ChangeLog

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MagicMenu - ChangeLog
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2026-08-15  Jan Zahurancik / AmiKit  (version 3.1)

  * MagicMenuPrefs now fits itself to the screen. On screens smaller
    than 800x600 it drops the built-in banner and puts the pages behind
    scrollbars (thanks to Mikhail's report). If nothing can open, the
    editor tells you why.
  * The installer is now smarter and can handle older installations of
    MagicMenu. It can also quit a running MagicMenu before the new one
    is delivered. MagicMenu takes a QUIT argument from the Shell, which
    is how it does that.
  * The installer speaks English and sixteen other languages. The
    catalogs themselves have been updated too. Thanks to Philipp Lonke
    for testing.

2026-07-22  Jan Zahurancik / AmiKit  (version 3.0)

  * FIXED the transparency bug that had been there since 1999 - the one fix you can SEE:
    switching the titles of a transparent pull-down menu (non-blocking
    mode) left blank patches in the new menu's background, in the exact
    place of the previously open menu. Cause: a closed menu window's
    screen region is repaired by the applications underneath only when
    their tasks get to run, but MagicMenu snapshotted the screen for the
    next menu immediately, baking the unrepaired hole into its
    transparent background. Two changes, both required: every closed
    menu window's pristine under-window bitmap now repairs the snapshot
    of any window opened later in the same menu session, and the menu
    windows switched to SMART_REFRESH so Intuition itself restores their
    obscured regions (retiring the old CopyBackWindow backfill scheme).
  * about 30 crash, hang, leak and correctness fixes: a Forbid() left
    permanently in force, an endless loop in the
    menu item renderer, allocator mismatches, freeing static images into
    the memory pool, teardown ordering that could park foreign tasks on
    dying semaphores, out-of-bounds reads in the remap tables, and more.
  * MagicMenuPrefs rewritten as a MUI application (needs MUI 3.8+),
    with manual-sourced bubble help on every control and a built-in
    banner that a "magicmenuprefs.pic" beside the editor replaces, in any
    format a picture datatype can read. The gtlayout editor it
    replaces is no longer shipped - it could not reach any of the
    settings 3.0 adds, and an editor that silently writes a subset of the
    configuration is worse than none.
  * the transparency/backdrop rendering path got measurably faster
    (tile read once instead of per line, no per-pixel divisions) with
    byte-identical output.
  * the Look & Feel tab was rebuilt around one column of settings per
    menu type: the old three-way "Type" cycle became two enable
    checkmarks heading the columns (both on = position dependent, and a
    disabled type ghosts its column), and the opening delay is a
    per-type slider from Off to 100-1000 ms instead of a single yes/no
    switch. Center, the separator style (renamed Lite/Bold), submenu
    markers, the recessed look, the selection frame and the drop shadows
    down to their distance and intensity are per-type as well - each menu
    can be styled fully independently, and old configurations map over
    unchanged. The
    "Highlight disabled items" switch was dropped: it only lit a disabled
    entry while the pointer crossed it, in the multicolour look alone.
  * transparency and the backdrop became one "Menu background" cycle per
    menu type - Solid Color, Transparent, Image or Transparent Image -
    on a tab of their own. Those four are the only
    outcomes the renderer has ever had; the three booleans that used to
    express them could also express combinations that did nothing, which
    is why "Allow transparency" could not be switched off while a
    backdrop was loaded. The colour controls share that tab rather than
    having one of their own, so the editor is three tabs instead of
    four: Look & Feel, Background & Colors, Keyboard.
  * the separator style no longer depends on the recessed look. Before
    3.0 turning Double borders on silently suppressed the full-width
    separator bar; the two settings are independent now. A 2.x
    configuration that had both set therefore gains a separator bar it
    did not draw before - the only place in 3.0 where an old
    configuration deliberately renders differently.
  * the Look & Feel controls were relabelled in plain language. Old to
    new, for anyone updating a translation or a screenshot:
      Usage:               -> Menu control:
      Look:                -> Menu style:
      Delay:               -> Opening delay:
      Center:              -> Center submenus:
      Separator:           -> Separator bars:
      Double borders:      -> Recessed look:
      Frames around items: -> Selection frame:
      Cast shadows:        -> Drop shadows:
      Mark submenus:       -> Submenu marker:
    and, on what is now the Background & Colors tab,
      Backdrop:            -> Backdrop image file:
    The option names changed with them: Intuition compatible / Sticky mouse
    button / Smart select became Hold and release / Sticky, open on move
    / Sticky, open on click; Indented / Full width became Lite / Bold;
    and the submenu marker now offers Text or Arrow rather than a yes/no
    switch. Every Yes/No cycle also lists Yes first.
  * FIXED a second, rarer face of the transparency bug: the pristine
    repair described above also overwrote the parts of a new box's
    snapshot that a box still on screen occupied, with content from
    before that box was drawn - visible as a wrong patch in the
    undarkened corner of a submenu's shadow, and only when the
    previously closed submenu happened to overlap it. Those areas are
    now taken back from the live screen after the repair.
  * drop shadows are the same size for every box. The original grew
    them with the nesting depth, which contradicts the new distance
    setting - asking for 3 px and getting 3, 5 and 7 px on the strip,
    the menu and its submenu.
  * new: menu drop shadows are configurable - distance (1-10 px) plus
    intensity (1-100%) on truecolor screens, or a dedicated Shadow pen
    on palette screens.
  * preferences UX: Verify/Fix patches and Non-blocking moved into the
    Settings menu, Create icons is controlled purely by the CREATEICONS
    tooltype, and controls that cannot take effect ghost consistently
    (the Menu background and Color for selection rows, the shadow
    settings, color matching precision on truecolor screens).
  * also fixed in this release: a catalog id shift that would have
    mistranslated 67 strings for
    every non-English user with a 2.x catalog installed; the preferences
    window ignoring the screen it was supposed to open on, which also made
    the PUBSCREEN tooltype inert; an opening delay that only applied to
    the first box of a quiet stretch; drop shadows drawn at half the
    configured intensity at distance 1; the blocking-mode renderer
    ignoring the Shadow pen; MMPORT reading past a 2.x peer's struct; a
    green colour component clamped against blue's bound; the whole
    multicolour look being lost when the shadow pen alone could not be
    allocated; and a dozen controls that were greyed out while still in
    use - or editable while having no effect.
  * builds with the vbcc cross-toolchain; version 3.0 across all
    binaries.
  * the AmigaGuide manual is no longer part of the distribution. The
    readme carries what a user needs, and the editor explains itself
    through bubble help on every control.
  * this changelog starts at 3.0. The history up to 2.35 is at
    https://github.com/jens-maus/magicmenu