A new beta version of the Freehand drawing library (version 0.9) is being released this morning. As always, it’s a free upgrade to beta customers. It’s also the first beta release that leaves the drawing algorithm intact and greatly expands the capability of the library as a whole.
Following is a brief summary of the new features. I’ll do an additional set of blog posts covering the details of each feature.
1 – Freehand is now packaged under net.algorithmist.freehand and is supplied as a Flex library project. This serves as the central code library from which a variety of projects may be developed.
2 – New Value Objects for line data, individual stroke data, and stroke collections. This stems from user requests to expand the number of controllable parameters and provide a simple means to store individual and collective stroke data offline. The new VOs may be used as data providers to set individual stroke data or even draw an entire collection of strokes from a single VO (using the new draw method in the core Freehand class).
3 – Stroke Transforms. The collection of raw input points from which a stroke is mathematically derived can be both accessed and now transformed. Stroke transformations are implemented externally to the Freehand class via a new utility class (GeomUtils). Keeping stroke transformations external to Freehand allows a wide variety of stock or custom transforms to be created without modifying or increasing the weight of the Freehand class.
4 – Stroke serialization to FXG or SVG. Strokes may be serialized to either FXG or SVG format for transfer to a server or immediate storage to disk in an AIR application.
5 – Interactive control. Freehand drawing instances may have interactivity turned on or off at runtime.
6 – Mobile Freehand. A new MobileFreehand class supports applications targeted primarily towards tablets. This has been tested with Flex 4.5.1/Air 2.7 on an iPad-2 with nice performance, even from the debug version of the app. The actual class is platform agnostic. Any Flex 4.5 user may target the mobile platform of their choosing.
A screenshot of the basic demo is show above (please forgive my pathetic mouse skills). The beta distribution comes with a number of new demo programs, each of which illustrates various features of the new library.
There are still a couple beta slots open for interested parties. The beta license fees are very low AND beta customers get free upgrades for life. That’s a deal with appeal, so please contact me at theAlgorithmist [at] gmail [dot] com if you are interested in purchasing a license.
Thank you.
The Algorithmist 