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<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Hello Folks,</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>I am pleased to announce that the third edition of the VTK
Textbook is finally in stock (we have 100 copies right now and are expecting
500 more by Friday) and available for purchase from <a
href="http://www.kitware.com/products/vtktextbook.html">http://www.kitware.com/products/vtktextbook.html</a>
Likewise the VTK 4.2 version of the user’s/developer’s guide is now
available at <a href="http://www.kitware.com/products/vtkguide.html">http://www.kitware.com/products/vtkguide.html</a>
Finally the Beta release of VTK 4.2 is available from <a
href="http://www.vtk.org/files/release/4.2">http://www.vtk.org/files/release/4.2</a>
A summary of significant changes (from the FAQ) is included below. With VTK 4.2
we will be releasing patches during its lifetime. So there will be versions 4.2.1,
4.2.2, 4.2.3 etc as bugs are reported and fixed.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Thanks</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Ken</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>+ Use of macros to support serialization, standardize the New method,
and provide the Superclass typedef. </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>+
Subclassing of VTK classes in the python wrappers (virtual method hooks are not
provided). </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>+
vtkImageWindow, vtkImager, vtkTkImageWindowWidget and their subclasses have
been removed to reduce duplicated code and enable interation in ImageWindows.
Now people should use vtkRenderer and vtkRenderWindow instead. vtkImageViewer
still works as a turn key image viewing class although it now uses
vtkRenderWindow and vtkRenderer internally instead of vtkImageWindow and
vtkImager. </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>+
New class: vtkBandedPolyDataContourFilter. Creates solid colored bands (like
you find on maps) of scalar value. </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>+
Event processing: Several new events to VTK were added (see vtkCommand.h). Also
event processing can now be prioritized and aborted. This allows applications
to manage who processes which events, and terminates the processing of a
particular event if desired. </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>+
3D Widgets: A new class vtkInteractorObserver was added to observe events on
vtkRenderWindowInteractor. Using the new event processing infrastructure,
multiple 3D widgets (subclasses of vtkInteractorObserver) can be used
simultaneously to process interactions. Several new 3D widgets have been added
including: </span></font></p>
<pre><font size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> - vtkLineWidget</span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> - vtkPlaneWidget</span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> - vtkImagePlaneWidget</span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> - vtkBoxWidget</span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> - vtkSphereWidget</span></font></pre>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>Besides providing a representation, widgets also provide auxiliary
functionality such as providing transforms, implicit functions, plane normals,
sphere radius and center, etc. </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>+
New class: vtkInstantiator provides a means by which one can create an instance
of a VTK class using only the name of the class as a string. </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>+
New class: vtkXMLParser provides a wrapper around the Expat XML parsing
library. A new parser can be written by subclassing from vtkXMLParser and
providing a few simple virtual method implementations. </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>+
TIFF reader is now implemented using libtiff, which makes it capable of reading
almost all available TIFF formats. The libtiff is also available internally as
vtktiff. </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>+
New method (all sub-classes of vtkObject): Added a virtual function called
NewInstance to vtkTypeMacro. NewInstance creates and returns an object of the
same type as the current one. It does not copy any properties. The returned
pointer is of the same type as the pointer the method was invoked with. This
method should replace all the MakeObject methods scattered through VTK. </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>+
vtkSetObject macro is depricated for use inside the VTK. It is still a valid
construct in projects that use VTK. Instead use vtkCxxSetObjectMacro which does
the same thing. </span></font></p>
<p><font size=3 color=black face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:12.0pt'>+
vtkPLOT3DReader have been improved. It now supports: </span></font></p>
<pre><font size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> - multigrid (each block is one output)</span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> - ascii</span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> - fortran-style byte counts</span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> - little/big endian</span></font></pre><pre><font
size=2 color=black face="Courier New"><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> - i-blanking (partial)</span></font></pre>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'>+ A new vtkTextProperty class has been created, and duplicated text API
s have been obsoleted accordingly. Check the "Text properties in VTK
4.2" FAQ entry for a full description of the change: <a
href="http://public.kitware.com/cgi-bin/vtkfaq?req=all#6.14">http://public.kitware.com/cgi-bin/vtkfaq?req=all#6.14</a></span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'> </span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Ken Martin</span></font><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>, PhD</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Kitware</span></font><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> Inc.</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>518 371 3971 x101</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>469 </span></font><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>Clifton</span></font><font size=2
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> Corporate Pkwy</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:Arial'>Clifton Park</span></font><font size=2 face=Arial><span
style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span></font><font size=2
face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>NY</span></font><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'> </span></font><font
size=2 face=Arial><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Arial'>12065</span></font></p>
<p class=MsoNormal><font size=3 face="Times New Roman"><span style='font-size:
12.0pt'> </span></font></p>
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