Java 5 migration. Fixed Image-viewer heap leak. Added memory-status monitor.

Java Version

This release requires Java 5 update 4 ("1.5.0_04") or better. It won't run under Java 1.4 or below, and there is a major security hole in Java 5 update 3 and below.)

Installing

To install CPC from scratch, follow the instructions inside the distribution zip.

Upgrading

Upgrade to 5.4.0 or better before attempting this upgrade. Then upgrade in the usual way, ie. install "over the top" of the current installation. Follow the installation instructions which come with the distribution.

The modules subfolder of the Checkpoint folder is no longer used. It can safely be deleted if present.

The files classbase.cdb and concurrent.jar, both located in the lib subfolder of the Checkpoint installation, are no longer used. They can safely be deleted after the upgrade has been completed.

The following libraries, all used by the audio player, and all located in the lib subfolder of the Checkpoint installation, have been upgraded. The older versions (version numbers given here) can safely be deleted: jl0.4.jar, jogg-0.0.5.jar, jorbis-0.0.12.jar, mp3spi1.9.1.jar, vorbisspi1.0.jar.

System specification

Minimum supported: Windows98, 200MHz CPU, 64MB RAM, lots of patience. This may be marginal for the audio player.

Recommended: 600MHz CPU, 256MB RAM, Windows2000 or Linux (Kernel 2.4, modern glibc).

Known issues

Unix only: If you're installing in Server configuration, and are only installing CPC, you will need to run browserset (located in /opt/cpoint/bin) as the Checkpoint user, before trying to run CPC as yourself.

CPC text editor (Windows2000 only): CPC's internal viewers prefer to use Alt+Up and Alt+Down (arrow keys) to track through whatever result set they are operating on. (Apart from the Internal HTML Viewer, which plays differently because it's running inside a browser). However, when using the Internal Text Viewer on Windows2000 these key combinations inject junk characters into the text.
Workaround: Use Alt+Space and Alt+Backspace as alternatives. (These also work on the other viewers).

CPC audio player: Some files don't disclose their own duration, and so the length is reported as ??.??. Occasionally you may see the sample size and sample rate reported as -1. There seem to be some WAV variants which have a variable data rate; the player can't handle these. (It's not alone in this.)

CPC image viewer: full-screen mode image display can be somewhat fragile; this appears to be an OS / video-driver interaction with Java itself. If you encounter problems, don't use Alt+Tab (or the equivalent on your OS) to bring up other windows while in full-screen mode. You can also try disabling image preview in CPC. As usual, make sure your video drivers are up to date.

CPC image viewer: Please note that having large images (eg. those from digital cameras) open in multiple copies of the image viewer really chews up memory! Java limits Checkpoint Commander (and / or any other app) to quite a small memory heap size (typically 64M); if this runs out, Checkpoint Commander will stop working properly. To check memory status, use Help|Memory status. For more details, and a tweak for Sun VMs which allows for larger heap sizes, please read the user guide entry for this menu item.

Linux / KDE 3.5 only: Java dialogs occasionally come up in "shade" mode, for no apparaent reason. This can fool you into thinking that CPC has crashed. If this happens, the dialog will come up with only the title bar showing. To fix, right-click on the title bar and uncheck the "shade" option.

Download

Binaries: download from SourceForge.

Sources: See issue 15 for instructions about building from source. Due to the messy organic evolution of our build system, building from source is somewhat awkward.