VTK 3.1 final

[Ken Martin]

VTK 3.1 is final and there are tar zip and windows binaries available at 
ftp://public.kitware.com/pub/vtk and hopefully the folks at GE can whip 
together an RPM for Linux. From the VTK 3.1 beta many recent bug fixes have 
been incorporated. Right now a summary list of changes between VTK 2.4 and 
VTK3.1 does not exist. In general there have been a number of bug fixes, a 
complete overhaul of the imaging and geometry pipeline to better support 
streaming of data.  Better Python support in many areas. Upgraded to work 
with Tcl 8.1 and 8.2. New methods for type information and safe downcasting 
(not using RTTI yet) Better handling of method lookups for wrapped classes 
in Tcl. UNIX builds no longer require the Tcl/Tk source to use the 
TkWidgets. Support for off-screen rendering using Mesa.  etc. You can also 
obtain VTK 3.1 by anonymous CVS as follows

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous at public.kitware.com:/vtk/cvsroot login

vtk

cvs -d :pserver:anonymous at public.kitware.com:/vtk/cvsroot checkout -r 
release-3-1 vtk


Usage Changes
===============
There are some incompatibilities between VTK 2.4 and VTK 3.1.  If you were 
using the SetMemoryLimit of an imaging filter in VTK 2.4 you should now use 
the vtkImageStreamer filter. The new pipeline architecture can compute the 
total memory usage for the entire pipeline, making it easier to specify 
streaming by providing one memory limit for the entire upstream pipeline, 
not just for the direct input of a filter. I'm sure there are a few other 
changes I'm forgetting.

Class Writer Changes
==================
Due to the new pipeline architecture some filter method names have 
changed.  In many cases the old methods have been left around and now 
produce a warning (and instructions on the new change) when used. For many 
filters no changes will be required.

There is a new macro (vtkTypeMacro) being used to provide the GetClassName, 
IsA, and SafeDownCast methods, just take a look at an existing class such 
as vtkProp.h

- Ken 

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