The Omni Group Releases OmniGraffle 2.0 Beta
Seattle, Washington — January 18th, 2002 — Today, The Omni Group released
OmniGraffle 2.0 Beta. OmniGraffle is the powerful, yet fun and easy to use,
diagramming and charting application built for Mac OS X. New features to
version 2.0 Beta include AppleScript support, URL links to graphics, layer
support, cool new tools, shape enhancements, line ending enhancements,
export to HTML, grid enhancements, auto layout improvements, a magnet
editor, OmniOutliner import preferences, and tons of bug fixes and
miscellaneous enhancement. Phew. Download OmniGraffle 2.0 Beta at
http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omnigraffle/. On that page, you can
also download a PDF of our new OmniGraffle manual that is actually fun to
read. See below for a complete list of 2.0 features and improvements (our
engineers have been very busy.)
For those customers that have already purchased a license of any version of
OmniGraffle 1.x, The Omni Group is offering you a free upgrade to version
2. Wil Shipley, Omni President states, “Originally we were working on a
free update that we were calling ‘OmniGraffle 1.2,’ which contained some
bug fixes and a couple of new features users requested. However, our
engineers did way too good of a job on the upgrade, adding oodles of cool
new stuff, and it quickly became clear what we were working on was really
OmniGraffle 2.0. But we still felt we owed our users the free bug fixes
that were in there, as well. Since we’re all about rewarding our customers,
we decided that, for this upgrade only, the 2.0 release will be free to all
OmniGraffle 1 users. This will also apply to all customers who will receive
OmniGraffle 1 as part of Apple’s new Power Mac and PowerBook bundle (which
they announced on January 7 at
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/jan/07macosx.html). Your old license
key will still work with OmniGraffle 2.0, so you just need to download the
new version from us and you’re set to start playing with all the great
stuff we added.”
If you haven’t yet, sign up for the OmniGraffle-Users mailing list
http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/omnigraffle-users. Share tips,
short-cuts, diagrams, shapes, palettes, rants and raves with other
OmniGraffle users!
Purchasing Information:
Licenses for OmniGraffle can be purchased from Omni’s online store
https://store.omnigroup.com/cgi-
bin/WebObjects/OnlineStore.woa/wa/storefront and is good for any
OmniGraffle version 1.x or any version 2.x. OmniGraffle requires Mac OS X
10.1 or better.
Information about The Omni Group:
The Omni Group, founded in 1993, develops Mac OS X applications including
OmniWeb, OmniGraffle, and OmniOutliner; provides Mac OS X based consulting
services such as porting games to Mac OS X; and employs 20 unique
individuals who mostly agree that Fatal Attraction is the scariest movie
ever made. Information on The Omni Group is available at
http://www.omnigroup.com/.
Release Notes:
– Summary of all the changes since 1.1
– Applescript Support
– URLs linked to graphics
– Any graphic can have a URL associated with it.
– There are 3 ways to add a URL to a graphic
– Drag a non-image file from the workspace and drop it on
the graphic
– Drag a URL from OmniWeb and drop it on the graphic
– Edit the URL on the Link Info pane
– There are 3 ways to navigate using links
– There is a new Browse tool. In browse mode, any
graphic with a link will highlight when the cursor is
over it. Clicking on the graphic will open the link.
– Choose Format-)Show Links. A link symbol will appear
next to each graphic that has a link. Clicking on
the link symbol will open the link.
– On the Link Info Pane, there is a “Follow Link”
button. This will also open the link.
– When importing PBProject and Framework files, it set the
links to the appropriate files so you can browse projects
easily this way – clicking on the boxes will open the header.
– Added a new export format: HTML Image Map. It creates a (map)
with (area) tags for all graphics with links. With this
addition Graffle actually works really well as an image map
creator by sticking a locked image on a lower layer and then
drawing boxes on it and setting links on the boxes.
– Layers
– OmniOutliner import prefrences
– user can create any number of outline styles
– each style has a general layout preference and a list of
prototype graphics, one graphic for each topic level.
– prototype graphics can be modified using the info panes
– More Tools
– Zoom Tool
– Polygon tool
– Link Browser tool
– Rubber Stamp Tool
– The rubber stamp tool is useful for repeatedly placing
the same graphic. If there is a graphic on the
pasteboard, then each click with the rubber stamp tool
will place a new copy of that graphic (it will beep if
there is no graphic on the pasteboard).
– Option-clicking with the rubber stamp tool will copy
whatever graphic is clicked on to the pasteboard.
– Tools Preferences for turning tools on and off
– Shape Enhancements
– Graded fills
– Tiled Images
– Improved autosizing/clipping control
– Text can have inline images.
– To add an image to text, you first have to be editing
the text. Then it will accept drag/drop of images. This
feature was added to try out a service for converting
text to PDF mathematical symbols.
– Option to turn off connections for graphics
– Line Endings Enhancements
– Underlying support for custom line endings
– Added sliders for setting line ending size
– Export panel additions
– Export panel remembers the last export type.
– Export panel lets you choose whether to export the graphics,
the selection, a rectangular region, or the entire canvas.
– Export panel also lets you set the compression, resolution,
and background transparency.
– Export to HTML Image Map
– Grid Enhancements
– Added a major grid that is slightly darker than the minor
grid.
– Added inspector controls for setting the major grid color,
spacing and visibilty.
– Made the grid visible by default.
– Made grid semi-transparent by default.
– Changed the templates to have the grid visible.
– Changed the A4 and B5 templates to have a 0.5 cm grid (US
Legal and Letter have 1/8 inch grid).
– Align center to grid is now persistent
– Auto-layout improvements
– 10x speed improvement for force-directed layout (not
including display time)
– Added optional magnetic alignment fields
– lines will tend to align themselves in the direction of
the field
– linear fields are can be at any angle
– radial fields radiate outwards from a point that can be
user set
– Miscellaneous features
– Arbitrary zoom values now show up on the zoom pop-up (instead
of blank).
– When a document is opened, it will scroll to the same area
that was visible when the document was last saved.
– Added a pop-up to the info toolbar configuration
– CVS – If a .graffle file is a file wrapper and it has a CVS
directory in it, then we preserve the CVS data.
– Added a menu item for checking for newer versions
– Hooked up a “Send Feedback…” menu item.
– Added UML class graphic and UML inheritance arrowhead
– Added a preference for “Remember Open Palettes”. This will
be on by default. It re-opens all of the palettes that were
open when the application quit.
– Added a color well to the font panel. Now you can set the
text color for multiple graphics without having to select
text individually and drag and drop the color from the color
panel.
– Bug Fixes and minor tweaks
– Bitmap and pict images that are dragged and dropped into
OmniGraffle are no longer converted to TIFF when the file is
saved. They are saved with their original data.
– Only saves images that are still being used.
– Groups were not computing their bounds correctly if they were
rotated.
– It was crashing if lines that were connected to themselves
got grouped.
– Graphics with overflowing text had the wrong drawing bounds.
– Size To Fit now sizes to fit the current number of pages
instead of a 1×1 canvas.
– Fixed a bug with scaled documents not printing correctly.
– Page breaks no longer draw outside the bounds of the canvas.
– Plugged some minor memory leaks
– Made Info panel float
– The grid size field was not localized
– Hide/Show Magnets was not redisplaying the view.
– The grid was being drawn on top of the page breaks and in the
same color. Now we default to a darker page break color and
always draw it after the grid, even if the grid is on top of
the graphics.
– Tripple-clicking on a graphic no longer ends editing… the
3rd click is passed on to the text editor.
– Transparency is working for line labels.
– Click-shift-drag had bizarre behavior
– Printed images were getting clipped by a half pixel
– PDF images were scaling like bitmaps
– Holding shift while creating lines should constrain the
current segment to 45 degree increments.
– Arrow keys should apply to the selected line or polygon knob
– Should be able to delete the last point in a line
– Clean up the palette code so that there are never duplicates
– Shadows now have a default transparency of 50%, and they
respond to changes in the transparency.
– Fixed a problem with replacing a flat file with a file
wrapper. This was broken with the last release of OSX.
– Can undo setting page break and canvas colors.
– Documents from templates and saved documents were not being
centered correctly when first opened
– Made the palette viewer a floating window.
– Clicking on the Info, Palette, and Selections buttons will
now hide there respective windows if they are already open.
– “Show Info” changes to “Hide Info” if the panel is visible.
– “Show Selection” changes to “Hide Selection” if the panel is
visible.
– Changed the initial license warning to say 20 objects instead
of 10 objects.
– Fixed a bug with DOT importing where it was trying to process
“node” as a keyword, instead of just a string.
– DOT import was choking on nested {}’s
– Added support for the full DOT color table
– Fixed a crasher related to grouping lines that point to the
endpoints of other lines.
– Shadows were being clipped by a pixel on PDF export.
– Fixed the problem with graphics not scrolling unless the
mouse is moving.
– Fixed the problem with nudged graphics getting pushed out of
view.
– Info panes do a better job of hide/show.
– Changes from 2.0 Beta (v3) to 2.0 Beta (v4) only
– AppleScript Support
– OmniOutliner import prefrences
– Auto-layout improvements
– 10x speed improvement in force-directed layout (not including
display time)
– added optional magnetic alignment fields
– Export panel additions
– Export panel remembers the last export type.
– Export panel lets you choose whether to export the graphics,
the selection, a rectangular region, or the entire canvas.
– Export panel also lets you set the compression, resolution,
and background transparency.
– Grid Enhancements
– Added a major grid that is slightly darker than the minor
grid.
– Added inspector controls for setting the major grid color,
spacing and visibilty.
– Made the grid visible by default.
– Made grid semi-transparent by default.
– Changed the templates to have the grid visible.
– Changed the A4 and B5 templates to have a 0.5 cm grid (US
Legal and Letter have 1/8 inch grid).
– Linked URL fixes
– Changed is so that when html files are generated, it also
generates an associated bitmap, and added an export
preference for picking the bitmap.
– Drag and drop of urls and files is working for lines.
– “Follow Link” saves the currently typed url before following
it.
– Made more area on the link inspector for displaying urls.
– Graphics within a group were not showing their links. This
has been fixed.
– If a url starts with “www.”, then we prepend “http://”.
– Misc
– Align center to grid should be persistent
– Arbitrary zoom values now show up on the zoom pop-up (instead
of blank).
– When a document is opened, it will scroll to the same area
that was visible when the document was last saved.
– Fixed the problem with the palette window refusing to stay
hidden.
– Fixed the problem with nudged graphics getting pushed out of
view.
– Fixed the bug with picas not showing up correctly on the size
info pane.
– Added a preference for “Remember Open Palettes”. This will
be on by default. It re-opens all of the palettes that were
open when the application quit.
– Flooring the bounds of the text seems to get rid of the
problem with blurry embedded images.
– Info panes do a better job of hide/show.
– Hooked up a “Send Feedback…” menu item.
– Bitmap and pict images that are dragged and dropped into
OmniGraffle are no longer converted to TIFF when the file is
saved. They are saved with their original data.
– Added a color well to the font panel. Now you can set the
text color for multiple graphics without having to select
text individually and drag and drop the color from the color
panel.
– Imroved DOT import support
– full color table
– handles nested {}
– Turned off drawing of the minor grid if the on-screen spacing
was less than 4 pixels