Release Notes for pyILPER 1.9.0

Note:: pyILPER 1.9.0 has some technical incompatibilities with previous versions. Please read Chapter Incompatibilities carefully to learn how to handle it.

New features

• New requirements to run pyILPER, see the installation instructions.
• Configurable auto(re)connect for serial interfaces.
• Show additional information about serial devices in the tty selection window.
• Thinkjet printer tab now displays page breaks.
• Qt style configurable.
• Added a command-line parameter to use the system default browser to show the pyILPER help.
• Added a command-line parameter to force scaling for high-DPI displays.

Fixes

• Fixed a brief flash of the command window when invoking lifutils programs (Windows).
• Fixed escape sequence processing in terminal emulation.
• Fixed shortcut configuration file name. The production version always used the file of a test version.
• Fixed page break processing in the Thinkjet printer tab.

Incompatibilites

Using command line parameters

Command line parameters are now only accepted if pyILPER is called as a module:

      python -m pyiler [options]

This ensures that command line parameter processing is also supported on Windows.

Serial device name change (macOS)

In previous versions of pyILPER, a device name schema like /dev/tty.XXXXXXXX was used as the serial device name for the PIL-Box. Unfortunately, the auto(re)connect feature does not work for these device names. Therefore, use the device name scheme /dev/cu.XXXXXXXX instead. Just call “change serial device” in the Pyilper configuration. The correct device name will be displayed automatically.

Location of pyILPER configuration files changed (Windows)

It turned out that Python interpreters, which were installed from the Microsoft Store, do not write to the AppData directory in the expected way under certain circumstances. Instead, the access to AppData is silently redirected to a local cache of the installed Python app for "security reasons" (app isolation). This means that the pyILPER configuration parameters are always lost if the interpreter app is replaced by another version.

Since the use of AppData is becoming increasingly obfuscated, the location of the pyILPER configuration files is now:

    %HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%\pyilper_config

The configuration files are copied to the new location if you start pyILPER 1.9.0 for the first time.

You can also copy the pyILPER configuration files from the previous location to the new location with the following command at any time:

     python -m pyilper -mc

Note: You must use the Python interpreter that created the configuration in the cached AppData directory.

Connection parameters changed in the pyILPER configuration

pyILPER Version 1.9 does a migration of the connection parameters in the configuration file. If the migrated configuration files are used with a pyILPER version prior to version 1.9, the connection parameters are reset to defaults.