Release Notes 6.0

• Standalone Storyboard application file compare/merge utility included with Storyboard to support continuous integration and automated build workflows.

• Dark UI theme support for the Storyboard Designer development environment.

• The new Resource Export configuration editor allows fine grained control over how resources are exported and managed for embedded targets. Used with the new Project Metrics view, this replaces the previous export control in the Simulator/Export dialog.

• The new Project Metrics view allows application developers to understand the full memory and storage costs associated with their application as it is being designed. The Project Metrics works hand in hand with the new Resource Export configuration editor to show the different costs associated with various target deployment scenarios ranging from SW rendering/RT Exec to OpenGL/RTOS deployments. This is a powerful tool for the specialized activity of embedded application deployment.

• Design States offer a brand new way for application developers to see how their application will look in different scenarios. A perfect compliment to the existing screen-based organization states of an application’s user interface, design states show you how a particular screen will look at different times based on changes caused by animations or external data. A great tool to visualize effects that occur in multiple screen contexts!

• Storyboard has revamped its translation and internationalization functionality to better address the needs of application developers and align with industry standard practices. The new Text Translation view shows what text content has been translated, what that translation value is and includes hints related to the correct visibility of the text. To extend translation to internationalization and some light theming support, users can now add additional variables such as fonts, point sizes and control metrics as attributes to be changed when languages change. Storyboard Engine supports this new functionality via a Lua module that allows fast and easy application language customization using the same translation text sources as in Designer.

• Storyboard 6.0 introduces an optimized OpenGL scene graph renderer. This is a complete re-engineering of the Storyboard Engine rendering pipeline to interface more optimally with high-performance 3D GPU technology in more configurations on more hardware platforms. In some scenarios, performance improves by up to 150%!

• Storyboard Lite Engine is a memory footprint reduced version of the Storyboard Engine specifically targeted at resource (memory and flash limited) constrained embedded target hardware platforms. In addition, the standard performance optimization tuning that occurs with each Storyboard Engine release, this configuration has been created with an eye to optimizing execution for low memory systems. A direct to C callback API allows developers to simulate environments with Lua and replace that functionality with compiled C code on target. The Resource Export configuration and the Project Metrics view have been specifically organized to give developers the insight they need to tune a Storyboard Lite Engine deployment.

• A feature scalable user interface has been introduced to Storyboard Designer to provide a common UI development tool that easily adapts itself to enable only those features available on your target platform. The feature sets allows developers to create rich multi-touch or gesture-based applications that leverage advanced 3D graphics and multimedia capabilities of OpenGL Storyboard Engine platforms in the same environment as they would create svelte and beautiful user interfaces for the more resource-constrained Storyboard Lite Engine platforms. One platform environment supports it all!

• New Scrolling Functionality

  • New scroll stop/cancel action

  • New auto scroll detected trigger event

  • Unified table cell and pixel gesture-based scrolling for tables

  • Alignment option for table and layer scrolling

  • Animation engine based auto scroll

  • Improved experience for overlaid scrolling table and layers

• Named data changes allow many variables to be set at once in a re-usable manner

• Text and Rich Text recognize U+200B character as a zero width break character

• New C Function callback action and API for use with Storyboard Lite Engine

• Exported C/C++ Headers contain model file and build details

• Performance logs now contain build and release information

• Performance logs now contain animation trace information

• Search for and count image references in model from the Images view

• Actions/Variables/Render Extensions are now grouped in the Application view

• Hotkey bindings for fill horizontal, vertical, container commands

• Copy/Paste of controls and groups no longer insert an automatic position offset

• New model elements are automatically selected as they are created

• Unlocking a child control/group will prompt to unlock the parent layer if locked

• Storyboard Designer renders previously unsupported OTF/TTF fonts (NotoSansCJK)

• IO Connector event generation view can be opened to a floating window

• Command line utility for resizing Storyboard applications

Lua API Enhancements

• Inbound and outbound events are now generated on multi-touch interfaces

• Inbound and outbound events are now delivered to all children/layers affected

• Screen Path screen transition arguments for top/bottom directions have been changed to match the documentation, they were previously reversed.

• Events bound to variables will now be delivered to the layer of the context if one is applicable.

• New Storyboard Engine API

  • Function callback for easier diagnostic logging

  • Enhanced model API for use with C Callback action.

• Image Load Manager

  • An interface has been created to allow plugins to add their own discrete image format loaders or to override the internal image loaders.

• Font Manager Plugin

  • Select TrueType or Bitmap or Monotype rendering using the same engine

  • Dumping all font resources (gre.dump_resource) will now completely drop the font from memory instead of holding a cached reference. This reduces memory overall, but can have an impact on performance if the font needs to be reloaded.

• Comprehensive and efficient 16 bit display rendering support

  • Design in 32bit with target content export in 16bit for storage savings

  • Mixed mode 32bit backing and 16bit display configurations available

• Memory Management

  • Discontinuous heap management and engine specific memory management

  • Model memory footprint was reduced by an average of ~16%, and as high as 42% reduction in some areas

• The multi-touch events mtXmove, mtXpinch and mtXrotate have been removed and replaced with mtmove, mtpinch and mtrotate events containing a data payload.

• The Lua argument context no longer references context_target, that value has been replaced with a new variable active_context that is the FQN of the object that is invoking the Lua action.

• The second argument to Lua callback functions was deprecated in Storyboard Engine 2.x and has now been removed entirely.

• When using C/C++ resource exports, all Lua files would be loaded. Now only those files in the scripts directory itself are loaded.

• Storyboard Engine command line option changes:

  • -orender_mgr,rotated=[90|180|270] changed to -orender_mgr,rotate=[90|180|270]

  • The display render manager option now compliments the fb option to help specifically identify which display index should be used.

• Storyboard Engine linux-*-fbdev has been replaced by the generic linux-*-swrender

• Storyboard Engine win32-x86-win32 has been replaced by win32-x86-swrender

• When using an animated GIF, an unbounded resource manager image cache configuration must be used

• Storyboard Designer no longer supports the import and conversion of Storyboard model files prior to version 4.x. These model files can be converted with any earlier version of Storyboard Designer ranging from 4.0 - 5.3. Contact support@cranksoftware.com for more assistance if required.