MassBoy - Release Notes

Version 0.39 (22. Feb. 1999), Tomi Engel

With this release we added some of the unique and new feature which make MassBoy different compared to existing solutions.

New Features Version 0.39(Bulid 990222)

The introduction of the MiscKit made this release mainly a UI update and bugfix release. However, some long awaited features (like PBM library search) have also found their way int othis release.

Library creation. (v 0.39)
Displayed spectras can now be added with a revised UI into an existing library. Sanity checks try to minimize the number of incorrectly entered data sets. Checks are performed on the CAS number, name and molecular weight.

Advanced spectra modifications. (v 0.39)
The spectras which are displayed in the corresponding panel now can be manipulated using a similar command text field as in the chromatogram documents. This allows to remove specific peaks whcih the noise reduction mechanism was not able to detect or even the manual construction of a totally new spectrum.

Redesigned the MiscInspectors. (v 0.39)
A complete reimplementation of the MiscInspector classes has been made. This finally simplifies the entire inspector handling and the preferences modules as well.

Added PBM search mechanism. (v 0.39)
Libraries can now be searched using a propability based matching algorithm. The current implementation is not highly optimized but gives a good impression of the bahavior and allows for rapid algorithm refinement.
Ported MassBoy to Mac OS X Server. (v 0.37)
The entire application has been ported to the Openstep successor named Mac OS X Server. From now on development will take place on that platform and Openstep version will be irregular snapshots of the moving project.
Implemented Library search. (v 0.36)
A primitive "base peak" algorithm has been implemented to test tthe library search UI and its integration into the application.
Integrated HTML Help. (v 0.35)
The service for sending the suggestion mail can now be configured with a hidden default value.
Support for composed mass qualifiers. (v 0.35)
Your mass selections now can be combined out of single mass ranges. This allows for notations like: 41, 45, 80 or 41-43, 80-85 or 41-43, 80-85/RIC. In this case the last statement is interpreted as (41-43, 80-85)/RIC.
Added an hidden Mail URL service default. (v 0.34)
The service for sending the suggestion mail can now be configured with a hidden default value.
Remebers open Panel. (v 0.34)
Panels which have been open when the application got terminated will be reopened on the next launch.
Activated color preferences. (v 0.34)
The color settings of the preferences panels have been activated with the help of the new MiscKit code.
Uses the MiscKit. (v 0.34)
From now on the application requires the MiscKit framework to be present in /LocalLibrary/Frameworks.
Copy with Layout. (v 0.32)
A new item in the Edit menu allows the user to copy the screen in exactly the same size and format as it would appear during printing. The settins can be changed via the regular Print Layout panel.
This feature allows the creation of EPS samples with exaclty the same size which is useful for pulications.
Spectrum Panel title is editable. (v 0.32)
In order to allow custom imformation for copy and print operations the title text in the spectrum panel has been made editable.
Save as "msrun" file. (v 0.32)
We now are able to save the Finningan data inside or "msrun" filewrappers. The provided data is derived from the local cache format and therefore is hardware specific. This currently is more of a quick and dirty solution since those files are not portable accross platforms.
The entire save mechanism needs a redesign once we move to the component based approach.
Added the Spectrum List Panel. (v 0.31)
In addition to the regular graph view you are now able to list all peaks of the selected spectra in a numeric table fashion.
Made Inspector a multipane view. (v 0.31)
The inspector panel now is build of swapable subviews. This still is onlt 50% of the final version since we need a more component based approach for inspectors. This will happen once the MiscInspector stuff is ported.
Made Preferences a multipane view. (v 0.31)
Preferences have been rearranged and now have a swapable area with multiple subviews. This is almost the final layout. The only possible changes can be expected once we get the component subsystem so that we can load preferences bundles on the fly

Bugs Fixed

This time most of the fixes have been made with some general UI polishing. There still is a lot that needs to be done¹but we are slowly getting there.

Resizing window causes bad redraw.
Changing the windows width did not cause a proper update of the view and did require a new zoom operation or a scrollbar action to trigger the redraw. Resize handling has be completely redesigned and now does it the clean way which solved a number of related problems (e.g. the print bug mentioned below).
Drawing lines is ugly and wrong.
The drawn lines looked ugly when printed. Drawing a white background for the zoom operation caused this trouble and with a cleaned up zoom we no longer need this dirty tricks. Now our views are prepared for overlapped graphs too.
Printing does not reflect screen view.
The resizing bug cause our scaled printouts to show a different data range then we had on screen. This is fixed for documents and the spectrum panel as we cleaned up the resizing code.
Print margins too small.
The full page printouts have been adjusted so that they are entirely visible on a DeskJet by default. The size of the margin is stored as a default value and adjustable by the user.
Focus borders got printed.
Focus or key views have a dashed border to make them visible but these border are not intended for printing. We now handle them correctly.
Displaying "E00".
Displaying the exponent did not have the "+" sign if the exponent was zero. Now we correctly display "E+00".
Strange line drawing.
Printouts and on-screen drawings sometimes lost graph border lines or showed them in strange line width. A hack in the mouse-rect-zoom handling caused this problem and cleaning up the mouse-rect zoom solved related drawing bugs.
Info Panel typo.
There was a typo in the info panel (Spectros"k"opy). Fixed that one.

Development History

Release notes of previous versions are still available: