Download it here. This is the third alpha release as we head toward 2.0. There are many significant changes in 2.0, so be sure to read up on them.

If you find problems, please file a report so that we can fix them.

The big changes since 2.0a2:

• Several Android fixes to handle recent SDK changes by Google. For anyone using Android, you’ll need to install 2.0a3. The Android page on the Wiki has also been updated.
• Fixed a regression in 2.0a2 that prevented serial from working on OS X.
• Tracked down a problem on OS X 10.7 (Lion) where the mode and open menus on the toolbar disappeared immediately.

The full revisions list with the gory details:

PROCESSING 2.0a3 (REV 0202) – 5 November 2011

Some weekend bug fixing and regression repair for the recent alpha releases.

Also several Android fixes to get things working again with more recent
updates from Google. You’ll need to upgrade to this version of Processing
in order to continue using Android mode.

[ environment ]

+ Fix problem with serial not loading on Mac OS X.

+ Fix problem with popup menus on the toolbar disappearing immediately
when used on Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion).
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=846
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=887

+ Incorrect tab/line shown for preprocessor errors when more than 2 tabs
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=873

+ Commenting via menu or shortcut does not set sketch to “need save”
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=766

+ IDE Export Application button exports applet (fixed in 2.0a2)
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=863

[ core ]

+ Fix for video frames not showing up in 3D.

+ Rounded rect() does not have a maximum length for corner radius
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=813

[ android ]

+ Fix libraries when used with Android. Libraries can also specify
an Android version by including an ‘android’ subfolder.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=766

+ Fix problem with export menu, keys, toolbar being different.

+ Change default package name a bit.

+ Switch to SDK 8 (Android 2.2) as the minimum that we’re supporting.
This allows us to rely on far more consistent OpenGL implementations.

+ Update the project files for Android SDK Tools Revision 15 (now required)
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=876

+ Improve launching with the emulator.

+ Remove ‘includeantruntime’ warning during build.

+ “Date could not be parsed” error.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=864

A pre-release with a million billion bug fixes and tweaks. Download here (in the pre-releases section of your grocer’s freezer), especially if you’re using Android. If this feller works, we’re hoping to do a stable release called Processing 1.5 sometime in the next few days. If you have issues, please report them on Google Code (not in the forum!)

PROCESSING REV 0195 – 10 April 2011

Bug fixes and several Android updates. Working to close in on a proper
Processing 1.5 release.

This release has several changes to renaming sketches, using Save As,
and how untitled sketches are handled. Please help test!

Note that on the Android side, this release once again requires installation
of the Google APIs. See the Android Wiki page for details.

[ general ]

+ Sketch restarts automatically after pressing stop button on PDE
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=561

+ ‘unexpected token void’ for any type of error (due to fallback)
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=551

+ Deal with weird states when closing last editor window on OS X

+ With one sketch open, changing the mode doesn’t close the original editor
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=569

+ Move library examples to the examples menu
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1278
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=181

+ Ctrl-slash not working on Linux (fix from pkalauskas, thanks!)
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=596

+ Update to Java 6u24 for Linux and Windows

+ Export .java source files with applets and applications.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=570

+ Reference broken in 0194.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=572

+ Other reference tweaks

+ Fix exception spew when clicking between editor windows.

+ Don’t reload sketch on “save as”
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=62

+ Smooth text on the status bar on Linux.

+ Clear up some issues with focus handling in the editor.

+ Save As/Rename don’t properly set focus
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=13

+ “No library found” message when using import statements and the code folder
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=568

+ Remove version number from splash image
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=324

+ Subfolders in /libraries folder not supported in 0194,
bring them back for toxi and the toxiclibs folks.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=578

[ core ]

+ Deal with bad screen updates for sketches running < 60 fps in JAVA2D

+ OPENGL2 record only saves one line in a LINES shape (fix from Andres)
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=579

+ normal() command commented out in sphere() method
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=602

+ save() and other pixel operations no longer working with JAVA2D in 0194
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=594

[ android ]

+ point() doesn’t render in A3D
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=592

+ Android stuck at “Starting Build”
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=590

+ Deal with missing android-core.zip (No such file or directory)
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=577

+ Error messages about “No library found for android.*”

+ When returning to android application, sometimes screen stays black
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=237

+ Device Killed or Disconnected Error Message with Libraries
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=565

+ Better error handling when certain SDK components are not installed.

+ Canceling an attempt to find the Android SDK leaves no window open,
or crash when trying to change to Android mode w/ no Android SDK
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=605

Number of Processing users, every four weeks, since 2005:

Long version: this is a tally of the number of unique users who run the Processing environment every four weeks, as measured by the number of machines checking for updates.

Of note:

• In spite of the frequently proclaimed “death of Java” or “death of Java on the desktop,” we’re continuing to grow. This isn’t to say that Java on the desktop is undead, but this frustrating contradiction presents a considerable challenge for us… I’ll write more about that soon.
• There’s a considerable (even comical) dip each January, when people decide that the holidays and drinking with their family is more fun than coding (or maybe that’s only my household). Things also tail off during the summer into August. These two trends are amplified due to the number of academic users, however other data I’ve seen (web traffic, etc) suggests that the rest of the world actually operates on something like the academic calendar as well.

About the data:

• This is a very conservative estimate of the number of Processing users out there. Our software is free — we don’t have a lot to gain by inflating the numbers.
• This covers only unique users — we don’t double count the same person in each 4-week period. Otherwise our numbers would be much higher.
• This is not downloads, which are also significantly higher.
• This is every four weeks, not every month. Unless there are 13 months in a year. Wait, how many months are in a year?
• This only covers people who are using the actual Processing Development Environment — no Eclipse users, etc.
• Use of processing.js or spinoff projects are not included.
• This doesn’t include anyone who has disabled checking for updates.
• This doesn’t include anyone not connected to the net.
• The unique ID is stored in the preferences.txt file, so if a single login is used on a machine, that’s counting multiple people. Conversely, if you have multiple machines, you’ll be counted more than once.
• Showing the data by day, week, or year all show the same overall trend.

This is a pretty lame visualization of the numbers, and I’m not even showing other interesting tidbits like what OS, version, and so on are in use. Maybe we can release the data if we can figure out an appropriate way to do so.

Exciting news! The short story is that there’s a new Processing Plug-in for Eclipse, and you can learn about it here.

The long story is that Chris Lonnen contacted me in the spring about applying for the Google Summer of Code (SoC) program, which I promptly missed the deadline for. But we eventually managed to put him to work anyway, via Fathom (our own SoC army of one, with Chris working from afar in western New York) with the task of working on a new editor that we can use to replace the current Processing Development Environment (the PDE).

After some initial work and scoping things out, we settled on the Eclipse RCP as the platform, with the task of first making a plug-in that works in the Eclipse environment (everything in Eclipse is a plug-in), which could then eventually become its own standalone editor to replace the current PDE.

Things are currently incomplete (again, see the Wiki page for more details), but give it a shot, file bugs (tag with Component-Eclipse when filing), and help lend Chris a hand in developing it further. Or if you have questions, be sure to use the forum. Come to think of it, might be time for a new forum section…

This piece from Niklas Roy made me laugh out loud:

Built with Processing and AVR-GCC.

(Thanks to Golan, who pointed out this link.)

Casey and I are in Chicago this weekend for the Processing+Android conference at UIC, organized by Daniel Sauter. In our excitement over the event, we posted revision 0191 last night (we tried to post from the back of Daniel’s old red Volvo, but Sprint’s network took exception). The release includes several Android-related updates, mostly fixed from Andres Colubri to improve how 3D works. Get the download here:

http://processing.org/download/ (under pre-releases)

Also be sure to keep an eye on the Wiki for Android updates:
http://wiki.processing.org/w/Android

(By the time you read this, there may be newer pre-releases like 0192, or 0193, and so on. Use those instead.)

Release notes for the 0191 update follow. And we’ll be doing a more final release (1.3 or 2.0, depending) once things settle a bit.

Processing Revision 0191 – 30 September 2010

Bug fix release. Contains major fixes to 3D for Android.

[ changes ]

+ Added option to preferences panel to enable/disable smoothing of text inside the editor.

+ Added more anti-aliasing to the Linux interface. Things were downright ugly in places where defaults different from Windows and Mac OS X.

[ bug fixes ]

+ Fix a problem with Linux permissions in the download.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=343

+ Fix ‘redo’ command to follow various OS conventions.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=363
Linux: ctrl-shift-z, macosx cmd-shift-z, windows ctrl-y
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_keyboard_shortcuts
http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/documentation/

+ Remove extraneous console messages on export.

+ When exporting, don’t include a library multiple times.

+ Fixed a problem where no spaces in the size() command caused an error.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=390

[ andres 1, android 0 ]

+ Implemented offscreen operations in A3D when FBO extension is not available
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=300

+ Get OpenGL matrices in A3D when GL_OES_matrix_get extension is not available
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=286

+ Implemented calculateModelviewInverse() in A3D
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=287

+ Automatic clear/noClear() switch in A3D
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=289

+ Fix camera issues in A3D
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=367

+ Major fixes for type to work properly in 3D (fixes KineticType)
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=358

+ Lighting and materials testing in A3D
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=294

+ Generate mipmaps when the GL_OES_generate_mipmaps extension is not available.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=288

+ Finish screen pixels/texture operations in A3D
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=298

+ Fixed a bug in the camera handling. This was a quite urgent issue, since affected pretty much everything. It went unnoticed until now because the math error canceled out with the default camera settings.
http://forum.processing.org/topic/possible-3d-bug

+ Also finished the implementation of the getImpl() method in PImage,  so it initializes the texture of the new image in A3D mode. This makes the CubicVR example to work fine.

[ core ]

+ Fix background(PImage) for OpenGL
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=336

+ Skip null entries with trim(String[])

+ Fix NaN with PVector.angleBetween
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=340

+ Fix missing getFloat() method in XML library

+ Make sure that paths are created with saveStream(). (saveStream() wasn’t working when intermediate directories didn’t exist)

+ Make createWriter() use an 8k buffer by default.

New release available shortly in the pre-releases section of processing.org/download.

More bug fixes, and one new treat for OS X users. Hopefully we’re about set
to call this one 1.2. Please test and report any issues you find.

[ additions ]

+ On Mac OS X, you’re no longer required to have a sketch window open at
all times. This will make the application feel more Mac-like–a little
more elegant and trendy and smug with superiority.

+ Added a warning to the Linux version to tell users that they should be
using the official version of Java from Sun if they’re not.
http://wiki.processing.org/w/Supported_Platforms#Linux
There isn’t a perfect way to detect whether Sun Java is in use,
so please let us know how it works or if you have a better idea.

[ fixes ]

+ “Unexpected token” error when creating classes with recent pre-releases.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=292

+ Prevent horizontal scroll offset from disappearing.
Thanks to Christian Thiemann for the fix.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=280
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=10

+ Fix NullPointerException when making a new sketch on non-English systems.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=283

+ Fixed a problem when using command-line arguments with exported sketches
on Windows. Thanks to davbol for the fix.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=303

+ Added requestFocusInWindow() call to replace Apple’s broken requestFocus(),
which should return the previous behavior of sketches getting focus
immediately when loaded in a web browser.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=279

+ Add getDocumentBase() version of createInput() for Internet Explorer.
Without this, sketches will crash when trying to find files on a web server
that are not in the exported .jar file. This fix is only for IE. Yay IE!

Mixed bag of updates as a follow-on to release 0185.

[ mixed bag ]

Android SDK requirement is now API 7 (Android 2.1), because Google has deprecated API 6 (2.0.1).

More Linux PDF fixes from Matthias Breuer. Thanks!

PDF library matrix not reset between frames. (Fixed in 0185.)
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1227

Updated the URLs opened by the software to reflect the new site layout.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=278

Updated the included examples with recent changes.

Just posted release 0185 of Processing on the download page. It’s a pre-release for what will eventually become 1.2 or 1.5. Please test and file bugs if you find problems. The list revisions are below:

PROCESSING 0185 – 20 June 2010

Primarily a bug fix release. The biggest change are a couple tweaks for problems caused by Apple’s Update 2 for Java on OS X, so this should make Processing usable on Macs again.

[ bug fixes ]

+ Fix for Apple bug that caused an assertion failure when requestFocus() was called in some situations. This was causing the PDE to become unusable for opening sketches, and focus highlighting was no longer happening.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=258
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1564
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1569

+ Fixed two bugs with fonts created with specific charsets.

+ Fix from jdf for PImage(java.awt.Image img) and ARGB images. The method “public PImage(java.awt.Image)” was setting the format to RGB (even if ARGB)

+ Large number of beginShape(POINTS) not rendering correctly on first frame
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1572

+ Fix for PDF library and createFont() on Linux, thanks to Matthias Breuer.
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1566

+ Fix from takachin for a problem with full-width space with Japanese IME.
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1531

+ Reset matrix for the PDF library in-between frames also added begin/endDraw between frames
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1227

[ additions ]

+ Add the changes for “Copy as HTML” to replace the “Copy for Discourse” function, now that we’ve shut down the old YaBB discourse board.
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=271

+ Option to disable re-opening sketches when you start Processing. The default will stay the same, but if you don’t like the feature, alter your preferences.txt file to change:
last.sketch.restore=true
to the following:
last.sketch.restore=false
The issue was originally filed here:
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1501
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=245
However the main problem with this is that due to other errors, the wrong sketches are being opened, sketches are sometimes forgotten, or windows are opened concurrently on top of one another, creating a bad situation:
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=177
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=179
Those bugs are not yet fixed, but will be addressed in future releases.

+ Option to change the default naming of sketches via preferences.txt.
First, you can change the prefix, which defaults to:
editor.untitled.prefix=sketch_
And the suffix is handled using dates. The current default (since 1.0) is:
editor.untitled.suffix=MMMdd
Or if you want to switch back to the old (six digit) style, you could use:
editor.untitled.suffix=yyMMdd
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1091

+ Updated bundled JRE/tools to 6u20 for Windows and Linux

+ Several SVG fixes and additions, including some tweaks from PhiLho. These changes will be documented in a future release once the API changes are complete.

+ Added option to launch a sketch directly w/ linux. Thanks to Larry Kyrala.
http://dev.processing.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=1549

+ Pass actual exceptions from InvocationTargetException in registered methods, which improves how exceptions are reported with libraries.

+ Added loading.gif to the js version of the applet loader. Not sure if this is actually working or not, but it’s there.

[ android ]

+ Added permissions for INTERNET and WRITE_EXTERNAL_STORAGE to the default AndroidManifest.xml file. This will be addressed in greater detail here:
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=275
And with the implementation of code signing here:
http://code.google.com/p/processing/issues/detail?id=222

+ Lots of work happening underneath with regards to Android, more updates soon as things start evening out a bit.

+ Defaulting to a WVGA screen for the default Processing AVD.

Inspired by this post by Kurt Opsahl of the EFF, Matt McKeon of IBM’s Visual Communication Lab created the following visualization depicting the evolution of the default privacy settings on Facebook:

Has a couple nice visual touches that prevent it from looking like YAHSVPOQUFOTI (yet another highly-stylized visualization piece of questionable utility found on the internet). Also cool to see it was built with Processing.js.

Watched Douglas Crockford’s “JavaScript: The Good Parts” talk, based on his book of the same name. I like Crockford’s work on JSON—or rather, the idea of simple file formats that need simple APIs to work with them. More important, with the continued evolution of processing.js, I’m really optimistic about where things are headed with JavaScript. (You might say I’m feeling a bit hopey changey about it.) I’ve had Crockford’s book in my reading pile for a while and finally got around to watching the talk last week.

I was at Netscape (or maybe at Sun?) when they renamed their “LiveScript” language to “JavaScript” (because Java was the it-language at the time) and I’d avoided it for a long time. His talk points out a series of things to avoid from the JavaScript syntax, in fact I think I enjoyed the explanation of the “Bad Parts” a bit more. By clearing out a few things, the whole starts making more sense. But it’s an interesting discussion for people scratching their head about this incredibly pervasive language found in web browsers, and rapidly becoming more exciting as support for Canvas and WebGL evolve.

I’ve just posted revision 0176 of Processing, a pre-release of what will become version 1.1 or maybe 1.5, depending on how long we bake this one before releasing the final. A list of changes can be found here.

You can download the release at android.processing.org, which (as you might guess) is the eventual home of the Android version of Processing. The Android support is very incomplete, as you can see from the warnings on the page.

But ignore for a moment that it says “Android”, the download is hosted there because at the moment, most of my energy is focused on the Android extensions. While the build also includes the incomplete Android tools (just pretend they aren’t there, unless you’re willing to read all the caveats on that page), there are many bug fixes for the regular Java version of Processing in the download too. It’s been a couple months since I’ve done a proper release, so there’s a backlog of fixed bugs and things I’ve been adding.

I’m posting the pre-release because so many things have changed, and I don’t want to do a 1.1 release, followed by an immediate 1.1.1. So please test! Then again, it’s taken me so long to explain the situation that I should have just posted it as 1.1.

And by the time you read this, it’ll probably be release 0177, or 0178, or…

One of the earliest fixtures in the Processing community is toxi (or Karsten Schmidt, if you must) who has been doing wonderful things using the language/environment/core for many years. A couple months ago he posted a beautiful reel of work done by the many users of his toxiclibs library. Just beautiful:

A more complete description can be found on the video page over at Vimeo.

As a continuation of this project, we’ve just finished a second health visualization (also built with Processing) using GE’s data. Like the first round, we started with ~6 million patient records from their “MQIC” database. Using the software, you input gender, age range, height/weight (to calculate BMI), and smoking status. Based on the selections it shows you the number of people in the database that match those settings, and the percentages that have been diagnosed with diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, or have had a stroke:

For people reading the site because they’re interested in visualization (I guess that’s all of you, except for mom, who is just trying to figure out what I’m up to), some inside baseball:

On the interaction side, the main objective here was to make it easy to move around the interface as quickly as possible. The rows are shown in succession so that the interface can teach itself, but we also provide a reset button so that you can return to the starting point. Once the rows are visible, though, it’s easy to move laterally and make changes to the settings (swapping between age ranges, for instance).

One irony of making the data accessible this way is that most users — after looking up their own numbers — will then try as many different possibilities, in a quick hunt for the extremes. How high do the percentages go? If I select bizarre values, what happens at the edges? Normally, you don’t have to spend as much time on these 1% cases, and it would be alright for things to be a little weird when truly odd values are entered (300 lb. people who are 4′ tall, smokers, and age 75 and over). But in this case, a lot more time has to be spent making sure things work. So while most of the time the percentages at the top are in the 5-15% range, I had to write code so that when one category shoots up to 50%, the other bars in the chart scale down in proportion.

Another aspect of the interface is the body mass index calculator. Normally a BMI chart looks something like this, a large two-dimensional plot that would otherwise use up half of the interface. By using a little interaction, we can make a simpler chart that dynamically updates itself based on the current height or weight settings. Also, because the ranges have (mathematically) hard edges, we’re showing that upper and lower bound of the range so that it’s more apparent. Otherwise, a 5′8″ person steps from 164 to 165 lbs to find themselves suddenly overweight. In reality, the boundaries are more fuzzy, which would be taken into account by a doctor. But with the software, we instead have to be clear about the way the logic is working.

(Note that the height and weight are only used to calculate a BMI range — it’s not pulling individuals from the database who are 5′8″ and 160 lbs, it’s pulling people from the “normal” BMI range.)

For the statistically (or at least numerically) inclined, there are also some interesting quirks that can be found, like a situation or two where health risk would be expected to go up, but in fact they go down (I’ll leave you to find them yourself). This is not a bug. We’re not doing any sort of complex math here to evaluate actual risk, the software is just a matching game with individuals in the database. These cases in particular show up when there are only a few thousand individuals, say 2,000 out of the full 6 million records. The number of people in these edge cases is practically a rounding error, which means that we can’t make sound conclusions with them. As armchair doctor-scientist, it’s also interesting to speculate as to what might be happening in such cases, and how other factors may come into play.

Have fun!

John Maeda (Casey and I’s former advisor) has written a very gracious, and very generous article about the origins of the Processing project for Technology Review. An excerpt:

In 2001, when I was a young MIT faculty member overseeing the Media Lab Aesthetics and Computation Group, two students came up with an idea that would become an award-winning piece of software called Processing—which I am often credited with having a hand in conceiving. Processing, a programming language and development environment that makes sophisticated animations and other graphical effects accessible to people with relatively little programming experience, is today one of the few open-source challengers to Flash graphics on the Web. The truth is that I almost stifled the nascent project’s development, because I couldn’t see the need it would fill. Luckily, Ben Fry and Casey Reas absolutely ignored my opinion. And good for them: the teacher, after all, isn’t always right.

To give him more credit (not that he needs it, but maybe because I’m bad with compliments), John’s objection had much to do with the fact that Processing was explicitly an evolutionary, as opposed to revolutionary, step in how coding was done. That’s why it was never the focus of my Masters or Ph.D. work, and instead has nearly always been a side project. And more importantly, for students in his research group, he usually forced us away from whatever came naturally for us. Those of us for whom creating tools was “easy,” he forced us to make less practical things. For those who were comfortable making art, he steered them toward creating tools. In the end, we all learned more that way.