Ann: SWI-Prolog 9.2.24

[jan]

Dear SWI-Prolog user,

I’m happy to announce SWI-Prolog 9.3.24. Notably the swipl-win GUI
version suffered from some serious regression due to the switch to
compiled (.qlf) libraries. Highlights:

• Better swipl-win.exe on Windows. The updated version provides

  • Support for ANSI hyperlinks. This implies that error messages
    and reported source locations are clickable. Notably compiler
    warnings, errors and explain/1 reports related locations
    with hyperlinks.
  • Support for underlined text and better looking bold text.

• Fixed MacOS/Linux swipl-win: hangs on Help/About. 9.3.23
  broke the menu. After restoring that, many of the menu actions
  were broken.

• Work on Freedesktop.org integration. Integration files are now
  installed in <home>/desktop and an installation can activate
  the desktop integration by running

  swipl sys desktop install
  

  With the integration installed, swipl-win and xpce should
  show the SWI-Prolog icon and .prolog files should launch
  swipl-win.

• Integration of XSB attributed variable test suite and dialect
  emulation. This provides basic support for constraints in
  tabling.

  Enjoy — Jan

SWI-Prolog Changelog since version 9.3.23

• ENHANCED: Windows: use native fonts for bold and support
  bold+underlined.

• ADDED: Freedesktop.org Desktop integration files. This patch adds
  a directory desktop with icons and desktop integration files.
  A particular version can be activated as desktop application using

  swipl sys desktop [--global] install
  

  The activation canbe removed using

  swipl sys desktop [--global] remove
  

• ADDED: Windows swipl-win.exe: support underlined fonts Support
  \e[4m to print underlined text.

• ADDED: Windows: swipl-win.exe : support hyperlinks. This patch enables
  terminal escape sequences to embed hyperlinks. file:// links
  are then mapped to edit/1 and other links are opened in the browser.

  This patch also fixes several issues and provides cleanup to the
  swipl-win.exe console code.

• FIXED: Report correct number of clauses when loading .qlf files
  Reported 0 (zero) clauses for all .qlf files.

• FIXED: ?- edit(file('myname.pl')). to create a new file.

• FIXED: Do not precompile several files This patch stops precompiling
  the libraries win_menu, threadutil and check_installation. The sources
  are full of conditional compilation that also depends whether or not
  swipl or swipl-win is started.

  Using runtime conditionals is possible, but would lead to many
  undefined predicate warnings.

• FIXED: Create menu in Windows and Qt consoles. Broken due to
  conditional compilation that excluded the call to init_win_menus/0
  from the .qlf file.

• BUILD: prohibit building in the source directory.

• TEST: Include clpfd test with tabling.

• DOC: Constraints and tabling

• TEST: Merge XSB attributed variable tests. This updates several of the
  tests, documents what tests cannot be executed due to incompatibilities
  and extends the XSB dialect emulation to deal with a later part of
  the attributed variable interface.

  The tests both deal with basic attribute handling and with (simple)
  tabling
  that involves attributes.

• FIXED: Support attributed variables in “fastheap” terms. These are
  used by tabling and delimited continuations.

• FIXED: Handling attvars in answer tries.

• FIXED: library(prolog_source): undefined html_write:html_meta_head/3

• XSB: Added basic attributed handling to emulation Library
  machine now exports get_attr/3, put_attr/3, del_attr/2 and
  install_verify_attribute_handler/4.

• ADDED: library(prolog_profile): Prolog flags for defaults -
  profile_ports provides the default “mode”, now true -
  profile_sample_rate provides the default sample rate (200)

• DOC: clause/3: describe properties of clause references.

• DOC: retractall/1 and logical update view section.

• DOC: Moved some sections in the “Database” section of the manual.

• BUILD: Better support for cmake < 3.20

• PPA: Updated releases - Added Plucky Puffin (25.04) - Removed Focal
  Fossa (20.04) and Bionic Beaver (18.04)

  The latter two fail to build the Janus interface due to too old
  Python versions.

Package pldoc

• FIXED: Undefined call to start_emacs/0

Package swipl-win

• FIXED: win_message_box/2: crash if image option cannot be found Now
  shows the box without image and throws an exception afterwards.

Package xpce

• MODIFIED: WM_CLASS handling Recent desktop environments such as
  Gnome 46 and later ignore the _NET_WM_ICON property to set an
  icon for a frame (toplevel window). We can set the icon through a
  .desktop file using StartupWMClass where all windows of a
  process are bundled under the same icon. But, xpce set WM_CLASS
  from the xpce class name.

  This patch adds display<->wm_class to set the WM_CLASS
  for all toplevel windows. The default is SWI-Prolog. By
  setting this to @default, the old behavior is restored.

• FIXED: emacs/1: allow non-existing file. This also fixes ?- edit(file(File)) to create a new file as advertised.

• FIXED: Profiler IDE: link to website. Renamed “exit” to “quit”,
  removed “statistics” (is shown anyway) and “about” (useless).

[mgondan1]

Is it possible to change the typo in the title? 9.3.24 instead of 9.2.24? I would like to link to it.