NumericalChameleon

Release Notes (historic)

Version 2.1.0 (June 24, 2018)

o updated the .dmg only:
  - bundled Java Runtime Environment 10.0.1 for Mac with time zone database 2018e applied

Version 2.1.0 (Oct 17, 2017)

o compatibility changes:
  - The NC 2.1 has been made compatible with Java 9.
  - The NC 2.1 requires Java 8 or later. Java 6 and 7 are not supported anymore.
  - removed all Look and Feels where the developer abandoned (see also removed libraries)

o new features:
  - java.net.useSystemProxies=true is now enabled for the nc-admin.exe launcher
    in order to use proxy settings from the system by default on Microsoft Windows
  - on macOS the system proxy settings are being recognized if Java 9 is used
  - on both GNU/Linux and macOS the environment variables http_proxy resp. HTTP_proxy and
    no_proxy resp. NO_PROXY are being recognized on startup
  - text in notice area is saved and restored automatically
  - added JTattoo Look and Feel that comes with a lot of great modern themes
  - localization bundle is now part of the update center so that localization changes
    can be delivered faster
  - one new category: (music) note values
  - two new groups: music and liquids
  - added decades and centuries to the time difference dialog
  - added Morsecode (classic and Apple Watch) to category spoken numbers

o graphical improvements:
  - splashscreen has got both rounded edges and a shadow
  - nicer images for the favorites
  - swap button is now between source and target
 
o fixes:
  - fixed: unsaved text in notice area gets lost if not saved explicitly
  - fixed: combobox resizing didn't happen on first start of the app
  - fixed: Google calendar does not accept our .ics due to missing escape chars
  - fixed: .ics should use CRLF as the endline sequence according to RFC 5545
  - fixed: non-privileged user can open the update dialog which will fail
  - fixed: nc launcher script on GNU/Linux and macOS didn't accept parameters
  - fixed: setting sci figures can be selected if Roman Numerals has been loaded
  - fixed: typo in unit description USB SuperSpeed+

o internal improvements: 
  - gathering latest tzdata info from https://www.iana.org/time-zones rather
    than from ftp://ftp.iana.org/tz/
  - reading zone1970.tab (modern format) rather than zone.tab (old format) in
    order to get the principal location for each time zone
  - removed own implementation of the Splashscreen and rely only on the Splashscreen
    functionality from the JRE

o removed libraries:
  - removed JGoodies Looks (latest version is not free of charge anymore)
  - removed JGoodies Common (latest version it is not free of charge anymore)
  - removed Kunststoff LnF (abandoned)
  - removed Metouia LnF (abandoned)
  - removed Squareness Look and Feel (abandoned)

Version 2.0.1 (Jan 6, 2017)

• fixed sf bug#4 Help/Tutorial, Help/Support, Help/Homepage doesn't work with all browsers
• fixed: Help/Manual should read language help id instead of language gui id
• fixed: English should be used for the help on a category if a translation is missing
• fixed: data tables should be available not only in German but also in English
• updated data tables for German
• replaced icon for the unicode category (the request for logo use per guidelines by unicode.org has been approved)
• removed dependency to swing-layout.jar (saved 115k) and used Java SE standard API instead
• updated NimROD LnF to version 1.2d
• updated exchange rate filters
• updated holiday defs by using latest xml-holidays data
• updated leapseconds and timezone ids
• Language German updated (v2.0.1)
• Language Italian updated (v2.0.1)
• Language Spanish updated (v1.6.0.1)
• Language Hungarian updated (v0.1.0.1)

Version 2.0.0 (June 6, 2016)

• Compatibilty Changes
  
• The NC has been published under the terms of the GPLv3+
• at least Java 6 is required, Java 8 or later is recommended
• For the online help an external browser is required
• Core Functionalty
• 5200+ Units (more than 1900 are new)
• 93 Categories (10 are new)
• New Categories
• Fuel Efficiency (l/100 km, mpg, etc.)
• Time in Words (colloquial, official, military and by audio)
• Fractions (including periodic determination)
• Geographic Coordinates (Latitude/Longitue, UTM, etc.)
• Date and Timeformats (Unix time, ISO 8601, etc.)
• Calendar Systems (Gregorian Calendar, Maya, etc.)
• Slope (in % and Angle in °)
• Checksums (powered by Jacksum) witz 58 algorithms and 10 different output formats
• Catalytic Activity (katal, mol/s, etc.)
• Concentration of Substance (mol/l, mol/m³, etc.)
• New Modules
• Time Differences
• Exact calculation of time differences, even location dependent timestamps
• Calculation of interest rates, seven common international methods are supported
• Time zones including information of the time delta and the distance in km
• Random Numbers
• You can throw up to 512 virtual dices, each dice colored if you like, including the option to save the results
• Flexible, generic random generator with sort function and optional avoidance of duplicate numbers
• Updated Modules
• Holidays
• The NC uses the holiday definitions of the sub-project called xml-holidays 1.0, it supports more than 800 holidays from 31 countries for historic, current and future years
• In addition to flexible holidays like Easter or Advent calculation, really complex dates like the Oktoberfest, Equinox or Solstice are supported as well
• In addition to the formats dtcm, Outlook and vCalendar there is also support for the formats called iCalendar (RFC 2445) and XML-iCalendar (xcal) for the export to different programs like Mozilla Sunbird oder Lightning
• Exchange Rates
• Direct download of exchange rates
• The parser has been improved and is now state of the art
• The Regular Expression Library has been replaced by the Java Standard Regex API
• Updated all existing exchange rate filters
• Some new exchange rate filters
• New currency symbols have been added
• Updated descriptions of all exchange rate filters with important hints for Internet Explorer users
• Reformatted all filters for better readibility with the Windows Look and Feel
• Spoken Numbers
• From now on, input can be interpreted as digits or as a number
• Syllables for audio output of numerals are available not only for English and German but also for French (France, Switzerland and Belgium), Spanish, Italian, Finnish, Schwedish, Dutch, Hungarian, Turkish, Polish, Romanian, Hindi, Tamil, Esperanto, Russian, Portuguese (Portugal and Brazil)
• Support for French extended from 1 digit to 96 digits
• French is distiguished between French in France, Switzerland and Belgium
• Support for Italian extended from 1 digit to 3 digits
• Support for Dutch up to 9 digits (new)
• Support for Hungarian extended from 1 digit to 24 digits
• Support for Hindi extended from 1 digit to 2 digits (not only Transliteration but also written in Devanagari)
• Support for Tongan up to 100 digits (new)
• Support for phone dial sounds (new)
• Phonetic Alphabets also for both Austria and Switzerland
• Graphical User Interface
• functional improvements
• Kategoriegruppen lassen sich nun bequem von der Hauptoberfläche auswählen
• Neue Kategoriegruppenfilter
• Die Konfiguration der gesamten Oberfläche ist nun übersichtlich in einem Dialog zusammengefasst
• Einheiten lassen sich nun auch über einen Dialog bearbeiten
• Bookmarks/Favorites is non-modal now for more flexibility
• Navigation menu contains all navigation related items now
• Verbesserungen bei der Bedienung des Wechselkursupdates
• Alphabetische Sortierung der Ausgabe bei der Auswahl von Hilfe/Support
• visual improvements
• Support for country specific decimal point separators
• Distinction between decimal precision and significant numbers
• Popup of combo boxes get more space if necessary
• A finer font is used by default for both the Swing LnF and the Ocean LnF
• A new splash screen immediately after the start
• "live resize" has been enabled
• Removed country flags in the language selection menu for being politically correct
• Standard Look and Feel menu has been sorted alphabetically
• Support for the Squareness Look and Feel Theme Package
• Swing-layout (LGPL) has been used, https://swing-layout.dev.java.net/
• User interface also in turkish
• Source Code
• Internal Improvements
• Big refactoring has been done
• group-files can contain comments
• build.xml has been updated, at least NetBeans 6 is recommended
• Many deprecated Java methods have been replaced
• New Libraries
• NimrodLnF 1.2, patched by jonelo
• Dice, patched by jonelo
  
• Jcoord 1.1-b, patched by jonelo
• Jacksum 1.7.0
• hvjavacal.jar 0.13
  
• Updated Libraries
• JCalendar, version 1.4
• Squareness LnF, version 2.3.0
• Kunststoff LnF, 2.0.3, patched by jonelo
• Metouia LnF 0.91, patched by jonelo
  
• Replaced Libraries
• Ostermiller Browser (replaced by Java Standard API)
• Regular Expression Library (replaced by Java Standard API)
• JavaHelp (replaced by native Browser)
• Java Look and feel Graphics Repository (replaced by free icons)
• Help
• The Program Help has been updated
• The "Java Help"-System has been replaced by the standard browser
• Installers
• Native installers are available (.exe, .bin, .deb, .rpm) in order to install the software correctly into your operating system
• A mobile solution is available in order to run the software 100 % from a mobile device without any traces on the host operating system

Version 1.6.0, patch 2 (25-Feb-2007)

• Bugs fixed
• Two mass per time values are wrong
• Restart or changing the language can hang the GUI (sf #1601343)
• Minor Updates:
• Slowenia has got the Euro in 2007
• DST rules for the holiday calendar are now provided exclusively by the Java Runtime Environment

Version 1.6.0, patch 1 (01-Nov-2006)

• Bugs fixed
• Five frequency values are wrong
• GUI freezes if both Metouia Look and Feel and JRE 5.0 are used
• If JRE 5 is used, scientific format can be applied, even if the user has not selected the sci format
• Favorites are not always found
• Descriptions of the hardness of water values are confusing
• Minor Updates:
• Exchange rates filters have been updated where possible
• Spanish language resources have been updated
• Support for the "at"-character in the Morse code

Version 1.6.0 (16-May-2004)

• The NC supports
• More than 3200 units in 82 categories and 10 exchange rate filters
• This is more than 900 new units and 4 new categories
• The graphical user interface has been localized in 7 languages
• New modules/categories
• Convert timezones from all over the wold, the calculation take the summer time as well as date and time into account
• 19 interactive phonetic alphabets are supported (international, morse, NATO/ICAO, american and british english, french, spanish, german, italian, portuguese, danish, dutch, swedish, hebrew and a few historic alphabets)
• The category "Screen resolutions" is new
• The category "Performance of the FPU" is new
• The category "Calendar (year)" is new and it is aware of more then 90 international holidays from the US, Germany and Switzerland
• The category "Calendar (date)" is aware of the sun signs and the "age in days"
• The category "Color" has been expanded to the HSB-colormodel
• The category "Unicode" is able to take strings
• It speaks numbers in "Morsecode" literally and via audio
• For all Star Trek fans: klingon spoken numbers (up to 10³⁰-1)
• New features
• The graphical user interface has been optimized for faster navigation
• Additional language support for greek and hebrew
• English has been separated into US and UK english
• The country descriptions (ISO-3166) are not only available in english and german, but also in french, portuguese and hebrew
• The currency descriptions (ISO-4217) are not only available in english, but also in german and hebrew
• You can bookmark favorites for a faster navigation
• You can filter categories
• If you filter categories the GUI shows an appropriate icon
• Category filter are stored in flat files and it is easy to create your own
• You can search for units and categories
• All available international holidays can be exported to dtcm, Outlook or any vCalendar-compatible application
• You can easily select a date with the date picker dialog, you can select the week of the year or just add or subract days or weeks to find the date you want.
• If you select the category spoken numbers, calendar or color, the GUI shows additional buttons for an appropriate context
• Undo- and redo-functions are available for the inputs
• The build-in editor can save text in ISO-8855-1
• if available, more Look&Feel-Standards are choosable (Aqua on Mac OS X, GTK+ 2.0, plastic, squareness and Ocean which comes with J2SE 1.5)
• The configuration items has been joined into one menu
• The navigation items has been joined into one menu
• You can disable tooltips
• The feature "native or java decorated windows" (introduced in NC 1.5) can be enabled or disabled with the GUI
• You can set both default unit and defalut value
• If you restart the application you will be informed that the window will disappear for a while
• Tables and help have been separated
• A few nicer images
• New tables
• NOAA-Scales
• Bugs fixed
• Improved internationalization
• The function "cut" copies the content before
• Too many "and" at the english spoken number module (already in Patch nc-1.5.1-patch-20040126.zip)
• There is no "and" if you just use integer values - bug at the US english spoken number moule
• All exchange rate filters have been updated
• updated ISO-3166 list (AX:Åland Islands und CS:Serbia and Montenegro are new)
• Latest modules and libraries
• JavaHelp 2.0_01 (already in Patch nc-1.5.1-patch-20040126.zip)
• Sugar 1.2.0

Version 1.5.1 (20-Jul-2003)

• bugs fixed
• NC does not start with JRE 1.3
• NC does not start if locale is not english, german, french, spanish or portuguese
• NC does not play sounds
• minor features
• Mac OS X support: implemented some of the Apple Human interface guidelines, so the NC looks like a native application on Mac
• System look and feel is pickable
• Logfiles (standard in and standard out) can be created on demand (-logfile)
• User properties can be deleted on demand (-reset)
• Online help updated
• Tested successfully with 1.4.2
• latest modules and libraries
• Sugar 1.1.0

Version 1.5.0 (01-Jun-2003)

• now NC provides 2300 units in 78 categories, 10 exchange rate filters
• more than 700 new units and 3 new categories
• new modules
• Calendar module (day of week, week of month, etc.)
• International dial codes (both directions)
• Alphanumeric phone numbers
• Spanish spoken number module (up to 1^30-1)
• Esperanto spoken number module (up to 999)
• Latin spoken number module (up to 99)
• Russian spoken number module (up to 99)
• Japanese spoken number module (up to 99)
• new features
• Scientific notation support
• Spanish language support
• NC is now able to speak numbers in a language (a soundcard is required, currently german is supported)
• Window size, window location, Look and Feel and the selected theme will be stored
• Unicode is supported in config files and the build-in editor
(for displaying special characters like Ohm, special currency symbols or cyrillic chars)
• Build-in editor can save text as UTF-8, UTF-16le, UTF-16be and HTML
• Build-in editor can load text as UTF-8, UTF-16le, UTF-16be and ISO5589-1
• Font size can be set for the build-in editor for presentation purposes
• Source and target can be set to a default index
• Extended exchange rate filter specification for making bloomberg filter working correctly
• Special effect: exit animation (edit $HOME/.nc.properties)
• Some nicer images
• Java 1.4+
• the NC takes full advantace of the most cool Java 1.4 features
• Mouse wheel support
• Full Unicode 3.0 support
• Native or Java decorated window (edit $HOME/.nc.properties)
• Tested successfully with Java 1.4.2 beta
• new tables
• Buchformate (german only)
• ISIN (german only)
• Earthquake intensity scale (german and english)
• HTTP status codes (german and english)
• Engl. paper sizes (german and english)
• bugs fixed
• updated exchange rate filters which were not working anymore
• desktop file for UNIX (missing working directory for Gnome and KDE)
• fixed localization typos
• latest modules and libraries
• JavaHelp 2.0 release candidate
• IzPack 3.0.8a
• Sugar 1.0.2

Version 1.4.0 (02-Dec-2002)

• now NC provides 1607 units in 75 categories, 10 exchange rate filters
• new modules
• colorcode module
• Romanian spoken number module
• Unicode module
• new features
• now friendly to multi-user platforms
(user properties will be stored in the user homedirectory while system properties remain in the installation folder)
• 2 new exchange rate filters (ECB and ExchangeRate.com)
• a step controlled unit list can be generated for one or all targets
• format of notice can be set
• you can save notices
• color chooser for the colorcode module
• reload feature for units
• maximum view
• improved ant script (tested with Ant 1.5)
• added Mohs Scratch Hardness (only german help file)
• added some DIN norms (only german help file)
• a lot of nicer images
• installer creates shortcuts under Windows
• png and xpm files for UNIX desktops
• desktop file for GNOME
• bugs fixed
• updated exchange rate filters which were not working anymore
• updated ISO configuration data
• fixed some bugs in the help file
• fixed typos in lang/categories_de.list
• fixed typos in the installer
• latest modules and libraries
• JavaHelp library 1.3.1
• Metouia LnF 1.0 beta
• IzPack 3.1.0 cvs
• Sugar 1.0.1

Version 1.3.0 (01-May-2002)

• now NC provides 1201 units in 73 categories
• new features
• faster program start
• count units and categories with one click
• french language support
• portuguese language support
• new portuguese and brazil spoken number modules (up to 1e36-1)
• extended UK, US and german spoken number modules (up to 1e96-1)
• Themes-support also for Kunststoff LnF and Metouia LnF
• improved themes and new themes
• providing Ant-script for developers
• very powerful exchange rate modules
• now it supports _all_ currencies defined in ISO 4217
• providing country flags for 236 countries
• new exchange rate filters (Bloomberg, iccfx.com, United Nations, Reisebank and Oanda)
• shows currencies and their corresponding country flag
• improved exchange rates update dialog
• updating exchange rates also at the command line for cronjobs
• better performance for exchange rates update process
• you can cancel exchange rate update process
• your preferred exchange rates filter will be stored
• bugs fixed
• repaint problem under Solaris fixed
• resource bundle will be loaded only if it differs from the previous selected one
• latest modules and libraries
• IzPack 2.12.0 (with a few modifications)
• Kunststoff LnF 2.0.1
• Metouia LnF alpha

Version 1.2.0 (30-Nov-2001)

• Kunststoff Look&Feel Rendering Bug fixed
• more country flags
• Update of exchangerates with the GUI (2 filters are supported)
• Language selection with the GUI

Version 1.1.0 (28-Oct-2001):

• Internationalization (GUI and help)
• English and german available
• Frame and components are resizable
• New About-Dialog
• On-Line-Help available
• Standard Look&Feels are supported
• Metal-Themes are supported
• Kunststoff-Look&Feel are supported
• using Forte for Java CE 3.0
• using IzPack 2.9.0

Version 1.0.0a (23-Sep-2001):

• no changes on Java sources, it's still 1.0.0
• bug fixed in the UNIX nc100 script
• register.txt now supported in german and english
• using IzPack 2.6.0
• recompiled with Sun's J2SDK 1.3.1

Version 1.0.0 (19-Sep-2001):

• first published application version
• 1051 units and 68 categories
• register.txt only in german
• using IzPack 2.5.0
• compiled with Sun's J2SDK 1.3.0

a long time ago...

• When I was a child, my Dad was able to enthuse me for different units from all over the world - thank you Dad.
• My first implementation of a unit-converter happend in the year 1992, and it was written in Pascal (well, I never published it since it was more a test software in order to learn Pascal)
• Since none of the existing unit converters matched my wishlist for an unit converter, I decided to write my own unit converter software. It should contain all features that I have had in mind, it should be free, open source and it should run not only on Windows
• In 1996 I published a little applet at the University of Applied Sciences in Landshut, it was based on Java 1.1 and it provided already some conversions. I called the applet NumberConverter.
• On Sep 19, 2001, I released the first public release of the NumericalChameleon under the GPL

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