[Release] MegaZine3 Version 2.0.0

[Florian Nücke]

Announcing MegaZine3 Version 2.0.0

As some who visited the forum over the last couple of weeks may already know,
a new version of the MegaZine3 engine has been under development. Because of
the fact that this new version was a major overhaul of the existing sources,
introducing some major new low level (read: code architecture) features, it was
decided to label the code branch based on this reworked code version 2.x, beginning
with version 2.0.0 which is hereby officially released.

Version 1.x (at this time 1.38) will still be maintained, although with lower priority.
More specifically, only (major) bugs will be fixed, it is not planned to add new
features to the 1.x branch.


Why not just use the new version?
In most cases, the reason may be, that the new version will use a different
(custom) license model, and is not distributed under the GPLv3. Version 1.x
will now and forever more be released with GPL licensed code.

That said, the new license model still offers a lot of freedom:

• the engine is still open source!
• private use is, and will remain, entirely unlimited and free.
• commercial users will now have to buy a license, but in our opinion
  the prices are very fair. If you have questions regarding this, please
  send a mail to Hans Nücke and visit http://www.vservu.com/.
• all interfaces and classes necessary for plugin development are
  licensed under the MIT License, which means you can do whatever you
  want with the plugins you develop.

Why use the new version?
Among the many developer oriented feature changes there are also some new
features normal users will enjoy:

• possibility to use spread pages, i.e. it is possible to define all content for
  a double page in one spreadpage tag, making it easier to use double
  page images. Furthermore this now allows you to even use dynamic elements
  across two pages, such as video.
• the liquid scaling mode has undergone some cosmetic and functional
  changes, and the pages are now scaled independently from the GUI. It is now
  configured in the book definition (megazine.mz3), and no longer in the index.html.
• it is now also possible to manually zoom in and out, scaling the actual
  book (not only the gallery as before)...
• ...and scroll freely when the page size exceeds the available display area.
• much more flexible way to define background graphics, either bound to the
  pages' position (e.g. for pre- and postpage), or for the whole flash area.

For Developers
The new version makes it a lot - let me say this again: a lot easier to implement
new functionality, as the engine now sports a plugin system.
All additional functionality, such as the navigation bar and the gallery have already
been ported into plugins, so you can imagine how much you can do with a plugin.
This hopefully means other people feel encouraged to write their own plugins, and
publish them to the public, giving you the benefit of the plugin's functionality.

There are already a few plugins planned by us (but without any actual time frame,
so if you feel like implementing one of them, feel free to!), for example: print
functionality, thumbnail based page overview and search functionality, just to name
a few.

For Designers
With the new version we also introduce a completely reworked way of defining the
graphical elements of the books' controls, the GUI. Unlike the not so intuitive
interface.swf in version 1.x all GUI elements are now styled via XML documents,
so called ASUL documents. This means it is possible to change the appearance
through XML documents alone. No fiddling within the code, no recompiling / publishing.
We strongly encourage you to try this out, and help us extending the documentation on
this topic.


What else is new?

The MegaZine3 Wiki
Together with the new version, we'd like to officially announce the project Wiki, which
will contain information about version 2.x (and only version 2.x, if you wish to
add information for v1.x please explicitly mark it as such!). It already contains a
lot of information, but will hopefully grow as people get involved and common
knowledge gaps become apparent. Please feel invited to contribute!

Bugtracker
If you didn't see it already in the bugs section (which will be closed down soon),
there's now a bugtracker available for reporting bugs. You will have to register
before creating a new issue (i.e. report a bug or request a feature). When reporting
a bug, please, as always, be as descriptive as possible, and provide a test case
where possible.


Changes since RC2
Quite a lot, mainly because the release got delayed a bit by us finalizing the
license agreements for v2, so I had some more time to work on it. Hopefully I
did not introduce new bugs this way...

• Liquid scaling and zoom now work together. Normally liquid scaling is active, but it
  can be overridden by using the mouse wheel to manually zoom in or out. To get back
  to liquid scaling, zoom to the according zoom step (snaps to the liquid scaling). If
  the book is at its maximum/minimum size and one zooms out/in, liquid scaling is
  also enabled again.
• book@fillrate was removed, more flexible configuration is now possible via the megazine.asul
• Added ScrollPane and ScrollBar ASUL objects, which are now used by the gallery
  plugin, as well as the help plugin. The ScrollPane is also used to allow scrolling of
  the whole book when zoomed in.
• Changed element loading a bit to make it more robust (and logical). Also fixed
  event behavior in ElementProxy.
• Improved page animations a bit and fixed a glitch/bug.
• Fixed a bug causing page position recalculation even though unnecessary (e.g.
  when not moving the cursor, so there is no change in the position).
• Fixed some Slideshow issues and added repeat mode (returns to first page if it
  reaches the end). Also renamed book@startslide to book@slidestart.
• Fixed postpage not showing. The prepage and postpage attributes have been
  replaced with a child tag for the book tag, pagebackground. One can define any
  number of ASUL objects in this tag, which will be displayed behind the pages.
  Origin is the top left corner of the left page.
• Added possibility to define overall background, much like the pagebackground.
  Tag is named background and is a child tag of the book tag. Any number of ASUL
  definitions can be placed here, too.
• Added possibility to add a link to ASUL objects (only normal protocols, such as
  http, ftp etc. supported, no book internal ones), using the url attribute.
• Moved console to a plugin.
• Changed default index.html to use the whole browser frame for the flash
  element. The "Powered by MegaZine3" is now embedded as a background graphic
  in the default megazine.mz3 (but can of course be removed, although we'd
  appreciate you wouldn't, to help spread the word).
• Minor fixes.

Anyway. That all said, please

Download MegaZine3 Version 2.0.0

and try it out.


PS: the last changes since RC2 are not yet documented in the project wiki, but I'll get to that as soon as possible!