History of ToonTalk Enhancements and Bug Fixes - 2000

Here is the list of bugs and enhancements for 2000.  Similar lists for 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006 are available as well.

If you already have ToonTalk and want the latest update then click here.

1/4/00

1. When a picture is erased and another picture is dropped on top, the erased picture loses its parts and gains the parts of the picture on top. (As before it also gets the appearance of the picture on top.)
2. If you copy an inactive picture then copy is also inactive now.
3. The Parts sensor now updates when the picture is flipped back over.
4. Fixed some problems where pictures that got a new appearance by being erased and a new picture dropped on top didn't behave as they should.
5. Fixed an occasional problem where the hat or hair of the programmer wasn't displayed if a picture of the programmer had been added to another picture.
6. It used to be that Pumpy would not change the size of Tooly if 'G' for Good Size was selected.

1/5/00

1. Fixed a problem were if you erased the remote looks for a picture and dropped a picture with pictures on top the geometry of the pictures was wrong.
2. Fixed another geometry problem with replacing the appearance of a picture with another.
3. You can now start and stop a picture by typing space or '.' to the remote control for the looks of the picture.
4. If a picture with pictures on top was saved where some of the parts were inactivated they are now inactive when restored.
5. Sometimes leaving ToonTalk and coming back and then making a user defined sound broke things. (Bug introduced in November.)

1/7/00

1. The "-language" command line option now accepts "PT" as an abbreviation for Portuguese from Portugal.
2. In anticipation of major changes to birds so that they can fly between computers, you now get a nice warning if you try to load in a bird or nest which is network aware (even though no such birds and nests exist yet and won't for a couple of months).

1/8/00

1. The language specific DLLs now specify whether addresses should display as number followed by word or word followed by number.
2. Made changes to how Marty describes things so it works for grammars as different as English and Japanese.

1/9/00

1. Made improvements to how Marty describes pictures.

1/10/00

1. If you change the color of a number (by flipping it over and using the "Which Picture" sensor) then it now saves correctly so that when reloaded it has the right color.
2. Fixed a problem where sometimes pictures when flipped and then flipped back got the wrong size (the size they were when flipped).
3. Made improvements to how Marty is saved if a city is saved while he is visible.
4. If a picture is in a notebook or box, sometimes time was wasted checking if it was involved in any collisions.

1/12/00

1. Demos files were recording which voice Marty spoke with so it could not be overridden by the user.

1/13/00

1. Improved the way objects are saved and restored so they are restored with the identical appearance they had when saved - even if they were animating.
2. The main notebook now remembers better where you place him and uses it as a default next time you sit down.

1/14/00

1. Fixed a problem where sometimes the button on a magic wand wasn't placed right.

1/15/00

1. Cities now save more things like whether the power is off or programmer is hidden.
2. State of the programmer is now saved in cities more accurately.

1/17/00

1. Can now correctly save a city while holding a magic wand.

1/18/00

1. Can now properly save a city where Dusty has erased things. Earlier strange things happened if you ran Dusty in reverse in the restored city.
2. When ToonTalk doesn't have enough time to do everything then some animation cycles are updated only every second or third time. The way this works was improved.
3. More accurate saving and restoring of the appearance of objects (exact position and where in an animation cycle).
4. If you erased something with Dusty, dropped the erased thing in a notebook, and then ran Dusty in reverse ToonTalk sometimes crashed.
5. Fixed a problem where some connections between objects were lost when the city was saved and restored.

1/19/00

1. If robots were running while a city was saved they are now restored so that they continue running where they were when saved.
2. Fixed a problem where the label of a notebook wasn't always displayed.
3. If you took the box that a robot was working on and dropped in a notebook (without grabbing the robot to stop him) ToonTalk sometimes crashed.

1/24/00

1. Fixed a problem with the size of text pads sometimes changing when they shouldn't.

1/25/00

1. Fixed a problem specifying which demo to run where both the user and the system added DMO sometimes.
2. ToonTalk behaves better now if you give a full path name with extension to a sensor like "file to picture" and the file doesn't exist.

1/26/00

1. When displaying Unicode (e.g. Japanese) in a talk balloon it was not centered vertically well.

1/27/00

1. Made further changes to how Marty describes things so it works for grammars as different as English and Japanese.
2. Marty explains during the Puzzle Game how you can get hints from him in more appropriate contexts now.
3. Improved how very long text strings (e.g. URLs) inside of talk balloons are displayed.
4. Unicode text fits much better now inside of talk balloons.

1/28/00

1. Fixed a problem where sometimes the notebook on the back of a picture became invisible.
2. Changing the width or height of a picture using remote controls sometimes also changed the x and y position sensors for the picture. This is because the x and y sensors measure where the center of the picture is from the edge of the screen (or picture it is on top of).  You can add "OldBehaviorWhenChangingSize=1" to the "Switches" section of your toontalk.ini file to get the old behavior. The new behavior has the nice property that it doesn't matter what order you change the size and change the position of a picture.

1/30/00

1. Fixed a problem where connections between saved objects wasn't restored properly occasionally.

1/31/00

1. Fixed a problem where Marty had something important to say but you were outside at the time and then sometimes he didn't beam in to tell you when walk inside a house.
2. Fixed a problem where robots where running, you turned off power, and then dropped the robots in a notebook where it sometimes crashed ToonTalk.

2/1/00

1. If something goes wrong while saving a city a broken city file is no longer left behind. Instead a dialog box informs you of the problem and the old city file is left alone.
2. If you vacuumed up both a picture and its remote looks and spit out the remote looks it behaved strangely.
3. Fixed a problem loading pictures where on the back is a robot with a remote looks of the picture in its thought bubble.
4. If a team of robots was stopped (e.g. by F8) and then part of the team vacuumed away and destroyed then when F8 was pressed again ToonTalk would sometimes crash.
5. A major new feature - time travel - started working (but is still buggy). See www.toontalk.com/English/ttravel.htm for details.

2/2/00

1. ToonTalk had troubles describing things that included a erased force feedback effect.
2. ToonTalk saved remote controls using joysticks incorrectly - these are now loaded in OK anyway.

2/3/00

1. You can now put whole houses on the clipboard. Just type control-c while standing in a house and then type control-v while outside. A copy of the house will be built on the block you are on. Everything is saved - stuff in side and decoration.

2/4/00

1. A new sensor has been added to the 'Sensors' notebook. It shows the language (e.g. "English" or "Swedish") that is currently in effect.

2/6/00

1. If a general text-to-speech engine (not like the built-in one that causes Marty to spell things he can't say) is in effect then it is now passed text without any preprocessing to deal with numbers, hyphens, etc. This assumes the engine can do at least as good a job at this as ToonTalk.
2. Fixed more problems loading in remote controls for joystick buttons.
3. When you save something with user pictures or sounds in it, Marty gives you a warning. Repetitions of this warning for additional pictures or sounds is given a low importance and usually is not spoken but ends up in the user text log file.
4. If the toontalk.ini "Switches" section has the entry "DontOpenInternetConnection=1" then ToonTalk will not even try to make an Internet connection for reading URLs.

2/7/00

1. ToonTalk had a limit to the size of an encoding in a page of a notebook (64K). It now is limited by the general limit to encodings of 2,000,000.
2. Fixed some problems Marty had describing some kinds of remote controls with pictures for values.
3. Sometimes getting up from the ground altered the location of things left on the ground.
4. Fixed problems with pasting houses with the geometry of decorations.

2/8/00

1. The clipboard sensor now ignores rooms, houses, or cities on the clipboard. It only re-creates single objects.
2. Greatly improved the accuracy of the geometric relationship of pictures. This was causing small objects to get smaller (sometimes so small they couldn't be seen) and things on the wall decoration to drift to the left bottom corner.
3. A bad BMP file (one that Windows Paint can't read) sometimes crashed ToonTalk. Now a warning is presented and just that object isn't displayed.

2/9/00

1. The recently introduce "Copy of Me" page of the remote control notebook of a picture has been decommissioned. It had various problems and there is a much better way of having a robot create a copy of a picture it is on the back of. It just erases a new picture and drops the remote control for the looks of a picture on it. A copy of the picture is produced.
2. Some remote controls from the Options notebook overrode the setting of 'Set Options' because of the state they were saved in.
3. Sometimes when you flipped over a picture you'd see robots on top of box. They are now always under the boxes.

2/10

1. If a notebook was added to the main notebook and then taken out and put in another notebook, ToonTalk sometimes got confused.
2. Marty gives an explanation of how to change pictures using '+' less often if you press space while pointing to or holding a picture and there is nothing on the back.
3. You can now put anything on the back of a picture (except for Tooly and his friends).
4. F12 used to put a snapshot on the clipboard. Control-F12 does that now. F12 is now for tossing pictures. If you press F12 while holding a picture it will move off in the direction that it was recently moving. F11 no longer also does any kind of tossing but is exclusively for ignoring what is underneath.

2/11

1. Fixed an occasional problem when saving a picture and its notebook.
2. Sometimes the remote control for the looks of something that has pictures on top of it would display the pictures on top intermittently.
3. Fixed a problem standing up while holding the magic wand and then sitting down again.
4. When you moved to the corner or wall while sitting on the floor in a resolution greater than 640x480 the wall or corner wasn't displayed correctly.
5. If you vacuumed up Tooly and then vacuumed up other objects and spit them out again they began very narrow.

2/12

1. Standing up and sitting while Marty was talking sometimes resulting in a blank talk balloon.
2. The variable width font text pads used in the built-in notebook now do not show the background (they are set to "show some" not "show all").
3. Made further improvements to the accuracy of the geometry with which parts of a picture are saved and restored.
4. There is no longer a delay from when a picture is destroyed (e.g. dropped in a notebook) and its remote controls become inactive.
5. A flipped picture used to match the same picture unflipped. No longer. Two flipped pictures match only if the would match if both were flipped over.
6. Fixed a bug that occurred while quitting ToonTalk with Tooly inside of Dusty.

2/13

1. Marty is able to describe trucks much better. And Marty didn't used to be able to describe trucks or notebooks if they were inside of something else.
2. Many internal errors are now just added to the user's log file rather than spoken by Marty.
3. The parts of a picture inside of a box in a thought bubble are not displayed since they are not considered in the matching process.
4. Pictures inside of things sometimes forgot the "good size" when saved and restored.
5. Dropping Tooly on a robot sometimes crashed ToonTalk.

2/14

1. Birds would sometimes incorrectly fly to their nest when it was in a box in a robot's thought bubble.
2. Nests in thought bubbles once again only match empty nests.
3. Corrupted files or clippings sometimes caused ToonTalk to freeze or crash. Now a nice error message appears and one can continue without the badly encoded objects.
4. Dropping a remote control for the looks of a picture (A) on an erased picture (B) now copies the things on the back of the A and places them on B which becomes a complete copy of A - just the same as if the magic wand copied A. But robots can do this.
5. ToonTalk now handles errors within errors better.

2/15

1. Sometimes you didn't see what a bird was carrying.
2. ToonTalk now treats pictures in boxes given to robots that have remote controls for their looks in use as if it was a remote control itself. So robots won't quit but will wait for some other robot to change the picture via one of the remote controls for the looks.
3. Sometimes if a scale had an ordinary number or text pad on its left and remote control on the right, that a robot would give up even though the value on the right might change tilting the scale so it matches.
4. If you took out a team of robots of 3 or more, removed the first one and then either gave the others a box or put the one you removed on the team so it ends up at the end ToonTalk got confused and sometimes crashed.
5. Robots wasted CPU time sometimes when the power was off.
6. The encoding for objects for the clipboard now uses '-' instead of '/'. (Old clippings still work fine.) This is because many mailers thought that // at the beginning of a line indicated a file added "file:" which broke the encoding.

2/16

1. The "Directories" section of toontalk.ini can now have the entry FileSearchPath. This is a list of paths separated by semicolons. * is used to indicate the current user's name. For example, "FileSearchPath=c:\tmp;c:\temp\;*\sounds;http://www.toontalk.com/Pictures;http://www.toontalk.com/Sounds/;c:\*\puzzles;"
2. Holding down shift while typing control-c puts an encoding of the object on the clipboard as before. But any user media (pictures or sounds) are saved with a reference to just the short file name and not the entire path that created it. This is especially useful for converting an application that uses URLs to references to local files to be found on the FileSearchPath entry.
3. The random number sensor now produces values from 0 to 999 inclusive. 1,000 is no longer produced. This simplifies using it to compute other random numbers. For example, numbers from 0 to 9 by dividing by 100.
4. Sometimes text pads on the back of pictures became blank when there was a tiny remote looks of the picture also on the back.
5. Pumpy no longer changes the size of multiple objects. You need to turn him off and then on again to have him work on another object. This is because too often he changed the size of multiple objects unintentionally.
6. If you dropped a text pad with a full path but no extension of a sensor like "File to Picture" it didn't work.

2/17

1. ToonTalk used FileSearchPath for user files for notebooks and cities. This broke things if the FileSearchPath included URLs.
2. User sounds defined by a URL were being saved referring to the temporary cache file name.
3. If FileSearchPath includes a URL then files found are cached now.

2/18

1. You sometimes saw what a bird was carrying even when the bird was flying from one place to another of the back of the same picture.
2. The Containers sensor didn't update properly if in a box on the back of a picture and that picture was flipped.
3. If you stopped a picture (e.g. by typing '.' to it), then pictures inside of boxes on the back of the picture weren't stopped.
4. Beta 21 released.

2/20

1. Boxes on walls (e.g. inside the rocket in the puzzle game) weren't displaying their contents right.
2. Improved the way text is distributed when a subtitle needs more than one line.

2/22

1. Fixed a problem where pictures were sometimes displayed with the wrong size when erased, replaced by another picture, saved, and then restored.

2/23

1. Fixed a month old problem where sometimes objects got stuck at such a small size that they couldn't be seen.

2/24

1. Sometimes sensors got disconnected from their pictures when saved in a notebook (but not when saved in a city or the clipboard).
2. If an error occurs saving something in a notebook, then ToonTalk gives users a warning and should neither crash nor destroy the item that was being saved.
3. Fixed a problem where Marty gave inappropriate advice if you typed space to a picture of a number or a remote control for the looks of a picture.
4. Implemented a new policy so that if unflipped pictures are on the back of pictures they run only when flipped. Unless they are in a box that a robot is working on - then they are active whether the picture is flipped or not.
5. Fixed a problem dropping pictures on erased pictures where sometimes they ended up flipped and things on the back were lost.

2/26

1. Began to add more useful information to the user's log file as to why robot's stopped. For example, if a robot drops a picture on a number you now get descriptions of the items involved.
2. The number of items that can be saved at one time was increased (the restriction is really on the number of items that are shared - e.g. birds of the same nest or sensors of the same picture - it is now 64K instead of 32K).
3. Fixed a problem sometimes loading cities that were saved while robots were running.

2/27

1. Fixed several memory leaks that caused ToonTalk to slow down and also to crash Windows after running ToonTalk for a long time.
2. Fixed a problem where only the version with debugging code run properly.
3. Fixed a problem where ToonTalk didn't maintain log files unless time travel was enabled. In other words GenerateLogs can be set while SecondsBetweenLogs isn't.
4. ToonTalk Beta 21A released.

3/1

1. If a robot running on the back of a picture loads up a truck with an address (as well as a box and robot team), then a new house is made and the robot will run there. As before with no address the robot will run on the back of the picture.

3/2

1. Sometimes a robot would wait for sensors to change when even if they did it would fail to match. The sensor now must be a cause of the robot failing to match.

3/3

1. Strange things sometimes happened if you vacuumed up Tooly the Toolbox and then set off a bomb.
2. Fixed a problem of vacuuming up Tooly the Toolbox and then sitting down in a new room.
3. Fixed a problem replaying logs of running the puzzle game.
4. Changed the way things work if you use both the -i and -o switches to read an old demo and write a new one.
5. Changed demo logs so that can be created to either include a copy of the current notebook or to start with a new one (which will be different for different language versions of ToonTalk).
6. Fixed a problem preventing you from flipping over the remote looks of a picture and then dropping a flipped picture on the back.
7. Fixed a problem where Marty didn't say the right things when you finished the puzzle game.
8. If somehow Tooly or his friends were saved with very large sizes, it is now fixed.
9. One way that Tooly was sometimes given a crazy size was when you ran free play, then play game, and then free play.
10. Made small improvements to how demo logs are created.

3/6

1. When time travel is enabled the city is saved when you exit. This no longer happens if the exit was due to internal errors.
2. ToonTalk now suggests you try a higher screen resolution if you have a very high frame rate and are running 640x480 or higher. (Previously it only suggested this is if you were running 320x240.)
3. You no longer see a bird fly to a nest on the back of a picture if she is coming from another house.
4. Fixed a bug when a robot blew up a picture you were holding.
5. Fixed a problem with how Marty spoke words with hyphens in them.
6. Fixed a problem adding things to the back of a remote control for the looks of a picture.
7. The remote control for the looks of something sometimes changes size to match the size of the picture it is the remote looks of. This caused them to become very very small when the original picture was on the back of a picture in a box. This behavior now applies only if the size is more than a minimum (5% of screen width and height).
8. Fixed a month old bug in how robots were sometimes loaded.
9. If a picture is part of a picture that is made so small that the picture gets a width or height of zero, it got stuck at that size even when expanded.

3/7

1. ToonTalk now puts up a nice dialog box when given an old demo file to run. (Old demos must be run by older versions of ToonTalk.)
2. If you are using Pumpy to shrink something then he keeps shrinking it even if the end of his hose moves around.
3. If you are using Pumpy to change something to a good size, the center of the object no longer moves.

3/13

1. If a demo is being played with subtitles then Marty will use talk balloons even if subtitles were requested by 'Set Options'.
2. Fixed a problem that prevent new demo log files from being run if the language DLL (e.g. usnt32.dll) was for an older version.
3. Fixed various problems with address remote controls when you changed them manually or turned them on and off. Thanks Miki for reporting this.
4. Fixed a problem with boxes on pictures (currently only in the puzzle game - on the wall of the house or rocket).

3/14

1. Fixed a problem where sometimes the built-in notebooks lost their labels.
2. If Marty beamed in to give some advice or warning then sometimes before leaving he would notice what you are pointing to or holding and start to give advice about that as well.
3. Fixed a recently introduced bug where the user log file gave the wrong puzzle numbers when running Play Game.
4. The high screen resolutions can now run even if you don't have high resolution graphics (an m25 file from a CD-ROM installation). Text will be much sharper and you can shrink objects down and see them better.

3/15

1. Change of policy to what happens when remote controls of a picture are delivered by bird to a nest on the back on another picture. It used to be that the "allegiance" of the remote controls was switched to the new picture (that it is no the back of). This lead to unexpected behavior.
2. Fixed a recent problem with describing pictures either by Marty or for the clipboard.
3. Sometimes loading something containing a user picture whose file is no longer available led to instabilities.
4. If a user picture is missing its file then as before it is replaced with a text pad with the file name on it. This pad was sometimes very large or small.
5. Fixed a problem playing back demos that started in a saved city.

3/16

1. Fixed a problem with demo logs of running the puzzle game.
2. Fix for address remote controls on 3/13 broke keyboard actions on other remotes. They work fine now as well.
3. If you typed 'u' (or the letter for your localized language version) while on the floor and your hand was empty then you stood up (unless the thing under your hand processed the 'u'). This now happens only if nothing is under your hand. Thanks to Ross for bringing this up. (On 3/22 also changed this so 'u' is ignored if you hide your hand.)

3/17

1. Fixed some remaining places where Marty gives the obsolete advice that using space will change the value of a sensor. He now recommends you use '+'.
2. Fixed a memory leak when running narrated demos.
3. Demo logs now recall whether they are using Unicode internally (e.g. for Japanese) and replay appropriately.
4. Demo logs also remember whether they were recorded with an alternate spoken language.
5. Fixed a problem that Marty sometimes had when describing remote controls.
6. Sometimes dropping a picture with robots on the back on to a notebook caused it to have the wrong size when taken from the notebook.
7. If while initializing ToonTalk couldn't find a file then the message box sometimes had only the file name in it. It now always has a message saying that the file couldn't be found.
8. Fixed a problem where when running a demo log it created a file noname.txt rather than <user name>.txt. Where user name is the name used when creating the demo log.

3/18

1. If you give a toss to a picture and drop it on another picture then the apparent speed is preserved. It used to be that the speed depended upon the size of the underlying picture.
2. You can now (once again) toss a picture that is still attached to a magic wand.

3/19

1. If you ask for a screen resolution that is greater than your computer is capable of it, you now get a warning it resets the default to the next smaller size.

3/20

1. StartTT.exe can now show an AVI movie when started. Typically a publisher's logo.
2. Updated 'Set Options' so that higher screen resolutions aren't disabled for non-CD-ROM installations.
3. 'Set Options' now displays your choice of voices for Marty even if only one is available.

3/21

1. Fixed problems creating log files when the ToonTalk speed is set very low.
2. If a robot is dropping something on a hole of a box that is occupied by certain remote controls (e.g. the Containers sensor), then it didn't work right if everything was very small.
3. ToonTalk no longer supports multiple resolution of demos. If a demo requires say 640x480 screen resolution then that is how it will run regardless of the settings (e.g. 'Set Options').
4. Improved the way Marty speaks numbers in Portuguese (both Brazilian and European versions).
5. Fixed a recently introduced problem where robots are still running after flipping a picture over.
6. Sometimes robots on the back of a picture wouldn't run when they should.
7. When a robot running on the back of a picture dropped something it became activated. This is costly and may not be the intended behavior and so is no longer.
8. Fixed a problem where Marty sometimes gave a warning about a robot having a box that doesn't match and no one he can give it to when an earlier robot in the team should suspend waiting for a sensor to change. Thanks to Jakob for reporting this.
9. If you used a sound defined by a user wave file, paused ToonTalk, and then vacuumed up the sound sometimes ToonTalk broke.
10. If a limited text-to-speech engine is used like the default voices for Marty, then text-to-speech sounds now process the text to deal with some of these limitations. Numbers, for example, should be spoken correctly now. If a general text-to-speech engine is involved it is assumed it can handle any text.
11. Sound pads now have a different color. This is so it is easier to see the difference between sounds and numbers. This change requires a new m25 or m22 file.

3/22

1. If you press 'u' (or the localized equivalent) while sitting on the floor with an empty hand and not pointing to something, you'll stand up. This is no longer the case if you have made your hand invisible.

3/23

1. Fixed a problem where upon exit, ToonTalk is trying to put up a dialog box asking if you want to learn how to change the screen resolution and strange things happened.
2. Fixed a problem when running the built-in demos in ToonTalk where it didn't find the narration files on the ToonTalk CD-ROM.
3. Fixed a problem where if ToonTalk is run directly after installation and before ever running 'Set Options' that some option settings were not so good.

3/25

1. ToonTalk now supports file extensions TT. If you double click on one of these (or click on a link to one from a web browser) then the ToonTalk object encoded in the text of the TT file is added to a running ToonTalk (when you are on the floor). If a ToonTalk isn't running one is launched. If no object is encoded by the TT file, then the text object of the contents of the TT file is loaded.

3/26

1. ToonTalk no longer suggests you run at a higher resolution if you are already running at 1024x768 or higher.
2. Fixed a bug introduced a week earlier that caused Marty to reset his user profile so he treated every user as a new user.

3/27

1. Fixed a problem running the Introductory Tour in some language versions where Marty stayed around and confused things during the first robot training.
2. Fixed a month old problem that sometimes caused teams of robots to not load in properly.
3. Encoded objects in TT files (see 3/25 entry) now run when added to the floor unless they were saved turned off.

3/28

1. If a robot on the back of a picture set off a bomb then the picture is destroyed. But for a short period after being destroyed it can be picked up by the "Hit Who?" sensor and trouble followed.
2. If a robot was trained to drop something on a hole and when running if the hole contains a parts or containers sensor then the thing dropped got passed to the box on the sensor. But if that box had more than one hole then it might end up on any of the holes. Now it is always the first hole. (If dropped by hand then the geometry of the drop determines where it ends up.)
3. Sometimes when some sensors were transferred (by robot) to the back of a new picture, then the value wasn't always updated and sometimes showed the value appropriate for the picture it was sensing before.
4. A few sensors like the clipboard sensor misbehaved if erased by Dusty and then the value changed.
5. If a picture is erased and replaced by another picture that had been erased and replaced by another picture, then internally ToonTalk kept a chain of links that wasted time and memory.
6. Fixed a memory leak due to parts and containers sensors.
7. Fixed a somewhat recent problem saving a city while on the floor.
8. Fixed a problem where robots didn't always resume running when F8 was pressed for the second time.
9. Fixed a problem where a picture with robots on the back was erased and another picture dropped on top.
10. Fixed a problem if a picture was destroyed by a robot on the back while inside of a vacuum.
11. Fix problem on 3/26 where Marty treated everyone as a new user only worked if the user name was the same including case. The fix is now case insensitive.

3/29

1. Fixed another problem with pictures being destroyed by robots on the back setting off bombs.
2. If an internal error occurred while generating a comment or description of something placed on the clipboard then it no longer interferes with the save. The text of the description may be incomplete however.
3. Fixed a problem that sometimes occurred while describing a team of robots on the back of a picture.
4. Sometimes robots on the back of pictures would stop working until you dropped the picture.
5. Sometimes if an earlier robot in a team failed to match because of the current value of a sensor and they were running on the back of a picture the team didn't wait for the sensor to change.
6. Put in better error checking if a sound comment was added to something and something was wrong with the sound.

3/30

1. If a robot flipped over the remote looks of a picture it was on the back of, he sometimes stopped working right.
2. Fixed a problem loading robots that were saved while they were running.
3. Released version 2.02 and Beta 22.

4/1

1. Some recent fixes to Marty made it so he didn't give advice unless called by the user.
2. Fixed a recently introduced bug that can cause ToonTalk to crash while quitting.

4/3

1. If the final puzzle file in a sequence contains just the name of an HTML file (.htm or .html) then the puzzle game is terminated and the user's web browser is launched on the file. Good for ending your own puzzle sequence.

4/5

1. Fixed a problem with birds releasing things on the back of pictures.
2. When training a robot to work on a box containing the "containers" sensor of a picture, it used to become a zero-hole box.
3. Fixed a problem training a robot to work on a flipped picture where its parts disappeared during training.
4. Fixed a recently introduced problem where if a box with a picture in it was dropped into the hole of another box, then the size of the picture when taken of the box was set to the size of the box hole.
5. When a member of a robot team flipped over the remote control for the looks of the picture where the robots are working on the back then sometimes the robots got confused.

4/6

1. It is now more robust if a robot destroys a picture it is on the back of.
2. Fixed a problem introduced on 3/28 that incorrectly optimized pictures that have been erased and given a new appearance.
3. If a sensor displays something that is not a picture (like the parts and container sensors) and the item is removed from the sensor it didn't behave as it should.
4. Fixed a minor bug in the processing of the FileSearchPath entry in toontalk.ini.

4/7

1. Made more improvements to how ToonTalk behaves if a robot on the back of a picture destroys the picture.
2. Improved the handling of training a robot to work on a box containing a picture with robots running on the back.
3. When the remote control for the looks of a picture is stopped then the picture is stopped as well.
4. The size of the remote control for the looks of a destroyed picture was improved.
5. Improved the reliability (but not accuracy) of dealing with objects that are smaller than a pixel.
6. If you select multiple files in the Windows can copy them to the clipboard, then ToonTalk got confused.

4/8

1. Implemented (but have yet to decide whether this is a documented fully supported feature) control-i as a way to turn things into infinite stacks - very much like the stacks in Tooly.
2. Made further improvements to how ToonTalk behaves if a robot on the back of a picture destroys the picture.
3. If a picture is moving on top of another picture and is added to a notebook the picture no longer moves while in the notebook.
4. Allow Dusty and the Magic Wand to select subpictures of an infinite stack.
5. If a robot was suspended or turned off it now is activated if necessary if a box is dropped on it.
6. Robots can now be trained to type labels for other robots. Also can be trained to add labels to birds or nests.
7. Sometimes if a running robot was vacuumed up and then the city saved, the robot would start to run inside of Dusty.

4/9

1. Improved the way ToonTalk handles running robots that are destroyed. Sometimes robots would still run after they should have been destroyed.
2. Sometimes Marty caused errors when describing why a robot stopped working.
3. Sometimes if a team of robots is destroyed while running (e.g. on the back of a picture that is destroyed) then some memory leaked.
4. Improved the way ToonTalk handles dropping something back on the stack it came from (or is identical to).

4/10

1. Fixed a problem putting force feedback effects into boxes. (Thanks to Ross for reporting this.)
2. Fixed a problem sometimes loading a joystick sensor. (Thanks to Ross for reporting this.)
3. Sometimes robots on the back of pictures stopped running when you picked up the picture - no longer.
4. Implemented control-g which toggles whether you can grasp something with your hand - Dusty works in either case. Good for gluing things down to the floor.
5. Sometimes a robot running elsewhere ended up on the back of pictures.
6. Improved the internal handling of flipped pictures on the back of other pictures.
7. If you drop something on top of a stack and something else and the stack "rejects" it then only sometimes did the other object get a chance to accept the drop (e.g. go into a hole in a box).
8. Improved the handling of objects whose size is less than a pixel.
9. Fixed a problem with matching force effects with force effects in a robot's thought bubble. (Thanks to Ross for reporting this.)
10. Fixed a similar problem for matching some kinds of sounds.

4/12

1. If something went wrong while loading a city everything loaded prior to the problem is now added to the city.

4/15

1. Fixed a problem with the coordinates of objects saved in a city that are on the ground.
2. Fixed a problem where if you saved a city while sitting on the ground, it didn't load back in properly.
3. Sometimes when ToonTalk put up a dialog box to inform users of a serious problem the box was hidden under other windows.
4. Sometimes quitting after Dusty had erased things caused an error on exit.
5. If an error occurs while starting ToonTalk and you answer the dialog box saying you want to continue you no longer get more such dialog boxes.

4/17

1. When ToonTalk is told what language to use it now only checks the first few letters - e.g. "port" for Portuguese, "eng" for English, and "swe" or "sve" for Swedish.

4/20

1. If any section of a puzzle contained a line longer than 255 characters, ToonTalk got confused. The limit is now 2048. (Thanks to Tiago for reporting this.)
2. When Marty speaks while you are standing in a room, he is now a bit to the left so his talk balloon isn't clipped.
3. If Marty is speaking with a general text-to-speech engine (one that doesn't need to spell unknown words) then the first talk balloon was displayed for much too long.
4. Fixed other problems synchronizing Marty's speech and his talk balloons.
5. If a puzzle sequence ends in an HTML page (see 4/3 changes), then the default directory wasn't provided so it only worked reliably if a full path name was given.
6. When you pick a demo, ToonTalk once again says "OK"

4/21

1. If the language is European Portuguese, then ToonTalk displays avenues with cardinals (e.g. 5) and not ordinals (e.g. Fifth).

4/24

1. ToonTalk no longer suggests you switch to a higher resolution when you have a high frame rate if you already have it set at 1024x768 or higher.
2. For some screen resolutions (e.g. 1024x768) text pads got smaller as you typed more. (Thanks to Tiago for reporting this.)

4/25

1. Sometimes copying what is placed on the clipboard in a TT file on the ClippingDir (specified in your toontalk.ini file), misbehaved.
2. Birds can now fly between computers. Just put a bird on a clipboard and paste it into another machine. This is available in beta 23 and later. It is not ready for any product versions.

4/26

1. Made major changes to how Marty speaks numbers in European Portuguese. (Thanks to Tiago for help here.)
2. Fixed a problem adding pictures to a picture that is more than 1.5 times wider or taller than the screen.

4/27

1. The nest of a long-distance bird can be copied or pasted (so long as it isn't pasted into another machine).
2. When you exit ToonTalk after using long-distance birds, connections are released properly now.
3. If a long-distance bird flies to ToonTalk running on another computer and returns and then that ToonTalk is quit and restarted (and the nest was either saved in the city or pasted back in), then the bird will make a new connection and reach the nest again.

4/28

1. If a long-distance bird is pasted into the same ToonTalk more than once, then each one shares the same connection to the nest.
2. If a long-distance bird is given something and the computer where the nest isn't running ToonTalk, the bird will keep trying to connect.
3. If a long-distance bird is pasted into the same ToonTalk as her nest, then the bird will fly directly to the nest and not fly through the network to the nest.

4/29

1. If a long-distance bird receives lots of messages and can't deliver them just then, then she'll stop when the number of messages to deliver gets to be too many (currently around 50). And robots giving her things will also stop until the messages are delivered (e.g. because ToonTalk with the recipient nest was started).

4/30

1. Fixed a recently introduced memory leak in the implementation of long-distance birds.
2. Made further improvements to how Marty speaks numbers in European Portuguese.

5/1

1. Made further improvements to how Marty speaks numbers in European Portuguese.
2. If the nest of a long-distance bird is restored then you'll see an egg in the nest only if no local birds of this nest exist.
3. Fixed various bugs in long-distance birds.
4. If a computer has more than one IP address - e.g. a modem and local area network - a bird will try both to get to the nest.
5. If a robot was using a tool like the wand while you were out of the room sometimes when you returned the wand was huge.

5/2

1. Made further improvements as to how ToonTalk handles very large things (bigger than the screen).
2. If you flipped over a picture (or number or text pad) and took out its remote control for its looks and flipped the looks over and put the original on its back and then flipped it back over, an error was signaled. It no longer causes and error and also Marty now warns you that strange things may happen (e.g. partial duplication of things on the back). Thanks to Tiago for reporting this.
3. Warnings for loading a networked nest saved with a different IP addresses than the computer currently has now deals properly with multiple IP addresses.
4. Version 2.07 created (for release in Portugal).

5/3

1. If the command line contains -debug_network 1 or the new 'Network' section of toontalk.ini contains LogNetworkEvents=1 then the user log file (<user name>.txt in the Users subdirectory of ToonTalk) contains a detailed log of network connections and messages.
2. If a bird is saved and her nest has been destroyed (e.g. dropped on the notebook) then she saves as if she has no nest.
3. If a bird without a nest is given something it sometimes caused an error.
4. Resources were wasted if a long-distance bird delivered something to a nest that has been destroyed.

5/4

1. Fixed some problems that caused Marty's text balloons and speech to get out of synch.
2. Fixed a problem where sometimes robots on the back of things wouldn't run until it was dropped.
3. If you took a picture (or number or text pad) flipped it over, took out its remote control for its looks, flipped over the remote control and put the picture on the back then ToonTalk got very confused. Thanks to Tiago for reporting this.
4. For the last month, restoring cities or things on the floor of a room sometimes had things stuck to the floor.
5. Fixed another bug introduced a month ago, that made robots saved while running on the floor not work right.

5/5

1. When a ToonTalk with nests that receive things from long-distance birds is exited, it now breaks the connection with the computers with the birds properly.
2. Designed a new format for long-distance birds and their nests that takes up about 1/3 as much space and is easier to upgrade.
3. Fixed a recently introduced problem that caused the text-to-speech system to signal an error while exiting ToonTalk.
4. Fixed a recently introduced problem where NT 4.0 didn't play sound effects. (Probably also applied to Windows 95 running DirectX 3.0.)
5. The implementation of long-distance birds now handles things better if the ToonTalk holding their nest exits.
6. Sometimes a team of robots would stop working (when watched) after one of them finishes when another should begin working.

5/8

1. Fixed a problem with how Portuguese (both the European and Brazilian versions) handle '-' within words.
2. Fixed a recently introduced problem receiving message from long-distance birds that wasted resources.
3. If a nest had a label and something on top of it and was saved then when you pointed to the nest the label was displayed on top of what is on the nest.
4. When talk balloons have a different language than the one that Marty speaks they text and speech got out of synch badly (it still happens somewhat) and sometimes the talk balloons displayed for less than a second.
5. If an imported picture is loaded into a computer without the BMP file and the picture had been saved with things on the back or front then strange things happened.
6. If the last puzzle file in a sequence is just a file name ending with 'htm' or 'html' then ToonTalk exited and displayed the HTML file before Marty was finished speaking. It now exits when you leave the rocket.
7. If you double click on a puzzle file, ToonTalk is launched. Sometimes if you then ran 'Free Play' with the same user name the size and location of Tooly and his friends was wrong (and sometimes very very large).
8. If you paused ToonTalk and while the dialog box was displayed double clicked on a TT file, then you lost the mouse cursor.

5/9

1. If a picture or sound is imported with a full path name (e.g. starting with http://www... or c:\...) and ToonTalk can't find the file, it now searches for files using the 'FileSearchPath' entry in the 'Directories' section of toontalk.ini. It searches those directories for a file with the same short name and extension. Thanks to Miki for suggesting this.

5/10

1. Running robots sometimes didn't save so that when loaded again they would run without being started again by the programmer.
2. Recent improvements to how Marty speaks numbers in European Portuguese now apply to Brazilian Portuguese as well.
3. Fixed a problem if a robot is saved while it is waiting for a truck it sent off to build a house.

5/11

1. If you loaded a networked nest (a nest with long-distance birds) into a ToonTalk and the Internet address is different from when it was saved, you no longer get a dialog box warning - just a warning in your log file.
2. Added error handling for processing incoming network messages so an error only results in a loss of a single message.

5/12

1. If you dropped a text pad that had been flipped over on a notebook to jump to a page with some matching text it didn't work. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
2. If a dropped a text pad that had been flipped over on an empty page of a notebook and then try to jump to that page by dropping a text pad it didn't work. Thanks to Miki and Ross for reporting this.
3. On some puzzles (those were Marty was expecting something that changes over time), Marty would sometimes start to say something and then interrupt himself and switch to saying the next thing.

5/15

1. If you dropped something containing a nest but none of its birds on a stack (in Tooly or a notebook for example), then the nest was converted to a networked nest (which wastes resources if it is only being used locally).
2. Fixed a recently introduced bug saving cities while robots were running.
3. If the remote looks of something was destroyed then the something was stopped. This even happened if the remote looks was from a sensor like "Hit Who?". Thanks to Miki for reporting this. (Bug introduced on 4/7/00.)
4. Improved the way Marty speaks of pictures with things on the front and back.
5. Fixed a bug that occurred when a picture had at least one picture with pictures on the front and the last thing on the back was removed.
6. Fixed a performance bug with drawing objects whose width or height was longer than the screen.
7. ToonTalk now recovers from a DirectX draw error: "DirectX front surface missing".
8. If you clicked on the 'Leave ToonTalk' button holding something a Java applet was generated. Now only if you click on 'Come Back Later'.

5/16

1. If something is glued you can now still type control-g to unglue it (or control-i to toggle whether it is a stack). This is part of what is still an "undocumented feature" (control-i and control-g) good for building neat cities.
2. You can now type control-i or control-g while holding Dusty to toggle glue or stackness of a picture that is a part of a picture.

5/17

1. If a robot uses a wand in "self-copying" mode (S), the wand now copies the robot and any teammates. Great for recursion and mobile processes. When held it still just copies the wand (since you don't want more than one copy of yourself ;-)).
2. Self-copying by the wand, now animates like other copying with the copied item appearing attached to the wand.

5/19

1. Copying a picture with text or number pads that are "showing all" no longer produces copies with the pads as "show some". (The default is still to change to "show some" when added to a picture.)
2. Stacks of sounds now load properly (i.e. as stacks rather than as a single sound pad).

5/22

1. If a bomb goes off on the back of a picture that is inside a box on the back of a picture, then the whole thing isn't destroyed just the picture in the box.
2. Fixed a recent problem where text balloons showed part of a sentence sometimes when sitting down while Marty was talking. And Marty speech also was of parts of sentences.
3. You can now make a notebook blank so that it matches any notebook when in a thought bubble.
4. When a box is dropped on a blank notebook, the notebook is now filled with copies of the elements of each hole of the box.

5/23

1. If Marty is speaking and showing a talk balloon which has a parenthetical remark that is split between 2 bubbles, then Marty sometimes would speak part of a word and then the other part when the balloon switched.
2. If text doesn't fit well in a talk balloon, the code to switch to a smaller font works better now.

5/24

1. Broke long-distance bird (fixed on 5/26).
2. The Portuguese versions of ToonTalk can now speak "à".
3. Control-F8 which releases the mouse didn't work for old versions of DirectX - in particular this broke on NT 4.0.

5/25

1. Fixed a memory leak associated with use pictures (defined by BMP files).

5/26

1. File to Picture (and pasting or dragging files) now accepts GIF, PNG, and JPG as well as BMP files. Note that this works only if Internet Explorer 4 or later has been installed on the computer.
2. If you type to the top of a stack (e.g. in Tooly) then the key is sent to the top element of the stack. Previously it wasn't sent at all.
3. If you press PageUp to have Marty repeat what he just said and he hasn't said anything then an error was signaled.

5/29

1. If robots are on the back of a picture that has been added as decoration to the roof or side of a house or wall of a room, then those robots only run if you the programmer are viewing the pictures they are controlling.

5/30

1. Added to the Directories section of toontalk.ini "URLCacheDir=<directory name>".  If given a value, then when URLs are read they are cached in the specified directory. Used in conjunction with FileSearchPath, you can post media needed by games or other ToonTalk applications on the web and they are copied to a the URLCacheDir as needed. If this isn't set then the system Internet file cache is used. This has the advantage and disadvantage that files are automatically deleted when old and space is needed.
2. Added to the Directories section of toontalk.ini "UserFiles=<directory name>". If given a value, then ToonTalk will look at the specified directory for user-specific files. These include changes to notebooks, saved cities, and the user customizations and profile. You can set this to a directory on a local file server, if children move between machines. Or it can be set to "a:" if the files should be kept on a floppy - making it easier to move between computers (say at home and at school).
3. Sped up the loading of user pictures and sounds into ToonTalk.

5/31

1. Fixed a problem handling bad or missing user picture files.

6/2

1. Improved the handling of URLs for non-existent files.
2. Fixed a problem introduced a few months ago with some puzzles where Tooly appeared.
3. The "File to Picture" sensor when given a file name without an extension only tries to see if the file exists with ".bmp" added. (It no longer tries to add GIF, JPG, or PNG.)

6/3

1. Fixed a problem introduced a few months ago with Marty's talk balloons where sometimes sentences (or even) words were split between balloons. This also caused Marty to speak funny.

6/4

1. Fixed a recently introduced problem in 'Play Game' when you walk back to the rocket and you left while Marty was talking.

6/5

1. Robots on the back of a picture in a box on the back of another picture didn't run when they should.
2. The Brazilian Portuguese version now speaks numbers like "1. 234. 567" much better.
3. Fixed a recently introduced problem where the first thing Marty says when you enter the rocket in 'Play Game' is confused if you didn't skip over the credits or let him finish with the credits.
4. ToonTalk had a bug replaying very short recordings of 'Play Game'. DMO files less than 10K now work fine.
5. Fixed a problem introduced a week ago where robots stopped running on the back of a picture if you put the picture in your pocket. This broke some puzzles near the end of "Play Game".
6. Fixed a problem with replaying recordings of using ToonTalk where Marty was speaking.
7. Occasionally ToonTalk's palette is replaced by one so the colors look wrong. This is automatically fixed in many cases now. If it still occurs, pausing and resuming ToonTalk should fix the problem.

6/6

1. Sometimes pressing PageUp (which makes Marty repeat the last thing he said) when Marty hasn't said anything caused an error.
2. If a box is on the wall (as happens often inside the rocket in 'Play Game'), then the contents of the box became 'See Some' so text was visible but the pad it was on became invisible.
3. Fixed a problem saving while a box is on the wall and the box has a sensor for the remote looks on the back. This is true of some of the later puzzles.

6/7

1. If you load a picture with a transparent color (currently only GIF and PNG files support this), then that color will be invisible when the picture's visibility is set to 'See Some'. Unfortunately, the Microsoft API being used also makes cyan (100% red, 0% green, and 100% blue) invisible as well. If you need cyan and transparency then don't use a transparent color but use black for transparency (and very near black for when you need black). Or use a color near cyan.
2. Some puzzles save the contents on the floor for use in later puzzles. If a bird was on the floor it became a network capable bird. No longer since this is wasteful and can lead to pauses.
3. Sometimes ToonTalk got confused when a robot was putting things on a nest while a bird was as well.
4. If you pressed F7 (to hurry up the animation) while sitting down sometimes an error was triggered.
5. If you dropped a sensor of a picture where the value of the sensor is text or a picture on the back of another picture, then the sensor displayed black though it seems it still worked.

6/8

1. Fixed a recently introduced problem with the Portuguese versions of ToonTalk when "à" occurred in a word.
2. Improved the way Marty spoke the time when written as "3h45" and the like.
3. Occasionally something that was under something else became on top just by standing up and sitting.
4. If ToonTalk needs to put up a dialog box while it is initializing, then sometimes the dialog box was hidden beneath a window.
5. Sometimes after putting up a dialog box while initializing, the color palette was wrong until paused and resumed.

6/9

1. If a bird or nest is copied to the clipboard, the encoding no longer includes lots of general help information. This is so that it is easy to exchange networked birds by pasting into a chat or instant message system.
2. Improved the error handling if ToonTalk can't find necessary files when starting.

6/10

1. Improved the error handling if something goes wrong loading a non-BMP picture file.
2. Beta 23 released.
3. The Brazilian Portuguese version of Marty can now speak ":". (The other language versions still have this problem.)
4. When a text pad was dropped on the "Text to Speech" sensor the text was sent to the speech engine unprocessed. This typically caused problems speaking numbers using the ToonTalk provided voices.

6/12

1. Fixed a problem running robots on the back of pictures that have been trained to change Dusty's button.
2. If a robot erased something and then tried to restore it, it used to only work if the robot was on the floor with you.

6/13

1. The Java applet generator can now handled flipped picture with robots on the back of other pictures.
2. The Java applet generator now handles robot's whose name contains non-alphanumeric characters. E.g. space or new line.
3. The Java applet generator now handles pictures with text on the back that contains non-alphanumeric characters.

6/14

1. Introduced a new entry to the Network section of toontalk.ini. If LongDistanceBirds=0 then no attempt will be made to send or receive messages over the network.
2. Fixed a recently introduced bug where it displayed both the top item and the second to top item of a nest that is on a wall. Comes up in several puzzles.
3. Fixed a problem that broke the Java applet generator when dealing with the remote control for the looks of something.
4. Fixed a problem that broke the Java applet generator when dealing with a picture that has been erased and given a new appearance.
5. Fixed a problem that broke the Java applet generator if 2 or more robots had the same name.
6. Fixed a problem that broke the Java applet generator that sometimes occurred with many robots on the back of a picture.
7. Since saving very large cities can take several seconds the cursor icon now changes to an hour glass while the save is in progress.

6/15

1. Sometimes in puzzles some objects on the floor floated above your hand.
2. Changed the way the Brazilian Portuguese version described the contents of boxes.
3. Fixed the way the Brazilian Portuguese version speaks sentences contain ':' to only speak the colon only if the colon is quoted.
4. Puzzle #63 occasionally rejected a correct seconds timer.
5. The display and speaking of numbers in Brazilian Portuguese now works correctly even if every three numbers are separated by ". ". E.g. 1. 234. 567 is OK now.

6/16

1. Changed the way the Brazilian Portuguese version displays and reads ordinals greater than 13. E.g. the equivalents of "the 14th hole contains ...".
2. If a robot has an attached tool (typically in puzzles) and used the space bar to turn the tool on then sometimes ToonTalk got confused. This broke puzzles 42, 62, and 63 and perhaps more.
3. Reduced the chances that the text in Marty's talk balloon will contain more lines than can fit.
4. Beta 23c released.
5. The Brazilian Portuguese version now specially handles the particle "de" after "precisamos".

6/24

1. Non-beta versions without support for long-distance birds, signaled errors when loading in long-distance birds or nests.

7/10

1. Fixed a recently introduced problem where at the end of a puzzle sequence a dialog box warning of a missing puzzle file was displayed.
2. If you pause ToonTalk while flying the helicopter, and then resume, the sound of engine is resumed. (Not clear when this became broken.)
3. When ToonTalk is paused it now releases access to audio and speech and restores this access when it restarts.

7/11

1. Fixed a problem when Marty tried to describe Tooly the Toolbox.
2. Fixed some problems where Marty's speech and his talk balloons got out of synch when PageDown was pressed.
3. Marty spoke whenever the text included 3 dots - now only if they are quoted. E.g. "...".
4. Fixed a problem that broke the animation of Marty teleporting in.
5. Fixed various problems Marty had describing notebooks that were in other things (e.g. boxes).
6. When Marty describes what keyboard commands are available for a tool - e.g. SRE for Dusty the Vacuum he now displays with commas and spaces. E.g. S, R, E.
7. Fixed a problem where if you saved a city while on the floor or ground and then loaded the city with a different screen resolution, your hand was too small or large for your arm.
8. Made various improvements to what Marty said in the Brazilian Portuguese version.
9. If you vacuumed up Tooly, left Dusty in another house or on the ground, and then sat down elsewhere,  got up again, ToonTalk signaled an error.
10. If a sentence doesn't fit in the talk balloon that Marty is speaking, a better sized font is used instead.

7/12

1. If you finish the puzzle game, you can start over again now with the same user name.
2. If you have solved all the puzzles and collide with Marty, he used to ask you to try again.
3. If Marty has no puzzle hints, he used to display 2 sentences without a space between them.
4. Sometimes ToonTalk signaled an error if Marty was displaying text while you stood up or sat down.

7/13

1. Fixed a bug introduced 6/24 which prevented ToonTalk from loading birds saved by old versions of ToonTalk. This broke puzzle 42 and some later puzzles.
2. The Brazilian Portuguese version now replaces "em o" with "no" and "em a" with "na".

7/14

1. Made small improvement to the placement of text in Marty's talk balloon.

7/15

1. If a robot's name started with a digit, then it didn't translate properly when converted to a Java applet.

7/16

1. If the code behind a foreign bird (that flies to a "DLL" of Windows) wants Marty to say anything it also ends up in the user's log file.
2. If a puzzle sequence ends with the name of an HTML file, then that file is shown if the user quits after solving the previous puzzles
3. If you are holding something in your hand and some other program interrupts ToonTalk, then a Java applet of what was in your hand was generated.

7/19

1. Fixed a problem where if you vacuumed up a sensor and then spit it out it displayed the old value even if the thing it was sensing has changed.
2. Sometimes when something is spit out of Dusty its size and position weren't quite right.

7/21

1. If a generated Java comment referred to a name (of a robot, for example) that was on more than one line, it wouldn't compile correctly while generating a Java applet.
2. Java applets weren't generated correctly when a robot had a non-blank sensor in its thought bubble.
3. Sometimes when there were several flipped pictures on the back of a picture, the Java applet wasn't generated correctly.
4. If copies of the same robot were part of the thing being turned into a Java applet, the applet didn't work right. To fix this the Java code no longer uses the robot's name but an internal ID number. The relationship between the robot's name and ID number is now provided by generated Java comments.

7/22

1. ToonTalk generated incorrect Java code when a sensor showing a picture was erased and in a robot's thought bubble.
2. Fixed a scheduling problem with Java applets when a robot starts running because a bird delivers something.
3. Fixed a problem with Java applets where erased pictured matched everything, including non-pictures.
4. Applets now behave correctly if based upon a robot that uses the keyboard to change pictures (e.g., cycle the picture number).

7/23

1. Fixed a problem generating Java applets when a robot has a sensor in a thought bubble that isn't showing anything (e.g. "Hit Who?" when not colliding).
2. Java applets now preserve the color of the text of a number.
3. Java applets now correctly translate pictures in thought bubbles whose "Picture Number" is other than zero.
4. Fixed another scheduling problem of when robots run in Java applets.

7/26

1. Fixed a problem that sometimes signaled an error while quitting ToonTalk. Seemed to only happen in Windows 2000 when ToonTalk was putting up a dialog box upon exit.
2. Sometimes an incorrect Java applet was generated for robots that used the Magic Wand.
3. Incorrect Java was sometimes produced if a comment was too long (more than 2048 characters long).
4. Java applets now behave correctly when a robot was trained to use the keyboard to change the state of Dusty (between suck, erase, and reverse).

7/28

1. Fixed a problem displaying help while exiting if running on Windows 2000.
2. Text in Marty's thought bubble is displayed better when some styles of numbers (e.g. "2. 000") are encountered.
3. Fixed a problem where text like "1,000,000" was broken after a comma.

7/29

1. Fixed a problem loading things that contain long-distance birds or nests in versions of ToonTalk where that feature is turned off.

7/30

1. Fixed a problem with long-distance birds delivering things that sometimes occurred if one of the computers had multiple IP addresses.

8/7

1. Fixed a problem when Marty tried to describe a nest with long-distance birds.
2. If you placed an untrained robot in a truck with a box and then went to the new house and gave the robot the box, you didn't enter his thought bubble.
3. Sometimes a collision was mistakenly reported for brand new objects.

8/8

1. Sometimes ToonTalk didn't generate the correct Java code when generating an applet containing pictures imported by the user.

8/10

1. The text-to-speech sensor when it first received some text didn't always speak it properly.

8/13

1. Added a new entry to the "Switches" section of toontalk.ini called "ExclusiveMouseOK". If its value is 1, then ToonTalk will take exclusive control of the mouse software. It might make ToonTalk slightly more responsive and it should fix a problem running ToonTalk under emulators like Virtual PC and SoftWindows. Currently not recommended unless running in full-screen mode.

8/14

1. In the Brazilian version of ToonTalk, Marty now speaks the "dot" in URLs like www.toontalk.com.

8/16

1. Fixed the way Marty speaks "soltando-o" and "colocando-o" in the Brazilian version of ToonTalk.

8/17

1. Fixed a problem where sometimes a robot on the back of a picture put something in a hole of a box and ToonTalk signaled an error. (Only occurred in one known case - Poddy in the Playground city).

8/18

1. ToonTalk can now generate a Java applet of a picture imported as a GIF file.

8/20

1. ToonTalk now automatically moves from the opening screen to the titles to a running ToonTalk. The default wait of 10 seconds can be changed by setting "DelayBetweenTitles" in the Switches portion of toontalk.ini.

8/21

1. Improved the way labels on boxes are displayed.
2. The puzzle game now works for birth years greater than 1999. You can return with either 2000 or 100 if you were born in 2000 for puzzle 16.

8/22

1. Notebooks, birds, nest, boxes, and robots can now be labeled with non-ASCII characters including Japanese characters.
2. You can now use a Windows IME to type text to ToonTalk including Japanese (if you either have a Far East version of Windows or have set the default language of Windows 2000 to Japanese).
3. ToonTalk displays multi-line variable width font text pads better.

8/23

1. If you typed control-F8 while in full-screen mode very strange things happened. You now get a windowed version of ToonTalk and the mouse is released so you can, for example, drag pictures or sounds into ToonTalk.
2. When you dragged things into ToonTalk, the objects appear in a box but the label of the box wasn't displayed properly.

8/25

1. If you vacuumed up a box that a robot was working on then the box reappeared when the robot stopped (and the box couldn't be picked up). Thanks to Micke for reporting this.
2. Fixed a problem with inputting single byte characters when the language was Japanese.

8/26

1. While using an IME to input non-ASCII characters like Japanese characters, there is now feedback of the current "candidate" that will be accepted by pressing the 'Enter' key.

8/28

1. Fixed a problem where random numbers from 0 to up to 1000 were generated by Java applets and only up to 999 in ToonTalk.
2. The keyboard sensors now work more generally in Java applets. Arrow keys for example are now handled correctly.
3. You can now use arrow keys instead of the mouse when running Java applets.
4. Fixed bugs in the mouse button sensors in Java applets.
5. Fixed a problem when a full cycle of activity in a Java applet took less than 1 millisecond.

8/29

1. When entering your name after starting ToonTalk, you can now have non-ASCII characters (e.g. Japanese) in your name.
2. Java applets running robots that copy pictures sometimes behaved incorrectly.

8/30

1. Java applets that run robots that take things out of a pictures notebook of remote controls didn't behave right.
2. Implemented the parts and containers sensors for Java applets.

8/31

1. Sensors in Java applets weren't always initialized properly so they had an incorrect value until the thing they were sensing changed.

9/1

1. Restored the white backing on the variable width font text pads found in the built-in notebooks of ToonTalk since they are easier to read against a varied background and seem more "object-like".

9/3

1. Demos made since 8/20 didn't work if the the system automatically moved between title screens.
2. Sometimes multi-lined variable width text pads were displayed with an incorrect distance between the lines.
3. The feedback provided when using an IME (Input Method Editor) didn't look good if the language was other than Japanese.

9/7

1. Keyboard events to turn on and off a picture weren't processed if the picture was erased. Thanks to Sarah Nathan for providing an example of this.
2. Fixed a problem where a robot running on the back of a picture that flips over a different picture occasionally crashed.
3. Since 2/27 when a robot was given a box, ToonTalk first ensured that all pictures in that box were turned on. This was costly and not always desired so it no longer happens.
4. Sometimes when a picture with robots on the back was copied that the behaviors were turned off. (So some games like the new Playground adventure game didn't work after a scene change until the space bar was pressed.)  Thanks to Jakob Tholander for providing an example of this.
5. Fixed a problem that sometimes prevented Marty from giving a warning that too many things were being displayed at once and some won't be seen (but are still there).
6. If too many things are on the screen at once, ToonTalk will now always show Marty and his talk balloon.
7. Fixed a problem after putting up a dialog box during initialization.

9/8

1. Made further improvements to how labels on boxes are displayed.
2. If while generating a Java applet reference is made to a file name which contains a back slash (\), the applet would not compile. It is now converted to a double back slash (\\).
3. Made the speed of doing collision testing a bit faster.
4. The "Hit Who?" sensor (now called the "Touching Who?" sensor) no longer ignores what the programmer is holding in his or her hand.
5. When you dropped a picture or other item that looks like text on a blank text pad the blank pad is now converted the the text equivalent of what was dropped on top.
6. Removed spurious warnings of file not found when generating a Java applet containing user defined pictures.

9/17

1. If you clicked on 'See Demos' and then left the window with the demo choices open and then clicked on a TT, CTY, USR, or PZL file, nothing happened.
2. Dropping a picture on a notebook to jump to a page with that picture on it was broken for many months.
3. You can now drop a picture from a file on a notebook to jump to the matching page. Previously only built-in ToonTalk pictures worked.

9/18

1. Fixed a bug that signaled an error sometimes when an element become very small (less than 1/10 of a pixel). Thanks to Jakob for providing an example.

9/20

1. Renamed the "hit who?" sensor to "touching who?" to avoid confusion about the symmetry of this sensor. If A is touching B then B is also touching A. The phrase "hit who" confused children who didn't think, for example, that the milk cartoon could be hitting a cat while they were fine with a cat hitting a milk cartoon.

9/21

1. A temporarily user can now add things to all notebooks except the main one (that lives inside of Tooly).

9/22

1. You can now train a robot to add pages to a notebook (except for the main notebook).
2. Demo files didn't record the state of the shift and control keys and therefore didn't run properly if a sensor for the shift or control key was used in the demo.
3. Demo files can now be created that record input from the IME (Input Method Editor) including two byte characters, e.g. Japanese characters.
4. Fixed a problem in recording demos that was introduced on June 14.
5. If control-F8 was pressed (the key for releasing or capturing the mouse) while recording a demo, it didn't replay correctly.

9/26

1. If you used the keyboard to change an address (street or avenue), then the address was changed but sometimes continued to display the old value.
2. If you type a page number to a notebook that is larger than the number of pages, then as before it goes to the last page. But it is now the case that if you then type a new page number it will respond.
3. Sometimes errors followed if ToonTalk put up a dialog box before it was finished initializing.

9/27

1. If network capable nest is in a notebook (or is on the back of a picture in a notebook), then when the notebook is opened to the page where the nest is, it became prepared to receive messages from long-distance birds. This shouldn't happen and was wasteful.
2. Improved the performance of loading and saving large cities.
3. While a large city is loading you now should always see the hour glass cursor.

9/28

1. If you erase a notebook and copy it the new notebook is now also erased.
2. Fixed a problem where spurious comments were generated in the Java code for an applet.

9/29

1. Fixed a problem when a robot on the back of a picture, erases a number and drops a box on it. Thanks to Micke Kindborg for providing an example of this.

10/2

1. Fixed a problem when a robot on the back of a picture, erases a text or sound pad and drops something on it. (Broke the Bambi game.)

10/3

1. Improved the handling of very large images (several times bigger than the screen).
2. Fixed a problem about spurious warnings in the log file about removing something from a background that couldn't find it.
3. Small flipped pictures are now displayed much faster than before.
4. Deal better now with very tiny objects (smaller than a pixel) that have parts (e.g. picture on a picture). But there are still some problems where ToonTalk loses track of the relative size of these tiny objects.

10/5

1. Fixed the way ToonTalk generates Java when a robot copies something and drops the result on something.
2. Fixed the way ToonTalk generates Java when a robot uses Dusty to erase something.
3. A text pad that has been flipped and flipped back no longer flips again if you type 'f' to it. You need to use shift-mouse click (or right mouse if 'Set Options' have been set accordingly).
4. Sometimes a robot would get stuck that was trained to type something to a picture that has been erased and given a new appearance. Or is typing to a remote control for the looks of another picture.
5. Improved the way generated Java applets work when a picture is erased and another picture is dropped on top.
6. Improved the way generated Java applets work when a robot changes the button on Dusty and then uses him.

10/6

1. A minimum width and height now applies to all objects in ToonTalk. It is 1 pixel by 1 pixel when running at 640x480. And 2 by 2 at 1280x960. This should prevent problems where objects were nested several levels and when taken apart ToonTalk had lost track of their relative sizes.
2. Occasionally Marty got confused and stayed around after saying good bye.
3. And occasionally Marty got confused and left just after you called for him
4. And occasionally Marty would forget to say anything when called.
5. Some sensors couldn't be turned on and off by typing space and stop ('.'). All sensors can be turned off now.
6. Sometimes sensors were active and displayed the right value but didn't display an animated marquee to indicate that it is active.
7. Improved the behavior of the language sensor that displays ToonTalk's current language setting.
8. Dropping a non-box on an erased notebook is still ignored but now a warning is put the user's log file.
9. Improved the warnings Marty gives if a picture file can't be found.
10. Fixed a problem that signaled an error when something was dropped on an erased sensor that had no value (would have been showing black if it wasn't erased).
11. The sensors for the middle and right mouse buttons now tell the truth independent of how the mouse keyboard acceleration option was set in 'Set Options'.

10/9

1. Fixed a problem where a robot has been trained to vacuum something off a sensor and when run he gets mixed up about where to vacuum. Thanks to Ross for reporting this.
2. Loading pictures or sounds from URLs caused ToonTalk to offer to display your log when you exited.
3. Marty only gives one warning about sending pictures or sounds when a user picture or sound is saved. The user's log lists all the files.

10/10

1. Fixed a problem displaying multi-byte characters (e.g. Kanji) in subtitles. Sometimes several lines were displayed at once.
2. Sounds loaded from files were saved in a way that only worked if the file was on the FileSearchPath in toontalk.ini.
3. ToonTalk can now use shortcuts to files in the same way it uses the files. These can be local shortcuts ("lnk" extensions) or Internet shortcuts ("url" extensions). Shortcuts are typically created in the Windows user interface.

10/11

1. Marty now warns you about errors loading files at the most 3 times. Subsequent warnings end up in the user's log file.
2. If you created a stack of pictures with things on the back and then pressed space while pointing to the stack, then the picture on top of the stack wouldn't always run correctly (or respond to tools like Dusty or Maggie).
3. Sometimes when exiting ToonTalk in full screen mode and a dialog box needs to be displayed, ToonTalk was paused with the indication that it was interrupted by another program. The dialog box now just appears.

10/12

1. Fixed a bug (introduced in April) that caused a robot being watched to hold on to a bomb he sets off. This meant the house wasn't always destroyed and that the robot if spit out of Dusty would sometimes cause errors.
2. The sensor that displays the language version of ToonTalk (e.g. English or Swedish) if saved turned off didn't turn back on properly.
3. If a flipped picture is turned on (via the space bar), then any pictures which are face up on the back of that picture is activated. Even if those pictures are inside of boxes or other objects.
4. Blowing up a sound object no longer stops the sound. (Since otherwise an explosion sound would be cut off when the picture it was on the back of was destroyed.)
5. Made improvements to ToonTalk's handling of file links (shortcuts).
6. Double byte characters (e.g. Kanji) in Marty's thought bubble sometimes required one more line than there was room for in the balloon.

10/13

1. Bammer now always smashes two things into one. Previously if the bottom thing was blank then the thing dropped was coerced to the type of the blank thing but both objects remained. For backwards compatibility, old robots and demos continue to work the old way.
2. Fixed several bugs in the Java applet generator especially when a robot has been trained to use the magic wand. The applet generator is more robust as a consequence of the above change since whether an object is destroyed by Bammer no longer depends upon run-time properties.

10/15

1. Made further improvements to ToonTalk's handling of objects that are smaller than a pixel.
2. Made improvements to ToonTalk's handling of file links (shortcuts).

10/16

1. Fixed a problem when Marty describes a robot in a box in a thought bubble. Was also a problem when generating comments when placed on the clipboard.
2. Robots running on the back of a picture now deal better with the geometry of tiny pictures.

10/17

1. Sometimes after the second robot in a team ran he would move back and forth when the team was waiting for a sensor to change or a bird to arrive.
2. Fixed errors when Marty is describing something very long (over 10,000 characters) or the description is added to the clipboard as a comment. The description now ends with something like "I've said enough."
3. Made more progress saving and restoring with very tiny (sub pixel) objects.
4. Fixed problems copying very small objects such that their relative geometry was preserved.
5. Fixed a problem that occurred sometimes when a robot was removed from a team and added to another.

10/18

1. Sensors that can have non-rectangular pictures on them (e.g. "touching who?", "clipboard", "file to picture") didn't display in a consistent manner. They now always show the background as something that changes from white to gray to black and back again. This is to emphasize their sensor nature, somewhat like how number and text valued sensors show an animated marquee.
2. If you called for your notebook via F4 and then picked it up and dropped it, it flew off to its previous location. This was confusing.
3. If a demo was made that involved a notebook that contained a sensor for random numbers, then it didn't always replay correctly.
4. Fixed a recently introduced problem where if something was dropped on some stacks the top item became very large.
5. Sometimes a robot that vacuumed up his box caused spurious warnings to appear in the log file.
6. Typing the arrow keys while a demo was running changed the value of the keyboard sensors and sometimes broke the demo.
7. Typing arrow keys while recording a demo weren't recorded properly which made keyboard sensors misbehave.
8. Fixed a problem where using the notebook of remote controls of a picture after having previously flipped the picture and erased it and replaced it with a new appearance.
9. Released Beta 24.

10/19

1. The sensors "Touching Who?", "Parts", and "Containers" now respond only to space and '.' from the keyboard to turn them on and off.
2. The new animated background for some sensors now only animates when they are active.
3. Improved the appearance of the animated background of some sensors.
4. Fixed a file in Beta 24 that caused the manual to be displayed after solving 17 puzzles in Play Game.

10/23

1. Occasionally robots that were supposed to be running elsewhere appeared on the back of pictures or numbers. In particular this broke puzzle #62 if puzzle 46 has been solved in the same session.
2. Sometimes robots from previous puzzles kept running unnecessarily.
3. Fixed a problem caused by something being destroyed (by robots setting off a bomb on the back) while still held in your hand.
4. If a puzzle sequence ends with a file containing the name of an HTML file, then ToonTalk as before ends the puzzle sequence and shows you the HTML file but it no longer offers to show you hints as well.
5. Fixed a problem that caused the log file to contain spurious warnings about something already being part of a background.

10/24

1. If a picture is erased and a picture is dropped on it and then another picture is erased and the first picture is dropped on it, then chains formed internally that slowed things down and wasted memory.
2. Fixed a rare problem starting ToonTalk in a city that was saved when the programmer wasn't on the floor.
3. Fixed a couple memory leaks.

10/25

1. Fixed several more memory leaks.
2. If you drop a picture on a notebook, it now jumps to a matching page only if the picture you dropped has nothing on top or on the back. And it can't be flipped over either.
3. Fixed a recent bug that caused some roof or house decoration to become very big.
4. Improved the speed of loading pictures defined by user files.

10/26

1. Fixed even more memory leaks.
2. Improved the time taken to check if something is equal when dropped on a stack if sensors are part of the object.
3. Improved the performance when robots flip over the remote looks of a picture.
4. If a robot creates more things than he did while training you now get a nice warning rather than an error.

10/27

1. Even more memory leaks found and fixed.
2. Fixed a problem replaying demos at a resolution greater than 640x480.
3. Fixed a problem sometimes saving robots that in a robot's thought bubble.
4. Fixed a problem when a robot flips over more than one picture and uses the notebook of remote controls.

10/30

1. When a robot on the floor is given a box and he fails to match due to the current value of sensors, then he now will run as soon as the sensor changes. Previously the robot might not notice the change for a while (or never if the change lasts a very short time).
2. The animation of robots on the floor waiting for sensors to change was improved.
3. Sometimes if a notebook is shared by many robots (e.g. the notebook of remote controls of the picture that the robots are on the back of), the robots got mixed up and took the wrong thing from the notebook.
4. Fixed another memory leak.

10/31

1. Sometimes if ToonTalk was customized so that Marty didn't use talk balloons (just spoke or displayed subtitles), then Marty would sometimes appear and not say anything.
2. Fixed problems in creating demos when some of the geometry sensors were involved on the back of pictures.
3. Fixed even more memory leaks.
4. Fixed a recent problem with the notebook of sensors that happened sometimes when the picture they are sensing was destroyed.
5. Fixed several problems be turning off the experimental feature added on 24/2 that pictures on the back of pictures run when the picture is flipped. You need to type space to turn them on now. This was also causing many spurious warnings from Marty.
6. Sometimes when you flipped over a picture that was saved as flipped over on the back of another picture, then it became very big. Sometimes when you removed it from the back of the other and sometimes if you flipped it over.

11/1

1. Fixed a problem double clicking on a PZL file when the SpokenLanguage feature is enabled (that permits ToonTalk to display text in one language and speak another).
2. Fixed various problems displaying very large boxes (with hundreds or thousands of holes).
3. Speed up the display of boxes that are partly off screen.
4. Fixed the Java applet generator when a robot has been trained to type space to the magic wand.
5. The puzzle game has recently been making a noise if you use the arrow keys.
6. Tooly and his friends now always go to standard locations when training a robot.
7. Beta 24b released.

11/2

1. Improved the generation of a Java applet when a robot was trained to press space to use the magic wand.
2. Fixed a problem generating Java applets sometimes when a flipped picture is on the back of another picture.
3. When a picture with robots on the back that have been turned off is dropped on another picture, the robots are turned on if the underlying picture is on. (Used to be they were turned on regardless.)
4. Improved the way a robot remembers space being pressed while holding a wand. It is now remembered the same as if the right button (if enabled) was used to turn it on. This new way is a little faster and produces clearer descriptions from Marty.
5. Improved the way generated Java applets work when a picture has a picture on top that has a robot on the back that sets off a bomb.
6. Improved the way generated Java applets work when a picture is destroyed.

11/3

1. Fixed a problem introduced on 10/23 that caused errors when robots were retrained.
2. Warnings about missing files now include the file extension.
3. When generating a Java applet of a ToonTalk creation that includes either user pictures or sounds, ToonTalk now looks at the same places (FileSearchPath) for the corresponding GIF or AU files that Java needs.
4. Improved the way generated Java applets work when a robot matches a synthetic picture (e.g. rectangle or oval) with another kind of picture.

11/4

1. Improved how Java applets are generated when the remote control for the looks of a picture in encountered.
2. Improved the way generated Java applets work when remote controls are turned on or off with space and '.'.
3. Improved the way generated Java applets work when a robot on the back of the remote looks for a picture sets of a bomb.
4. Improved the way generated Java applets work when a robot tries to match a picture with a sensor that displays pictures.

11/5

1. Fixed a problem with the size of pictures in boxes on the back of pictures when removed.
2. Demo files weren't recorded properly when the mouse speed sensors were used and the arrow keys were used.
3. Demo files weren't recorded properly when a city containing remote controls for the random number sensor was loaded.

11/6

1. Fixed a problem generating Java applets when the nest of a bird had been copied.
2. Dropping a picture that had been turned off into a box sometimes turned it on.
3. Fixed a problem where ToonTalk appeared to freeze if you trained a robot after vacuuming up Tooly. (Thanks to Pierre-André Dreyfuss for reporting this.)
4. Time was wasted moving robots on the back of pictures that couldn't be seen.

11/7

1. Patch a leak that occasionally happened as robots ran (only observed during playing the puzzle game).
2. Fixed other memory leaks.
3. Fixed a problem when starting on a puzzle (e.g. by double clicking on the puzzle file) that required you to jump back to an earlier puzzle.
4. At the end of a demo that solves puzzles, you no longer get a dialog box asking if you want to read hints.

11/8

1. Fixed a problem that occurred when a nest with more than one item on top was copied.
2. When running ToonTalk with a spoken language different from the text that is displayed, some text and speech was sometimes lost.

11/9

1. Marty would give a warning about a number becoming to small or large when an inactive sensor or a blank number was involved.
2. Sensors now no longer function when the picture they are sensing is on the back of another picture. They also don't match anything other than erased things of the same type. Scales next to such sensors now totter.
3. Copies of pictures with robots running on the back, sometimes the robots starting running before the process of copying was complete (and hence some sensors like position and parts weren't always correct). The copies now start running on the next cycle. Robots on the back of a picture that is being dropped on an erased picture now also wait a cycle before running. As do robots on the back of a picture when the picture is flipped back over.
4. Pictures with robots running on the back that are on a flipped picture that is in a box (or anything other than the back of another picture) no longer are activated when the containing picture is activated.

11/10

1. When a remote control for the looks of a picture is flipped over, a copy of the things on the back of the original picture are placed on the back of the remote control. The overhead of doing the copy can be very high when the pictures are complex. So now when a robot on the back of a picture flips over the remote control for the looks of another picture the overhead of copying is avoided. (This makes scene changing in the Playground adventure game much faster as well as shooting in the Space Behaviors game.)

11/11

1. If a warning is produced before the titles are shown (e.g. a missing BMP or WAV file while loading a city), then Marty would appear and say nothing.
2. If a stack of pictures had a robot on the back that was using the "selected" sensor, then the sensor would take an extra cycle to work properly. (This caused the Playground "speak my looks" gadgets to require 2 spaces to work.)
3. When a bird and nest on the back of different pictures where both pictures are back of another picture which is being copied then the bird thought that her nest was being copied and would deliver messages to both nests.

11/13

1. Fixed a problem when Marty tried to describe a force feedback effect when effects haven't been loaded.
2. Fixed a problem typing 4 characters - '(' being one of them. Introduced when arrow key handling was improved fairly recently. (Thanks to Pierre-André Dreyfuss for reporting this.)
3. Some robots that were "lost" were still running and wasting resources.
4. Occasionally ToonTalk broke when standing up while Marty was talking.

11/14

1. While foreign birds (defined by a user-supplied DLL) can't work when transformed to a Java applet, an error is no longer caused and a warning is produced.
2. Fixed a  problem if a robot was waiting for a bird to deliver something to a nest that is in a box on another nest.
3. Fixed a problem with Java applets generated for robots that found things in the main notebook.
4. Fixed a problem with Java applets for robots that drop things on erased things.
5. Improved the way Java applets are generated for robots that use Dusty the vacuum.
6. When a city is saved robots that are "lost" are no longer saved.
7. Java applets now work even if non-English sensors are used.
8. Improved the way robots work that have a nest next to a scale in the box they are working on.
9. Java applet source code now always includes a comment related the robot's name to the Java code.
10. Handle better the case where a robot is waiting for something to arrive on a nest and the nest is removed.
11. Fixed a problem with Java applets that used the last few sensors in the Sensor notebook.

11/15

1. Empty text pads in boxes no longer get the width of the hole so that they are easier to visually distinguish from erased text pads. (Thanks to Pierre-André Dreyfuss for the suggestion.) Also zero-hole boxes in boxes are narrower than erased boxes.
2. Fixed a problem with Java applets when a robot used the magic wand on something on top of a nest.
3. The Java generator now handles better ToonTalk sensors that don't make sense in Java (e.g. roof decoration or MCI).
4. Java applets can now use the magic wand on erased pictures or sensors.
5. Java applets can now use the magic wand on sensors that display text or pictures.
6. Fixed a problem with the color of text in Java applets.
7. Java applets can now drop things on erased text pads.
8. Improved the display of multi-line text in Java applets.

11/16

1. Fixed a problem with Java applets where a robot vacuumed something off a nest.
2. Fixed a problem with Java applets when a robot had a remote looks in his thought bubble.
3. Fixed a problem with Java applets when a flipped picture is in a box.
4. Nests with boxes on them work properly in Java applets now.
5. Java applets can now deal with robots that set of a bomb to remove a sub-picture.
6. Java applet can now deal with flipping pictures.
7. Java applets can now deal with pictures that have been erased, had another picture dropped on top, and then erased again.
8. Improved the matching of a picture with the remote looks of another picture in Java applets.
9. Java applets now deal better with sensors that show the remote looks of another sensor. (E.g. the "touching who?" sensor.)
10. Fixed a problem in Java applets where a robot changed the button on Dusty.

11/17

1. Fixed some problems with Java applets that use sensors that show pictures (e.g. "touching who?").
2. When a Java applet copied an erased or flipped picture, the copy wasn't erased or flipped.
3. When a Java applet copied a picture with pictures on top, the copy didn't have copies of the sub-pictures on top of it.
4. Java applets where a robot dropped a remote control displaying a number on a number didn't always work.
5. Java applets that matched a keyboard sensor didn't always work right.
6. Multi-line text is displayed nicer now.

11/19

1. Java applets no longer use Dusty to vacuum up stuff when a robot is done.
2. Made further improvements to Java applets when a robot uses Dusty.
3. When a Java applet is waiting for a picture to load the status line now indicates what picture is involved.

11/20

1. Fixed a problem generating a Java applet that includes a bird that no longer has a nest.
2. Improved the way Java applets deal with the "hit or miss" sensors.
3. If a picture has a text pad on the back that is used as the name of its Java applet. Now the name must be less than 30 letters long. (Longer text gets added to the HTML of the applet - on 8/12).
4. Things can no longer animate to a size smaller than the minimum size.
5. Fixed a potential race condition where a Java applet could start to run before the 'Start' button is pushed.
6. Fixed a problem in Java applets with the "colliding?" sensor where it was sometimes updated too often.
7. Fixed a problem displaying the remote control for the looks of something in a Java applet.
8. Made various improvements to numeric sensors in Java applets.

11/21

1. No longer waste processor time when boxes are on the floor but out of sight.
2. Fixed a problem with Java applets sometimes when robots put lots of temporary things on the floor.

11/22

1. Fixed a problem generating Java applets when a robot has an erased sound in his thought bubble.
2. Java applets will not waste resources updating the display more than 100 times a second. (Which maybe is still higher than need be.)
3. Made various improvements to the sensor for the mouse's movements in Java applets. (But the sensor still can't work when the mouse cursor leaves the applet window.)
4. Java applets where user provided pictures occur multiple times runs and loads much faster now. Ditto for user provided sounds.
5. Java applets now give higher priority to robots that run only once per cycle (since they rely upon sensors that update only once per cycle). Games run much more smoothly as a result.
6. Sometimes robots in Java applets kept running on the back of pictures after they were destroyed.
7. Text-to-speech objects in Java can now be copied.

11/26

1. Improved the display of boxes with very many holes that are off screen.
2. Fixed a problem generating Java applets that contain multi-line text pads.
3. If a picture is turned into a Java applet and has no text pads of 30 or less on the back the name generated is unique for that ToonTalk installation. (It is Picture followed by a serial number.)
4. Fixed a problem where ToonTalk kept BMP files open during the entire session even after having read them.

11/27

1. ToonTalk now safely ignores untrained robots on the back of a picture. Even if a Java applet is generated.
2. Can now generate a Java applet that contains a robot with nothing in his thought bubble. (He matches anything.)
3. Fixed a problem if a picture at the end of the magic wand has a robot that sets off a bomb destroying the picture.

11/28

1. Sometimes when pointing to a picture its parts would slowly drift off. (Bug was introduced fairly recently.)
2. Generalized things so ToonTalk can use nearly any Java compiler to create applets.
3. Java applets can now drop a text pad on an erased box to get a box with one letter per hole.

11/29

1. Java applets can now add flipped pictures (with boxes and robots) on the back of other pictures.
2. Made improvements to how Java applets deal with sensors that show pictures.

11/30

1. Improved the way applets are generated when a robot uses the magic wand.
2. Fixed a problem with Java applets when a robot has been trained to use the keyboard just after copying something.
3. Fixed a problem generating applets that contain erased sensors that show text in a thought bubble.
4. Java applets that use the text-to-speech sensors now work though the text is displayed in the applet's status bar rather than spoken.
5. Fixed some problems dealing with very tiny pictures (smaller than a pixel).
6. Java applets can now work with erased text-to-speech sounds (e.g. in thought bubbles).
7. Java applets can now find things on the back of pictures.
8. The 'Grasped?' and 'Released?' sensors now always display 'no' in Java applets.

12/1

1. Java applets now work if they use a dead sensor (looks black) in a thought bubble.
2. Java applets now can handle robots that are trained to take things off the back of pictures. (Only birds worked before.)

12/3

1. Java applets now work if they use robots that are only in notebooks.
2. Fixed a problem generating Java applets of boxes with labels containing a new line character.
3. Improved the way Java is generated when many pictures are involved.
4. The 'Selected?' sensor now works in a Java applet. Something is selected if it is the main picture or a part of it.

12/4

1. Improved the way Java applets handled boxes in boxes.
2. Improved the way Java applets handle user filled notebooks.
3. Fixed a problem generating Java when a notebook contains too much stuff. (So that the compiled encoding of the notebook is greater than 64K bytes.)
4. Improved how Java applets deal with erased pictures in thought bubbles.
5. Fix a problem generating Java applets for pictures that contain the remote looks sensor.
6. Java applets now deal correctly with boxes with pictures with robots running on the back.
7. Java applets now can use the ttclass.zip archive rather than all the ToonTalk Java class files.
8. Implemented a major performance improvement for Java applets that use notebooks.
9. Java applets that drop pictures on erased pictures works better now.

12/5

1. Sometimes a bird on the back of a picture flying to a nest also on the back of the picture would make flying noises and go slow even though she's not being watched.
2. Java applets that copy things that share (e.g. birds sharing a nest or sensors sharing a picture) work now.
3. Copying pictures with robots on the back works properly in Java applets now.
4. Dropping pictures on erased pictures in Java applets works better now.
5. Robots no longer run on pictures that have been flipped over and placed in boxes in Java applets.
6. Robots now run on pictures that haven't been flipped over and are in boxes on the back of a running picture in Java applets.

12/6

1. Fixed a problem generating Java applets when the parts or container sensor was in a thought bubble.
2. Improved the way Java applets work with user notebooks.
3. Improved the way Java applets deal with erased pictures in thought bubbles.
4. Changed the way Java code is generated to be more general and to avoid re-using variables.
5. A Java applet can now drop the remote control for the looks of a picture on an erased picture.
6. Chains are no longer created in Java when a picture is erased given a new appearance and then dropped on another erased picture.
7. Fixed a problem in Java applets when dropping something on a the remote control for the looks of a picture.
8. Java applets can now set the state of a vacuum with keyboard shortcuts ('s', 'r', and 'e' in English).

12/7

1. Fixed a problem where a Java applet using notebooks could interfere previous generated applets that also used user notebooks.
2. Java applets that include flipped pictures in boxes work better now.
3. The default Java compiler is now jikes.exe in ToonTalk's Jikes subdirectory.
4. The applet generator deals better with missing pictures now.
5. Fixed a problem with the geometry of pictures dropped on erased pictures in Java applets.
6. Improved the way things are copied in Java applets to deal with circularities (e.g the remote control for the looks of a picture on the back of that picture).
7. Improved the way Java applets handled flipped pictures with robots being added to the back of other pictures.
8. The sensor showing the containers of a picture is now updated as things changed when running as a Java applet.
9. Improved the way sensors are updated when needed in Java applets.

12/8

1. Sometimes Java applets had the comment "We just created something". It now describes the something (in 1024 characters or less).
2. Text on the back of a picture being turned into a Java applet can now be a picture of text as well.
3. Fixed a problem where the size and position of things on top of a picture were set wrong if the picture was saved while it was flipped. (Thanks to Ross for reporting this.)
4. Flipped pictures now save so that when unflipped they go back to their old size.
5. Fixed a problem introduced fairly recently that prevented you from getting your "present" for solving all the puzzles.
6. Sometimes the sub notebooks from a remote control notebook for the parts of the flipped picture contained only inactive sensors.
7. toontalk.ini entries are no longer limited to 255 characters.

12/11

1. Fixed a problem in Java applets getting a text pad off the back of a picture.
2. Fixed a problem dropping pictures with things on the back on a notebook (and it being destroyed if it matches).
3. Fixed a problem where sometimes saving a picture changed its size.
4. Fixed a problem generating a Java applet when multiple nests are involved on single page of a notebook.
5. Fixed a problem training a robot on a flipped picture with the remote control for its looks on it.
6. Fixed a problem when a picture or sound is given by a file name that is a shortcut (a LNK file extension) to an non-existent file.

12/12

1. Sometimes when a Java applet copied a flipped picture the copy wasn't flipped.
2. Improved the way Java applets display an erased picture that has had another picture dropped on top.
3. In a Java applet, if a robot in a team is waiting for both a nest to receive something and a sensor to change its value it no longer interferes with other team members and the team will run after the appropriate changes.
4. Fixed a memory leak related to the notebook of sensors on the back of pictures.
5. Fixed a problem generating Java applets with boxes with pictures with robots on the back.
6. Fixed a problem with the notebook of remote controls when both a picture and the remote control for its looks are flipped.
7. Occasionally an error was signaled when a robot was done working.
8. Fixed a memory leak for notebooks of remote controls vacuumed by a robot.

12/13

1. You can now drop a notebook on an erased box to convert the notebook to a box with each page in a different hole.
2. Fixed a problem training a robot to drop an box on an erased notebook (to convert it).
3. Dropping the "wrong" kind of thing on an erased notebook stopped the training of a robot and caused Marty to appear. It is now ignored.
4. Robots sometimes tried to vacuum up a notebook of remote controls when it was done even if the notebook had returned to the back of a picture.
5. When the colliding sensor is used as a remote control to move the picture so it is no longer colliding then sometimes it would still touch the very edge.
6. Sometimes robot would run on the back of pictures that had been turned off.
7. If a robot is waiting for a sensor and for an earlier member of his team to put something in a hole, he sometimes wouldn't work right.

12/14

1. Robots can now be trained to vacuum off a page in a notebook (but not the main notebook since that is shared).
2. If a robot changes the page of a notebook in his box and then repeats he now works on the correct page.

12/15

1. Fixed a problem where birds made noise and took time to fly from the back of a picture to the back of another picture.
2. Fixed a problem where a robot sometimes got mixed up about which page of a notebook he's using.

12/17

1. Boxes smaller than 10 pixels in any dimension no longer display their contents.

12/18

1. Sometimes if there was an error loading something into ToonTalk that Dusty and the other tools would disappear.

12/19

1. Fixed a problem (introduced in May) that caused birds to occassionally stop when flying on the back of pictures.
2. Fixed a display problem with boxes introduced recently.
3. Sometimes a robot working on a notebook would work with the notebook despite the fact that only the page numbers were visible.
4. Made improvements to the layout of things on the back of a picture so it is easier to pick up and looks better.
5. Sometimes when a picture is destroyed (e.g. dropped in a notebook) the remote controls for its looks didn't become black rectangles.
6. Sometimes when a picture is colliding with multiple things and is being destroyed (e.g. a bomb going off on the back) then an error was signaled.
7. The display of erased things sometimes did unnecessary extra work.

12/21

1. The notebook with the remote controls of a picture used to have notebooks for each part as well. This was very expensive in some cases. By default this is no longer the case. You can set "CreateRemoteControlNotebooksForParts" in the "Switches" section of toontalk.ini to restore the old behavior.
2. A complete rewrite of the way the sensor for the looks of a picture works was completed. Besides being much more lightweight internally you can now use the remote control to remove things from a picture (front or back). And you can flip over the sensor to see or manipulate the other side of a picture without flipping the picture over as well. And if the picture is flipped over the sensor isn't changed.
3. Fixed a problem Marty had dealing with parenthetical remarks with the built-in speech engine.

12/22

1. Java applets now correctly copy things that contain bird/nest pairs so that they know about each other but not about the original versions.
2. Java applets had a bug dropping numbers on negative numbers.
3. Speed up the copying of structures containing birds.
4. Occasionally the size of a picture changed improperly if that picture had been erased and had another picture dropped on top and they held or selected while the keyboard is used.

12/23

1. Beta 25 released.
2. Fixed a problem generating a text-based Java applet from a robot held in your hand.

12/28

1. Fixed a problem with a Java applet of a robot with a box containing a bomb.

Continue with 2001.

home | search | purchase | manual | news | info | faq | support | downloads | press | contact us