M.A.M.E./M.E.S.S./U.M.E. Catalog / Launcher II Documentation

CHANGES - v0.44, 23-JUL-2014

fix: general bug fixes
imp: improved functionality
new: newly added functionality
wip: (incomplete) work in progress
doc: documentation changes
inf: informational only

v0.44, 23-JUL-2014:

fix: Mac OS X build: resolved type conflicts between LZMA SDK and older XCode headers (< 4.x)
fix: corrected device and BIOS set hiding in the master list when ROM state filtering is disabled
fix: corrected initial opening of zip/7z image archives when the splash screen is disabled
fix: avoid crash when the game/machine list cache creation is prematurely interrupted (upon user request)
fix: MiniWebBrowser: corrected the network item downloader
fix: fixed a bug with individual ROM checks that corrupted the ROM state cache with an invalid entry, causing it to be invalidated during the next reload
fix: welcome dialog: 'NativeFileDialogs' setting didn't work as expected with folder browsers
imp: MAME/MESS/UME emulator templates updated to 0.154 (removed 'hlsl_write' from Windows OSD templates, removed 'memcard_directory' from all templates, added option 'console' to all templates)
imp: speeded up ROM- and software-state filtering as well as game-/machine-/emu-info lookups by using QHash [amortized O(1)] instead of QMap [O(log n)] to store/retrieve states & infos internally
imp: updated MESS category.ini contributed by ASH to 0.154 (4 sets remain uncategorized, help appreciated)
imp: upon merging game/machine info-sources UME variants now keep track if a game's/machine's info came from MAME (history.dat) or MESS (sysinfo.dat) and formats/displays the data accordingly when requested
imp: updated the alternative system- and software-notes templates contributed by José Marcio Rezende Franco
imp: hide game/machine list while filtering it by ROM state (faster)
imp: consecutive duplicate words in SDL joystick names are now cleaned up -- i.e. "Logitech Logitech Extreme 3D" becomes "Logitech Extreme 3D"
imp: QMC2 Arcade: added support for theme-specific default values used by certain settings -- i.e. darkone uses a 'sortByName' setting with an expected default value of 'true', ToxicWaste doesn't (want to) support this setting and uses the global default value of 'false' instead
imp: QMC2 Arcade: be more responsive while loading data from file (especially interesting when using a console window)
imp: updated minizip to version 1.1 which adds support for zip64 (zip archives can now be larger than 4 GB) -- see also bug tracker ID #45
imp: made category.ini translatable (caution: the new format is not backward-compatible (!) - however, you can use older category.ini's with the new code because translations are optional)
imp: revised slot-info cache creation/loading to be more responsive and faster
imp: changed default paths for 'category.ini' and 'catver.ini' (using the 'data/cat' folder now)
imp: about dialog: added Mac OS X 10.9 & Windows 8.1 detection for Qt >= 4.8.6 / 5.2.0
imp: improved ROM state filtering performance by resetting the internal state of the tree-widget before actually showing/hiding the items
imp: don't be fussy about ignored options when checking emulator configuration templates (they are ignored for good reason, so why confuse users by mentioning them?)
imp: QMC2 Arcade (Windows): when started from a command prompt, console-mode 'terminal' now causes QMC2 Arcade to use this console for logging
imp: QMC2 Arcade / ToxicWaste theme: load icons asynchronously (in a separate thread) in order to not affect flicking performance
new: added a 'user data' database (SQLite 3) to store & retrieve rank information and personal comments per game/machine
new: added a new ranking system and a corresponding 'rank' column to all game/machine lists -- see also bug tracker ID #46
new: added missing 'restore' feature to the image format setup dialog
new: replaced the foreign IDs menu with a new (tree-)view for foreign emulators and their custom IDs (if any) shown as sub-items of each emulator; the view will only be shown when there are any registered (foreign) emulators -- see also bug tracker ID #53
new: icons for foreign emulators and their custom IDs can now be selected individually
new: eye-candy: pepped up the static loading & filtering texts with an animation (also used for mass tagging)
new: automatically clear all emulator caches when the output of '-listfull' changes (optional, enabled per default) -- something users often forget is using QMC2's -cc command line switch when updating their MAME/MESS/UME SVN builds; this feature is supposed to automate that as far as possible (changes to devices and software-lists aren't recognized automatically)
new: added command line option '-tc' which will check the emulator configuration template (printing results to stdout) and exit before actual start-up occurs
new: ROMAlyzer: added support for CMP-compatible fix.dat exports -- see also bug tracker ID #51
new: QMC2 Arcade: added support for multiple image/icon files (per artwork category), supporting the main GUI's ParentImageFallback setting as well
new: icons of game/machine clones now fall back to the parent set's icon when the ParentImageFallback setting is enabled (and an individual icon for the clone isn't available)

v0.43, 07-APR-2014:

fix: avoid crash upon game/machine launch when double-click activation is enabled -- see also bug tracker ID #44
fix: ROM status exporter: corrected mix up of certain sort criteria indexes
fix: MinGW build: corrected compiler & linker flags for QMC2 Arcade to not open a console window
fix: MiniWebBrowser: corrected a signal/slot auto-connection that caused a Qt warning with Qt 5 (minor)
fix: corrected tagging through Shift+Up/Down when the XML tree is expanded and the cursor is on a sub-item
fix: MiniWebBrowser: corrected the display of super-long links in the status-bar so the browser wouldn't resize in X direction
fix: corrected variant launching (broken in 0.42)
fix: main GUI / key- & joy-mapping: don't trigger disabled actions
fix: MESS device configurator: avoid crash (seen on Windows) when the selected system changes while the available devices and slot-options are currently being determined for another system
fix: initial ROM path check: corrected handling of relative ROM paths
fix: updated the handling of character encoding in software-lists on Windows to modern MAME/MESS/UME -- see also bug tracker ID #65
fix: corrected the working directory the emulator would use when scanning software-lists (so that a relative hash path would actually be found)
fix: demo-mode (minor): corrected the produced command line when 'maximize' is disabled
imp: updated MESS category.ini contributed by ASH to 0.153
imp: QMC2 Arcade: enabled translation for joystick and key-sequence map debugging
imp: initial ROM path check: output more detailed information for each non-existing/inaccessible ROM path
imp: revised the help menu and added forum, wiki and bug-tracker links (opened in the default browser)
imp: ROMAlyzer: included an item counter in the progress bar when analyzing, reading or writing sets
imp: added LZMA SDK 9.22 (7-zip) data compression/decompression library by Igor Pavlov
imp: optimized loading & parsing of the software-info DB
imp: added a subset of the QtFtp add-on for Qt 5 compatibility with the QFtp and QUrlInfo classes
imp: separated MAME & MESS emulator-info DBs as well as their game-/machine-info counterparts in order to allow for merging them in case of UME
imp: MAME/MESS/UME emulator templates updated to 0.153
imp: system- and software-notes templates: new template macros ($IS_BIOS$ and $IS_DEVICE$) and JS functions (isBios(), isDevice() and romStatus())
imp: Windows: the FileSystemModel's directory scanner thread now uses native Win32 API calls instead of Qt classes -- see also bug tracker ID #56
imp: added a FileIconProvider wrapper class for QFileIconProvider that uses native Win32 API calls on Windows for better performance (also caches the icons internally)
imp: updated template format to v0.2.7 which adds support for a new relativeTo attribute (valid only for file-type options) which - if set - will be used to generate a path relative to the current value of the referenced directory-type option when using a file-picker; note that this will only work correctly when the referenced directory-type option consists of a single path (i.e. not for semicolon-seperated paths, in which case you'd have to edit the corresponding file-type option manually to reflect relative file paths)
imp: replaced some icons in the classic image-set
imp: produce a nicer command line when the emulator is launched in embedded- or demo-mode (no duplicate or redundant options)
imp: updated the alternative system- and software-notes template contributed by José Marcio Rezende Franco
new: ROMAlyzer: added read-only support for 7z archived ROMs
new: added support for 7z archived icons and image artwork - note that for best performance 7-zipped icons should be packed in a solid block (7z default) and images should be packed non-solid (7za option -ms=off)
new: MESS device configurator: added support for 7z archives to the file-chooser (just like the existing support for zip archives)
new: QMC2 Arcade: added support for game/machine icons (only supported by the ToxicWaste theme at the moment)
new: revised the XML data cache to be stored in / retrieved from an SQLite 3 database in order to save memory and speed up initial loading (per game/machine XML data is queried from the DB on demand)
new: added a web-search feature (currently supporting Google, Wikipedia, DuckDuckGo and Yandex)
new: MiniWebBrowser: added experimental support for anonymous FTP (warning: don't use this for big downloads)
new: added a built-in PDF viewer based on PDF.js (experimental)

v0.42, 24-DEC-2013:

fix: changes to global emulator options weren't correctly merged with the current game/machine-specific ones when the corresponding save-button was pressed and 'overwrite' was selected on the subsequent dialog
fix: don't add 'ghost sets' to internal master list when creating category- or version-views
fix: don't allow initial ROMAlyzer setup while reload is active
fix: do final update of the progress bar before sorting the game/machine list after a reload
fix: emulator configuration widgets now honor the current style's highlight coloring for check-box (bool) type delegates
fix: corrected sRGB profile headers of all included PNGs
fix: software-list: favorite software wasn't shown initially when software-state filtering was active
fix: ROM check: the ROM status indication for the currently selected game/machine wasn't always correctly updated on-the-fly for 'not found' sets and sets w/o ROMs
fix: software-list: corrected combined state- and compatibility-filtering
fix: MESS device configurator: don't show slots that have no user-selectable options
imp: MAME/MESS/UME emulator templates updated to 0.152
imp: main GUI: renamed command line argument -qmc2_config_path to -config_path (the old argument name is still supported, though)
imp: updated MESS category.ini contributed by ASH to his latest version as of 20-DEC-2013
imp: greatly improved the game/machine search feature to be interruptable while the actual search is performed, indicating its progress; added reg-exp like features for the pattern syntax (the special characters $, (, ), *, +, ., ?, [, ], ^, {, |, } and \ must be escaped - by adding \ in front of them - when they are meant literally)
imp: X11 embedder: removed xwininfo requirement (done via Xlib directly now)
imp: QMC2 Arcade: countless improvements to the darkone theme
imp: speed up loading of cached game/machine lists and cached XML data
imp: added the run-time Qt version to the window titles of all variants / applications
imp: setup dialog: shuffled / replaced some button-bar icons
imp: modernized the YouTube video player and ported it to Qt 5 / QtMultimedia
imp: replaced splash screens with new ones based on current logos
imp: ROMAlyzer: indicate optional missing ROMs as such in the report (greyed-out icon) and when logging the CRC miss
new: added support for the use of environment variables in settings strings
new: ROMAlyzer: added data file import (imports all game names contained in a data file as the list of sets to be analyzed)
inf: the new required minimum Qt version is 4.8.0, support for older versions of Qt has been dropped

v0.41, 05-NOV-2013:

fix: QMC2 Arcade: disabled GTK style related work-around for Mac OS X
fix: foreign emulator support: the selection of a foreign emulator in the system's configuration wasn't correctly honored on emu-launch
imp: template-map check: switched the order in which differing default values are logged (the expected value is shown first now, the second value is the one from the currently active template)
imp: QMC2 Arcade / ToxicWaste theme: updated cabinet overlay image made by Jacques Châtelet (JacKc), added auto-stopping of animation and wave effect when emulators are running
imp: new logo images for all QMC2 variants, also by Jacques Châtelet (JacKc)
imp: improved key-sequence and joystick-function scanners
new: QMC2 Arcade: added support for key-sequence mapping
new: QMC2 Arcade: added support for digital joysticks (mapping their functions to key-sequences)
new: Qt CHDMAN GUI: added a script-engine based on QtScript (ECMAScript/JavaScript)
doc: completed all man-pages

v0.40, 18-SEP-2013:

fix: demo- & arcade-mode setup dialogs: corrected driver status filter order
fix: corrected item selection in favorites and play-history when restoring the game/machine selection
fix: corrected device and BIOS set filtering for category- and version-views
fix: QMC2 Arcade: worked around a weird issue on some GTK environments (which may implicitly set a buggy default style causing start-up crashes) by explicitly setting a safe built-in Qt style
fix: QMC2 Arcade: corrected the path that's used when loading images from a ZIP
fix: software-list: don't trigger an unwanted search during the loading phase
fix: reopen/remap the currently selected joystick (if any) after scanning the available sticks
imp: ROMAlyzer: improved logging when CHDs can't be found
imp: variant launcher on Linux/UNIX: added fallback to the current working directory for launching QMC2 variant binaries
imp: implemented a generalized solution for 'MinimizeOnVariantLaunch' and 'MinimizeOnEmuLaunch' which also saves/restores the current window states of all top-level widgets
imp: QMC2 Arcade: added a '-language' command line option (using the main GUI's setting as the default, which is now customizable from within arcade themes as well)
imp: QMC2 Arcade / ToxicWaste theme: the flip direction (cabinet <=> game-card) now adapts to where the user clicks on the 'flippable' item (left/right half of vertical center area vs. top/bottom area), the back-end default options are customizable from within the theme, the quit confirmation is optional now and the image-class shown in the cabinet can be selected on the game-card
imp: suppress the initial ROM state filtering when no states or BIOS / device sets have been disabled (this speeds up loading in many cases), also do not run the actual filter when an individual set's ROM state is checked and doesn't change
imp: slightly improved the loading performance for cached XML data and all dat-info sources
imp: added support for Qt 5.1, however, the recommended Qt version remains 4.8 (when Qt 5 is used, the build rules will automatically disable embedder functionality on X11 platforms as well as all Phonon features on all platforms -- new implementations using QtMultimedia as replacement for Phonon and a rewrite of the embedder code will most likely be done at a later stage
imp: MAME/MESS/UME emulator templates updated to 0.150
imp: ROMAlyzer: changed file-status indication slightly, using capital letters for good and lower letters for bad states
imp: added mamedb.com and progettoemma.net as additional MAWS sources and made progettoemma.net the new default URL
imp: MESS device configurator: renamed available device configurations to stored device configurations and simplified some tool-tips accordingly
imp: emulator control panel: exchanged LED on/off icons with fancier ones and added a third LED column
imp: more SDL joystick related logging
new: added display of software-state info as 'combined statistics' to the software-list widget (similar to the stats-label used for the game/machine list)
new: QMC2 Arcade / ToxicWaste theme: added support for displaying emulator- and game-infos on the game-card and for manual vs. automatic cabinet scaling/positioning
new: added 'tagged only' and 'favorites only' filter options to the arcade- and demo-mode setup dialogs
new: added optional support for additional image formats for all kinds of artwork
doc: added (preliminary) man-pages for all binaries
inf: globally renamed the 'XML game/machine list cache' to just 'XML data cache'

v0.39, 11-JUN-2013:

fix: software-list export: traverse the export map correctly
fix: avoid crash when play was triggered on premature game/machine list data
fix: minor: launch foreign emulators/IDs even if the current game/machine is a device set
fix: don't remove/hide the system-notes detail page when the game-/machine-list is reloaded
fix: slot-devices: default slot-options with non-default BIOS selections weren't passed to the emulator
fix: Windows 8 specific corrections (especially related to the file-chooser and the welcome-dialog)
fix: MESS device configurator: the UI setup wasn't correctly stored/restored under certain circumstances
fix: MESS device configurator: double-clicking stored configurations could lead to a crash
fix: MESS device configurator: adjust tab-orders after dynamically changing device-mappings and slot-options
fix: MESS device configurator: correctly clear all device-maps and reset the slot-configuration to the default one when the 'new configuration' button is clicked
fix: X11 embedder: call XUnmapWindow() & XMapRaised() after releasing an emulator to avoid that its window may be hidden, corrected a centering issue upon resizing of the embed-container
fix: software-lists: floating software-snapshots should never be shown when their contents are the ghost-image
fix: software-lists: corrected a rare UI synchronization issue when switching systems while a software-list is currently being created
fix: software-lists: don't disable the complete widget when one or more expected software-lists weren't found
fix: avoid a rare crash that could be caused by subsequently applying settings very quickly
fix: QMC2 Arcade / ToxicWaste theme: corrected positioning of the imager-viewer (back-side)
fix: options / joystick: automatically select the 'Map' function when the user clicks 'Apply' or 'OK' so joystick function mappings actually get activated (joystick functions won't be mapped when in 'Calibrate' or 'Test' mode)
fix: honor the emulator's working directory (if specified) when verifying ROMs
fix: avoid crash of the front-end when 'mame/mess/ume -listxml' crashes
fix: minor: don't issue an actual search when no game/machine list data has been loaded yet
fix: key-sequence scanner: avoid X Error: BadWindow invalid window parameter warning when grabbing the keyboard -- on X11, the window must the 'mapped' (shown) first
fix: corrected joystick support on Mac OS X by implementing real calibration / axis value normalization -- see also bug tracker ID #39
imp: added tool-buttons to select/deselect all categories in the demo- and arcade-mode setup dialogs
imp: software-list export: added the 'supported' column to the software-list export feature
imp: software-lists: added a 'clear selection' item to the software-list's context-menu
imp: updated MESS category.ini contributed by ASH to his latest version as of 28-MAY-2013
imp: software-lists: save/restore an individual position of the vertical splitter for use with the software-detail widget
imp: added support for multiple ZIPs per image type, specified as a semicolon-separated list of ZIP file paths
imp: ROMAlyzer: when a set is analyzed, also check for any device-references and offer a context-menu item to analyze them separately
imp: MAME/MESS/UME emulator templates updated to 0.149
imp: HTML editor: added a shorter editor object reference named 'qmc2NEO' as an alternative to 'qmc2NotesEditorObject'
imp: system- and software-notes templates: template macro additions ($EMULATOR_TYPE$, $SOFTWARE_STATUS$, $SOFTWARE_STATUS_UT$ and $SOURCE_FILE$)
imp: updated & renamed the alternative system-/software-notes templates contributed by José Marcio Rezende Franco
imp: MESS device configurator: minor UI improvements using fewer frames and some new icons
imp: all MAME targets: added support for detection of HBMAME
imp: minor speed ups on the initial loading of the game/machine list views
imp: made XML cache loading/creation an interruptable process
imp: X11 and Windows only: the scaling mode for snapshots taken through the embedder can now be selected
imp: using Qt's built-in (= non-native) standard file-dialogs wherever possible (you can optionally switch back to using native dialogs, however, we don't recommend it due to possible issues on some platforms or desktop systems)
imp: added a 'reset' action to all header context-menus (will make all contained columns visible and stretch them equally)
imp: added support for samples to all MESS targets as well (MESS supports samples since sometime after 0.148u3), however, this doesn't include the sample-checker yet
imp: available 'bios' and 'ramsize' options are now displayed with their descriptions (bios) or as human readable values (ramsize), including an indication for the default option and natural sorting
imp: enabled free sorting for shortcut- and joystick-maps
imp: log a warning to the front-end log when QMC2 finds multiple uses of the same set name during game-/machine-list cache creation
imp: integrated zlib updated to version 1.2.8 (see zlib's change-log for details)
new: system- and software-notes templates: added two new slots for use with zipped images: 'qmc2NEO.isZippedImage()' will determine if an image is from a ZIP, 'qmc2NEO.getImageData()' will return the base64-encoded image data which you can use in <img> tags (caution: may be slow and will inflate the HTML enormously -- only use this with the WYSIWYG editor!)
new: HTML editor: added an option to show/hide the HTML tab
new: system- and software-notes templates: added support for querying the XML (from -listxml) using XQuery through the new slots 'qmc2NEO.queryXml()' (will execute an XQuery on the complete XML data, warning: may be slow), 'qmc2NEO.queryLocalXml()' (same as before, restricted to a single game/machine and thus much faster) and 'qmc2NEO.getXmlResult()' (will return the list of result strings as an array)
new: search-patterns used to match games/machines or software-list entries can now be negated on-the-fly through a setup-menu attached to the search-box's find button
new: promoted 'Qt CHDMAN GUI' (see tools/qchdman) to non-WIP status as it meanwhile supports all 'chdman' commands
new: allow merging the file-chooser mapping with the currently set device-mappings
new: added a built-in palette-editor to easily set up UI colors (without the use of a Qt style-sheet or 'qtconfig' which isn't available on all platforms)
new: added a slot-info cache for faster initial loading of data from '-listslots'
new: added selectable zoom-factors for the software-list's floating snapshot-viewer and the embedder's snapshot-list/-viewer
new: X11 and Windows only: snapshots taken through the embedder can now directly replace an image of any type; the image will be stored to the first (primary) folder and a backup file will be created there first (note that this is only available for images stored in folders, not for zipped images)
new: added support for state-checking, -caching & -filtering of software-lists
new: added a source file column to all game-/machine-list views
new: added an option to allow for automatic emulator termination when a new one is launched (i.e. run one emulator instance at a time)
new: added new QMC2 Arcade theme 'darkone' including additional functionality by Pete Beardmore
new: QMC2 Arcade's default values for the command line switches -theme, -console and -graphicssystem now follow any customizations made in the main GUI's arcade mode setup dialog
wip: adding support for freely definable additional artwork classes (system- or software-images)
doc: the QMC2 FAQ has been moved to the wiki

v0.38, 11-JAN-2013:

fix: corrected progress-bar updates when loading catver.ini or category.ini
fix: corrected remapping of key-sequences using the Command key on Mac OS X
fix: the key-sequence scanner now also scans num-pad keys
fix: system-notes: template loading didn't work correctly initially
fix: corrected full-screen switching when the menu-bar is hidden
fix: Windows: corrected HLSL multi-part float handling
fix: fall back to the default style when a previously set style wasn't found
imp: system-notes: template macro additions ($PARENT_ID$, $ROM_STATUS$ and $ROM_STATUS_UT$)
imp: updated MESS/UME variant logos / splash-screens and all app-icons -- thanks to Jacques Châtelet (JacKc)
imp: demo-mode: added an option to launch emulators sequentially rather than randomly
imp: Win32 MinGW build: changed the default for 'MKSPEC' to 'win32-g++-4.6' -- this assumes Qt 4.8, so whoever still uses Qt 4.7 has to pass 'MKSPEC=win32-g++' on the make command (i.e. 'make configure MKSPEC=win32-g++')
imp: image-checker: potentially obsolete items contained in image- or icon-directories include files and folders now
imp: control-panel images are now available to all MESS variants as well (i. e. for use with AntoPISA's new MESS controllers)
imp: YouTube video player: added support for YouTube's new requirement to add session signatures to stream URLs
imp: removed no longer required file-removal tool settings
imp: MAME/MESS/UME emulator templates updated to 0.148
imp: Mac OS X: replaced key-sequence 'Ctrl+O' with 'Ctrl+,' (commonly used short-cut for open preferences dialog); 'Ctrl+O' can now be used for its actual use case on Mac OS X (open/activate item)
imp: software-lists: added a 'supported' column (possible values: yes/no/partially)
imp: HTML editor: the menu-bar can be hidden now, and the editor's contents can be made read-only (i.e. to avoid unintended changes)
imp: system- and software-notes: template loading allows asynchronous URL retrieval now (i.e. remote image URLs), indicating the current progress while loading
imp: HTML editor: replaced the standard QWebView with the MiniWebBrowser's tweaked internal web-view to support JavaScript actions that open new windows
imp: software-notes: template macro additions ($SOFTWARE_SUPPORTED$, $SOFTWARE_SUPPORTED_UT$, $SOFTWARE_INFO$, $SOFTWARE_INFO_STATUS$)
imp: the documentation browser's zoom-setting is now restored as well
imp: added ability to store an option's short-name in the emulator configuration template (i. e. <option default="roms" name="rompath" shortname="rp" type="directory">)
imp: using a proxy-style when Qt 5 is detected to avoid single-click item activations (that's not really suitable for us)
new: ROMAlyzer: the set rewriter and checksum wizard now also load repro-data from regular files (when they are stored in expected folders and have the correct file names / CRCs), the set rewriter can also reproduce sets in individual sub-directories (see 'reproduction type' in ROMAlyzer settings)
new: demo-mode: added filtering by category, driver-status and set-names when selecting eligible sets for the demo
new: image-checker: bad image files (subset of the missing ones) can now be filtered and removed by means of the GUI (so searching for bad image files in the log and manually removing them is no longer required)
new: made a complete rewrite of the sample-checker which wasn't working correctly for ages -- see also bug tracker ID #31
new: MiniWebBrowser: added a search widget to find arbitrary text in web-pages
new: MiniWebBrowser: added support for persistent cookies (stored in / retrieved from an SQLite database)
new: added PDF.js -- a JavaScript / HTML5 PDF rendering library
new: added support for HTML5 'localStorage' to the MiniWebBrowser and notes-templates (this allows templates to store and retrieve local settings)
new: system- and software-notes templates: exposing the notes-editor object to JavaScript allowing templates to call editor slots directly (!) -- right now, there are four slots you can use: 'qmc2NotesEditorObject.loadCurrentTemplate()' will reload the template itself (for example to react on changed settings), 'qmc2NotesEditorObject.getIconData()' will return the base64-encoded icon data which you can use in <img> tags, 'qmc2NotesEditorObject.getColor()' will open a color-dialog and returns a named color, and finally 'qmc2NotesEditorObject.getImage()' will open a file-dialog to select an image file (see data/gmn/template.html for an example)
new: MESS device configurator: allow in-place renaming of stored device configurations (see context menu)
new: added support for a 'software info DB' using MAME history.dat's new (MAME & MESS) software infos, available in all variants -- thanks to Alexis Bousiges for his efforts and kind cooperation on this matter
new: added ability to reset, revert and/or store individual emulator options by adding a column with respective action tool-buttons that are enabled/disabled according to the option's current ini-state
new: file-chooser: folders can now be included in the file-list and are opened/followed when double-clicked or Enter/Return is pressed on them (there's also a new context-menu item for this); the folder-mode itself can be switched through a new menu-button in the widget's tool-bar (folders are hidden by default, select 'Show folders' to display them or 'Show folders first' to show them on top of the file-list, before any regular files)
new: added a new QML based implementation of the long-awaited 'arcade mode' as a stand-alone application (QMC2 Arcade, see arcade/ folder)
new: added support for Qt 5.0, however, the recommended Qt version remains 4.8 (when Qt 5 is used, the build rules will automatically disable embedder functionality on X11 platforms as well as all Phonon features on all platforms -- this is due to dropped Qt modules, add-on modules may cover this later perhaps)
new: added alternative system- and software-notes templates contributed by José Marcio Rezende Franco
new: added MESS category.ini contributed by ASH
inf: the SVN repository has been moved to a new location -- use one of these URLs now: svn://svn.code.sf.net/p/qmc2/code/trunk or http://svn.code.sf.net/p/qmc2/code/trunk

v0.37, 17-SEP-2012:

fix: changes made to multi-value floats as used in HLSL options weren't updated correctly
fix: demo-mode: don't select device-sets
fix: non-Windows: avoid a rare crash when exiting QMC2 while a running emulator is producing output on the notifier FIFO
fix: don't allow tagging/untagging of parent-items in category- and version-views
fix: file-browsers in emulator configuration dialogs used the wrong standard file-dialog so non-existing file names weren't accepted
fix: ZIP-archived image files weren't correctly opened initially
fix: full-screen switching on Ubuntu 12.04 (Unity desktop) didn't work correctly -- see bug tracker ID #26
fix: don't pass empty arguments when launching foreign emulators
fix: non-Windows: the optional memory indicator wasn't updated because the corresponding timer didn't fire
fix: MESS device configurator: when a configuration made with the file-chooser was saved, the current slot setup wasn't stored together with it -- rendering the stored item useless when slot customizations were required
fix: corrected ROM status determination for sets containing only CHDs (but no ROMs)
fix: the current emulator selection made on the game/machine-specific configuration tab wasn't saved upon reload
fix: minor: corrected progress-text updates when certain operations are running 'in parallel' (i.e. loading the software-list while a full ROM audit is active)
fix: avoid crash when no game/machine is selected and a 'play' action is triggered
fix: MiniWebBrowser: corrected document history handling with regard to the availability of back- and forward-actions
fix: set locale- and c-string-encoding to UTF-8 globally and handle XML data specifically on Windows to cleanly support international character sets
fix: emulator wasn't launched under certain circumstances when the game/machine was filtered out due to its ROM status
fix: use UTF-8 character encoding when reading game-/machine- and/or emulator-info DB dat-sources
imp: adjusted the ghost-image used for videos (wrong text removed)
imp: depending on the installed codecs, an unused YouTube widget may still cause load on the system, so it's now already destroyed when it's no longer required
imp: updated redistributed Qt translations from Qt 4.8.3
imp: unified the image processing to remove code duplication for different image types
imp: check for the existence of the emulator's executable file before trying to actually run a null process (which may cause issues on Mac OS X)
imp: Mac OS X build: added build option XCODE3 which (if set to 1) will disable the special handling when Qt 4.8+ is detected
imp: MAME/MESS/UME emulator templates updated to 0.147 (added new core options ui_mouse and ui_active, removed option hide_cursor)
imp: added an option to allow for setting QMC2's working directory to be the same as the executable's path (for special use cases, not commonly used)
imp: replaced all QMC2 variant logos and splash-screens with improved versions from JacKc
imp: Qt messages that are sent before the GUI is ready are now printed to the console (stdout) instead of eating them
imp: emulator configuration widgets: all drop-down lists for 'bios' / 'ramsize' selections or options with pre-defined choices are now sorted, possible duplicates are removed and the number of visible items has been increased to 20
imp: the file-chooser's folder selector is now also sorted / sortable
imp: foreign emulator IDs can now contain arguments with white-space characters when they are enclosed in double-quotes
imp: changed the file-chooser's sorting (by file name) to be case-insensitive
imp: updated template format to v0.2.6 which adds support to ignore complete sections (globally or per target OS)
imp: Mac OS X build: don't compile runonce as it's not used on Mac OS X (and has an X11 requirement)
imp: integrated zlib updated to version 1.2.7 (see zlib's change-log for details)
imp: Win32 MinGW build: added OS auto-detection for Windows so specification of MINGW=1 is no longer required (however, if MINGW is set, its value will be used regardless)
imp: when a non-default (= foreign) emulator is selected for the current game/machine, the device-mapper and software-list tabs are disabled now
imp: sets with empty names are now ignored, logging corresponding warnings when the game/machine list cache is recreated (this is a driver bug which also '-validate' will warn about)
imp: Win32 VC++ build: added x64 support to the project generation script
imp: added an advanced line-edit containing an icon to symbolize its function (used in certain search widgets)
imp: changed the default short-cuts for adding games/machines to the favorites list (now Ctrl+J and Ctrl+Shift+J) to free the Ctrl+F short-cut for another/better use (i.e. for finding arbitrary text)
imp: changed the default short-cut for 'About QMC2' (now Ctrl+B) to free the Ctrl+A short-cut which is commonly used for 'select all'
imp: file-chooser: opened ZIP contents are sorted as well
imp: completely revised the image cache internals, now also storing the file path the cached image was loaded from, which can be retrieved via the image's context-menu (the file path is not available in case of zipped images, though)
imp: much better GUI response while recreating the XML cache and checking all ROMs (full audit)
imp: animate searching for game/machine XML data when the user expands an item in the primary (full-detail) view
imp: the menu-bar on Mac OS X is no longer 'native' because this misbehaves with multiple menu-bars that we have now
imp: emulator configuration widgets are now initially hidden and shown after all options were loaded, which speeds up this process a little bit (you won't see a visual difference, though)
imp: added OS detection for Windows 8 and Mac OS X 10.8 to the about dialog when Qt 4.8.3 or higher is used
new: added support for David Haywood's (Haze) Universal Machine Emulator (MAME/MESS unification project) in the form of an additional variant called 'qmc2-ume' or 'qmc2-sdlume' -- see bug tracker ID #22
new: the YouTube video-player now supports local movie files as well
new: added support for tool-bar customization
new: allow the specification of semicolon-separated lists of folders for ALL image types
new: added support for system- and manufacturer-logo images (i. e. AntoPISA's new MESS marquees)
new: added support for the new MESS category.ini from ASH (UME targets merge the info with data from catver.ini, if applicable)
new: added a check for the ROM path setting (a warning message will pop up when the ROM path hasn't been set or isn't available) -- see bug tracker ID #28
new: made a complete rewrite of the image-checker dialog, which now allows checks of ALL image types in a multi-threaded way -- this also fixes a long-standing bug on Windows, BTW (see bug tracker ID #5)
new: MESS device configurator: added support for nested slots, including real slot recursion
new: software-lists: available mount-devices are dynamically updated whenever the device/slot setup changes
new: added 3 new actions to tag / untag / invert tags of all visible sets (according to the current ROM state filter)
new: game/machine detail tabs can now also be reordered directly in the GUI by dragging them with the mouse
new: added a tool action to open a new empty browser window on demand
new: <info> elements contained in a number of software-list entries are now displayed as well (requires very recent MAME/MESS/UME versions after 0.146u5, otherwise <info> elements are not contained in the -listsoftware output)
new: items in all game/machine list views can now be tagged/untagged while the 'cursor' is moved, using the new (customizable) short-cuts Shift+Up and Shift+Down (works much like in 'Total Commander' when tagging/untagging files or folders)
new: the file-chooser now offers an additional context-menu item to open regular files (not ZIP content yet!) externally by launching the default application that's associated with the file's MIME type (or extension)
new: added a 'personal rich-text notes' detail for games/machines (same as the software-notes feature, but for systems this time)
new: added command line option '-cc' which clears (removes) all emulator caches prior to starting up
new: HTML editor: added document preview in built-in browser as well as 'new-from-template' and 'revert-from-saved-file' functionality
new: MESS device configurator: added support for selecting the BIOS used in slot-devices (if applicable)
new: software-lists: optional automatic adjustment of the emulator's -snapname parameter for easier creation of software-snapshots
doc: use a common image directory instead of sym-links
inf: the configuration template for MAMEUIFX32 has been dropped (unmaintained)
inf: long project name changed to M.A.M.E./M.E.S.S./U.M.E. Catalog / Launcher II

v0.36, 21-MAY-2012:

fix: ROMAlyzer: don't stop searching for CHDs at the first ROM path (when there are multiple ROM paths)
fix: allow embedding of (MAME/MESS-like) foreign emulators again -- changes made in 0.35 prevented this completely
fix: changed the default short-cut for the check template map action to 'Ctrl+Shift+C' -- the previous default of 'Ctrl+C' was awkward since it's usually used as short-cut for copy to clipboard
fix: avoid crashes in the game list parser and the ROMAlyzer's checksum wizard due to unexpected nameless entries (first appeared in MESS 0.145u1+)
fix: build: corrected a new set of compile-time bugs related to builds with PHONON=0
fix: ROMAlyzer: after updating CHDs to the latest format, update the CHD header information from the replaced file before comparing the SHA1 checksums
fix: minor: corrected a few texts with regard to the current variant's emulator type (MAME vs. MESS)
fix: file-chooser: expand/collapse ZIP-contents on any type of 'activation' (i.e. not only on mouse double-clicks but also when enter or return are pressed, includes navigation via cursor-keys)
fix: re-enable 'locked' widgets when the emulator can't be started for reading the game/machine data
fix: MESS device configurator: corrected display of file-editor's data when there's only one available device instance (by synchronizing delegate/model updates)
fix: don't start a verification process when the ROM state cache can't be opened for writing
fix: file-chooser: the machine-dependent software-folder was not correctly pre-selected when existing device configurations were loaded in parallel
fix: MESS device configurator: avoid a rare crash when systems are hovered very quickly (asynchronous updates may otherwise work on meanwhile invalid data)
fix: clear favorites and play-history upon reload and make sure the last selected game/machine is correctly re-selected (if applicable)
fix: ROMAlyzer: when repairing a set and the wanted CRC or name (header-)entry already exists in the target ZIP, recreate the complete ZIP file in order to replace the 'bad' file
fix: ROMAlyzer: don't rewrite sets that are analyzed on behalf of the checksum-wizard (even if 'rewrite while analyzing' has been activated)
fix: corrected some additional MESS-specific phrases and removed WIP-only stuff from key- & joystick-mappers
fix: adjusted the behavior of the two main search combo-boxes and tied them more closely
fix: software-lists: support multiple allowed device-interface types
fix: MiniWebBrowser: don't raise main-widget / lower browser window(s) when selecting the path to save a downloadable resource
fix: corrected character conversion when compressing HTML data stored in in-memory and on-disk web-caches (using QString::toLocal8Bit() instead of QString::toLatin1() now)
imp: ROMAlyzer: LRU-caching XML data positions in order to speed up merge-processing
imp: updated the MAME variant's logo with an improved version from JacKc
imp: MESS device configurator: log a warning when '-listslots' crashes
imp: MAME/MESS emulator templates updated to 0.146 (fixed duplication of option 'natural' in MESS templates)
imp: interpret the new 'has no roms' status as 'good' (a.k.a. correct)
imp: foreign emulator support: added $DESCRIPTION$ as an optional argument placeholder for the set's description
imp: ROMAlyzer: interpret emu- and file-states of sets that have no ROMs as 'good' also in case of MAME (new since 0.145u2)
imp: ROM status check: circumvent the corner case of sets without ROMs also in case of MAME (new since 0.145u2, see 'ide_baseboard' and 'hdd' devices)
imp: ROMAlyzer: log possible driver XML bugs where a merge-name is given without a parent set to take it from (other than this, these cases are ignored and treated as 'good' merge-states)
imp: when registering foreign emulators, the existence of the $ID$ placeholder on the supplied command line is now indicated through a green/yellow colored label (when $ID$ is missing, the configuration will most likely not work)
imp: allow the specification of the emulator's working directory already in the welcome dialog
imp: updated redistributed Qt translations from Qt 4.8.1
imp: honor 'players' value for device sets where applicable (i.e. some input devices)
imp: MESS device configurator: sort slot-options alphanumerically, add a separator between 'not used' and available options, allow disabling of default slot-options and indicate them as such
imp: main widget: revised all auto-connected menu actions to use QAction::triggered(bool) (instead of a meanwhile deprecated signal)
imp: slightly better responsiveness while loading cached XML data
imp: Mac OS X build: avoid using xcodebuild for Qt 4.8+
imp: replaced the 'MESS wiki driver look-up' with a ProjectMESS-based search since most data in the MESS wiki was lost, and ProjectMESS is the new de-facto '#1 web-resource for all things MESS' :)
imp: the MiniWebBrowser's zoom-factor can now also be specified through a (mouse) wheel-event when the Ctrl-key is pressed at the same time (like most standalone browsers)
new: ROMAlyzer: added support for CHD v5 (new since MAME/MESS 0.145u1) -- built-in analysis will work for CHD v3, v4 and v5; however, note that all 'CHD manager' functionality requires chdman from MAME/MESS 0.145u1+ now
new: ROMAlyzer: added a function to store the current log contents to a file
new: added tear-off capability to all menus within menu-bars
new: added freely customizable lists of game/machine IDs (and descriptions) that can be attached to foreign emulators and be presented / launched through the menu
new: both the MAWS (off-line) and the ProjectMESS driver look-up features save/restore their zoom-factors now
new: experimental support for Qt 5, which is in alpha-stage right now (there will be no embedder support on X11 platforms in the first place, since they dropped some X11-specific classes like the QX11EmbedContainer -- an add-on for Qt 5 to revive this functionality is planned, but will probably not be available before Qt 5.1)
new: YouTube video-player: you can now also 'paste' a YouTube video URL into the video-player itself, which will then start playing the respective video without attaching it to the play list
new: about dialog: added output of run-time Qt library paths to the system-information page
new: integrated zlib 1.2.6 to remove the extra requirement
new: the MiniWebBrowser now supports and allows pop-up window requests when the build option BROWSER_JAVASCRIPT is enabled (which is the default)
new: build option BROWSER_EXTRAS is now enabled by default which also activates the use of QtWebKit's Web Inspector in the MiniWebBrowser for everyone
new: added a Spanish translation -- thanks to Daniel Barrado
wip: adding a set rename tool to the ROMAlyzer which uses the -listxml outputs from both the old and the current emulator to gather the changes automagically
wip: adding a Romanian translation (mostly done) -- thanks to Mihai Boisteanu
wip: adding an Italian translation -- thanks to Stefano Cereda
wip: adding a stand-alone CHDMAN GUI (see tools/qchdman/)
wip: adding a Greek translation -- thanks to Kostas Albanidis
wip: adding a Swedish translation -- thanks to Daniel Nylander

v0.35, 06-FEB-2012:

fix: minor: hide the software-list favorites column 'device configuration' for MAME targets as it's a MESS-only feature
fix: minor: corrected the main progress-bar's visual behavior when ROM status checking and software-list caching are running in parallel
fix: MAME targets: the software-list widget wasn't cleared upon reload
fix: the last active detail-tab's header wasn't always shown initially
fix: software-snapshots were positioned incorrectly under certain circumstances
fix: corrected a few minor log-scrolling issues
fix: individual ROM checks didn't work correctly when the ROM status was 'not found' since output is written to stderr in this case and not to stdout as otherwise
fix: YouTube video-player: avoid crashes on exit by waiting for all application threads to finish before returning to the OS
fix: YouTube video-player: attached videos could get lost when changing the current game/machine very quickly
fix: ROMAlyzer: correctly 'remove' the progress-bar item-widget before deleting it (worked w/o until Qt 4.7.x, crashed since Qt 4.8.0)
fix: corrected restoration of main-widget's layout when the front-end was showing a maximized embedded emulator during clean up on the previous run
fix: corrected Windows 64-bit builds with DEBUG=2 (see bug tracker ID #21)
fix: file-chooser: the underlying item model now produces correct minimum widths for icon-less columns (size and modification date)
fix: embedder on X11: corrected initial input focus after launching a new embedded emulator
imp: ROM status exporter: additional output-format choice ('all formats') to export the ROM states to all three formats at once
imp: when a software-list can't be found (though it's expected to exist), leave the software-list widget disabled and don't try to parse the invalid XML (a warning will still be logged since this is actually an emulator bug, but probably also a wanted/known situation as told by etabeta78)
imp: MAME/MESS emulator templates updated to 0.145
imp: faster display of software-snapshots by using tool-tip like window attributes for the viewer widget (this also fixes bad-window errors on X11)
imp: slightly bigger icons in all game/machine list views
imp: updated template format to v0.2.5 which adds support for an optional 'part' attribute that can be used in file-type options to specify the extracted part of the file's path (currently only "basename" is supported, used by the effect-option)
imp: loading of software-lists can be interrupted now and is indicated accordingly for larger lists (i.e. cpc_cass/cpc_flop)
imp: Mac OS X build: moved macx/Info.plist.in to arch/Darwin/Info.plist.in where it belongs
imp: build: added a 'configure' make target to create platform dependent project file(s) and stop (i.e. to open it in XCode and build from there on Mac OS X, or to run MinGW make in job-server mode on Windows)
imp: MiniWebBrowser: browser-plugins are now enabled per default (see make option BROWSER_PLUGINS)
imp: build: removed make option PRETTY as it's no longer usable in the supported Qt versions
imp: Mac OS X build: provide application icons (.icns) to be associated with the apps
imp: created new logo images (thanks to JacKc)
imp: ROMAlyzer: checksum-wizard: when the user changes the checksum-type and the current checksum is available in the 'other' type as well, display it in the line-edit (not available when the checksum is edited manually)
new: the ROM state filtering mechanism can now be enabled/disabled on-the-fly (the default is 'enabled', just as before)
new: added support for multi-device software-list entries as well as automatic vs. manual mount-device selection (includes the ability to mix parts from different software-list entries)
new: added an alternative game/machine search entry box to the tool-bar
new: added a CSV and ASCII export tool for software-lists
new: added import/export functionality for software-list favorites
new: changed the MESS device configurator so it offers available device-instances based on the slot-options specified, thus allowing to mount them as well (through the legacy device-mapper and the file-chooser)
new: added ZIP support for software-snapshots
new: X11 and Windows only: game/machine icons are now also shown on the tab headers of embedded emulators
new: all images have an additional context-menu item ('refresh') now to clear and reload their cached pendants
new: integrated the HTML editor from Qt Labs / graphics-dojo for all kinds of (upcoming) rich-text editing purposes
new: added content-zoom to the MiniWebBrowser
new: top-level windows can now optionally be minimized upon emulation launch and automatically restored when the (last) emulator instance has ended
new: YouTube video-player: added a semi-transparent overlay widget to display status information at the bottom of the player's viewport
new: software-lists: added software-compatibility filtering
new: added a 'MESS wiki' detail to look up available driver information
new: added an option to suppress all messages sent through QDebug and related convenience functions
new: added an optional startup splash-screen utilizing the new logos
new: added support for emulator-embedding on Windows (!) -- note, however, that embedding of emulators running in Direct 3D mode ('-video d3d') has two known issues: full-screen switching will lead to a crash (of the emulator) and screen-shots aren't taken correctly from within the GUI (just a black image)
new: X11 and Windows only: added an option to select the default launch-mode used when starting emulation by activating (i.e. double-clicking) an entry in any list
new: X11 and Windows only: replaced the style-controlled embedder-release icons (usually a red 'X' which some users wrongly interpreted as 'exit emulator') with a more suitable / less irritating and style-independent icon by setting explicit style-sheets on the tab-bars of all embedders
new: added two options to allow for hiding of BIOS and/or device sets in all master-lists (see Front end -> Game/Machine list in the main setup dialog) -- both will trigger an automatic reload when changed
new: added a dock-able/floating software-detail widget with a separate snapshot-browser, a ProjectMESS software-lookup feature, and an HTML editor/viewer for personal rich-text software-notes
inf: the new required minimum Qt version is 4.7.0, support for older versions of Qt has been dropped

v0.34, 15-NOV-2011:

fix: MAME targets: don't auto-resize the last column in the game/machine list views when toggling the use of catver.ini (it annoys more than it helps)
fix: build: corrected compile-time bugs related to builds with PHONON=0
fix: adjust icon sizes when showing the audio-effect dialog initially
fix: removed flicker on changing game-/machine-list views
fix: corrected a few MESS-specific phrases
fix: corrected delegate-sizing issues when there's only one device instance in the MESS device setup
fix: Mac OS X: set ROMAlyzer's parent widget in order to avoid context-menu displacement
fix: ROMAlyzer: the ROM set's context-menu should be available also when the set rewriter hasn't been enabled
fix: MAME targets: category- and version-views were not created initially when switched to via the view-selector combo-box
fix: MAME targets: demo-mode: avoid floating-point exception when no games were selected by the filter
imp: updated minizip to version 1.01h
imp: YouTube video player: decode (percent-)encoded error messages before logging them
imp: setup dialog: conflated all formerly split emulator- and game-info DB settings
imp: MAME/MESS emulator templates updated to 0.144
imp: ROMAlyzer: better 'no dump' indication
imp: enabled audio-effect widgets for MinGW builds (they work fine when the official Qt DLLs are being used, otherwise set the new AUDIOEFFECTDIALOGS make option to 0 in order to disable them)
imp: X11 only: minor embedder optimizations regarding widget resizing
imp: YouTube video player: added support for YouTube's new way of presenting video stream URLs
imp: general overhaul of the main-widget's layout parameters to allow for a somewhat more 'compact' design
imp: the working directory of the external ROM tool can be specified now
imp: build: added EMU as an alias for the EMULATOR make option
imp: locale-aware statistics in the ROM status exporter and the GUI's ROM status bar
imp: updated redistributed Qt translations from Qt 4.7.4
new: added a 'driver status' column to all game/machine lists (or views)
new: Windows only: the other variant's exe file can now be specified explicitly (the default is to search for it only in the directory where the calling variant was started from) -- this works also when you rename the exe files; you can additionally specify the command line arguments passed to the other variant (note that this is an independent setting and would also be used when the variant exe is not overwritten!)
new: support for MAME's/MESS's new device-referencing (new since 0.143u2+ SVN)
new: Mac OS X only: the tool-bar can now optionally be unified with the title-bar
new: MESS targets: support for machine-specific device slots / slot options, integrated with the MESS device configurator
new: the MESS variants now use their own logo, and all variants use new unified applications icons -- thanks to Anna Wu
new: added a new tool-function to allow for forced removal of ALL emulator related caches at once
new: added support for the new 'messinfo.dat' file from AntoPISA (see http://www.progettosnaps.net/messinfo/)
new: completed the support for software-lists in MAME and MESS (ZIP-support for software-snaps will be added later)
new: customizable columns in all game-/machine-list and software-list views
new: MESS targets: a new 'file chooser' dialog has been added to the MESS device configurator as an easy-to-use alternative to the manual setup
new: MESS targets: device type icons are now displayed to better symbolize MESS device instances
new: ROMAlyzer: you can specify an additional source ROM path for the set rewriter in order to allow for merging updates
new: added support for item-tagging and a number of related operations that can now also be performed for tagged games/machines
new: for ZIP-archived icons (actually the only practical way to store them) support for ICO format has been added -- this means that for instance MAMU's icon can now be used directly, w/o conversion to PNGs!
new: icons are now also supported for all MESS targets
wip: adding a Java (Eclipse/SWT) based editor/translator for emulator templates (see tools/qmc2_options_editor_java) -- thanks to Marcelo Bossoni
inf: note that the versioning pattern has changed: we now just count the releases and follow the simple scheme '0.XX', where XX is the release number
inf: note that the minimum required MESS revision now is SVN r12599 (or MESS 0.143u3)

Ancient change-log entries prior to QMC2 v0.34 are no longer maintained in the SVN tree since v0.39!

The archived change-log can be downloaded from here in case you're interested.