EAGLE Version 5 Update Information - Cadsoft

- The new User Language function system() can be used to execute external
programs.
- The User Language objects UL_ELEMENT, UL_INSTANCE and UL_NET have new
data members 'column' and 'row' which return the location within a
drawing frame.
- The User Language member functions UL_ELEMENT.smashed and
UL_INSTANCE.smashed now accept an optional parameter text name that allows
you to query whether there is a smashed parameter text by that name.
- In the User Language the labels of a segment (both bus as well as net)
can now be accessed through the new object type UL_LABEL, which is
generated by the new loop member UL_SEGMENT.labels(). The old way of
accessing labels through UL_SEGMENT.texts() is now deprecated and won't
handle cross-reference labels correctly. The actual text of a label is
now returned by UL_LABEL.text.
- The User Language object UL_SCHEMATIC has a new member 'xreflabel',
which returns the format string used to display cross-reference labels.
- The User Language object UL_SCHEMATIC has a new member 'xrefpart',
which returns the format string used to display part cross-references.
- The User Language object UL_INSTANCE has a new loop member named 'xrefs',
which loops through the gates that represent the contact cross-reference.
* Screen drawing:
- Drawing on screen no longer uses "raster OPs". The individual layers
are now drawn using "alpha blending". Each color (except for the
background color, which is always opaque) can have its own alpha value,
which defines how transparent it is. A value of 0 means the color is
fully transparent (i.e. invisible), while 255 means the color is
completely opaque. When reading an eaglerc file from an older version,
the alpha values of all colors are initialized to a default value if
all palette entries have an alpha value of 0.
You can use the script 'defaultcolors.scr' to set the colors to the
new defaults.
When printing, the alpha values are always set to 255.
- Since the layer colors no longer use additive mixing, but rather use
alpha blending, the default background color in the layout editor
window has been changed to white.
- If you want to have the old raster OP behavior on black background,
you can uncheck the "Use alpha blending" box in the "Options/Set/Colors"
dialog. In that case the alpha value defined for the colors is ignored
when using a black background, and colors are mixed using an OR function.
- The colors above index 15 in the color palettes are now by default
initialized with a medium gray value.
* User defined Attributes:
- In a library, devices can now have "attributes", which are arbitrary
user definable "name/value" pairs. Attributes are related to the individual
"technology" variants of a device.
- The new command ATTRIBUTE can be used to define the attributes of a given