info-beamer pi 0.9.8 released

info-beamer pi 0.9.8 adds support for Raspbian Stretch as well as other minor improvements.

Support for Raspbian Stretch

This version adds official support for Raspbian Stretch. You can now download info-beamer pi for all three Raspbian versions (Wheezy, Jessie and Stretch) available.

type(obj) support for all info-beamer objects

Previously calling type(obj) and any info-beamer object like images, videos videos or open files returned a generic "userdata" value. See this example code:

local image = resource.load_image "image.jpg"
print(type(image)) -- will output 'userdata'

This release adds a more meaningful response for all info-beamer objects. For example images will return "image", videos "video" and open files will return "openfile".

This can be useful to create functions that handle the different types transparently to the caller.

open_file(open_file("foo")) works now

The open_file function allows you to open a file only to consume it later with one of the resource loaders like load_image. The open_file function is now a bit more transparent and also accepts an existing openfile object. This allows you to "capture" files regardless of whether the caller of your function provides you with an openfile object or a filename.

nearest=true argument to load_image

Sometimes you might want to load images with the GL_NEAREST nearest texture filter instead of the default GL_LINEAR mode. This can be useful if you have very small images that you scale up while drawing them. Previously such images would be blurred if you upscale them.

New rawvideo:place function

The Pi has a firmware bug (as of Aug 14 2017) which results in incorrect video clipping of natively drawn videos if those videos are rotated. You can find the full bug report for this issue on the Raspberry Pi bug tracker. info-beamer pi now works around this bug if you use the new :place function. It combines the calls to :target, :rotate and :source into a single call that internally recalculates the target and source areas of the video and prevents the firmware bug from triggering. It is highly recommended to use this function instead of the three lower level functions it replaces.

Internal changes

• info-beamer pi uses the newer Luajit version Luajit v2.1beta3 now. Changes include mostly minor bug fixes and a few performance improvements that probably don't make a difference for most info-beamer projects.
• Added deprecation warning to math.mod and string.gfind. Use math.fmod and string.gmatch instead. Those two functions have been deprecated for a while and should not be used in new code.
• Added the magic code for the BTRFS filesystem so you won't get a warning if your node directory is on that filesystem.
• The video:state() method now returns the resolution even if the video play back was successfully completed.
• make_nested call now sends content_update events in alphabetically sorted order.
• Reload DNS settings before establishing a new vnc connection so changed name servers are used. Fixes the bug reported here.
• New gl.modelMultiply function that allows you to multiply the current ModelView with a custom 4x4 matrix.

Get the new version

info-beamer pi 0.9.8 is now ready for download. Just grab the new version here:

Feedback is always welcome. Have fun!