Bricscad (Linux) Beta

Important Note

• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Fixes

• Bricscad crashed on startup with a memory exception (segmentation fault). The crash was caused by incorrect memory alignment during the initialisation of the Lisp engine. Fixed.
• Printing: allow printing to non-standard paper sizes.

Known issues:

• Four toolbar docking areas exist: top, bottom, left, right. A toolbar docked in one area cannot be docked into another area by dragging. For instance, a toolbar with horizontal layout will not switch to vertical layout by dragging it to the left side. The customize dialog can be used to dock the toolbar in another area.
• In the main graphics window of Bricscad (Linux), a mouse arrow is always visible. Indeed, the display of custom mouse pointers in the main graphics window is not yet implemented on Linux. By the design of Bricscad, the lack of a mouse pointer is also a custom mouse pointer. This feature has been deliberately postponed, in favor of more important features.
• When starting Bricscad from terminal, this error message may appear: "Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_drawable_get_depth: assertion `GDK_IS_DRAWABLE (drawable)' failed".
• In the settings dialog, previews are not visible and the layout of the description is incorrect until the settings dialog is resized.
• The COPYCLIP window and the Bricscad Prompt History window appear as a separate application in the application bar.
• Installation issues on 64 bit. It is possible to run Bricscad (Linux) on a 64 bit system. However, the Bricscad (Linux) installers do not automatically add all required 32 bit libraries. Additional manual setup is needed.

Important Notes

• Bricscad for Linux is in beta stage. It is possible to file support requests. Bear in mind that we cannot guarantee a quick response in this early stage.
• Please check our website for updates and inspect the Release notes. During the beta stage of Bricscad for Linux, the Release notes will contain an updated list of known issues.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Fixes

• Fixed display of non-english characters in (some) TTF fonts. TTF fonts can contain multiple character maps. Inappropriate use of the freetype library caused an incorrect character map to be selected.
• SR25409: In the Find and Replace dialog, when trying to find some text, the "find next" button was never activated. Fixed
• SR24584, SR25101: Lisp issue: Particular characters, depending on codepage, were not correctly converted fom UTF-8 to Unicode. Fixed.
• The settings variable "GLSWAPMODE" was introduced to influence the OpenGL update mechanism. In principle each update mechanism should result in a good display. However, in practice the behaviour differs over different OpenGL drivers. When experiencing display problems, consider modifying this variable.
• SR24942: Lisp issue: Implemented (get_diskserialid) function to provide a licensing base for Lisp applications.
• SR25516: The pickbox was not visible if its size was set to 10 or lower. This issue was caused by referring to windows cursor resources, which are absent on linux. Fixed.
• Printing:
  • From now on the layout name will be included in the print job name.
  • The paper size selection has been improved. More drivers and paper sizes should work now. Further improvements are being investigated.

Known issues:

• Four toolbar docking areas exist: top, bottom, left, right. A toolbar docked in one area cannot be docked into another area by dragging. For instance, a toolbar with horizontal layout will not switch to vertical layout by dragging it to the left side. The customize dialog can be used to dock the toolbar in another area.
• In the main graphics window of Bricscad (Linux), a mouse arrow is always visible. Indeed, the display of custom mouse pointers in the main graphics window is not yet implemented on Linux. By the design of Bricscad, the lack of a mouse pointer is also a custom mouse pointer. This feature has been deliberately postponed, in favor of more important features.
• When starting Bricscad from terminal, this error message may appear: "Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_drawable_get_depth: assertion `GDK_IS_DRAWABLE (drawable)' failed".
• In the settings dialog, previews are not visible and the layout of the description is incorrect until the settings dialog is resized.
• The COPYCLIP window and the Bricscad Prompt History window appear as a separate application in the application bar.
• Installation issues on 64 bit. It is possible to run Bricscad (Linux) on a 64 bit system. However, the Bricscad (Linux) installers do not automatically add all required 32 bit libraries. Additional manual setup is needed.

Important Notes

• Bricscad for Linux is in beta stage. It is possible to file support requests. Bear in mind that we cannot guarantee a quick response in this early stage.
• Please check our website for updates and inspect the Release notes. During the beta stage of Bricscad for Linux, the Release notes will contain an updated list of known issues.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Fixes

• Dynamics were not visible on most of the non-black backgrounds. Fixed.
• Printing: Fixed creating of default.pc3 on Linux. As a result, the target Printer/Plotter Configuration "None (uses default)" can be used from now on.
• When changing the background color of the main graphics window, the background is immediately refreshed. Before this fix, a layout switch was required to see the change.
• Printing: Preserve the center of a preview window when changing the zoom level by combobox. If the zoom level is so low that no scrollbars are needed, the page is centered instead.
• Dynamics could cause display artifacts on the screen. Fixed. This issue was caused by incorrect usage of XOR-mode while drawing with opengl.
• SR24319, Lisp issue: fixed a timing problem with OPEN command, that caused startup Lisp and MenuLisp *.mnl files not being properly loaded into each drawing after opening.
• Hatches inside scaled blocks were not drawn scaled. Fixed. This issue was caused by incorrect transformation while drawing with opengl.
• Lisp issue: fixed a problem with loading Lisp files in which multiple codepages are used. Loading the Lisp file failed with message: "; error : malformed list on input at [READ] ...".
• 3D solids were not visible in the drawing. Fixed.
• SELinux issue: The Bricscad (Linux) library libbcadtestrunner.so required relocation in order to be loaded. This is not allowed by SELinux. Fixed by recompiling this library with -fPIC flag to avoid the need for relocation. Before this fix, Bricscad (Linux) failed when SELinux was enabled, displaying the error message "/opt/bricsys/bricscad/v10/libbcadtestrunner.so: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied".

Known issues:

• When starting Bricscad from terminal, this error message may appear: "Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_drawable_get_depth: assertion `GDK_IS_DRAWABLE (drawable)' failed".
• In the settings dialog, previews are not visible and the layout of the description is incorrect until the settings dialog is resized.
• The COPYCLIP window and the Bricscad Prompt History window appear as a separate application in the application bar.
• Non-english characters do not properly display when using ttf fonts. To be further investigated. Shx fonts do not suffer from this issue.
• Installation issues on 64 bit. It is possible to run Bricscad (Linux) on a 64 bit system. However, the Bricscad (Linux) installers do not automatically add all required 32 bit libraries. Additional manual setup is needed.

Important Notes

• Bricscad for Linux is in beta stage. It is possible to file support requests. Bear in mind that we cannot guarantee a quick response in this early stage.
• Please check our website for updates and inspect the Release notes. During the beta stage of Bricscad for Linux, the Release notes will contain an updated list of known issues.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Fixes

• Shx fonts, plot styles and templates have been added to the installers.
• Fixed the display of flyout toolbars. Before this fix, the icons in flyout toolbars were not entirely visible.
• SR24584: Lisp issue: Fixed an encoding problem with (read-line), (read-char), (write-line), (write-char). UTF-8 encoded ANSI files were not correctly read in the character range 0x80-0xFF. This character range should depend on the system code page. The problem occured when the system codepage differed from Bricscad's codepage; that is when the system and Bricscad use different languages.
• SR24316: In some cases the numpad enter key was not processed correctly. In that case, the character "Ų" may appear. This happens for instance, but not exclusively, during the TEXT command. It turned out this issue occured if the main graphics screen was focused. Fixed.
• Fixed: QUIT command: Bricscad (Linux) hanged after clicking the "Cancel" button in the "Save changes" dialog box.
• Various fixes to toolbars:
  • On startup of Bricscad (Linux), floating toolbars were displayed behind the main window. When minimizing the main window, those floating toolbars became visible and unminimizing Bricscad (Linux) was only possible with alt+tab. This issue happened because the toolbars were created before the main window was properly initialized. Fixed by creating the toolbars at a later time.
  • SR24285: The application may crash when a toolbar is undocked/docked. This crash was also avoided by creating the toolbars at a later time.
  • When dragging a toolbar to another position, a "hint window" is shown to preview the new placing. Due to a bug in wxWidgets/gtk, this hint window could cause the user interface to freeze. This issue has been avoided by using a different style for the hint window.
• Fixed transparency issues with icons in the layer combo, customize tree control and drawing explorer. Before this fix the icon backgrounds were grey or black rather than transparent.
• Added display of icons in the gradient name combo and arrowhead combo. These combo boxes are visible on the properties bar, when a gradient or dimension is selected.
• The commands stylesmanager and plottermanager open the default file browser at the plot style path and plot configuration path respectively.
• SR24274: When searching for shx fonts, the font is found only when an exact case-sensitive filename match is found. This is fixed. From now on, files in the search path (shx fonts, images, xref files...) can be found in a case-insensitive way. In case multiple matches exist, an exact case-sensitive match will have preference over a case-insensitive match.
• The license manager has been activated. From now on, the normal 30 days trial policy applies.
• When the scrollbars property (WNDLSCRL) was on, Bricscad (Linux) crashed at startup. The crash has been avoided. Mind that scrollbars are not supported on linux yet.

Known issues:

• 3D solids are not visible in the drawing.
• A new pc3 file cannot be generated yet. As a result, the target Printer/Plotter Configuration "None (uses default)" cannot be used.
• When starting Bricscad from terminal, this error message may appear: "Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_drawable_get_depth: assertion `GDK_IS_DRAWABLE (drawable)' failed".
• In the settings dialog, previews are not visible and the layout of the description is incorrect until the settings dialog is resized.
• When changing the background color of the main graphics window, the background is not refreshed immediately and the foreground color may not be adjusted to differ from the background color.
• The COPYCLIP window and the Bricscad Prompt History window appear as a separate application in the application bar.
• Localization issues. It has been reported several times that non-english characters do not properly display. Until now, preference has been given to creation of non-english installers. We have now implemented the means to create a non-english Bricscad (Linux). From now on we will work on reproducing/fixing the display of non-english characters.
• Installation issues on 64 bit. It is possible to run Bricscad (Linux) on a 64 bit system. However, the Bricscad (Linux) installers do not automatically all required 32 bit libraries. Additional manual setup is needed. We aim to fix and/or document flaws in the installers as soon as possible.
• SELinux compatibility. When trying to run, the message "can not restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied" may appear. The compatibility of our libraries with SELinux has been improved: most of our libraries are now compiled with -fPIC flag to avoid the need for relocation. Full compatibility with SELinux is yet to be tested.

Important Notes

• Bricscad for Linux is in beta stage. It is possible to file support requests. Bear in mind that we cannot guarantee a quick response in this early stage.
• Please check our website for updates and inspect the Release notes. During the beta stage of Bricscad for Linux, the Release notes will contain an updated list of known issues.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Fixes

• Printing: Reduced the size of the generated postscript code when printing images or gradients.
• SR24215: Files with uppercase extension (e.g. '.DWG') were not found and shown in open file dialog on linux. Fixed.
• The Plot Style Editor and User Profile Manager are now available on Linux. They haven been ported from MFC to wxWidgets. The Windows version now also relies on wxWidgets.
• SR24271: Linux, toolbar customization: Fixed loading an external Bitmap file.
• Installer: added launcher to Graphics menu.
• SR24337, Lisp, (read-line): Windows-style line-ending characters were not properly recognised on Linux. This is fixed. Both line-ending types are now supported on both platforms.
• SR24248: Left clicking on an entity that was already gripped, left a cursor artifact behind (multiple cursors visible). This is fixed.
• SR24251, SR24389: User Interace Customization: Fixed the loading of partial cui files. Partial cui files were loaded before, but were inserted at a wrong level.
• SR24400: Displaying the attributes editor dialog, eg by calling EATTEDIT, caused Bricscad (linux) to crash. Fixed.
• Lisp engine: Avoid memory overrun issues with pathnames.
• SR23781: Avoid displaying two cursors on the screen when scrolling using thumb.
• Printing: Improved storage of most recently used printer settings.
• SR24247, Refresh problem when drawing with opengl: In some cases traces of the entire drawing were left on the screen, eg when panning/zooming after selecting a hatch boundary. Fixed.
• Fixed a crash that happened if there was a startup lisp file in the support path on Linux.
• SR24110: A selected template file was not used for command "new". Fixed.
• SR24302, Space Bar Crash: This crash was caused by accessing the command prompt menu after its destruction. Fixed by delaying destruction of the command prompt menu.

Known issues:

• A new pc3 file cannot be generated yet. As a result, the target Printer/Plotter Configuration "None (uses default)" cannot be used.
• When starting Bricscad from terminal, this error message may appear: "Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_drawable_get_depth: assertion `GDK_IS_DRAWABLE (drawable)' failed".
• Fonts are not yet added to the installation.
• Toolbars cannot always be properly moved or docked. The application may crash when a toolbar is undocked/docked. A toolbar may become hidden behind the main application screen.
• The background color of icons is wrong in the layer dropdown and in the drawing explorer: the icon background is grey or black instead of transparent.
• Icons of flyout toolbars are not entirely visible.
• In the settings dialog, previews are not visible and the layout of the description is incorrect until the settings dialog is resized.
• When changing the background color of the main graphics window, the background is not refreshed immediately and the foreground color may not be adjusted to differ from the background color.
• Scrollbars cannot be displayed in the main graphics window yet. When enabling scrollbars, the application can crash.
• In some cases the numpad enter key is not processed correctly. In that case, the character "Ų" may appear. This happens for instance, but not exclusively, during the TEXT command.
• The COPYCLIP window and the Bricscad Prompt History window appear as a separate application in the application bar.

Important Notes

• Bricscad for Linux moved from alpha to beta stage. From now on it is possible to file support requests. Bear in mind that we cannot guarantee a quick response in this early stage.
• Please check our website for updates and inspect the Release notes. During the beta stage of Bricscad for Linux, the Release notes will contain an updated list of known issues.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Fixes

• Printing is now available.
• Improved error handling for OLE objects, which are not supported on linux. An error message will now be displayed instead of silent undefined behavior.
• Improved installer: The target architecture of .deb installer is now set to "all" so it can be run on a 64bit system as well. The executable permission of bricscad and bricscad.sh is corrected in the .tgz download. The argument passing in bricscad.sh has been modified.
• The default application menu was made slightly different on linux: it contains no VBA items, no Tablet items, no OLE items.
• The 'Help' command now opens the online help url in an external browser.
• Enabled splash screen.
• Fixed recent file list.
• Fixed an issue with the toolbar and menu customization menu. This menu should appear when right clicking on a toolbar or on the application menu. However, it appeared when right clicking nearly anywhere.

Known issues:

• A new pc3 file cannot be generated yet. As a result, the target Printer/Plotter Configuration "None (uses default)" cannot be used.
• When starting Bricscad from terminal, this error message may appear: "Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_drawable_get_depth: assertion `GDK_IS_DRAWABLE (drawable)' failed".
• Fonts are not yet added to the installation.
• Toolbars cannot always be properly moved or docked. The application may crash when a toolbar is undocked/docked. A toolbar may become hidden behind the main application screen.
• The background color of icons is wrong in the layer dropdown and in the drawing explorer: the icon background is grey or black instead of transparent.
• Icons of flyout toolbars are not entirely visible.
• In the settings dialog, previews are not visible and the layout of the description is incorrect until the settings dialog is resized.
• When changing the background color of the main graphics window, the background is not refreshed immediately and the foreground color may not be adjusted to differ from the background color.
• Scrollbars cannot be displayed in the main graphics window yet. When enabling scrollbars, the application can crash.
• In some cases the numpad enter key is not processed correctly. In that case, the character "Ų" may appear. This happens for instance, but not exclusively, during the TEXT command.
• The COPYCLIP window and the Bricscad Prompt History window appear as a separate application in the application bar.

Important Notes

• Until the final Beta we will not answer questions nor give support for the versions published. Please DO NOT USE the Support Request pages.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Changes

• Fixed refresh problem with layout tabs.
• Added installers. From now on three file types are available for download: .deb, .rpm, .tgz. The .deb-installer is primarly meant for installation on Ubuntu, the .rpm for installation on Redhat. The .tgz is meant for other Linux systems or for custom installations on Ubuntu or Redhat. Since this is an early version, it is possible that you will need to use the .tgz version on your specific Ubuntu or Redhat system.
• Fixed selection in the refedit dialog: the default selection did not work. Before this fix, it was needed to select something else in the tree to actually select something.
• Preview windows now work. (block preview, linetype preview, textstyle preview, hatch preview, font preview in font combo boxes, etc.)
• The dwg2010 format is now supported. As with most new Bricscad features, this feature is not platform specific and thus works both on Windows and Linux.
• Various fixes to the lisp engine.
• The dcl engine now works.

Important Notes

• Until the final Beta we will not answer questions nor give support for the versions published. Please DO NOT USE the Support Request pages.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Changes

• It's now possible to open dxf and dwt files.
• Fixed position of color pane in the status bar.
• Added spell checking support for Linux.
• Fixes related to opening/closing a document:
  • Fixed a crash on closing all documents.
  • On opening an already opened document, the question "Do you want to revert to the last saved version?" is asked. Fixed "yes" answer. Mind that the "no" answer does not activate the document yet.
  • On closing a changed file, the question "Do you want to save changes to document?" is asked. Fixed answers "yes" and "cancel". Previously "cancel" left ddcad in an unusable state and answering "yes" generated an empty file.
• Fixes to temporary graphics: Temporary graphics were not updated when the CIRCLE command was selected from the menu or when editing a point was initiated from the properties bar. Mind that crosshair cursor flicker is not eliminated yet.
• Various adjustments to improve compatibility of storing/retrieving settings between Windows and Linux, for instance:
  • Fixed some memory leaks.
  • On windows some settings are stored as the default value of a registry key. On linux, there was no equivalent. Fixed.
• Various adjustments to improve compatibility of paths between windows and linux, for instance conversions between slash and backslash in paths.
• Fixed a memory overrun in the lisp engine when calling (load "name.lsp").

Important Notes

• Until the final Beta we will not answer questions nor give support for the versions published. Please DO NOT USE the Support Request pages.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Changes

• Implemented pasting text to the command bar.
• The recent file list is now persistent. Before this fix, the recent file list was always empty when restarting Bricscad.
• Fixed problems with gradient dialog.
• It should now be possible to use Dimensions. Missing *.drx files were added to the alpha zip.
• It's now possible to browse the history of old commands using the UP/DOWN keys when the command bar is active.
• Fixed showing of toolbars in the Drawing Explorer.
• Enabled execution of hardcoded accelerator keys on Linux (DELETE, F1...F12). They are currently only executed when the drawing window has focus.
• Update name of current view when current drawing is saved with another name, and add the new drawing file to recent file list.
• The default location of user files has moved from "installation-directory/Bricsys/" to "~/Bricsys/". In the future, it will be possible to install Bricscad in a read-only system-wide location. Therefore user files should no longer be in the installation folder.
• Fixed initial window size on opening Bricscad. Before this fix, Bricscad was fully drawn only after the first key/mouse input.
• In some cases all radiobuttons in a group remained selected. For instance, this happened in the island option of the hatch dialog. fixed.
• Mtext editor: enable Undo-redo buttons.
• Fixed problems with duplicated crosshair cursor.
• Commandline, passing a filename: When a file name that was specified on the command line was not found, Bricscad did not start. This has changed, now Bricscad will start in such case: a new file will be created at startup.
• General improvements to path resolving and file search routines, ie eliminating incorrect windows-only assumptions. Further work on this overall issue remains.
• Menu customization: Customize > insert keyboard shortcut gave error "Tool not found in MacroGroup?: BRICSCAD.MenuMacroID?"
• Menu customization: Fixed showing of warning dialogs after applying the customizations.
• Commandline options: Implemented command line options -s and -p.

Important Notes

• Until the final Beta we will not answer questions nor give support for the versions published. Please DO NOT USE the Support Request pages.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Changes

• Fixed opening the hatch dialog.
• Implemented commandline options. On linux, commandline options start with a dash "-". On windows a slash "/" is allowed too, but on linux a slash is reserved for specifying a file to open by its full path.
• Fixed showing index colors in the color dialog.
• Improvements in the lisp engine:
  • echo the results of a Lisp command C:XXX to the command line
  • fixed: (vla-xxx) and (vlaxx-xxx) functions returning a VLA object "by reference" could fail, due to an initialisation problem.
• Added support for keyboard shortcuts.
• Fixed adding a group from the group dialog.
• Various fixes in Drawing explorer to prevent crashes.
• Fixed crash in property grid when the 'contents' field of an mtext object is clicked.
• In the status bar, update the OSNAP states when osmode is changed.
• Update the layer combobox when the current drawing is changed.
• Improved speed of dynamics, temporary graphics.
• Layout tabs: clicking on the layout tabs to change the active layout now works. On some systems, display problems remain.
• Fixed the storage of column widths, view type settings in the drawing explorer.
• Improved truetype font support.

Important Notes

• Until the final Beta we will not answer questions nor give support for the versions published. Please DO NOT USE the Support Request pages.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Changes

• The lisp engine now works.
• Added Copy/Paste support for the commands "COPYCLIP", "PASTECLIP", "PASTEORIG".
• Display of truetype fonts has been added.
• Layout tabs are displayed now. Clicking on the layout tabs does not work yet. Use the command "LAYOUT", option "Set" to switch layouts.
• Temporary graphics have become more stable thanks to internal synchronization fixes and fixes of memory leaks.
• Starting the command "DDEDIT" by doublecliking now works.
• Fixed crash on loading a drawing containing Bricscad OLE object.

Important Notes

• Until the final Beta we will not answer questions nor give support for the versions published. Please DO NOT USE the Support Request pages.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Changes

• It is no longer a debug build, so it is a smaller download.
• The 32bit libraries libpth, libxerces, libicuuc, libicudata were added to the zip file. As a result it should be possible to run this version on a 64bit system (at least on my 64 bit system it did run).
• Opening or saving a dwg does not work yet, but drawing entities is now possible through the commandline.
• At startup, close a few dialogs to ignore "this does not work yet" warnings.

Important Notes

• Until the final Beta we will not answer questions nor give support for the versions published. Please DO NOT USE the Support Request pages.
• This is the download location for the latest Bricscad for Linux:
  https://www.bricsys.com/open/common/download.jsp?p=B4L&l=en_US&site=1

Original forum post

Hereby we present you with a download link of the latest debug build AS IS.
About the only thing that does work without crashing is the about dialog.
Opening a dwg fails since we did not manage to correctly set up the main drawing window yet.
The application crashes as soon as anything is drawn on the main drawing window.

Nevertheless, I hope it can convince all of you that we are almost there.
I think it will be obvious for anyone with a little technical experience on Linux.

This channel will contain information about Bricscad (Linux).