What's New in 0.7?

There are too many changes to list; these are just the major new features:

• Impartial Games Support, including fast computation of Grundy values and periodicity detection.
• Misère Canonical Forms, as described in Winning Ways and ONaG.
• MisereSolver, a plug-in for calculating and manipulating misère quotients.
• A redesigned explorer.
• A RunScript method that executes the script contained in a specified file. This can be used to run scripts from within other scripts.
• Many, many other new methods.

As always, consult the tutorial for detailed information on the new features.

In addition, the API has been completely overhauled and modernized.  Plug-ins written for previous versions of CGSuite will not work with 0.7 and will need to be updated.  This will be the last time this happens, I promise!

Huge thanks to Dan Hoey and Michael Albert for assisting with this release!

These features were added in 0.6:

• A completely new thermography engine with support for extended thermograpy.
• Improved display of thermographs, with several options to customize the display.
• Greatly improved algorithms for loopy games calculations (thanks to Michael Albert for suggesting the more efficient algorithms).
• Support for rational numbers with large or non-dyadic denominators (e.g. 2^-50 and 1/3).
• An improved plug-in registration process with substantially better error handling.
• Various new methods, operators and bugfixes.

There are many more minor changes.  As always, see the WHATSNEW file included with CGSuite for a complete list.

Notes to users upgrading from previous versions:

• The operator := has been added as an assignment operator in order to maintain consistency with Maple and GAP.  It is completely equivalent to the old = operator.  However, users are encouraged to start using := in place of =.
• The methods GNth and GToNth have been renamed Pow and PowTo, respectively.
• Several API changes were made for this release.  If you wrote a plug-in for version 0.5 or earlier, it might need to be updated.  A complete list of API changes can be found at: http://www.cgsuite.org/renames.html
• The entire process of writing plug-ins has been substantially simplified.  A completely new plug-in tutorial is available; anyone interested in writing plug-ins for version 0.6, including users upgrading from older versions, is encouraged to take the tutorial.  The tutorial can be found at: http://www.cgsuite.org/docs/

These features were added in 0.5:

• A completely rewritten canonical games library that uses five to ten times less memory than 0.4.
• A feature to save "kernel databases" to the disk (File/Write Database).  This records all calculations made during a CGSuite session.  The database can be loaded and a later time.  This allows massive calculations to be broken into manageable chunks.  CGSuite will also save a backup database at periodic intervals during long calculations (the default is once per hour) to protect against system crashes and power failures.  (Caution: Don't rely too much on the permanence of the databases, since the format might change with the next release.)
• An improved explorer report that shows the thermograph and atomic weight of a game in addition to its canonical form.  Additional information will be added in future releases.
• Kernel pause/resume/cancel.
• The GUI outputs now display and update much faster, using substantially less memory.
• Improved kernel logging and memory usage reporting.

These features were added in 0.4:

• A full-featured scripting language, including if/then/else conditionals, for loops, and recursive function definitions.
• Algorithms for finding sensible moves (those that correspond to a position's canonical options) and orthodox moves (those that affect a position's thermograph) in arbitrary games.
• An explorer feature that expands only sensible or orthodox moves.
• Substantially improved error messages.
• An option to run scripts directly from the command-line, bypassing the interface entirely.  The syntax is:
  java -jar cgsuite.jar -s infile outfile
• An expanded tutorial describing the new features.  To access the tutorial, select "Getting Started" from the Help menu.
• Several example scripts.
• Mean and temperature labels for thermographs.

These features were added in 0.3:

• An Explorer component, designed by Samson de Jager, that allows graphical editing of game positions.  To create an explorer, click File/New/Explorer, or enter  Edit(G)  into a worksheet, where G is a game.  For example: Edit(DomineeringRectangle(5,5))    You can also use the Explorer to browse game trees.
• A text interface.  You can now type:
  java -jar cgsuite.jar -t
  to run CGSuite without the GUI.  A few other command-line options are now available; type
  java -jar cgsuite.jar -h
  for a list of them.