1.0.1rc1.dev2

This release comes with some major changes to the user interface, file queuing, processing speed, compression, and reliability of arcs generated. Thank you to everyone who helped me test the previous versions, the devel code, and who offered suggestions for improvement! I believe the result is a much better product overall.

Enhancements

• Firmware Checker - This can warn you of potential firmware issues before starting a print. It will show you if arc support is enabled, disabled, or if Arc Welder just can't tell. It will also alert you to warnings or oddities about specific versions of the firmware and will make recommendations regarding how to resolve the issue. Note that not all firmware types have been mapped, but the checker updates its definitions automatically from a separate repository. The repository supports adding new definitions on the fly in most cases, without updating ArcWelder itself. If you don't like the checker, you can even disable it!
• Firmware Compensation - Are you running an older firmware version and having problems printing small corners that are turning out flat? Arc Welder now has firmware compensation to deal with this, allowing you to produce small curves at the cost of a little compression. When using firmware compensation, new statistics will show you how many arcs were aborted and how that affected the final compression.
• Vase Mode Support - This experimental feature allows you to use ArcWelder with vase mode prints. My testing shows a dramatic compression rate for the average vase.
• *Improved UI - Fewer popups, more info, including the ability to show or hide the many of the panels. Processing progress now displays on the Arc Welder tab instead of an annoying popup. You can cancel processing or queued items. More file statistics are displayed, and the formatting has improved. Added Arc Welding info to the file manager details.
• More Configurable - Several settings have been added to allow you to fine tune Arc Welder to meet your needs. Control the output GCode precision or allow it to manually scale to match your source GCode. Control the maximum allowed path length deviation. Turn optional popups on and off, and more.
• More Compression - Every last drop of compression has been squeezed out in this version, resulting in more arcs generated. If Arc Welder fails to find an arc with the standard detection algorithm, it will dig deeper to analyze the GCode, allowing the new version to generate arcs in situations where the old version failed. Despite this, the new version is faster than the old version due to several other speed enhancements.
• Add Advanced Arc Error Detection - Some GCode does crazy things that baffled previous versions of Arc Welder. Several settings were used as safeguards against this, like the path tolerance percent. Now, these bad arcs are detected and aborted before they can cause problems. Arc welder now ensures that the rotational direction of each arc is consistent across all segments and that the start and end points of each arc are never crossed by the segments it was composed of. Thanks to other performance enhancements, the final algorithm is actually a bit faster than the previous version.

Bug Fixes

• Fix Unicode Issues - Unicode file names and GCode comments caused problems in previous versions depending on the python version. This has been corrected. Also, Unicode output within the GCode file was sometimes off, especially in comments. This has also been fixed.
• Software Update Issues - Due to a botched implementation of the new per-plugin release channel selection in OctoPrint 1.5+, automatic updates for ArcWelder were broken for that version of OctoPrint. This has been resolved.
• Firmware Checksum Issues - The output GCode precision has been limited to prevent checksum errors caused by overrunning the max GCode buffer length.
• Move Exceeded Maximum Extrusion - This was solved by the advanced arc error detection algorithm. It was a rare issue, but it needed to be dealt with in order for ArcWelder to be complete.