New Features in daVinci V2.0.x
daVinci V2.0 is a major release with more significant new features than any other previous version of daVinci. The most important modifications are: Transition from OpenWindows to OSF/Motif, support for multi-graph and multi-view, dynamic graph layout, vertical fine tuning, 2D-scrolling, layout orientations, navigation functions, search operation, online documentation, revised API, Tcl/Tk interface, full compatibility with daVinci V1.x.
All new features, compared to previous release V1.4.2,
are described below in the following categories (you can click on
the links for quick access):
Read the
release notes
to see what is new in the current minor release daVinci V2.0.3.
Some highlights of the daVinci V2.0.x user interface:
Some features of a new dynamic layout engine are enabled in the new release: By using the API, a daVinci application can change node and edge attributes or send graph updates to modify a loaded graph incrementally.
Some new
attributes
have been added to draw nodes with a double border
and edges with a double or thick line.
daVinci V2.0.x supports true color. i.e. 24bit
color values for nodes and edges.
Interactive Operations
Fine tuning
has been improved for the new version to move nodes vertically to
a new level. This feature also takes advance of daVinci's
dynamic layout engine.
2D-scrolling is a new technique to scroll in both directions at the same time. This can be done by pressing the middle mouse button while moving the mouse.
A navigation feature offers the opportunity to browse in a graph by moving from a currently selected node to the next relative node or neighbour node in all four directions (with animation!).
With a find operation, the user is able to search for particular nodes with a specified text.
Selection functions
can be used to show all parent-, sibling- or child nodes of a
currently selected node.
Online Documentation
A new hypertext
online documentation
is available in HTML format (you are actually reading it).
Direct access to
daVinci Internet resources
and integration of the help system is implemented with this approach.
The online documentation has a
search engine
(i.e. index) which is written in Java.
Application Programmer Interface
The API has a new more
intuitive syntax to realize application access to all new features
of daVinci V2.0.x (e.g. multi-graph mode, graph updates or
attaching new icons to the icon bar).
Transition to the
new API syntax is easy and full backward compatibility is guaranteed
by supporting all former V1.x API commands. The new API is
re-entrant, so an application can be disconnected at run-time
to connect another one. Further, the new API is fault tolerant
to proceed after a command with syntax errors has been received.
The V2.0.x API has a
Tcl/Tk interface
to execute Tcl-scripts by daVinci in the same way as it can
be done with a wish shell (but with direct access to the
daVinci API from inside the Tcl-script).
This way, an application can offer arbitrary dialog
windows by using nothing else but daVinci.
Note: daVinci is not a usual Tk object, so it
is not possible to manipulate daVinci's user interface
or graph visualization with Tcl/Tk commands!
Better Performance
Despite of many new features, benchmarks have demonstrated that
daVinci V2.0.x runs about 25% faster than the previous
release daVinci V1.4.2 with the same tasks. This was measured
on the daVinci development platform Sun Solaris 2.5, results
for other UNIX platforms may vary. The memory consumption of V2.0.x at
runtime is reduced by 20%, compared to daVinci V1.4.2.
Full Compatibility
daVinci V2.0.x is fully compatible to previous V1.x releases.
The graph format
(term representation)
has not been changed with transition to V2.0.x, so you can load all
V1.x graphs. The format of status files is modified to support
the new features, but status files stored with V1.x versions
of daVinci can be loaded in compatibility mode.
The API is completely
revised (see above), but
a backward compatibility mode allows to connect applications
written for the V1.x API.
Shortcomings in daVinci V2.0.x
The following shortcomings are present in the current release:
daVinci V2.0.3 Online Documentation - Page update: Nov 25, 1996