processing4

Revision 1293 – 26 July 2023

This release incorporates several contributed fixes (see below) and a few additional bug fixes and changes. The icons have ben updated a bit so that Processing is less likely to be confused with Visual Studio Code when seen in the dock or task bar, and the splash screen colors and layout have design tweaks as well.

• Update documentation and process for updating language files for localization 722

• Inherit dark mode from system settings on macOS 699

• Use calculated text height instead of OS ascent for better vertical centering. Note: this may cause some sketches to look slightly different if textAlign(..., CENTER) is being used. 739

• Bumped Java to 17.0.8+7.

• Fix NullPointerException when background() exceeds color range when writing PDF 740

Contributions

• Updated icons and splash screen colors from @fathompaul.

• Register pde:// browser protocol for .pdez and .pdex files on Linux from @lala-lala-lori 674, 696

• Syntax error highlighting placement / width incorrect from @sampottinger 714, 715

• Better comment/uncomment key shortcut for French systems from @ThinkDumbIndustries 625, 660

• Fix tweak mode issue with hex codes including transparency from @sampottinger 720, 721

• LSP feature/declaration support from @Efratror 676, 678

• Also reference support for Language Server Protocol from @Efratror 684, 690

• Updates to the Spanish and Catalan translations from @trikaphundo 744, 746, 743, 745

• Debugger was listing immediate array dimension last, fix from @WillRabalais04 606, 729

• Second beginDraw() / endDraw() call clears PGraphics object when created w/ P2D 641, 728

Revision 1292 – 20 February 2023

Impress your friends with new pde:// protocol handlers! With Processing 4.2, you can link to .pdex and .pdez files to immediately run and install libraries and sketches. How it works:

• Linking to pde://processing.org/somesketch.pdez in the browser will download somesketch.pdez and load it into the editor. It also works for files, for instance pde:///Users/ada/Desktop/somesketch.pdez will open an archive found on the Desktop.

• This also works for contributions (Libraries, Modes, Tools) archived as .pdex files.

Both file types are simply a renamed .zip file. So to create sketches in .pdez format, use Tools → Archive Sketch, and replace the .zip with .pdez.

This is implemented for macOS and Windows (#559), based on this article which appears to be from @pboucher. Thank you! We still need help with implementing and testing it on Linux (#674). We would also like to add a warning dialog when opening files this way (#560).

In addition to the protocol handlers, there are a number of fixes in this release, especially for Windows users (and soon, for Python users).

Windows users, we still love you

• The .pde, .pdex, and .pdez icons now work on Windows!

• Exporting projects to Windows resulted in “cannot find Java” errors, now fixed. #667

Snake people, we love you too

• Several internal changes have been made to better support future releases of Python Mode. Fingers crossed that we'll be able to launch some of this soon.

And still we fix the bugs

• Fix encoding problem in “has been resized from 100?100 to 116?100 by the window manager” messages when using OpenGL.

• fullScreen(P2D) not using the full screen when Windows display is scaled to fractional sizes. #514.

• Table.getString() raises stack overflow when column type set to double. #671

• Added support chained decimals during SVG Parsing (contribution from @bsapozhnikov) #515, #659

• Applications were being exported to the wrong folder. #601

• Fixed more /tmp folder problems on Linux. #666

Revision 1291 – 9 February 2023

Rollup of bug fixes from the past few weeks. Mostly in the Contributions Manager, several others too.

bug fixin'

• Lots of work on the Contributions Manager to deal with concurrency issues (and myriad problems revealed in the process). #640

• Preferences were not saved when closing Processing under certain circumstances. #608

community contributin'

• Fix typos in French translation. #661

• Improved documentation for lerpColor() function. #655

house cleanin'

• Warn users about multiple libraries with the same name.

• Tool tips for errors and warnings not picking up correct colors from the theme. Also made fixes for the margins and border of the popup.

• Many more updates to the contribs wiki

internal changin'

• Update to JDK 17.0.6+10 from Adoptium

• Set all build.xml files to use Java 17. Also fix several that still had tabs instead of spaces.

• Add exports to the library parameters.

• Fix inversion of handleSaveAs() (regression from earlier)

Revision 1290 – 16 January 2023

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. day!

Contributions Manager

The majority of the work for this release went into cleaning up and fixing the Contributions Manager. (What you see when importing Libraries, managing Modes, etc.) Please, please, please help us out and give it a lot of testing. This is old, messy, and important code that is easy to break in major ways. If you have trouble with it, please file an issue!

• The “Manage Modes…” menu item was opening an empty window. #613

• Fix Cannot invoke "javax.swing.JProgressBar.setVisible(boolean)" because "this.progressBar" is null error when using Update All. #618

• Libraries from the Foundation (i.e. Video, Sound, and JavaFX) will now be reported properly on the stats page.

• Updated the Wiki pages about Libraries, Modes, Tools, and Examples for Processing 4. These pages were copied over from the Processing 3 repository, but needed some cleaning. Still more work to do here, but it's a start.

• Implemented per-line indicators for download/install status. Eventually these will replace the progress bar in the bottom panel.

• Removed an old workaround for a NullPointerException while making selections. If it reappears, please file a new issue. #3667

@SamPottinger saves us again

• “Cannot find a class or type named ‘PApplet’” error #626, #635

• Cannot use @Override and @Deprecated in static mode #619, #622

• color in imports shows up as an error in the editor (even though the code still runs) #521, #636

• Sketch folders with spaces or hyphens showing errors in the editor window (even though the code still runs) #610, #637

Other Bug Fixes

• Help Menu sometimes disabled on macOS. This is a Java bug, but it's been closed as “cannot reproduce,” so I managed to find a workaround. #4353, #617, #638

• Fixed ClassCastException with copy() and PGraphicsJava2D. #624

Additions? Why Not.

• The shortcuts for Find Next and Find Previous (i.e. ctrl-G and ctrl-shift-G on Windows/Linux) now work inside the Find/Replace window.

• Show a warning when calling clear() on the primary drawing surface. #627

Revision 1289 – 28 November 2022

See the release notes for 4.1 and 4.0.2 for major updates since 4.0.1 was released in August.

This release adds a single file for Language Server support that was missing in the 4.1 release from a few hours ago.

And if you'd like to try out the Language Server with Visual Studio Code, you can give this project a try.

Revision 1288 – 28 November 2022

Compared with the 4.0.2 release which was focused on stability, this 4.1 release is focused on instability adding a couple new features. They'll need more testing, but hopefully you'll find them useful.

what makes this 4.1 instead of 4.0.3

• This release adds initial support for Language Server Protocol, which means we will soon be able to integrate the compile/run process with other editors like Visual Studio Code. There is still a lot of work to be done here (this code is probably more “alpha” quality) but it's a good step forward. To use it, we'll first need an LSP “client,” which can be a community contribution so keep an eye out for that in the coming weeks and months. Thanks to @kgtkr for the LSP code here, it's a huge help. #117

• Support has been added for extended language tags, which makes available a Traditional Chinese (zh_TW) translation in addition to the previously available Simplified Chinese translation (originally zh, now renamed to zh_CN). You can see the full list of supported language tags here. We will keep the existing two-digit tags in place for now, and update them as needed when new language translations are added. Read more on the Translations page on the Wiki. Thanks to @jsyeh for the zh_TW translation. #600

• Since the redesign of Processing.org, the offline reference is too large to include the download. In this release, a “Download Offline Reference” item was added to the Help Menu, for people who need an offline copy. It creates a file called reference.zip in the sketchbook. If that file is present, then the Help menu links and Find in Reference will use that copy of the reference. If it is not present, online URLs will be used. You can also manually copy the reference.zip file from sketchbook to sketchbook. Put reference.zip in the root of your sketchbook and restart Processing so that it picks up the new file. For instance, in a class situation, you might put the file on a shared server and tell people where to find it. Read more on the Offline Reference page on the Wiki. #524, #213

contributed fixes

• size(863,863/2) inside setup() function (fix from @sampottinger) #602, #609

• Pre-processor was inserting extra spaces (another from @sampottinger) #607, #609

• Fix the JavaDoc for mousePressed variable from @SableRaf. #605

other updates

• In some cases, the Theme was not being saved after Processing was restarted. #565

• A few updates and clarifications in the size() reference.

• The Java version has been bumped from 17.0.4 to 17.0.5.

Revision 1287 – 24 November 2022

🦃 Happy Thanksgiving! 🦃

Fixing more regressions and other steps backward found since the 4.0 release. Enjoy!

the big ones

• OpenGL apps now work with macOS Ventura, once again thanks to @jaegonlee. #544

• Library version number parsing wasn't ignoring comments properly, so libraries that followed the template closely were showing The version number for “…” is not a number. #586, #553

• The Updates tab of the Contribution Manager was throwing error messages about this.progressBar. #567

• fullScreen() with pixelDensity(2) was broken with the default renderer. On startup, the sketch would report Display -1 does not exist, returning 1 for displayDensity(-1). #487

• JSSC update for M1/M2 from @sampottinger #525, #577

the li'l and medium ones

• After creating 26 sketches, the “take a break” message still showed up after restarting Processing. #582

• With multiple users sharing a machine, Processing would not work properly for the second user due to a problem with the temporary directory. #549

• Added explanation for how to fix Processing when a user disallows access to the Documents folder on macOS. #581

• Fixed an infinite loop that could be caused by running out of options for a sketch naming scheme.

• When calling random() on a list (now choice()) with no elements, it would throw a weird Exception. Now it throws a more descriptive exception.

need some help here

Contributions from the community!

• Loading SVG file was giving Illegal base64 character 20 encoding error. Fixed thanks to @jaegonlee and @vepo. #592, #599

• Updated Catalan translation thanks to @trikaphundo. #550, #554

• Updates to the Spanish translation, also from @trikaphundo! #552, #574

• A couple fixes for the Ukranian language strings from @rzats. #585

• @LesleyWagner fixed the vertical placement of top elements in the Manager window. #520, #539

• Preprocessor fix from @sampottinger for function/variable "does not exist" errors reported when defining a class without setup() or draw(). #579, #597

steps forward

• Added a choice() method to the XxxxList classes, which returns a random value from the list. Similarly removeChoice() removes a random element from the list and returns the value.

• Also added a choice() method that returns random integers. So int value = choice(10) is a shorthand way of saying int value = (int) random(10)

• Removed the choice() (formerly random()) method from the XxxxList classes that took a PApplet object for its random number seed/generator. Just feels like overkill at this point.

internal changes

• Using more Java 17 syntax in the code. No plans to really scrub everything to change the syntax over, just a matter of cleaning things up as we go.

• Fixed a potential casting problem with Platform and DefaultPlatform. Should have been unreachable, but fixed anyway.

• Brought back getCodeIndex() for GUI Builder Tool… then removed it again. #545, #596

me talking on the wiki

• Added a Translations page to the 4.x wiki, which is update to the Localization page from the 3.x repository.

• Posted an explanation of how to create a naming.json file so you can set up your own sketch naming schemes.

Revision 1286 – 9 August 2022

And what sort of anniversary would it be without a regression that breaks a major feature? Ahem. Here's 4.0.1…

• In the 4.0 release, switching to p5.js Mode caused an error message to pop up. Now fixed. #530

• One minor addition: in the Preferences window, clicking the “More preferences can be found…” text will open the wiki page with more details about all these wonderful options.

Other than that, please see the release notes for 4.0…

4.0.1 is available! A nasty bug was found just after the release. So once you're done reading the notes below, please proceed to download the latest instead: https://github.com/processing/processing4/releases/

Revision 1285 – 9 August 2022

On the 21st anniversary of the very first Processing release (revision 0001), we're posting the final 4.0, which is the 286th release of the software.

The primary goal for Processing 4 is to keep everyone's code running, even as operating systems, hardware, and hairlines continue to change.

There are really too many changes to list, but you can start by reading about them at this link.

Below is a list of the incremental changes in this release since beta 9 a few days ago:

welcome, welcome!

• Added a new “Welcome” screen that links to a couple examples as well as the changes and updates page.

• The splash screen has also been updated with a new image for 4.0.

wait, what?

• Export to Application was almost completely broken on macOS, where all apps were reporting as “damaged” when transferred to another machine. It's now working again, and also prompts users to install the Xcode tools. See the wiki for more information about how to work with Apple's code signing restrictions.

• There was a lot of out-of-date material on the wiki pages in the Processing 3 repository on Github. We now have new versions of the major pages in the Processing 4 repository. This includes pages on Themes, Supported Platforms, Exporting Applications, Troubleshooting, and the FAQ.

• There are many entries in preferences.txt that are important, but not important enough to make it into the Preferences window. Some of those are now documented here.

• Processing sometimes creates a lot of temporary files (basically, each time you run a sketch), which didn't always get cleaned up by the operating system. With 4.0, those are all being written to a separate “processing” folder, so that they can be automatically removed after 7 days. #529

the last of the bugs

• When using Export to Application, errors in the code would cause the software to just report “error during export.” Now it provides the usual error message (about the error itself).

• The dropdown menu in the Theme Selector wasn't updating properly when new themes were selected.

• The rollover and pressed color for the console scrollbar was always blue.

• Inside Movie Maker, ffmpeg wasn't available on all platforms, that's now fixed. We've also updated to version 5.0.1.

you probably won't notice

• Examples have been updated, and are now being pulled from the processing-examples repository. May have also had to remove the sin/cos lookup tables from the Rotating Arcs example so that we could comfortably put it on the Welcome screen.

• Compress jdk/Contents/Home/legal into a single zip. It was 300 files, or 60% of the 500 files in the entire JDK. Lawyers FTW.

Revision 1284 – 4 August 2022

Getting very close to 4.0! Just a bit more now…

design, design, design

Perhaps most noticeable, this release includes a ton of refinement on the design.

• Another set of 16 themes, these with gradients, have been added to the Theme Selector. Have fun!

• If you've changed the theme in a previous beta, it will be reset the first time you use beta 9, because of major updates to theme handling (many new parameters, others renamed and cleaned up). Relatedly, changing the theme no longer writes a theme.txt file to your sketchbook folder.

• Added options to the Theme Selector to write theme.txt to your sketchbook folder (so you can make manual edits), and also to reload the theme dynamically (after you've made changes).

• Lots of minor fixes to typography and layout of elements. Hopefully you'll agree that the changes add up to things feeling a lot better.

• We're now using FlatLaf to improve the look and feel of dialog boxes and other components that we've not customized ourselves.

• Nearly all PNG-based icons and interface elements have been replaced by SVGs that are automatically re-rendered to match the theme when it changes.

• The base font being used is now part of the language translation, because specific fonts are required for non-Roman languages, or languages that are not supported by the Source Sans 3 that we use everywhere else. This also helps us get the language-specific overrides for Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, and Arabic out of the code and into something that can be updated more easily.

• The Preferences window has had a major facelift. It was giving me great anxiety. It was so, so ugly. It is now less ugly.

• The Contributions Manager is now themed and cleaned up to match the rest of the interface.

• We're replacing the underscores in tab names with spaces. It looks a little nicer with the default sketch naming. If you'd like to keep underscores, open preferences.txt and set sketch.name.replace_underscore = false.

• Updated the scroll bars to match the theme. #265

• New icon buttons for the status bar instead of hacky emojis. The clipboard icon even changes to a search icon when holding down shift!

• Implement 2x versions of the icons for the debugger window/variable inspector. #3921

• Taken collectively, these are the visual design changes for 4.0. #48

new features

• New sketch naming schemes! For those who didn't enjoy the sketch plus underscore plus six digit date, your time has come. Visit the Preferences window and behold the naming options available in the dropdown menu. You can now use the “Friendly” naming scheme that folks seem to love, as well as a pair of other less serious alternatives. #6045, #6048, #144

• It's also possible to create your own naming schemes. Create a file named naming.json in your sketchbook folder that follows the same layout in the Processing download. Provide a name, a list of prefixes, and a list of suffixes just like that file. Save it and restart Processing, and your new option will be available in the dropdown.

other big ones

• We should be fully set for Apple Silicon (i.e. M1 and M2) support. #128

• Code completion stopped working between beta 4 and beta 5. Now it's back. #491

community contributions!

• Double-clicking a .pde file also opens an untitled/empty sketch. #477, #479, #218

• Updates to the Spanish translation. #480, #481

• Updates to the German translation. #483

• Add flatlaf.jar to config.xml on Windows. #498

• Fix parsing of java error messages containing ":" #492, #493

• Exported applications were giving java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: --full-screen errors. #488, #502.

• Editor was treating {} brackets as code when they're inside a String, char or comment. #444, #504

• Add extra Java arguments to enable anti-aliasing for KDE users. #513, reference

bug fixes

• Fix “Unable to load Java Runtime Environment” errors on Apple Silicon machines. #526

• Updated the Help menu entries to make sure they're going to the right locations for 4.x. As with the reference, links are no longer local (see #524).

• Help → Libraries Reference and Help → Tools Reference submenu items were broken. #5839

data updates

• Added random() method to the XxxxList classes to return a random value from the list.

• Added getXxxxList() methods to JSONObject

• Added toXxxxList() methods to JSONArray

• Renamed getXxxArray() to toXxxArray() in JSONArray for consistency. The old versions are still available, but deprecated.

• Switch to toArray() instead of array() in the XxxxList classes. Did not deprecate old version because it was actually broken.

• Lots of cleanup (and some bug fixing) in the XxxxList classes.

internal changes

• Bumped the Java version to 17.0.4+8.

• If you get a “core does not run on this architecture” when running from the source, you may need to run ant clean-jogl inside core.

• Also added a clean-libs target to build.xml files that need it. This will re-download libraries that we rely upon like JOGL, Batik, Ant, and others.

• Cleaned up several files in the download, the footprint should be a few dozen megabytes smaller.

• Updated to the latest version of JNA (5.12.1) for better Apple Silicon support.

• All the remaining ancient bug URLs (Bugzilla and Google Code) have been updated and removed from the source. The Google Code issues are re-linked to their Github equivalents, and the old Bugzilla pages have been revived since their disappearance last August.

known issues

• We've had to remove the offline version of the reference that was accessible from the Help menu. We hope to bring it back some day. #524

• The mixed mode warning is temporarily missing. #519

• color in imports shows up as an error, but code still compiles and runs. #521

• Need to make it possible to use “module” jars so that other JavaFX classes can be imported. #522, #15

Revision 1283 – 23 April 2022

Lots of fixes! OpenGL on M1! Exclamation points!

the big ones

• OpenGL now working on Apple Silicon! Many thanks to user @jaegonlee who provided the last few tweaks to get a build working. #370.

• Lots of work on how Modes are handled in the Contributions Manager to make it less… quirky. This will be a huge upgrade if you're a user of Python Mode, p5jsMode, Android Mode, and others.

a whole mess of useful fixes contributed by @TN8001

• Fix text caret position shifts when typing Japanese. #447, #462

• Some keys couldn't be entered on the On-Screen Keyboard. #403, #461

• Fix error in Tweak Mode when using underscores in numbers. #442, #459

• Fix IDE auto-formatting confused by method references. #279, #436

semi-noticeable fixes and changes

• Set minimum size for the scroll bar thumb. #473

• Change to "Modes..." or "Manage Modes..." and same for Libraries, etc

• A few fixes for fullScreen(). #474, #471

minor bug fixes and changes

• Fix logic for opening the correct “main” tab in handleOpen().

• Dropping folder into sketch window throws weird exception. #441

• Fix does not exist message on Linux startup. (The startup script was passing a blank sketch file name to the software.)

• Support multiple files being opened from the command line on Linux.

• Only show setWritable() failure in recent.txt when it is a problem

• Fix NullPointerException when changing the theme. #476

• Suppress java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: accessibilityHitTest error in the console. #368

• Internal change for preprocessor to support Android Mode. #470, #469

• filter() calls with high pixel density in OpenGL were making a tiny texture. #429, #433

• Renamed parameters controlling GL buffer settings. #435

• Finalizing buffer object streaming changes to PShape when used with OpenGL. #196

lots of work on the contributions manager

• Fix frequent “Error during download and install of Python Mode for Processing” message. #5918, #445

• Manager fails to complete install of PythonMode when no windows open. #5309, #446

• Allow update of the current Mode. This was causing confusion because you'd otherwise have to arbitrarily switch to another Mode to run an update, even if you never otherwise used it.

• Laying the basic groundwork for theme updates.

• Removing the current Mode (with no windows open) was causing an exception.

• Fix NullPointerException when clicking Update All on the Updates tab. #440

• Switch to using https to get retrieve the contributions listing.

• Remove overbuilt, undocumented search features in Contributions Manager. No more regex, but accents and others work properly now.

• Lots of cleaning out old code in the contrib manager guts. Rewrote category tallying for contribs. This was also hiding an issue that caused contribs to be re-added several times. Removed the “restart” flag because it was never used. Cleaned up accessors and other internal muck for how processing.app.contrib classes interact with one another.

Revision 1282 – 3 March 2022

The main thing for this release is to prevent an issue where files might be deleted (!) due to the change in beta 6.

…it also rolls back a change that broke Python Mode. Sorry, snake people!

…but also: a new feature! A very cool new feature! See below.

Regression Repair

• Bring back getMainProgram() for Python Mode. #409

• Fix an issue where opening a single .pde file in an unrelated folder (i.e. Downloads) would delete the entire folder when deleting the "sketch" without being 100% obvious what it was doing. #424

• Andrés tracked down the problem with POINTS and PShape that was introduced in 4.0 beta 3. #345, #432

I'm just here for the ratio

Added a new windowRatio(width, height) function that remaps screen and mouse coordinates to the specified aspect ratio.

The general idea is that you set a ratio, and whether you're using fullScreen() or setResizable(true), the sketch will scale its coordinates (and the coordinates of the mouse to fit that same ratio.

For instance, use windowRatio(1280, 720) in your code, and then all your coordinates will be re-mapped to that range—but always keeping the aspect ratio. Probably easiest to see by running this sketch:

void setup() {
  windowResizable(true);
  windowRatio(1280, 720);
  
  cursor(CROSS);
  strokeWeight(10);
}

void draw() {
  background(240);
  fill(255);
  rect(0, 0, rwidth, rheight);
  
  fill(0);
  textAlign(CENTER, CENTER);
  textSize(200);
  text(rmouseX + ", " + rmouseY, rwidth/2, rheight/2);
}

When using windowRatio(), the new rwidth and rheight variables contain the width and height that were passed to windowRatio() and can be used in place of width and height elsewhere in your code.

Similarly, rmouseX and rmouseY contain the mouse position, scaled by the current ratio.

If your window is taller (or wider) than the specified ratio, your sketch will be moved (using translate() to fit the space, and rmouseX and rmouseY might even have negative values if they're outside the box. (Again, try running the code above.)

The exact amount of space that's extra can be found in the ratioLeft and ratioTop variables. And the current scale() being used for the ratio can be found in ratioScale.

Mind you, it might be tempting to use windowRatio(16, 9), but keep in mind that means your horizontal coordinates will be numbers between 0 and (almost) 16, and vertical will be between 0 and 9. Not a great way to work! (And at some point, likely to introduce quirks as you learn about the shortcomings of floating point number accuracy.)

Minor Mites

• Half a dozen other fixes/changes for opening sketches and how it identifies the Mode and the rest. If you notice anything weird, let us know asap.

• Rewrote our native code for going full screen on macOS, retiring jAppleMenuBar after a decade of service. Also gets things working on Apple Silicon.

• Prevent “You must first install tweak Mode to use this sketch” when using sketches that date back to 2.0. #415

• Swap more uses of Util.deleteFile() and move files to the Trash (or Recycle Bin) instead. This can make more mess, but it reduces the chances of something bad happening when Processing deletes a file.

• Change straight quotes to smart quotes in the PDE.properties file. This just means that more UI and error messages will have nicer quotes.

Until further notice

The macOS-aarch64 (Apple Silicon) release is not yet complete. If you want to use P2D and P3D (OpenGL) on macOS, use the Intel (x86_64) build, which is the only one that will be linked from processing.org/download until this situation is resolved. See #370 for status updates.

Revision 1281 – 13 February 2022

Continuing the unintentional tradition of Processing releases on Super Bowl Sundays, here's beta 6.

Scaling and stretching on Windows

• Windows scaling at 125% was stretching sketches to make them look crusty. #378

• pixelDensity() not working in exported Windows applications. #5414

• Implement sketch scaling in PApplet so that they take UI sizing into account. #4897, #4894

These changes also include some extra native code on Windows, which is described in detail here.

Hell freezes over

For those of you that use Git (or other version control) this release includes an experimental(!) feature that lets you separate the name of the sketch from the name of the main tab. This means that you can use "Save As…" and it won't rename the file for the main tab. Or you can rename a sketch folder and the sketch inside will still work properly.

Uncheck the “Keep sketch name and main tab in sync” option in Preferences, and you're on your way. This is a major change to some of the oldest code in the PDE. If it has bugs, it may eat code. Use with caution and report any issues you see immediately!

Again, please help test this feature and file issues if you run into trouble.

Bug fixes

• Actually set the correct names for the windowMove() and windowResize() functions that were announced in beta 5. #53

• PDF export not working with Processing 4.0 beta 5. #395

• Lots of issues discovered when making the sketch naming change. For instance, it looks like it was sometimes necessary to twice select the Mode for Android sketches. Also sorts out issues with when sketch.properties was or was not written.

• Fix NullPointerException on first use of Export to Application.

• RGB image created with createImage() has alpha channel. #388

• CODED is inconsistent between the default renderer and P2D/P3D. #376

• Fix multi-line strings not terminating properly. #398, #400

• Clean up text sizes in the warning dialog box shown when sketch files change outside the Editor.

• Clean up error text in the console that showed up when sketch files removed from a sketch while it was still open (after the user was asked about them).

Minor changes

• Fix up “Display N does not exist, using the default display instead” message. If more than one display, shows list of available displays (size and index).

• Move "Add Examples" to bottom of the Examples window

• Change cmd-click in window title to point to sketch folder, not the main PDE.

Things you're less likely to notice

• Updated to Java 17.0.2+8. We hope this may fix the java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: accessibilityHitTest error. #408

• Removed anachronistic Preferences.save() that happened after opening a sketch.

Until further notice

The macOS-aarch64 (Apple Silicon) release is not yet complete. If you want to use P2D and P3D (OpenGL) on macOS, use the Intel (x86_64) build, which is the only one that will be linked from processing.org/download until this situation is resolved. See #370 for status updates.

Revision 1280 – 3 February 2022

Tomorrow morning is the first day of using Processing in class, so I thought I'd add some chaos to that by posting a release the night before. Having started the first day of class being locked out of the classroom, I'm just looking for ways to keep the students from getting too comfortable.

The aarch64 (Apple Silicon) release is not yet complete. If you want to use P2D and P3D (OpenGL) on macOS, use the Intel (x86) build, which is the only one that will be linked from processing.org/download until this situation is resolved. See #370 for status updates.

Things you might notice in this release

• We've hopefully finally, finally, finally fixed the problems with the text caret position. #194, #226, and #342

• Syntax coloring updates based on the themes, mostly for the darker varieties.

• Added “Refresh” and “Show Folder” buttons to the bottom of the sketchbook window. Also cleaned up some of the guts to make it faster and less… quirky.

• Several fixes for resizing windows: P2D and P3D sketches should flicker red less, and the NullPointerExceptions when resizing sketches with the default renderer should be resolved. #386, #162, #4129, and #186

• When running a sketch, it shows the “Play” icon instead of the Processing icon for its windows (just like it does when running an exported application).

Out with the old…

• The twenty year old (and sometimes buggy) TIFF reader/writer has been removed, so Java's internal ImageIO is now used for TIFF files. The code is slightly slower, but the saved files are more compatible, and loadImage("blah.tif") will also work on more files than in the past.

• Also, image file names passed to save() and saveFrame() must have an extension. We are no longer adding .tif to files with no extension, because that can lead to confusing results, and the behavior is inconsistent with the rest of the API.

• Rewrote the ten year old (since we're keeping track of these things) code that handles fullScreen() to get it working on Apple Silicon. #221 and #372

Sam fixing up the preprocessor

• Several bug fixes to the preprocessor. #384

• Better error message when mixing "active" (with setup and draw) and "static" (no function definitions) code styles. #290

• Fix problem with function size(int, int) in classes. #317

• Add (provisional) support for multi-line string text blocks. #371

• fullScreen() when specifying the display number was broken. #352 and #392

Feature improvements in progress

• Adding core functions to replace the surface methods:

  • surface.setSize(w, h) now available as windowResize(w, h)
  • surface.setResizable() is now windowResizable()
  • surface.setLocation(x, y) is now windowMove(x, y)
  • surface.setTitle() is now windowTitle()

  There are also new event handlers windowResized() and windowMoved() that are called when the sketch window is resized or moved. We may still tweak the naming and behavior of these a little (consider these an "alpha" feature), but it's progress. #53

• Added necessary infrastructure to support language translations in Modes. #236, #237, #2833, #3154, and #3337

• Plumbing is in place to set the DPI of PNG images and the compression level of JPEG images. Though we still need some API for it.

Plumbing you probably won't notice

• Several changes to how image saving is handled. There were lots of ways this could go wrong, this gets rid of several of them. Hopefully no new regressions!

• Tweaked how URLs are opened for better compatibility on different operating systems.

• Debugging failed installation of .pdez files.

Revision 1279 – 24 January 2022

Loooots of changes under the hood to better support more platforms. And by that, we mean Apple Silicon (now in alpha!) and Raspberry Pi devices (once again). And whatever else gets cooked up in the coming years.

For the Windows users, the scaling issues have finally been sorted out. Use 125% and 250% and whatever weird Windows scaling you want, and it will work. You can safely uncheck the “Disable HiDPI scaling” checkbox in Preferences.

Against my better judgement, I'm posting a release that's native for Apple Silicon. OpenGL is currently broken. Sketches crash immediately. You should only use it if you're a masochist. Or a masochist that likes extremely fast but very incomplete software, and won't file bug reports saying “OpenGL is broken.” But it's being posted for folks who do not need OpenGL, and/or want to help debug. #370

We've also moved the FX2D (JavaFX) renderer to its own library, which is available from the Contributions Manager. In related news, the download size is now 230 MB instead of 493 MB.

New features!

• New downloads for Apple Silicon (incomplete! #128), and Raspberry Pi (32- and 64-bit). Some things are still broken, so the releases will be on Github but not processing.org/download.

• The design continues coming together, with new icons for exported applications, document files (.pde, .pdex, and .pdez), plus the Foundation icon used in the Contributions Manager. This work is still in progress, at least until #48 is closed.

• Re-implement settings.path to support portable versions. #3948, 362, #360, fixed with 1a49263a

We're all regressing, why can't your software?

• Double-clicking .pde files on macOS was broken in beta 3. #347

• PShape not allowing attibutes of type int. #344, #363

• Using P2D with createShape() causing GLException. #353, #367

• Fix error in internal utility function to invert scaling. #366, #217, #367

Other fixes…

• Tons of work to get the Windows version of the application to scale properly. Even the opening splash screen is behaving better. #342

• displayDensity() was returning 1 when run from the PDE on Windows. #339

• Fix "Could not delete disable_hidpi" message that was showing up on macOS and Linux after closing the Preferences window.

• Major work inside the Contributions Manager: links to projects, links in description text now working. Some fixes to speed things up. Removing hundreds of lines of vestigial code. Fix the font being used on the progress bar.

• Removed "Illegal reflective access" warning on Linux. #207

Changes

• Native libraries for OpenGL are no longer packed inside .jar files. This fixes slowdowns on Windows caused by antivirus software kicking into high gear. It also gives us a path to get OpenGL working on Apple Silicon. Unfortunately, this also means you'll need to set java.library.path in an IDE outside the PDE. #4783, #4239, JOGL, Stack Overflow

• JavaFX moved to its own library. It no longer works with Tools and Modes as a result, but it was just too hefty relative to its importance. Read about it in #348

• A massive amount of work for our supported platforms. Some of the gritty details are here but we have six of them. Export to Application has been rewritten. It's now possible to build Processing on all six of these platforms.

• Cross-platform support for native libraries has also changed significantly. The export.txt file is ignored completely (no libraries required it anyway), and the subfolders names for native libraries have changed. See the layout of core/library for an example. Again, this enables all these platforms from Apple Silicon to Raspberry Pi.

Contributed tidbits

• Select the entire line when doing Edit → Copy on an empty selection. #100

You probably won't notice, but it's noted here in case you do

• Set the minimum Java version for Windows launcher to 17.0.1.

• Bumped Ant from 1.10.10 to 1.10.12.

• Upgraded JNA from 5.8.0 to 5.10.0.

• Spent a bunch of time looking into RSyntaxArea. It's not gonna happen. #355, #3199, and the details.

Revision 1278 – 15 January 2022

New colors in the UI! We're still making changes to the design of the UI, but this release includes a new theme engine that makes it possible to select interface colors from a set of options, as well as more control over choosing your own schemes. Check out Tools → Theme Selector for the magic.

We've also moved to Java 17, fixed lots of bugs, added a new default color scheme, and implemented better support for multiple windows with OpenGL.

We even updated the loading screen to include 2022 in the copyright notice.

Fixing the bugs that won't fix themselves

• Added an option to “Disable HiDPI Scaling” on Windows for users that were having trouble with the editor caret (cursor) showing up in the wrong position, or text in the interface (on the tabs in particular) looking oddly jagged. #226, #231

• The “Disable HiDPI Scaling” option is a temporary workaround, with ongoing development taking place at #342. There's also a console warning if Processing detects that your display may have issues, however it's nearly impossible to do this with certainty. As a result, we can't enable the option by default, because it would make things worse for users who don't need it. Fixing this issue requires spending a lot of time testing different Windows systems, resolutions, monitor setups, etc.

• Too much writing to the console (from both System.out and System.err) causing the software to lock up completely. #338

• Got rollovers working again for the Toolbar buttons. Somewhat comically, these seem to have broken at some point during the 3.x development process, and nobody noticed.

• Fix a problem where the default font would misbehave after textSize() was called. Turns out the problem was that the wrong font was being used in the first place. But also added a warning for users when unsupported characters are used with the default font. #303, #4956

• listFiles() and listPaths() with an extension specified were not properly matching directories.

• Fix for disableStyle() with 2D shapes in P3D.

• Allow GEOMETRY (not just PATH) with contains() in PShape. The contains() method is still imperfect, but it's just as bad with polygon shapes as path shapes.

• The Open/Save dialog box was crashing on Linux. Can't reproduce with this release, which uses Adoptium OpenJDK 17, so fingers crossed that it's resolved. #306

Known Issues, the thorns that remain in our side

• The included version of the documentation is for 3.0, not the newer 4.0.

• The display scaling issues on Windows need to be resolved without folks having to use Preferences. #342

• …aaaand pretty much anything here and here. Please help!

Major internal work to support UI themes

• As mentioned above, several new themes are available from the “Theme Selector” option in the Tools menu. Selecting a theme will create a theme.txt file in your sketchbook that sets the interface colors.

• If you make changes to the theme.txt file in your sketchbook, you can select Tools → Update Theme to see those changes reflected in the interface. If there's no theme.txt file in your sketchbook, it will create a theme.txt file in your sketchbook, which you can edit. After you've saved your changes, select “Update Theme” again to see the updates.

• Selecting a new theme will resave your theme.txt file under a new name (theme.001, theme.002, etc.)

• Now using custom scrollbar widgets in the Editor so that it can better match the rest of the interface.

• Auto-generating toolbar and tab icons from SVG files based on theme colors.

• Implement automatic update for changes to theme.txt in the sketchbook.

• More documentation about all of this soon, which will live here.

Hark, a sound from the West, and it is Sam

• Error when calling smooth() on PGraphics #272

• Detect if calling special methods on PApplet or not (and restore unit tests) #288

• Move Mockito to a new version. #287

Behold, a sound from the East, and it is Andrés

• Finalizing support for multiple windows with OpenGL. #312, #313

• Implement buffer object streaming for P2D and P3D and finalize attribute API in PShape. #314

• Add support to PATH shapes in P2D renderer. #6009, #316

The community continues pitching in

• Update Ukrainian language strings. #301

• Splash screen has default OpenJDK icon. #297, #329

Maintaining this 200-year-old house

• Use UTF-8 for readString() and write() in net client. Avoids platform-specific behavior; Java 18 also making UTF-8 the default. #336

• Cleaning up the Create Font dialog while tracking down #278. Removed Serif, SansSerif, Monospaced, Dialog, DialogInput from Create Font. Also sorting the list of font names, and skipping fonts that start with . or # because they're supposed to be hidden from users.

Internal build and development changes

• Update appbundler with the latest from upstream.

• Replace JDK 11 and JavaFX 16 with JDK 17 and JavaFX 17. #285

• Move up from JavaFX 17.0.0.1 to 17.0.1.

• Get rid of version numbers in the name of the batik.jar file.

• ffmpeg not downloading correctly on M1 machines. #319, #5775, #5714, #6230

Revision 1277 – 4 October 2021

Had to put things down for a while after the big push to get beta 1 out the door. But now we're back with an update mostly focused on fixing a few things that were broken.

Lots of fixes

• Export to Application no longer broken when using P2D or P3D on macOS. (Though if you're a macOS developer, we could use some help) #249

• Allow imports with color in the name. This gets everyone's favorite toxiclibs working again. Got a fix from Sam, fingers crossed that it doesn't introduce new quirks. #240, #246

• Movie Maker no longer broken when there are spaces in the path to Processing. #268

• Debugger was not working when selecting Debug from the menu, now fixed. #282

• "Massachusetts Institue of Technology" typo in loading screen. Not actually a big fix, but lots of reports about this one. #254

…but it's still a beta

Not everything is fixed yet. Here are a few of the more obvious:

• The colors, theme, buttons, interface, icons, etc are not yet complete. We have the necessary help, we just need more time. #48

• Windows: Editor cursor position is offset to the right when display scaling >100% #226

• macOS: IDE cursor position is wrong if font size is changed in Preferences. This may be specific to multiple displays, when one is retina and the other is not. #194

• Export to Application not working with the current video library. The video library isn't handled by me, but we keep hearing about it. Updates will be posted here.

Contributions!

I love getting help from the community. Thank you!

• The welcome screen was persistent, even if you told it to go away. Oops. #48, #253

• Fix minor typos in the PWM code for the IO library. #266

• French translation: fixed typos and added missing items. #258

• Fixed for JSSC library layout and upstream updates. #119, #229

And more…

Things you may not actually notice.

• Added -Dpython.console.encoding=UTF-8 for Python Mode at the request of jdf.

• Removed translated URLs that are not actually translated. Some of the Help menu translations were pointed at ancient links. #250

• Switch to getModifiersEx() in processing.app code. #67

• Deal with getFontMetrics() deprecation warning in EditorToolbar.

Revision 1276 – 9 August 2021

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the very first Processing release (revision 0001) which was first posted to be shared as part of a workshop in Japan at Musashino Art University (https://dbn.media.mit.edu/workshops/musabi/). This is the 277th release.

The primary goal for Processing 4 is to keep everyone's code running, even as operating systems, hardware, and hairlines continue to change.

This beta release will become the default download on the site, which means that it is more stable, usable, and better than the 3.5.4 release from January 2020. It's hard to remember what things were like in January 2020. But if you must use pre-pandemic software, we'll be keeping the release online.

Highlights for Processing 4

Here are some highlights for Processing 4, since this will be the first time a lot of people are taking 4.0 for a spin:

• There's a new Movie Maker that creates MP4s and Animated GIFs!

• You can bundle sketches as double-clickable .pdez files and Libraries/Modes/Tools as .pdex files for easy sharing and installation.

• We're using Java 11, which should be faster, more up to date, and a lot more compatible with newer machines.

• There have been many updates for the Video and Sound libraries as we chase Apple's ever-changing guidelines for what constitutes “safe” software.

• For users more experienced with Java, you can now use newer language features! Sam Pottinger rewired the preprocessor (and brought us Java 11 support as well).

Changes since alpha 6

A lot has changed! Trying to get everything in under the wire as we work to finalize 4.0.

Features and Updates

• We've started work on refreshing the design. This round has a new set of colors, icons, a splash screen, and more. If you like them, great! If not, please hold your complaints. The internet doesn't need more negativity! We still have a lot of work to do, and we think you'll be happy with the final result.

• It's now possible to bundle sketches into a single file to be loaded inside the PDE. This is done with .pdez files, which is a sketch folder saved as a .zip but with the extension changed to .pdez. This means you can post a sketch on the web as a .pdez, and someone with Processing can click the link and have it load directly in the PDE. #73, #3987

• Similar to .pdez files, you can install Libraries, Modes, Tools, and Example sets (things that would normally be installed with the Contribution Manager) by renaming their .zip file to .pdez. Double-clicking a .pdez file will open it with Processing, and ask the user whether they'd like to install it.

• It's now possible to do code completion and refactoring even when .java tabs are included in a sketch. Thanks Sam! #157, #230

• Moved the preferences to ~/.config/processing on Linux instead of ~/.processing. This means your settings will be reset, but for most, that will be more of a plus with 4.x. #203

• Initial update of the splash screen and icons. These still need some work: the icons are too muddy at smaller sizes, for instance.

• The Welcome screen has been reset, so folks will see it again. We haven't made a decision on the Welcome screen for the final 4.0, but plan for it to be more useful than what's there now.

• “Show Sketch Folder”, “Add File”, and “Export to Application” now require Untitled or Read-Only sketches to be saved first, which avoids a weird situation where the user is dealing with files in hidden temporary folders. #2459

• The reference for Java Mode is now served up from a web server that lives inside the PDE. This means that the download has just a single file for the reference, instead of thousands of tiny .html files. Far fewer things to copy makes the installation process much smoother.

Bug Fixes

• Really chatty console messages for longtime users who had older (like 2.x) settings files still on their machine.

• IDE cursor position on Windows was going weird if display scaling used. #226

• Only call errorTable.updateTheme() if the Mode is using an Error Table (Python was not).

• PShape.scale() not working with PShape.resetMatrix() when P2D renderer is used. #217, #225

Should Be Fixed

Several things that should no longer be a problem based on updates we've done in 4.x, but not necessarily verified 100%.

• Undo feature may have undesired results (Fixed in 4.0a4) #4775

• HiDPI support for GNOME desktop. #6059

• AppKit errors from P2D/P3D. #5880

• Export Application broken in Processing 3.5.4 when using P2D or P3D renderers. #5983

• Cannot run rotateZ() within the PShape class. #5770

• Profile GL4bc is not available on X11GraphicsDevice error fixed with new JOGL release. #6160, #6154.

• Profile GL3bc is not available on X11GraphicsDevice should also be fixed. #5476

Internal Changes

Things you're unlikely to notice, but in case something seems off, it's better to make note of them in case you see a related problem pop up.

• Now using JDK 11.0.12+7.

• Cleaning up suggestions.txt handling and related code.

• Removed code for pulling fonts from JAVA_HOME/lib/fonts, because it no longer exists in Java 11.

• Update EditorFooter.updateMode() to EditorFooter.updateTheme() and add it to the code called by Editor.updateTheme()

• Removed the JRE Downloader, because it's no longer necessary. #155

• Changed Messages.loge() to Messages.err().

Known Issues

• Support for .pdez and .pdex is not yet complete on Linux. Please help! #239

• Have I mentioned that the design of the icons, theme, layout, etc aren't finished?

Revision 1275 – 10 July 2021

Code completion is back!

Added a new Movie Maker that creates MP4s and Animated GIFs!

And a new color scheme sure to bring out the cranks!

New Features

• Movie Maker has been rewritten and much improved! It can now directly create high quality MPEG-4 videos and Animated GIFs. Due to Apple removing support for most video codecs after macOS Mojave, we could no longer export QuickTime videos. The new Tool uses FFmpeg behind the scenes. The Tool also supports Apple ProRes 4444, which is very high quality, and incidentally, the format that Apple's “QTMovieModernizer” formerly used to re-encode “legacy” video formats. #6110

Design and Themes

• We've started work on refreshing the design. This round has a new set of colors. If you like them, great! If not, please hold your complaints. The internet doesn't need more negativity! We know some people won't like it, and we're still working on it. We think you'll be happy with the final version—we have some exciting updates that we aren't yet ready to share, and it will all make more sense as the system comes together. #48

• In the meantime, if you'd like to customize the colors, instructions are here.

• The "4" icon and the current "About" screen are only placeholders. I was tired of looking at the 3.x design, and also needed to be able to tell the versions apart from one another. It's also necessary to start the replacement process: figuring out what things need to be updated when we incorporate the real versions.

• All that said, major work underway for improvements to how the visual theme is handled. We hope to ship with a dark mode option as well. Stay tuned!

• The splash screen handler has been rewritten because the Windows version in launch4j was too brittle. The downside is that it's a fraction of a second slower to show up, but the upside is that hi-res Linux and Windows displays get a nice 2x version instead of the crunchy low-fi (not in a good way) version.

• Add ui.font.family and ui.font.size as preferences.

• Added support for 0x numbers to support alpha colors in theme.txt.

Bug Fixes

• Code completion is fixed. Thanks Sam! #177, #219

• mouseButton was not set correctly on mouseReleased() with Java2D. #181

• A more useful message for the NoClassDefError: processing/core/PApplet startup error on Windows was in the alpha 5 source, but may not have made it into the actual release. #154

• Fix Module javafx.base not found on Linux. Thanks letorbi. #214, #215

• After selecting a font other than Source Code Pro, font went to a default. #216

• unregisterMethod() was broken. #223

• Fixed "No library found for org.w3c.dom" message when using that (built-in) package.

Changes

• When changing to an incompatible Mode, just open a new window instead of giving the user a potentially confusing error message about it. #189

API Changes

None of these should break anything, but if they do, please let us know!

• Editor.applyPreferences() was protected, now it's public.

• Removed Editor.repaintErrorBar() and Editor.showConsole() because they didn't appear to be in use. Holler if this breaks anything.

• Renamed TextAreaPainter.getCompositionTextpainter() to getCompositionTextPainter().

Internal Changes

• Removed java.class.path when launching code from inside the PDE. This should prevent conflicts, and avoid introducing problems when using Export to Application.

• Removed compound key actions (which were undocumented and not in use). This clears up a lot of complexity in DefaultInputHandler.

• Remove jdt.compiler.jar from subprojects.

• Cleaned up lots of dead/unused parts of javafx/build.xml.

• Move ISSUE_TEMPLATE to the .github subfolder.

• Removed extra files from Tools folders for the download.

• Moved doclet to separate repo. Thanks DSI! #218, #222

Revision 1274 – 24 June 2021

Sneaking a release out the door the morning before while on a break from our company meeting. Don't tell my boss, he's kind of a jerk.

Known Bugs

• Code completion is currently broken. Any updates will be posted here.

• Plenty of other issues being tracked in the Processing 4 and Processing 3 repositories. Please help!

Updates and Additions

• Added a few more “entitlements” to the macOS release that may help with using the Video and Sound libraries, especially on Big Sur.

• Moved from the 11.0.2 LTS version of JavaFX to the in-progress version 16. This fixes a garbled text issue that was breaking Tools that used JavaFX.

• JavaFX has been moved out of core and into a separate library. After Java 8, it's no longer part of the JDK, so it requires additional files that were formerly included by default. The Processing version of that library comes in at 180 MB, which seems excessive to include with every project, regardless of whether it's used. (And that's not including the full Webkit implementation, which adds ~80 MB per platform.)

• JavaFX is back and working again! This also fixes some Tools that relied on it, and Export to Application should be working as well. #110, #112, #3288, #209, #210

Other Fixes and Changes

• Major font cleanup inside Preferences. It appears that the “Monospace” font may be missing or broken with OpenJDK 11. Does it show a random sans serif for you? Let us know if it does. But aside from that, the Editor and Console font should be behaving a little more reliably.

• The Windows splash screen should no longer be tiny. Still sorting out some hidpi issues on Windows, but this one might make things a bit less quirky. #4896, #145

• Better handling of NoClassDefError: processing/core/PApplet on startup with Windows 10. #154

• No longer using JFileChooser on macOS; it's too awful. This means a Copy/Paste issue comes back, but the cure was worse than the disease. #1035, #77

Internal Changes

• The minimum system version for macOS (for the PDE and exported applications) is now set to 10.14.6 (the last update of Mojave). 10.13 (High Sierra) is no longer supported by Apple as of September or December 2020 (depending on what you read), and for our sanity, we're dropping it as well.

• Updated JNA from 5.7.0 to 5.8.0.

• Remove the ant binary from the repo, updated the version we're using from 1.8.2 to 1.10.10.

• Rebuilt the appbundler tool for macOS to handle some recent changes, and disabled some logging chatter as well.

• Update to launch4j 3.14, fixing Export to Application on Windows.