Large number editing, more stable connectivity, important fixes

Quick start guide: https://www.thecoderscorner.com/products/arduino-libraries/tc-menu/tcmenu-overview-quick-start/

Major changes in this release

New functionality:

• Upgraded to IoAbstraction 1.4.10. (https://github.com/davetcc/IoAbstraction/releases/tag/1.4.10)
• Very large number support. Numbers stored internally as BCD can now be held up to 12 digits +/-. These can be edited a digit at a time similar to how text fields are edited.
• More stable remote connectivity. This is the first part of a large refactor of the remote connectivity to make it more stable and more testable.

Fixes:

• Fixed an issue on 8 bit devices that caused corruption of the title on the LCD
• Fixed an issue on graphical screens where the last pixel in the Y dimension was not used.
• Any unused plugins are now removed on a best efforts basis by the designer UI, this should nearly always clean up any unused plugins.
• Remote Serial now works properly on ESP8266.

Password protected sub-menus, render cleanup.

• Submenus are now able to be password protected.
• Renderer clean up separating out input code from display code.
• Core LCD renderer now supports title line and title line widgets based on custom chars (0-7).

Breaking changes: there is one breaking change, the renderer classes have completely changed. Ensure you do a rebuild through the menu designer before trying to compile.

Any issues, let us know through the forum linked from the main page.

For Windows and Mac: The designer package contains all the embedded libraries, so if you're using the designer you don't need the standalone package. The controller provides the ability to remotely manage and control menus on Windows and macOS. From 1.4 the controller will move toward UWP and mobile devices.

Keyboard support, revised protocol, time menu items, designer improvements

This release is mainly incremental with a few new features:

• Keyboard support for matrix keyboards with a new packaged example.
• Protocol refactoring to make processing more efficient - not backward compatible.
• Time menu items now supported with 12/24 hour and up to hundreds/sec accuracy.
• Documentation links now available from the code generator view.
• Ability to generate menu names that are fully qualified.
• Other minor improvements.

For Windows: Download the windows package for the designer UI and the controller. This will include everything you need to build a menu.

For MacOS: Download the macOS disk image file that contains both the designer UI and the controller. This will include everything you need to build a menu.

Standalone libraries only: download the zip file with standalone libraries.

ESP32, remote authentication, better editing, runtime & recursive menus

Along with quite a few bug fixes, this major release contains the following major features:

• Full support for both ESP32 and ESP8266
• Support for menu items that can be created at runtime, without needing to be statically defined in INFO blocks. this includes basic support for list items.
• Editing of IP address and text fields - on device and remote.
• Improved examples with less hardwiring.
• Dialogs that can render onto any display and also remotely. For questions or information.
• Authentication in the tagval protocol, including a few different implementations of the key manager.
• Multi-level nesting of menus
• Taking over the display and handling the reset time on the menu now better
• Usability of AnalogMenuItem greatly improved with helpers to floats and fixed point structure.
• Bluetooth serial modules tested and working with the library.

Note that if you previously used RemoteMenuItem in the designer UI, this has now been migrated to a runtime menu item that you add to the script. See any of the examples with remote functionality. Compatibility should otherwise be quite high.

TcMenu Designer is the application that allows you to graphically configure menus.
TcMenu controller is the application that lets you control menus remotely over Bluetooth, Ethernet, WiFi and Serial.

Available for both Windows and MacOS.

ESP8266, OLED, Joystick input, recursive menus and bug fixes

This release of TcMenu brings quite a few new features:

• Support for PROGMEM and Wifi on ESP8266 including a new example
• Tested example for OLED displays such as SSD1306
• Joystick input support using an analog joystick for UP / DOWN
• Recursive menus with configurable max depth, defaults to 4 now.
• Improved select button handling, no longer sends two events. Holding select now acts as back.
• Fixed a few other minor issues

If you've been previously using tcMenu. Once 1.3.1 is installed, ensure that you generate your menu design again by loading into the designer and selecting Code -> Generate Code. This is needed to update the generated code.

For Windows:

If you have any existing versions of the designer UI or controller UI installed, it is recommended that you remove them first and then install the new packages.

• tcMenuDesigner is the menu designer UI, once run it will offer to install the base library for you. There is no need to take the standalone download in addition to this.
• tcMenuController is the controller application that can remote control your device running tcMenu.

For MacOS

Release coming soon

Standalone

The libraries can be taken as a zip file standalone, should you not wish to use the packaged designer.

Better Adafruit_GFX support, better remote control, moves out of BETA

This release provides a few key new features:

There are a few smaller breaking changes in this release, especially if you had used the RemoteConnector communication layer in the past. These are quite simple to fix however. Any problems please either report an issue or use the TCC forum linked on the main page.

• Vast improvement in Adafruit_GFX support, tested on ILI9341 and 5110. Should work on many others.
• Remote capability can now be configured to also work with UIPEthernet
• Remote control utility that can control your menu over serial or ethernet now packaged.
• Considerable fixes to the remote layer
• Many other bug fixes.

Windows:

• setupTcMenuDesigner.exe is the application to design menus.
• setupRemoteConnector is used to connect and remote control to a menu on your device.

MacOS:

• tcMenu-1.3-final contains both applications in one disk image.

Additional:

• Standalone libs is the standalone libraries, only needed if you are not using the designer UI.

Plugin system completed, better code generator, acceleration and DfRobot shield support

Breaking changes V1.1 to V1.2

This is a major release of tcMenu, it is not quite compatible with the previous release. Before generating code on an existing project you will need to open the project directory and remove the projectName.cpp and projectName.h (where projectName is your project name). These files were regenerated every round trip anyway and there should be none of your code in there. This is because those files clashed with many IDE's and Arduino editors (which also use that name for the generated sketch).

The PROGMEM exposure in the library has been completely hidden and we've generally moved towards every string copy operation needing a size parameter. The changes are minor and should be quite self-explanatory as you come across them. Feel free to use the forum to discuss any problems and I'll respond quickly (see link in README.md).

From this point on API changes will be kept to a minimum, and it will come out of "under development" probably at V1.3.

Changes ( see the 1.2 milestone for more details )

Once you're on this version you'll get

• Far better code generation than before
• Proper support for 32 bit boards
• Rotary encoder and switches acceleration
• Ability to schedule tasks in taskManager in an OOP manner if required.
• Full plugin capability to install additional code generators.
• Many general bug fixes.
• DfRobot shield

Builds available for Windows and MacOS as usual. If you want a Linux desktop build please raise an issue and I'll look into building there too.

Plugin model, smaller packages, better testing

This release may not show much change on the surface, but some huge gaps have been filled underneath.

If you are using the Designer UI then you just need setupTcMenu.exe on windows or the disk image for macos.

Instead of the library exposing many classes that were not always needed, or needed a lot of sub libraries installed, the designer UI now copies in the rendering and remote components needed for your case. This makes dependencies much easier.

The library installer has been added back in, this time able to reason about versioning and not overwrite something it should not.

The executable designer package is now much better tested than before. Automated testing makes releasing much easier and covers a large number of basic cases.

Many bugs in the designer and a few in IoAbstraction fixed during the prolonged testing period.

Major improvements to performance and memory footprint.

Major memory usage improvements.
FloatMenuItem, RemoteMenuItem, ActionMenuItem are now supported.
Performance improved
On latest IoAbstraction version

Minor improvements, widget support in AdaGFX rendering

This release contains minor improvements upon the previous version:

• Fixes issues with dependencies
• Widget support in AdaGFX rendering
• Slight improvements to communications layer.