This is an alpha version and may contain bugs or other problems. Please report any problems to jonkv@ida.liu.se.
You can download VITAL 2.999.910 alpha here. Click the link and then select a Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS or generic build of VITAL. Please note that VITAL requires a Java virtual machine, version 1.4.1 or later.
Example domains:
A number of variations of the Missionaries and Cannibals domain, modeled using object-oriented macros, are now available in the example menu.
Query improvements:
The query interface displays the internal (parsed and optimized) version of the formula being evaluated.
For some time, the query interface has allowed you to trace the evaluation of a formula by generating a hierarchical text trace of each item (formula or term) being evaluated. There is now also a "brief trace" button which has a different behaviour for quantifiers: For universal quantifiers, only the first binding that makes the formula false is displayed (or no binding at all if the formula holds), and similarly for existential quantifiers. This means it is much easier to find "counterexamples" violating a formula.
Parser improvements:
Further improvements to make the parser smarter about inferring the type of a numeric value belongs to (in those domains where there are multiple numeric types).
Performance improvements:
Massive performance improvements when evaluating certain formulas that are universally quantified over time in interpretations with sparse state transitions.
User interface improvements and changes:
Syntax highlighting: C-style /* comments */ are now handled by the syntax highlighter, though there may be circumstances where this highlighting is not updated properly when changes are made.
In the main narrative window, color highlighting can be turned off for the lower display area. This saves time for very large narratives where the Java text area might literally take minutes to generate line breaks for a highlighted text, for some reason. The "Formatted" checkbox is off by default. Turn it on to activate highlighting.
In the interpretation window, feature names are fixed at the left of the window, and timepoints are fixed at the top of the window, making it easier to navigate through large interpretations.
In the interpretation window, you can highlight changes within an interpretation, making it easier to see where values change in long timelines.
In the interpretation window, you can highlight changes within an interpretation, making it easier to see where values change in long timelines.
In the interpretation window, intervals of time where nothing changes have always been collapsed into a single column. Now, such intervals are automatically recalculated depending on exactly what is present in the interpretation list right now. For example, turning off occlusion display or hiding certain features can allow the system to collapse further intervals, resulting in a better overview over long timelines.
In the interpretation window, column widths are automatically calculated depending on the width of the values that can be shown in each column. Before, a default width was used and if more was required the width had to be adjusted manually.
In the interpretation window, value names are automatically truncated to fit into the current column width. Before, value names would overwrite each other if columns were too narrow.
Cosmetic changes.
Some additional debugging code is turned on and some optimizations have been turned off in order to catch potential problems earlier. The downloadable version of VITAL is therefore a bit slower than the development version (but should still be considerably faster than the previous release version, 2.329).