MeVisLab Release Notes

MeVisLab now has a full-text search for its documentation. The entry for it can be found in the Help menu of the menu bar. (Note: The input widget above this entry only searches in section headers.)

The documentation of user packages can be indexed with the IndexUserPackagesHTMLFiles module.

Input and parameter connections in a network can now be copied instead of just moved to another input connector by pressing the Shift+Control keys while dragging.

A newly installed MeVisLab will default to only show the module panels for the currently active network. This behavior can be changed by deselecting the menu item Panels => Hide Panels of Invisible Networks.

Support for application translations has been improved, e.g., detection of translatable multi-line strings in Python code, translation hints in comments.

Since the command-line help of MeVisLab is very long, it is shown in a browser window now instead of a dialog.

The automatic panel of each module now shows a column that displays - in abbreviated form - the attributes of each field, e.g., is it editable, has it still its default value. Fields can also be sorted by this column.

File links in the output console get a different color if the linked file does not exist.

If the variable DisableModuleWindowsPersistence is set to True in the mevislab.prefs file, only the positions of currently open panels are saved in a network file and all others are removed. Previously, all panel positions were removed when this option was set.

Fixed that Restart with Current Networks also opened recent files if the Auto Load Recent Network Documents setting was set.

Fixed that the parsing of floating-point numbers in files depended on the set locale, which could accidentally be set to the system's default. This would affect users with, e.g., German system settings.

Suppressed a “Unable to open monitor interface” warning from Qt that could occur if the monitor setup was changed on Window.

Fixed the links created by :field: and :module: Sphinx roles in network note items.

Fixed many (mostly small) memory leaks.

Disabled the broken Restore Defaults button in the Preferences dialog for now.

Lots of small documentation updates and corrections.

MATE got an option to auto-format Python code with the black tool either manually or on each save.

The Jedi Python package used in MATE for the Python auto- completion has been updated to a recent version, and should support current language features.

Auto-generated Python function stubs will use the type hint support of Python now.

The Python debugger will mark object attributes that actually are a 'property' object as such.

The Python debugger in MATE could show overly long value tooltips. These now have a sensible maximum length, and occasional word breaks for better usability.

Raise the IDE window when continuing after hitting a breakpoint in the debugger.

The MATE object available for user scripts in the MATE text editor can now also be used in its scripting console.

MATE: Fixed hard to read text in the workspace file finder drop-down list.

Fixed the integration of the rope Python refactoring library.

Fixed that the Alt+Down key combo would not select the next entry in the 'outline' view anymore (while Alt+Up still worked).

Fixed a crash in MATE when setting/resetting the busy state cursor with a UserScript.

Fixed a crash if Ctrl+F3 is pressed without selecting or searching something before. Now, the text under the cursor is automatically selected in this case.

Fixed that the Close all secondary windows with ESC preferences option inexplicably also was used for opening the error check view of Python code. This has now its own option.

The ScreenShot.createScreenShot function in the TestSupport Python package now allows to specify that the screenshot should not be grabbed from the screen, but instead be done in an offscreen buffer, which works around the problems of panels sometimes being obscured by other windows or the screen saver.

Added missing compare functions to TestSupport.Base

Fixed that a test could sometimes be started recursively a second time by the user while it was still running.

Added the function MLAB.isNone(), which can be used to check if a wrapped Qt object has been deleted. This method has been added because the usual way of simply using the object itself as bool value could return wrong values because it would also use any isVisible, isNull, or isValid method of an object.

Added the function MLABDicom.loadDicomTreeFromBinaryContent, which loads a DICOM file from a buffer instead of from a file.

Users can unset the internal "should stop" flag with MLAB.setShouldStop(False). This can be helpful in server scenarios.

Named dock presets/layouts of the IDE can be activated by scripting with MLAB.IDE().activateDockPreset(name).

CurveList and CurveData objects can now be created by scripting with MLAB.createMLBaseObject("CurveList") and MLAB.createMLBaseObject("CurveData"), respectively.

Some code wizards were adapted to not create Python code with (initially) unused imports.

Jobs submitted to the JobScheduler extension were never finished if the executable to use did not exist.

JobScheduler: Fixed that jobs that were chained to a predecessor job that didn't exist anymore were not necessarily removed.

Fixed that adding a Python function as field listener to a module with no own script context would fail.

Fixed CSOWrapper.getIsPointInside behavior.

Made sure that the output from the logging default logger is correctly categorized in the output console as info/warning/error.

The ProgressBar control now shows an indefinite progress bar when combined with a boolean field. One needs to call MLAB.processEvents(True) periodically to allow GUI updates of the progress bar, though.

Fixed that the CSS hover attribute was ignored for buttons associated with a field when using CSS styling for a panel GUI. This was only a problem when used in the IDE, though, it always worked when run as application.

Alleviated a problem where the GraphicsView would not show the content of a web item if the view is too big. The issue still exists, but the view can be larger now.

For Visual Studio projects, UTF-8 is now the expected encoding for source files.

Windows: By default, the /MP option is used when compiling C++ modules with Visual Studio; this can be configured with the MLAB_MSVC_PARALLEL CMake option.

Installers can now generate a rudimentary JSON software bill of materials (SBOM) file. Set the variable GENERATE_SBOM to 1 in your .mlinstall file to use this. The SBOM file is generated alongside the installer.

Fixed annoying misleading warning message about files that could not be decrypted (and were not meant to, because they were provided this way by the MeVisLab SDK).

Fixed: Installing Python packages with PythonPip generated unnecessary (optional) library dependencies, which could mean unnecessary Python libraries were included in standalone installers if they were also installed.

Fixed a crash in the Standalone Installer wizard when closing the wizard after typing an invalid or incomplete application module name.

Windows specific

Linux specific

mimalloc is now used by MeVisLab to improve memory allocation efficiency on Windows (only in Release mode).

DicomImport:

SoView2D and SoDiagram2D by default now use the Qt library for 2D text rendering, which has the advantage that it usually can print all unicode characters. The old default is restored by setting View2DEnableQtFontRendering = No in the MeVisLab preferences file.

PythonPip will not propose a target package for installing packages by default, the user must select one (but the selection will be remembered).

The GraphManager: module got the ability to create a completely empty Graph object (which can be filled from scripting).

Improved loading speed of Graph objects with the BaseLoad module.

SoCSOTransform modules will now accumulate transformations in typical OpenInventor manner (only for newly created modules that use this information - existing modules in saved networks will retain the old behavior through a hidden option field).

Object inputs and outputs of ITK wrapper modules are now more specifically typed, which should make it easier to connect the correct input objects.

The itkImageFileReader and itkImageFileWriter modules have been moved to the MeVisLab/ITK package.

Changed the Histogram module to never set a NULL object at its output.

ImageLoad: Make PNG loading more robust against unusual compression parameters.

Fixed that the progress bar in WEMLevelSet... modules didn't show any intermediate progress.

Fixed: Some WEMLevelSet... modules could crash if applied on a WEM without any faces.

UndoManager: Fixed cause of rare, spurious crashes on module creation.

Fixed a crash in the MemoryCache module if the input image is too large. Instead print an error message.

VideoWriterML and VideoWriterInventor: Fixed handling of non-ASCII characters in the target filename.

ExportImageAsSlices: Fixed that the Export button was disabled when a valid file path was already set upon network loading.

Thumbnail: Fixed auto-update behavior.

The ExtractRTStruct module did not produce any output if the SourcePixelPlanesCharacteristicsSequence tag was not empty.

Fixed image border handling of View2DIsoContourShader.

So3DMarkerRenderer: Fixed that the internal bounding box of this scene node did never shrink when markers were removed.

The SoView2DMarkerEditor has been refactored somewhat.

WEMIsoSurface: Will now unset its WEM output in AutoUpdate mode if the input image is removed.

Fixed: WEMGeodesicClip was only usable in AutoUpdate mode.

WEMBinarySurface: Fixed that profiling didn't work for this module.

Fixed: Connecting an invalid image to a CSOIsoGenerator cross-connected to a CSOMerge triggered an endless loop.

Fixed a problem with the SoCSOEllipseEditor that path points would not be correctly calculated while dragging the cursor outside the viewer.

SoView2D: Fixed: It has been possible to set the maximum z, t, and u index for the displayed image beyond the actual dimensions of the input image.

Fix SoView2DAnnotation occasionally printing errors to the console when showing long, abbreviated UTF-8 strings.

SoLUTEditor: Changed the behavior of the interactive editor: Previously, it was too easy to accidentally insert new control points when wanting to move the first or last LUT point up or down. Now a more conscious move to right or left is needed.

Sobel3D: Fixed a potential division-by-zero crash.

Fixed that the enabled field of the SoPathTracerMaterial or SoPathTracerGradientVolume modules was ignored.

Deprecations:

ConnectedComponentsMacro, for simple access to the most common features from combinations of ComputeConnectedComponents, FilterConnectedComponents, and ConnectedComponentsToImage.

ExtractTextTableFromPRData, which tries to convert textual data from the GraphicAnnotationSequence of DICOM files as plain text, JSON, and CSV.

FieldDifferenceViewer, for showing differences between two strings as a difference view.

SelectTimepoints, which allows to select a subset of time points from an image, either by index, or by which are closest to a list of desired time stamps.

MarkerToImage, for changing image values at provided marker positions.

CategoricalEncoding, which converts one- or multi-hot-encodings to integer labels and vice versa.

NormalizeImageByPercentileMapping, which normalizes image values by linearly mapping lower and upper percentile to a defined range.

Fixes of several code smells and memory leaks; more compile warnings are handled as errors now.

SoMLMatrixTransform can now invert the matrix on the fly.

DICOM related modules:

CSOBoolOp:

Removed the project MLStochasticCollocation (...LinearFunction and ...InterpolationPolynomial modules) from the FMEwork/Release package, as nobody seemed to use it.

The PCLMarchingCubesRBF module been removed since the used PCL algorithm is too memory- and time consuming for nearly all parameter configurations, so that is was not stable enough for normal operation.

SoAsciiText

CSOBulgeEditor, CSOFreehandProcessor, CSOIsoProcessor, CSOLiveWireProcessor, CSOModifyProcessor, CSOPrimitiveProcessor, CSOTransformationProcessor, SoView2DCSOEditor

SoFixedFunctionShader

SoAngleLines, SoAngleToObjects, SoCake, SoDistanceLine, SoMainAxis, SoMinimalDistance, SoRuler, SoShapeToPointSet, SoThresholdToPointSet,

SoScreenSpaceAmbientOcclusion

ImportDialog, OISettings, OpenImage, SaveImage

EatDicomImport, DicomService

Negation

AngleLines2D3D, DistanceLine2D3D, SimpleImageStatistics

ObjMgrEventClient (and all ObjectManager related modules)

LiveWireMacro

SwapViewer

BaseBypassOp

ConnectedComponents

ContourManager, Draw2D, LiveWire, RegionToContour

DistanceTransform

LoG

KernelFilter

WEMClip

MovieCreator

The following MeVisLab-specific Python packages were deprecated and have been removed:

The following MeVisLab-specific Python functions and methods were deprecated and have been removed:

Lots of old names of renamed functions and enums have been removed.

There still exists a Python script file to help in the renamings: Packages/MeVis/BuildSystem/BuildTools/Scripts/replaceDeprecated.py

You can use this script from MeVisLab with the MLReplaceDeprecatedAPI module.

Some methods were replaced because they returned a const char* object, where it was the recipient's duty to free the allocated memory afterwards. In these cases there are methods that take a std::string instead.

Some methods were removed because the task could nowadays as easily be performed with methods from the STL (or Qt).

The method ml::Module::calculateOutputImageProperties now has two arguments. The second one is the PagedImage on which to set the image properties (previously obtained with getOutputImage(outIndex)).

You might notice that trying to override the method with one argument now causes an error in the compiler. This is intentional, you need to override the method with two arguments.

getFieldContainer() isn't needed anymore, as ml::Module is derived from ml::FieldContainer anyway.

QGLWidget is no more. Use the newer QOpenGLWidget.

QRegExp has been superseded by QRegularExpression.

QTextCodec, QTextEncoder, and QTextDecoder have been removed (not exactly, they still exist in the QtCore5Compat package, which we don't include in the SDK). By default, Qt only supports Latin1 and UTF encoding.

The multimedia framework has undergone some refactoring.

MessageBox

MessageBoxExt

OverwriteVectorComponent

The default encoding of text files read or written by MeVisLab is now UTF-8, if not specified otherwise.

The window positions of modules in a network are now stored relative to the screen the IDE main window is on.

Added a new command line argument -prefs-variable to define/override a preferences variable (e.g., 'Locale=en_US').

Auto-completion for imports in the Python scripting console didn't work for namespace packages (PEP 420).

When searching for words in an editable text area with the search dialog, the highlighted words were hardly visible.

MATE: Fixed shortcut F7 being defined twice in the help editor.

When converting a local to a global macro, a dummy example network is now created automatically.

Ctrl+L doesn't just switch to the No Dock Windows layout now, but toggles between this layout and the previous one.

When changing the visibility of an connector by removing the hidden tag again, a reload of the module would not update the hidden state.

Fixed that a field comment from the Interface section is lost if the field is also listed in the Description section.

MATE: The project workspace search now supports multi-word search.

The MeVisLabStarter executable (on Windows) doesn't have any special functionality anymore, and is just needed to restart MeVisLab. It sets the -singleinstance command line parameter of MeVisLab though, so if you want to re-use a running instance of MeVisLab, you can continue using MeVisLabStarter or set the -singleinstance parameter yourself.

When opening a scripting console for the field of a module (through the context menu), it would not stay on top like other windows.

Fixed a crash on closing the IDE when the cache size in the GUI is updated one last time.

Fixed background color of screenshots of panels that included OpenInventor viewers.

The About dialog now has a link to the license text of MeVisLab.

The CodeTest module in the TestSupport package got an optional parameter for its inject function that allows to ignore output lines matching a regular expression before doing error detection.

Fixed Show Enclosing Folder context menu entry for wrapped CodeTests.

Python coverage ignores code in a site-packages directory by default (since it contains third-party code). Also added the ability to specify explicit inclusion of directories through the TestCenter config file ("InclusionExpression").

Images in test results are restricted in the displayed size (but can be expanded).

Avoid temporarily opening a console window on test cleanup (only happened on Windows).

If the TestCenter is running in secure mode on Linux, and a test crashes (with a segmentation fault), the TestCenter will try to give a stack trace (which might include the signal handler functions as top-level entries).

The generation of ThirdPartyInformation (About dialog) entries and dependency information for Python packages installed with PythonPip got more robust.

MeVisLab now comes with automatically generated .pyi files for the scripting wrappers available in MeVisLab. These should automatically be found by any Python IDE that uses our Python environment (through sitecustomize.py) and help with auto-completion and type checking. If you don't want this, set the environment variable MLAB_DISABLE_SITECUSTOMIZE to 1.

Fixed a crash on destruction of the SoViewportRegionWrapper.

Added the option to not create skeletons in MLGraphWrapper.createEdge.

MLABScriptProcess doesn't inherit file handles anymore by default.

Slightly changed the behavior of MLAB.setVariable(), which previously wouldn't change a value that was stored persistently.

The interface of the class returned by MLABGraphicsScene.addWebView has changed somewhat, because there is no native support for adding a web viewer to Qt's QGraphicsScene anymore.

Fixed layout of HyperLabel control with longer texts.

The Image control re-renders SVG images to the displayed size now.

Keyboard navigation/selection did not work for a RadioButtonGroup if it was attached to a field.

Button titles of ToolButtonGroups connected to enum fields were not translated.

The PythonTextView was buggy with regard to the syntax highlighting, which could lead to overlapping line numbers and crashes.

ml::CurveList and ml::CurveData are now derived from ml::RefCountedBase, which means that these classes should not be deleted explicitly by the user, but implicitly through the use of the CurveListPtr and CurveDataPtr classes. This also means that CurveList and CurveData can't be direct members of another class anymore.

Especially the interface of ml::CurveList has been adapted accordingly, with explicit methods for adding and removing of ml::CurveData objects.

When local macros share the same name, only the dependencies of one of these modules would be considered.

Determining DLL dependencies for stand-alone installers on Windows doesn't require an external tool like DependencyWalker anymore (and also became a lot faster).

MeVisLab 4.0 was built with and requires Visual Studio 2022 now.

Qt has been updated to version 6.6.3 (from 5.15).

The PythonQt scripting wrappers for Qt have been re-created.

Python has been updated to version 3.11.9 (from 3.9).

jemalloc isn't used by MeVisLab and not included in the SDK anymore.

MeVisLab now solely uses libjpeg-turbo for the JPEG file format. libjpeg is no longer included in the SDK.

CMake target names of some third-party libraries have changed (mostly upper/lower case).

The Python package asyncqt has been replaced by qasync to fix problems with aiohttp.

ITK has been updated to version 5.3.0, and the module wrappers have been updated, including newly introduced classes.

VTK has been updated to version 9.3.0. Almost all module wrappers have been removed, please use the Python bindings provided by VTK instead. Have a look at the example networks of the remaining bridge modules for how interfacing with MeVisLab modules works.

The Windows version now uses 7-Zip in its installer.

DicomImport:

We added an example DicomViewer application module to MeVisLab, which provides basic DICOM image viewing capabilities in 2D and 3D.

The clear button in the WEMInteract module now clears the drawn contour.

WEMModify updates the face normals now. This attribute is, e.g., used by WEMInfo to compute the volume of a WEM patch.

SignedEuclideanDistanceTransform: Fixed wrong output for example network if minValue and maxValue are set to 0.

SoCoordinateSystem rendered the text shadow in front of the actual text under certain circumstances.

CSOMerge did handle input notifications when auto update was set to off.

Most WEM modules that use PVLs (primitive value lists): Introduced checks for correct type (per-node, per-edge, or per-face).

WEMLoad: Introduced a new field for auto-loading of WEMs.

ConnectedComponentsToImage: Did set an invalid image extent if no cluster was selected.

WEMVascularSystem: Would hang indefinitely if the graph was completely outside the image extent associated with it (which could happen if you constructed the graph by scripting).

There is also now a field clipping which determines if the resulting WEM should be clipped to the associated image extent.

Added new color modes to So3DMarkerRenderer that use vector length/angle and use a LUT as color input.

WEMLoad now can load .ply files with one-based indexing (previously it crashed).

ImageStatistics: Fixed that the variance could get slightly negative due to rounding errors.

Fixed rare crash in SoCoordinateSystem if no axis was initialized.

The OutputInspector for images now allows to step through the user dimension with Ctrl+Left and Ctrl+Right.

Fixed: The code generated by the Project Wizard for modules derived from SoView2DExtension missed an important dependency.

Module DicomPRSave saves XMarkerList, StylePalette, and CSOLists Base objects as and in DICOM files of Grayscale Softcopy Presentation State IOD. See also MultiFileVolumeListPROutput.

Module FileEncrypter encrypts files using a new C++ API BinaryEncryption, but the currently implemented encryption method is internal to FME, so this module is only useful if you implement your own.

Module SoMLMatrixTransform wraps SoMatrixTransform to enable direct use of ML and numpy matrices (which are transposed relative to the matrices used by SoMatrixTransform).

DirectDicomImport resolves variables (such as $(NETWORK), $(TMPDIR) etc.) in fields Import Files and Import Directories in the Configuration panel.

Improved robustness of experimental MultiFileVolumeListPROutput.

LoadYAML and ReadYAML can now deal with Python tuples encoded with "!!python/tuple".

Macro module CachedPath and Python module file_caching now support pruning of the synchronization target folder, which is enabled by default.

Removed the unused/unsupported NoCache mode from the modules ImageCache and ImageCacheForNetworkLoops.

ThirdPartyLicenseReport: now reads 'homepage' as alternative to the 'url' key in .mlinfo files; and some other minor improvements.

The fmeTestSupport Python module now supports EXPECT_ERRORS().

The C++ Module base class XMarkerListProcessor now allows to specify a number of input images (for modules that combine image and marker data)