Differences

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--- current [2020/09/01 15:57] – [9.4.33 Change Log:] James Sentman
+++ current [2020/11/14 17:20] – version 9.4.34 James Sentman
@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-=====XTension Version 9.4.33=====
+=====XTension Version 9.4.34=====
-Released: 9/1/2020\\
+Released: 11/14/2020\\
 \\
-Download for Mojave and Earlier: [[https://www.machomeautomation.com/files/xtension/xtension_9.4.33.dmg|XTension v9.4.33 (build 1024) 9/1/2020]]\\
+Download for Mojave and Earlier: [[https://www.machomeautomation.com/files/xtension/xtension_9.4.34.dmg|XTension v9.4.34 (build 1029) 11/14/2020]]\\
-Download for Catalina Only: [[https://www.machomeautomation.com/files/xtension/xtension_9.4.33_notarized.dmg|XTension v9.4.33 (build 1024) for Catalina Only 9/1/2020]]\\
+Download for Catalina Only: [[https://www.machomeautomation.com/files/xtension/xtension_9.4.34_notarized.dmg|XTension v9.4.34 (build 1029) Notarized for Catalina Only 11/14/2020]]\\
 \\
-**NOTE: the catalina download is a notarized disk image file but does not contain the entirety of the plugins as not all are updated to run on Catalina yet. See the Catalina note below or more info. Please do not use this image on a 10.14 (Mohave) or earlier version, use the non Catalina file above.**
+**NOTE:** The Catalina download is a notarized disk image and will run with the proper security on Catalina and later MacOS versions. As of this version all plugins that are going to get update for Catalina have been completed.
+\\
-====Important Info====
 **Minimum System Version** for this release is OSX 10.10\\
-**Mac OSX Catalina** the above linked disk image is notarized for Catalina however not all plugins have completed the transition to the new OS version. Please verify that your necessary devices are supported before updating.
-**Mac OSX Mojave** has changed the requirements for scripting of other applications. You MUST force any script to run that contacts a different application when you upgrade and click “OK” when it asks for permission or your scripts will silently fail when they run later. See the [[tech_notes:mojave|Mojave Support Page]] for more info.\\
-----
-I was overly aggressive in the previous version at removing older deprecated plugins that have newer replacements. I have undone that decision and replaced all the plugins that I removed in the last release. Your database should load and run normally in this version if it has in any of the more recent versions. As of this moment the only plugins that have actually been removed from the package are the original Arduino plugin, the original Vera plugin, the original Hue plugin, and the original Barix plugin. If you are coming from a version old enough to have still included those you will have to edit the interface for those and change them to the new version before they can run.
-You will see a new Plugin Validation window if any plugin issues are found at startup that will help you to know why something isn’t running and how to convert to the new plugin.
-====9.4.33 Change Log:====
+====9.4.34 Change Log:====
-  * NEW: Plugin Validation Window. At startup and anytime you wish from the “Validate Plugins” menu item in the Database menu you can validate that all the plugins you are using are installed and are not about to be removed. If a previously available plugin has been removed there will be instructions there for how to convert to the new plugin. If there is a replacement for a deprecated plugin you’re using there will be a warning message there letting you know that you should convert to the new one as soon as possible. If there is no replacement for the plugin or if the plugin just wasn’t found it will also be shown there.
+  * The W800, MR26 and all the original RFX plugins have joined the CM11, W800 and Lynx plugins on the list of devices that are now fully compatible with Catalina. If you are using any of these plugins it is no longer necessary to update to the newer versions if they were causing you trouble. You can now continue to use the original plugins forever. I have removed the deprecation warnings from them, they will just continue to do exactly what they did before.
-  * I put back all but the originally removed plugins, including the original W800 plugin. So if you ran the last version and gave up because your w800 plugin was not running at all it will now work again just at startup without having to do anything. You’ll also get a message in that validation window letting you know that plugin is going away and how to convert to the new one.
+  * **NEW** A beta version of a plugin for [[supported_hardware:controlbyweb|Control By Web]] devices. These are really nice boxes for relay control and temperature sensing on the network with both wired and wireless versions.
-  * NEW: The first pass at the Weatherflow plugin is included in this build. The only change from the last beta version that people are running is that it will now ignore multiple receptions of the same packet as can happen in networks with several bridges or routing nodes. **If you installed the beta plugin by manually copying it into your database plugins folder or using the “install plugin” menu item you will need to manually remove it from the database before XTension will run the built in version. Use the “reveal plugins folder for this database...” menu item from the Database menu and then drag the weatherflow.isf folder from there to the trash. Then restart XTension to use the new plugin.**
+  * Database Load Cache: The bulk of data in the database is now cached when you quit XTension and loaded back from the cache when you restart. This won’t help with the first load of the database but after that it can be anywhere from slightly faster on a modern SSD drive with a fast moderm machine to very much faster on a spinning drive. This has been running here since shortly after the last release and has not given me any issues with database corruption however once in a while the cached scripts refuse to load. This results in an error message to the log and the script loading in the original fashion so no data or script is lost. You just don’t get the speedup in that case and you have a log with an error for every script. I do not yet know why it refuses to load for me every 2 weeks or so but as I mentioned then the load happens normally. If you are unable to ignore some errors in the log that will not affect your data once in a while you can turn the database load cache off with the checkbox of a similar name in the XTension preferences.
-  * VERA: If you issue an X10 only command to a unit that is now part of a Vera interface it will no longer cause the Vera interface to crash and restart. Previously it would do this if you did something like tell it to send an All Units Off command which is an X10 only command as there is no equivalent for ZWave.
+  * Database Loading Optimizations. Over the years the database has had several small changes and I was checking for the existence of older files with every load. This version will only attempt to convert older data structures if the database version we are loading is from a version prior to this build. After that it will no longer look for all those things speeding up the database loading a small but real amount more.
-  * VERA: The Vera plugin will now properly handle many devices that the Vera considers to be “GenericIO” this includes many ZigBee devices. Perviously no values were found in those receptions. If anyone finds any that still don’t work please let me know.
+  * The new value animation that the list windows do when a unit is updated used to happen whenever any data was updated for the unit. This was slightly confusing as the last activity date would not have been updated, there was no new value but the unit still turned orange and then faded back to normal quite a bit depending on where the data was coming from. The list windows will now only do the new value animation if a unit updated resulted in a new value or in the Last Activity date being updated. This will make using them easier over slower VNC connections or on older machines with a lot of windows open.
-  * VERA: The Vera plugin no longer logs an error after issuing the “updateNeighbors” command making you think it didn’t work even though it did.
+  * Updated the checks for High Sierra or newer so that the background app of High Sierra Fix will only run if you are on high sierra and not if you are on anything older or newer. Previously I left it running on the first few versions of Mojave as I was not entirely sure the problem was fixed there yet. You will not see the GUI Thread Contention message on any OS but High Sierra.
-  * FIX: Errors logged by an interface during shutdown will now be filterable in the log by the interface name. Previously this information was left out.
+  * AppleScript continues to degrade in MacOS. XTension has to do a scripting component rollover in order to recover from a memory leak in Apple’s code. I’ve been doing that for some time now after around 10k AppleScript event handlings to make sure it keeps working. Unfortunately that is also the most common place that a corrupt script can cause a crash of XTension without any warning that the script was corrupt. I am now saving the database and turning off log caching prior to running the rollover code. That way if there is a problem you will not lose any database changes or unit updates and the log data will truly reflect the last thing that happened before the crash which might help in finding the culprit. The log caching is restored to normal after a successful rollover.
-  * FIX: Previously with the new W800 plugin if you edited a unit on that interface it would lose the connection between the interface and the unit until you disabled and re-enabled the interface. This is fixed and you can now edit any units associated with the interface without losing the connection. Hat tip to Thomas Arman who figured out what was really going on there!
+  * The Weeder plugin got some love and should lose fewer acks for commands. I have also reduced significantly the timeout for waiting for one that isn’t going to come in so even worse case that the Ack for the command was lost it will not hang up the entire bus of them for more than a second or 2. I’ve also improved it’s event handling in general so these really should not happen at all anymore.
-  * WEB REMOTE: I have increased the session timeouts drastically for both the Mobile Web Remote as well as the desktop Web Remote. This is especially helpful on the Mobile platform as you won’t have to go through the reload this app button if you are away from the screen for more than a couple of minutes. This really helps to make it more friendly and less frustrating to use. It will still time out in a few hours and if the iPhone shuts down the program in the background you’ll also have to reload it, but for just switching around and coming back to it this is a great improvement.
+  * Fixed an error that would be logged during the error processing of a failed parse in the new RFX plugin. Should the same parsing issue happen again it will now properly log some useful data instead of an error for being unable to log the useful data.
-  * WEB REMOTE: The dekstop web remote is now much better at serving up large archived movie files. Even ludicriously large movies can be served up and will begin to stream almost instantly. In previous versions this all worked well for smaller files, but for larger ones there was a significant delay before they would start playing and after some size they would not play at all. This is now working very well.
+  * For plugin authors I’ve added the ability to show the “use ssl” checkbox when specifying an incoming or outgoing networking connection. You could always do this by creating your own interface to it, but this will standardize the window layout and the key into the data structures.
-  * FIX: Shared Databases will no longer log a long stream of alien address receptions while the connection is active.
+  * When hitting command-f to return to the Find window while it’s still open the previous find text is highlighted and focus is returned to the search text field so that you can more quickly enter a new search term without reaching for the mouse. If you return to the window any other way while going down the list to find something the focus will remain in the list.
-  * FIX: The global “thisUnit” will now be valid even if you just created the unit script by clicking on the script icon in the list window rather than using the Edit Unit window to create the new script. Previously the thisUnit global would have been empty for a unit script created that way until you quit and restarted XTension.
+  * In a List window the File:Delete menu item will now properly offer to delete the List if no Units are selected. Previously if there had been a selection of Units in the window and you deselected them (or deleted them) the menu remained offering to deleted the selected units instead even though the action at that point would have been to delete the List.
-  * CHANGE: the global “thisUnit”, “thisScript” and “thisInterface” when used in a global handler will now be reset to what they would be if that script was running normally. So (thisScript) would return the name of the script that holds the handler and not the name of the script that is calling the handler as it did previously. This is a change from the previous behavior, but the previous behavior was not documented as on purpose and this seems more to me as to how it should work.
+  * Carrying over from the recent Beta release this version also fixes a problem with the logged error that your Idle script was taking too long to run. With any other script I give it 10 seconds to finish, but for some reason was being much more aggressive with the Idle scripting allowing it only 1 second before it offered up the same error. I was also incorrectly using microseconds instead of milliseconds when timing script handler execution so these would never have logged an error unless it took days to run. Both of those were fixed in the beta and are hopefully still fixed in this release.
-  * FIX: If there was a script problem that caused the script queue timeout error to be logged the thisScript, thisUnit and thisInterface values were never cleared. This could lead to confusing logging for other script errors that might happen later as it could have claimed to be from the script that was left hung up in the background.
-  * FIX: Previously if you deleted all the units in a List window you might have gotten a stack trace in the log and the window became unusable until you closed and re-opened it. This now works properly.
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