of text objects, which is important for EPS export. The fonts come in a separate ZIP file along with the GPL copyright note. It can be downloaded from the "downloads" page. Installation procedure:
  1. Download the archive WinFIG_fontspack_1.0.zip
  2. Open the control panel (Start menu->settings->Control Panel)
  3. Click on "Fonts" to open the fonts list window.
  4. Drag all PFM files into that window.
• fig2dev was updated to the current fig2dev code base from www.xfig.org. For changes see http://xfig.org/software/xfig/3.2.5/transfig.CHANGES

Bug fixes:

• Changing fonts of text objects did not work. It was only possible using some workaround.
• Corrected the vertical alignment of text objects. There was a small offset upwards.
• The bounding box around text objects was sometimes too small when exporting to EPS. That became a visible issue when a drawing contained some texts on the right side. These were sometimes truncated at their right end.
• When using small metric grid and magnet, there was always a small offset between the mouse pointer's tip and the line or point etc. being moved.

Version 2.0 beta 1 - 2 March 2007

Changes:

• The undo feature now allows taking back multiple steps. That sounds like a small change, but it required major rewrites under the surface. First, I switched from the old C structs to C++ objects, then I implemented action objects for all the possible modifications that can be made, and finally added undo and redo queues that hold the actions. The object model that I'm using now will allow me adding features easier and less error prone in the future. But since so many things have changed and probably no source file remained unchanged, I decided to release this as a beta version. So far no bugs are known, but be aware that there might be unresolved errors. Don't forget to save your work regularly!
• The "standard tool" (the arrow) now not only moves obects, but also shows the attributes bar for the selected object. That means, moving objects and editing their attributes does not require a tool change on the tool bar. Furthermore, when new objects are drawn, they are automatically selected and the attributes bar is shown too. That means, e.g. if you add a line, you can right away modify it's appearance without switching to the "Edit" tool.
• Many users asked if it is possible to modify text objects. Probably it was not so easy to understand that the text tool can modify objects when an existing text was clicked with the mouse. It is probably more consistent to allow modifiying texts using the "Edit" tool. So, now the activating the "Edit" tool and clicking on a text objects opens the text enter dialog. I think that is more intuitive,
• I made some of the icons look more meaningful.

Bug fixes:

• Aligining objects with shift-select (rather than using a box) did not work properly.
• Objects that were created using a custom fill color would use a wrong color the next time the file was loaded.
• Some dialogs were using german texts, because since the updgrade to Visual Studio 2005 the project was using the german resource locale for standard dialogs. This has been changed back to english.

Version 1.74 - 3 December 2006

Bug fixes:

• Polygons were not closed. The closing segment was not added.

Version 1.73 - 1 December 2006

Bug fixes:

• The program could crash on exit when the export dialog had been opened before at least once. That did not do any harm, but it was not very nice anyway.

Version 1.72 - 11 November 2006

Changes:

• It appeared inconsistent to me that moving objects required holding the mouse button down while moving a point did not. I changed the "move point" function to use the same behaviour like "move object". That means, moving a point requires clicking on it, keeping the mouse button pressed, dragging the point and releasing the mouse button at the desired location
• Sometimes moving an object with the mouse is too fiddly for small distances. It's much more convenient to do that with the arrow keys. So, I added a feature that allows moving selected objects with same.
• This is the first release that was compiled with Visual Studio 2005.

Bug fixes:

• Bitmap export did not work from within WinFIG. There was a problem when fig2dev attempted to open a pipe to GhostScript. That failed, because WinFIG had already redirected the stdout of fig2dev to a file.

Version 1.71 - 13 August 2006

Bug fixes:

• simple dots were not displayed

Version 1.7 - 16 July 2006

Changes:

• cut&copy now put the selected objects on the clipboard as Enhanced Meta File data (EMF), thus making them available to other programs that can import EMF, such as Word or Paint. Pasting to another instance of WinFIG is not yet possible.
• picture objects that contain EPS files are now shown in WinFIG. Previous versions only showed an empty rectangle with the filename. The preview is generated by calling GhostScript to generate a bitmap version of the EPS file, and is only available if the same is installed. That feature can be configured in the new "Preferences" dialog.
• WinFIG now writes the output of fig2dev into a log file called winfig.log. Check the log if exporting a figure did not work.
• align function can now also center objects. Useful for centering text labels in boxes
• added PSTricks property page to the export dialog

Bug fixes:

• WinFIG crashed when there was no document open and a button was clicked on the tool bar
• when the contents of some of the numeric fields (like depth, angle) was erased, a popup was asking to enter a numeric value amd thereby blocking the same field for input so that the program had to be killed
• the grid and magnet indicators did not show the correct state when switching between multiple drawings
• when undoing the copying of a line object, the area was not refreshed
• EMF export now calculates a precise bounding box preventing any extra blank space around it
• undoing align operations did not refresh the drawing
• after opening a compound for editing, point markers of any compound objects found inside were not drawn

Version 1.63 - (1-May 2006)

Bug fixes:

• the text markers were not shown when the text tool was activated

Version 1.62 - (16-April 2006)

Bug fixes:

• fig2dev created an erraneous filename for JPEG files

Version 1.61 - (14-April 2006)

Bug fixes:

• fig2dev was still not working correctly with a GhostScript installation with blanks in the path

Version 1.6 - (10-April 2006)

Changes:

• object dragging has been changed. Now you drag objects by clicking and holding the mouse button just as you know it from any other drag&drop operation. You can also select objects by using the lasso or by shift-select. That means now you can move several objects at once without the need to create a compound object.
• mark a selection of objects and cut/copy/paste them. You can paste to another window too. Copy&paste between applications does not yet work.
• fig2dev now updated to latest version 3.2.5 alpha 7. See http://xfig.org/software/xfig/3.2.5-alpha/CHANGES.transfig for changes. Note that I compiled with the PS driver for included fill patterns instead of that using PostScript Level 2 built-in pattern commands, since that did not work for GhostScript 8.5.1
• Eugene Ressler sent me his PSTricks driver to be included with that fig2dev port. See his web site for more information on PSTricks http://www.frontiernet.net/~eugene.ressler
• fig2dev was compiled with the directive DVIPS, which is necessary to allow coloured texts in LaTeX
• the contents of a compound object is still visible while dragging, instead of only showing and empty box
• arc shape is visible while dragging
• the colour of the grid can be changed

Bug fixes:

• fig2dev failed to execute GhostScript when it was installed under a path with a blank i.e. C:\Program Files\gs
• embedded pictures with a path that contains blanks were not loaded next time the figure was opened
• when creating a new text object and hitting the cancel button, the new text was still created
• point markers protruding beyond the extent of an object (i.e. at the end of a line) were not refreshed when moving or deleting objects
• when undoing an operation that changes the dimension of a compound object, the boundary was not properly updated
• when an object was changed inside a compound (flip, rotate, ...) and the compound was closed again and an undo was attempted, that undo would cause inconsistency and a possible crash
• snap-to-grid did not work properly for "imperial" grids

Notes to fig2dev:

• I could not successfully create objects with fill patterns using the new code, which uses "PostScript Level 2 built-in pattern commands". Therefore, I compiled with the old code, which generates the patterns into the PS files.

Version 1.5 - (24-January 2005)

Changes:

• rewritten to use GDI-Plus for rendering graphics
• better graphical implementation of dashed arcs with line thickness > 1
• user can add his own colors to the palette
• fig2dev now tries calling GhostScript by reading the installation location from the registry. Adding the GhostScript installation directory to the "PATH" environment variable is not necessary anymore.
• registration fee for Dollar payment raised to USD 25,00 due to continuing weakness of Dollar

Bug fixes:

• several corrections in rendering (arrow clipping fixed,...)

Version 1.42 - (8-August-2004)

Bug fixes:

• Under certain conditions thin dashed and dotted lines and splines were drawn in background color and thus not visible

Version 1.41 - (25-July-2004)

Bug fixes:

• WinFIG could crash when reading files where the font of text objects was set to -1. It seems some older Xfig version set it to -1 when using the default font for a text object.

Version 1.4 - (18-July-2004)

Changes:

• The object library is now available. See the readme.txt for how to fill it with objects
• regular polygons with variable number of sides

Bug fixes:

• resizing objects or drawing polylines could leave pixel trash on the canvas
• tagging objects for compounds using shift-select required more than one clicks to mark the first object
• After selecting "rotate", "flip" or "compound" the user had to click on the canvas first to be able to use the functions that require the "shift" key, like setting the rotation center with shift + left mouse button. The window now automatically receives the focus and will recognize if shift is pressed without clicking on the canvas first.

Version 1.3 - (15-May-2004)

Changes:

• Layers can now be turned off, dimmed or grayed out. The radio button "Export all/Export only active" is now active and can be used to limit file export to active layers. This is useful when you want to create slides for presentations.
• The rendering of boxes with round corners has been improved
• PSTeX export can now create the PS and the TeX file at the same time
• Files are now saved in Unix format (without the additional carriage return at the end of each line)
• The number of objects that can be saved in the unregistered version was set to 15

Bug fixes:

• WinFIG could be crashed by dragging an object or moving a point etc. and then switching to another document using control-tab without cancelling the current operation. WinFIG would expect to find the object being modified in the next document and run into an error.
• The keyfile was not found when starting WinFIG indirectly by clicking on a FIG file
• The number of objects that can be saved in the unregistered version was set to 15

Version 1.2 - (15-March-2004)

Bug fixes:

• Crash when moving end points of a line consisting of only two points. This bug was actually caused by the code added in 1.1 that displays the distances between points.

Version 1.1 - (12-March-2004)

Bug fixes:

• Object dimensions like circle radius or box width/height were only shown on creation, not when resizing.
• User colors are correctly displayed and written back to file. Adding or modifying user colors is still not possible.
• When dragging text objects there was always a trace drawn on the canvas.

Version 1.0 - (8-Feb-2004)

Changes:

• modifying existing object attributes (color, line strength, depth...) is now possible
• The export dialog contains a graphical front-end to the export tool fig2dev
• coordinates are shown while moving mouse pointer
• when editing text objects the input box is now pre-populated with the correct text

Bug fixes:

• Crash when drawing lines in LaTeX-mode using 1/1 grid resolved
• when saving objects that use pattern fill wrong pattern was written to the file
• the fig2dev option -G did not produce correct output

Version 0.95 - (29-May-2003)

This is just a small maintenance release. Path parameters that were supplied to fig2dev did not allow blanks. This has been corrected by enclosing paths in double quotes e.g. fig2dev -L ps "C:\my files\foo.fig" "C:\my files\foo.ps"

Version 0.94 - (14-May-2003)

Changes:

• contains the current version 3.2 patchlevel 4 of the export tool fig2dev It can now export formats like PDF, JPEG, PNG using GhostScript and SVG. I did not test everything. I mainly focused on testing the PostScript export. A source code archive will follow.
• I added the fig2dev manpage as a PDF file (fig2dev.manpage.pdf). It seems it was not yet updated for SVG. Try fig2dev -h for a list of options
• default options were changed for the new fig2dev version from "-L ps -P" to "-L ps"
• WinFIG now registers the FIG file type. FIG files can now be loaded by double-clicking on a file icon

Bug fixes:

• fig2dev export options were not always read from the registry correctly and in that case substituted by the default options
• Text objects did not have the correct font size, even more when printing.
• zoom and shift is now reset automatically when printing

Version 0.93 - (22-Apr-2003)

The image was cropped when exporting as Metafile. This release calculates a correct bounding box and produces Metafile clips with correct dimensions.

Version 0.92 - (13-Apr-2003)

This release fixes a bug in fig2dev, the export tool. It crashed when the input file was specified without path. The main program is unchanged.

Version 0.91 - (7-Apr-2003)

Bug fixes:

• arrows were not drawn correctly when scrolling the canvas

Version 0.9 - (28-Mar-2003)

Changes:

• picture objects are now supported (using the CImage class). Note that WinFIG supports BMP and PNG, which are not supported by XFig. Also, if you like to transfer your FIG files to Unix machines or just want to make files relocatable, do not use absloute paths to images like C:\FIG\pictures\pic.jpg. Use relative paths instead i.e. if your FIG file is C:\FIG\drawings\foo.fig enter ..\pictures\pic.jpg as the path to the picure file. You may then move the FIG folder to a different location while keeping correct paths to the pictures files.
  Furthermore, you may use unix separators i.e. ../pictures/pic.jpg
• fig2dev is now included. fig2dev is a tool for converting FIG to other formats. You may call fig2dev from the console or let WinFIG call it for you. You have to provide the command line parameters (i.e. -L ps -P for converting to PostScript). Read the manual page for details on fig2dev command lines parameters. I will include a graphcial front-end to fig2dev command lines like you may know from Xfig later, but I cannot say when it will be available.
• some front-end changes
• WinFIG now writes some settings to the registry under:
  HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WinFIG
  You may remove this key at any time without doing damage.

Bug fixes:

• snap-to-grid now works correctly
• zooming out and in could shift the figure out of the window
• wrong magnification was written to the file

Version 0.8 - (01-Mar-2003)

Changes:

• initial release
• As the version number indicates this is kind of a beta release. So, if you are using the tool for important stuff, please remember to make backup copies of your files once in a while.
• Supports the Xfig file version 3.2