I am pleased to announce the first Release Candidate version of AXIS (1.2rc1). Compared to the last alpha release, it has several new features and a number of bug fixes. AXIS 1.2rc1 supports emc1, bdi4emc, and emc2, and is available in six different languages. You can download the source code for release from the AXIS website: http://axis.unpy.net/index.cgi/downloads/01141010654 The AXIS developers are eager to receive help with additional translations, as well as updates to existing translations, success stories, or bug reports. Feel free to reply on this list or directly to me, <[email protected]> Jeff Epler Changes since 1.2a2 * The backplot colors have been improved. * AXIS builds properly on bdi4 machines using emc1. * The perspective view is correctly centered, even when a line of code is selected. * The jog distance selector (continuous/0.1/etc) is sized appropriately and works correctly for non-english translations. * The layout of several other buttons is improved for non-english translations. * The Brazilian Portuguese translation is now installed in the correct location. * The version of EMC2 will be displayed in the Help > About screen. * AXIS uses RS274NGC_STARTUP_CODE in the same way as emc. Before this, AXIS and emc could give different results for files that depended on the startup code. * Pressing Alt-V only opens the View menu, instead of opening the menu and changing the selected view. * The Hal Configuration GUI can now be launched from the Edit menu Changes since 1.2a1 * A portuguese translation has been contributed by Daniel Scheeren * In emc2, the backplot is now colored according to the ongoing movement type. Rapid moves are green, straight feeds are red (as before), and arcs are magenta. * AXIS can now be built against an installed version of emc2. This can be autodetected, or forced with the environment variable EMC_RUN_INSTALLED. * AXIS can now skip installing its own version of bwidget, and use the system version. If your operating has an appropriate version of bwidget available, install it and set the environment variable USE_SYSTEM_BWIDGET to a non-empty value * There is now a debian/ directory which builds a version of AXIS to go with Chris Radek's experimental emc2 debian packages for ubuntu * An icon is set for AXIS using the "NET_WM_ICON" protocol. * Support for 'simpleinstall' has been withdrawn. This feature was created to support users of bdi 4.xx. Now that instructions to rebuild the version of emc on bdi4 are on the emc wiki, this is no longer necessary. Note: this does not mean we're not supporting bdi4; it means that a kludge to support it is no longer needed. AXIS 1.2 supports bdi4. Changes since 1.1 * Internationalization: AXIS can now be translated into any language supported by Tk. * All bugfixes in AXIS 1.1.1 and 1.1.2. * Progress bar while loading programs is improved. * The 'Pause' and 'Stop' menu items now work correctly, even when the program being run has lots of very short moves. * When installing AXIS, files are always overwritten (similar to setup.py install --force