BowlerStudio: A robotics development platform

Today I announce a major update to BowlerStudio!

With release 2.34.0 I have added across all platforms the "Advanced Editors" suit. This suit consists of a set of applications that provide additional features to BowlerStudio. Some files need a more advanced aditor, or a special editor entirely, but are files that can be used in BowlerStudio.
* Eclipse - An IDE for Groovy scripts that provides debugging

* ArduinoIDE v2 - Compile and upload microcontoroller code

* Inkscape - 2d Vector graphics editor. THe vectors are extruded in BowlerStudio into shapes

* Blender - Provides artistic mesh modeling and advanced mesh repair tools

* FreeCAD - Paraametric Sketch and Extrude style CAD modeler

These tools can be launched as needed, and will be downloaded on-the-fly from a curated list of download links. The download targets are json files in the users directory and can be edited by the user if need be.
Blender files and FreeCAD files are now treated as first class file formats by bowlerstudio. They cna be opened and managed in git, and when "run" they are passed to the editor to generate a CSG object. You can use links to FreeCAD or Blender files in any code and manipulate them like any other mesh generating file.
ModileBases and VItalimins UI now accepts scripts as vitamins. For each base and each link there is a list of vitamins and thier locations withing the frame. Now you can hang any script on a mobileBase frame and jog it around. You can finally design an entire robot without using code for any of it!.

I have finally managed to add support for HiDPI monitors. User just needs to use the menu to select a font size, and all the text in the application and all the Icons will resize to match the new size. The main window will also detect the font size setting to set the initial size of the window. Font size is stored in the applications configuration so it is persistent from opening to opening and across work stations.

As of v2.19.9 BowlerStudio has added 2 brand new subsystems.

First is MuJoCo Physics Engine. Bowlerstudio will now generate MuJoCo xml models from a given robot or from items either free or fixed in the scene. That means that any scene of robots and terrain can be simulated in Physics. Mujoco is an extremely  fast multi contact jointed system modeler.

In addition to physics, a system of Vitamins has been added. Vitamins are models of the void in a printed part into which an off the shelf component must fit. Users can add vitamins to any link or mobilebase. They can use a game controller to fly the part around in 3d to place it withing the given frame.

I added commits and branches to the BowlerStudio menu. You can switch between branches, look at all the commits, and if you select a commit, you create a branch from that commit. Merging and deleting branches all happens in the github PR's still. Now having all the commits availible to view and switch back to is usable by users of BowlerStudio. 

There had been a single bug that caused BowlerStudio to sometimes become unstable and freeze, potentially losing user data. I finally found that bug and eliminated it! With that there are no known bugs that affect user data or cause the application to become unusable. 

As always i aim to make BowlerStudio an excellent tool for designing robots. It has been a long road to get out of Beta testing but I am glad to say it was all worth it. 

I look forward to seeing what people use BowlerStudio for, and look forward to continuing to provide an excellent tool for free and with open source, well into the future. 

Thank you all for your support,  go make cool robots!

I just got my PR merged into github-api to add 2 factor authentication! As soon as its released, i will update BowlerStudio to support 2fa (Finally!)

See the feature add PR here: https://github.com/github-api/github-api/pull/603

I will add it to GithubPasswordManager, then upstream into the kernel and BowlerStudio. I am just waiting for the official release to go out!

I fixed the issue in BowlerStudio when it tries to open and there is no internet, it used to crash and hang, now it loads normally, AND your workspace is loaded so you still have quick access to your local files. This is a long-standing usability bug in network-denied situations. Now the application loads quickly and it easily ignores all the network operations. 

https://github.com/CommonWealthRobotics/BowlerStudio/releases/tag/0.32.7

WooHoo!

I spent the week doing bigfixes on BowlerStudio!

https://github.com/CommonWealthRobotics/BowlerStudio/releases

The big ones fixed:

* Re-docking windows sometimes results in frozen text windows

* Cold-start on windows was buggy

* Slide bars for robot link limits is MUCH improved

* Adding files to empty repos works now

* Git pull, and update repos menu item, now work

* Dropped the OpenCV deps, makes cross platform easier and binaries smaller

New Features:

* A workspace menu, populated with the 15 most recently used Git repos

* Bundled JVM on windows and Macos, no more separate Java dependency!

* Ubuntu 18.04 PPA

I have made a new release 0.22.0 that finally fixes the issues we were having with the binary release of the Mac stand alone. It turns out that when you run the code using gradle, it has already loaded all files into memory, so accessing the files is fast enough to be done in a UI thread, even though this is discouraged. In the Jar form, the timing overran, and Mac UI managed froze the program. I have now made (further) sure that file access takes place in a normal system thread, and UI access is managed by a tiny Platform.runlater code snippet.  This took months to fix because the way Mac breaks is totally opaque to the user and developer. It just hangs, no errors, no exceptions. 

I really hate macs...

Anyway, i also added High DPI screen support by making the font of the text window changeable. Ok, in fairness, all the UI text is still tiny, but the editor is nice and readable.  This will also help with projecting code on a projector for teaching.