*** CloudCompare versions history ***

v2.6.0 10/24/2014
- New methods:
	* Tools > Clean > Noise filter
		- this tool is similar to qPCL plugin's SOR filter (Statistical Outliers Filter) but
		  with more options:
			* possibility to set a (sphere) radius for the nearest neighbors search instead of
			 a fixed number of points (much better if the cloud density is not constant)
			* possibility an absolute error instead of a relative error
			* possibility to remove isolated points by the way
	* Mesh quality measurement tool: 'Edit > Mesh > Flag vertices by type'
		- flags all the vertices of the mesh (with a dedicated scalar field) with different
			values depending on whether they are belonging to a normal edge (0), to an edge
			on a border (1) or to a non-manifold edge (2).
		- displays in the console the total number of each type of edges (normal/border/non-manifold)
			as well as the total number of edges
	* Mesh volume measurement tool: 'Edit > Mesh > Measure volume'
		- the result is only valid if the mesh is closed (CloudCompare will warn you if it's not the case
			and you can check that yourself with the new 'Flag vertices by type' method (see above).
	* Meshes can now be exported in DXF (Autocad) files
	* New 'Display' options:
		- 'Display > Lock rotation around vert. axis' to lock the manual rotation around the screen
			vertical axis (shortcut: 'L')
		- 'Display > Enter bubble-view mode' to enable 'bubble view' mode, a viewer-based perspective
			blocked on the current camera position, with Z axis locked and a high field of view by
			default (shortcut: 'B'). This is the new default mode enabled when clicking on the 'Apply'
			button of a TLS/GBL sensor (typically opened with a PTX or Faro file for instance)
	* New feature: "Transformation history"
		- All rigid transformations applied to any 3D object are now 'tracked'. In practice it is
			accumulated in a 'history' transformation matrix for each entity. For instance this allows
			to easily determine the global transformation applied to an entity since loading time (even
			after multiple manual transformation or automatic registration steps).
		- a dedicated widget ('Transformation history') has been added to the the 'Properties' dialog.
			This widget displays the matrix either as a "standard" 4x4 matrix, or as a rotation axis
			associated to a rotation angle and a translation vector. This widget also allows the user
			to copy the matrix to the clipboard or to save it as a text file (for opening it later in
			'Edit > Apply transformation' for instance)
	* New buttons in the 'Apply Transformation' dialog:
		- 'ASCII file' to import a transformation matrix from an ASCII file (see above)
		- 'Clipboard' to paste the clipboard contents (hopefully corresponding to a transformation matrix ;)
	* New plugin: qCork for Mesh Boolean Operation (= Constructive Solid Geometry)
		- this plugin is based on the LGPL Cork Library (https://github.com/gilbo/cork)
		- allows to compute the difference, union or intersection of two CLOSED meshes
		- current limitations:
			* doesn't keep the mesh(es) attributes (color, nrormals, etc.)
			* only available on Windows

- Enhancements:
	* For 64 bits versions, the max octree depth is now 21 instead of 10. This way CC will be more efficient
		on clouds above 20 or 30 M. points. The resulting increase in memory consumption shouldn't be an issue
		for recent computers (the new octree needs 12 bytes per point instead of 8, which corresponds to +380 Mb
		for 100 M. points)
	* The 'Edit > Merge' method now works with meshes
	* qPoissonRecon upgraded:
		- now uses the latest PoissonRecon version 6.11
		- screening activated by default
		- the user can now choose to output the 'density' parameter as a SF
			(this let him afterwards reduce the output mesh extents)
	* qEDL (Eye Dome Lighting) now behaves correctly even in perspective mode!
	* The vector coordinates have been restored in the 2-points labels (Point picking tool)
	* Texture handling:
		- textures are now handled in a much smarter and proper way (OBJ/PLY/FBX formats)
		- less memory consumption + original filenames are preserved
	* FBX file format:
		- Materials and texture are now supported (input/output)
	* New options in the Bundler import dialog:
		- Choose the keyponts/orthophotos vertical axis with radio buttons (X, Y, Z and Custom)
		- Choose the ortho-rectification method:
			* Optimized: the 'classic' method based on CC's own parameter optimization process
			* Direct: an alternate method based only on Bundler's output parameters
	* qSRA (Surface of Revolution Analysis) plugin:
		- the triangles of the exported meshes (surface of revolution textured with the displacement map)
			are now in the right order (right hand rule)
		- memory leak fixed (when displaying a conical projection map)
	* ASCII import/export:
		- RGB colors can now be imported or exported as float values (between 0 and 1)
			instead of unsigned bytes (0-255)
		- New 'Apply' button (replaces 'Ok')
		- New 'Apply all' button to attempt to load all the files with the same column assignation
	* PLY import:
		- New 'Apply' button (replaces 'Ok'): the dialog will remember the previous configuration and will try
			to restore it the next time
		- New 'Apply all' button : the dialog is skipped whenever CC can successfully restore the previous configuration while opening new files.
	* PTX import:
		- grid translation is now also checked for 'big coordinates' (Global Shift & Scale mechanism)
		- cancel button also cancels the normals computation!
		- sensors corresponding to each scan are automatically created
		- CC will now ask the user if the normals should be computed or not
		- when loading PTX file from the command line, normals are not computed by default.
			Use the option '-COMPUTE_PTX_NORMALS' to force their computation.
	* LAS import:
		- new handles LAS 1.4 files: the dialog has a new section that allows the user to load the
			custom fields defined in the LAS file 'extra bytes' section 
	* VTK import:
		- VTK I/O filter is now smarter and can read Paraview VTK files with multiple elements per line
	* PCL import/export:
		- now fully integrated in the main application if the qPCL (I/O) plugin is present
			(i.e. all PCD files can be loaded and saved  via the standard 'File > Open' and 'File > Save' menus)
		- the equivalent icons of the qPCL plugin has been removed
		- ccViewer can also load PCD files with the qPCL I/O plugin
	* 'Edit > Sensors' menu has been reorganized
	* Camera sensor management enhanced:
		- Camera sensors are now created automatically when clouds are loaded from Bundler or ICM files (TODO: from E57)
		- A dialog let the user create or edit camera sensors
		- the camera symbol in 3D is fully configurable (display scale, with or without frustum, etc.)
		- camera sensors (and images) can now be saved in BIN files
		- the 'Camera Sensor > Project uncertainty' and 'Camera Sensor > Compute points visibility' are now
			smarter and can be applied on any point cloud
	* Ground Based Laser sensors management enhanced:
		- GBL sensors are now created automatically when clouds are loaded from PTX files (TODO: from E57)
		- the user can now apply the GBL sensor 'viewport' to the 3D display ("bubble view' mode)
			(new 'Apply' button in the sensor properties)
		- the sensor symbol in 3D is now correctly centered on the optical center
			(and can be used with the magnifier icon to zoom/focus on it)
		- 'Theta' and 'Phi' are replaced by the clearer 'Yaw' and 'Pitch' names
		- 'Edit > Sensor > View from sensor' method is now cleverer
		- 'Edit > Sensor > GBL Sensor > Show depth map' is now cleverer
	* Camera parameters dialog:
		- should not 'disconnect' from the current 3D view anymore
		- new setting: 'zNear relative position' to change the position of the near clipping plane
			in perspective mode (due to the way near and far clipping planes are handled in CC, this
			is only a relative position, and it cannot be set at any given depth).
	* New keyboard shortcuts:
		- 'A' to toggle all selected entities activation (i.e. enable/disable state)
	* Density computation:
		- only one method now with a dedicated dialog:
			* ability to choose either the precise or approximate methods
			* ability to choose how the density should be computed (number of neighbors, surface or volume)
	* Command line:
		- New options:
			* '-FBX_EXPORT_FMT' to specify the format when exporting meshes to FBX. Available formats
				are currently (FBX_binary, FBX_ascii, FBX_encrypted, FBX_6.0_binary, FBX_6.0_ascii, FBX_6.0_encrypted).
				If not set CC will display a message box to let the user select the output format (even in
				command line mode ;) 
			* '-AUTO_SAVE' + ON/OFF: to set whether output clouds or meshes should be saved after each
				applied algorithm (currently ON by default)
			* new option after 'SAVE_CLOUDS' or 'SAVE_MESHES': 'ALL_AT_ONCE' to tell CC to (try to)
				save all loaded clouds (resp. meshes) in a single file. The format must support this
				features (i.e. BIN or E57 for clouds, BIN or FBX for meshes)
		- Global Shift can now be configured when opening a file in command line mode:
			After '-O' (open file) use the '-GLOBAL_SHIFT' option and:
				* either 'AUTO' to let CC handle the big coordinates automatically
				* or the 3 values of the shift vector to apply
			Example: 'CloudCompare -O -GLOBAL_SHIFT AUTO myfile.asc'
		- New option '-COMPUTE_PTX_NORMALS' to force CC to compute normals when loading PTX files
		- Default timestamp for output files now incorporates seconds (so as to avoid overwriting
			files generated too quickly)
		- New option '-TYPE' (after '-DENSITY' or '-APPROX_DENSITY') to specify the type of density to compute
			* options are: KNN (number of neighbors), SURFACE (surface density) or VOLUME (volume density)
	* qRansac Shape Detection plugin:
		- parameters have been updated so as to be (much) clearer
	* CC now detects points with NaN coordinates and will automatically replace them by (0,0,0)
		to avoid (big) issues later
	* Primitive parameters can now be interactively changed:
		- Sphere (radius), Cone (height, bottom radius, top radius) or Cylinder (height, radius) can now be
			modified directly via the 'Properties' dialog
	* New 'sand-box' methods:
		- Tools > Sand box > Create cloud from selected entities centers
		- Tools > Sand box > Compute best registration RMS matrix
	* Point list picking tool:
		- new checkbox to display the global coordinates (instead of shifted ones) for shifted clouds
	* 2D Labels:
		- For points with an associated scalar value, the scalar field name is used instead of 'Scalar'
			(e.g. 'Density = 1.23' instead of 'Scalar = 1.23') 

- Bug fixes:
	* the spinboxes of the bounding-box editing dialog were oversized
	* the 'Cancel' button of progress dialogs was invisible on the x64 version
	* in some very limit cases, the distance computation could enter in an infinite loop
	* qSRA: memory leak fixed (when displaying a conical projection map)
	* the 'original' coordinates displayed in 2D labels (or in the console for picked points) was wrong
		(global shift was applied in the opposite way).
	* the global shift/scale infos were wrongly applied when exporting points picked with the
		'Point list picking' tool
	* for some clouds loaded from an ASCII file and with very particular sizes, the associated scalar fields
		size could be wrongly set (while the data was correctly loaded) and CC wouldn't accept to display them...
	* memory leak when loading PTX files
	* starting the 'Manual Segmentation tool' (scissors icon) in perspective mode could dramatically change
		the EDL rendering (anyway, using EDL in perspective mode is not really supported yet ;)
	* qPoissonRecon: the multi-threaded version (i.e. the 32 bits version on Windows) could crash sometimes
	* 3D mouse: on some configurations, the 3D mouse was not handled properly
	* The global shift information was not applied to the cameras when importing Bundler files with large coordinates
	* Saving E57 files could make CC crash sometimes (due to an internal inconsistency in libE57)
		+ CC is now more robust to this kind of errors!
	* 3D names now follow the entity when they are interactively translated (scissors tool)
	* Cloud cloning was not preserving the point size
	* When manually segmenting a mesh, its textures could be wrongly released from the OpenGL context
		(causing display errors in the best case)
	* Funny things (crash, etc.) could happen when choosing another option than 'leave empty' to fill empty cells...

v2.5.5.2 21/06/2014
- Bug fix: primitives color couldn't be changed with 'Edit > Colors > Set unique'
v2.5.5.1 17/06/2014
- Mac OS packaging issue
v2.5.5 07/06/2014
- New methods:
	* Edit > Colors > Levels
		- allows the user to edit the color histogram (either all channels at once or channel by channel)
	* Display > Reset all GUI elements positions
		- removes all persistent information about the position and state of GUI elements (so that the
			GUI elements are back to their default on next start)
	* Edit > Scalar field(s) > Convert to random RGB
		- Converts a scalar field to random RGB colors: the user only specifies the number of random colors
			that will be generated and regularly sampled over the scalar field interval ([sfMin ; sfMax])
- Enhancements:
	* Point-pair based alignment tool:
		- minimum number of pairs set to 4 now (3 was not reliable enough)
		- the error contribution of each point (pair) to the total RMS is displayed in a new column
			(once the 'Align' button has been pressed)
		- a new button next to each point allows the user to delete any point at any time
		- the window rotation center can now be properly picked on the aligned cloud after having clicked
			on the aligned button
	* Point-pair based & ICP registration method:
		- the registration rotation can be constrained around one axis (X, Y or Z)
		- the registration translation can be constrained along one or several dimensions (Tx, Ty or Tz)
	* Global Shift & Scale mechanism:
		- brand new dialog (hopefully clearer)
		- A 'global_shift_list_template.txt' file can now be found next to CloudCompare's executable file.
		  The user can edit it and follow the instructions inside:
			* this file should be renamed 'global_shift_list.txt' and it should contain 5 values per line
			  ("name; Tx; Ty; Tz; scale;" - mind the semicolon characters)
			* all entries in this file will automatically be added to the dedicated combo-box of the new dialog
			* this should help a lot users working always with the same global coordinate system(s).
		- the 'Edit > Edit global shift' and 'Edit > Edit global scale' methods have been merged into a single
			method: 'Edit > Edit global shift and scale'.
			* It uses approximately the same new dialog but the user can now choose if the modification
				of the shift and scale parameters should impact the global coordinates system (i.e. at
				export time) or the local coordinate system (in which case the cloud(s) will be translated
				and or/rescaled automatically)
			* this new method can be called on several clouds at once
		- when a transformation (applied with 'Edit > Apply transformation') causes the cloud coordinates
			to go overbounds, the same dialog appears in order for the user to optionaly update the global
			shift/scale information instead.
	* Bundler (.out) import:
		- Big coordinates (for keypoints) are now properly handled (with the Global Shift & Scale mechanism)
		- The user can now input a 4x4 transformation matrix in order to change the keypoints orientation before
			generating the orthophotos (i.e. this lets defining a custom orthorectification 'Z' axis)
	* The 'SF arithmetics' method has been enhanced with new operations (applicable on a single SF)
		- SQRT, POW2, POW3, EXP, LOG, LOG10, COS(radians), SIN(radians), TAN(radians), ACOS, ASIN, ATAN
	* Point clouds are now pre-loaded in the graphic card memory if possible (via VBOs)
		- allows for much faster display (up to 15 times!)
		- tihs feature can be disabled in the "Display Options" dialog ("Other display options" tab)
	* Histogram display enhanced with the QCustomPlot library (http://www.qcustomplot.com/)
	* Scalar-field properties editing dialog enhanced:
		- sliders are replaced by interactors displayed over a representation of the SF histogram
		- round interactors are used to set the min and max displayed values
		- triangles interactors are used to set the min and max saturation values
	* 'Color' and 'Scalar field' visibility checkboxes in the entity 'Properties' dialog have been merged:
		- a unique combo-box now lets the user choose between no color, RGB or SF colors
	* ASCII files loading:
		- the dialog now handles the header line (if any) in a smarter way (the 'skip lines' count is correctly
			updated, the extracted header is displayed, etc.)
		- new command line option:
			* '-SKIP [number of lines]' after '-O' to specify the number of lines that should be skipped
		* new mechanism to detect the column type based on the header line (if any)
			* when loading an ASCII file in CloudCompare this should set the columns type automatically
			* when loading an ASCII file from the command line this should prevent the dialog from appearing
				(if standard names are used: X.., Y.., Z.., Nx, Ny, Nz, Normx, Normy, Normz, R, Red, G, Green, B, Blue, etc.)
	* New option in the LAS file opening dialog:
		- 'Force 8-bit colors': to cope with files in which colors are mistakenly coded on 8 bits (instead of 16)
	* The 'Poisson Surface Reconstruction' plugin (qPoissonRecon) is now based on the version 5.71 of PoissonRecon lib
		(http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~misha/Code/PoissonRecon/Version5.71/)
	* The 'Interactive Transformation' tool is now much more accurate
		- only double-precision matrices are used
		- before that, especially when lots of rotations were applied to an entity, the resulting transformation matrix
			could have had accumulated too many numerical errors resulting in a slightly shrinked cloud
	* (Mac OS X) Fonts on "retina" displays are no longer fuzzy
	* 3D mouse support: CloudCompare now relies on the official 3dConnexion SDK
		- wireless devices should now be handled correctly
		- the option menu is replaced by the official/default one
		- (support is still limited to Windows only for now)
	* Default point size editing dialog (appearing inside 3D views when the mouse hovers their top-left corner) is now
		displayed upon a semi-transparent background so as to be always visible even when displayed over a green entity.
	* Non ascii characters in filenames (accents, etc.) are now better handled by file I/O filters
		(all filters but PLY, OBJ and STL (output only), FBX, DXF, GDAL rasters, PCD
		 and older/internal formats such as POV, ICM, MA, depth maps)
- Bug fix:
	* Loading only the keypoints from a Bundler file (without the images) would result in a corrupted import
		(wrong values were read)
	* qPCL: bug solved in MLSsmoothing with colored clouds
	* Memory leak fixed (when using sub-meshes, typically coming from an OBJ file with multiples parts)
	* The scalar fields generated by the 'Height Grid Generation' tool were seen empty by CC

v2.5.4.1 04/22/2014
- Bug fix:
	* Loading a PLY file with scalar field(s) would make CC crash

v2.5.4 04/19/2014
- New file format supported:
	* OFF meshes
	* PTX clouds (import only)
- Enhancements:
	* 'Sensor' framework upgraded:
		- Camera 'projective' sensors added (early support)
		- 'View from sensor' method added
	* STL import filter is smarter (collapsed triangle after vertex fusion are now automatically removed)
	* Global shift:
		- a new button 'use last' will now appear on the 'Global shift/scale' dialog that
			popups when loading a file with very big coordinates (current session only - the button
			will appear when the dialog has been "accepted" at least once before)
		- the Z coordinate (if small) is not shifted by default anymore
		- shift/scale information should be (more) properly handled by both the Point pair based and
			ICP registration tools
	* The console visibility is now forced when a warning message is generated
	* The 'Point-pair based align' tool keeps the activated GL filter (if any)
	* Normal vectors can now be converted to two scalar fields:
		- 'dip' and 'dip direction' (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_geology#Measurement_conventions)
			(the north is assumed to be +Y, and the altitude is +Z)
		- this new method is now in a common sub-menu with the "conversion to HSV" method
			(in 'Edit > Normals > Convert to')
	* The way the 'roughness' is computed (Tools > Other > Roughness) has been slightly changed:
		- for each point, the best fit plane is computed on all the neighbors except the point itself
			(this gives a less biased measure). The roughness value is then computed as the distance
			between the point and this plane.
	* New 'sand box' method: "Export cloud(s) info"
		- exports various pieces of information for all selected clouds in a CSV file (cloud name, size,
			mean, std.dev. and sum of all scalar fields, etc.)
	* 'Camera link' feature enhanced:
		- modification of the global zoom (magnifier icon) is now propagated
		- modification of the rotation center is now propagated
	* 'Command line' mode enhanced:
		- loaded clouds and meshes can be now saved anytime with the '-SAVE_CLOUDS' and '-SAVE_MESHES' options
			(this is not necessary by default as all modified or newly created entities are automatically saved,
			but it can be useful for performing format conversion through the command line)
		- ASCII files with less than 6 columns are now loaded silently (i.e. no dialog should pop-up)
		- new option '-CROP2D' to crop a cloud inside a 2D polygon (either in the XY, XZ or YZ planes)
	* New method: 'Edit > Colors > Interpolate from another entity'
		- set the colors of a cloud (or mesh vertices) by interpolating the colors of another cloud (or mesh vertices)
		- right now the only interpolation mode available consists in taking the nearest neighbor's color
	* New method: 'Tools > Fit > 2D1/2 Quadric'
		- fits a 2D1/2 quadric on the selected cloud(s)
		- this quadric is represented as a 'primitive' (kind of mesh) and its equation is displayed in the console
	* The 'Subsample' method can now be called on multiple clouds at once
	* Cross Section tool:
		- contour extraction parametrization is much more clever (for 'single' and 'multiple' contour extraction modes)
		- the extraction with a rotated clipping box is now properly handled

- Bug fixes:
	* Information displayed in 2D labels was 'shifted' ( 'P(index,x,y)' was displayed instead of 'P(x,y,z)')
	* Depending on the selection order, CC could crash when merging two clouds (one with normals and
		the other without)
	* A too big step (causing a 1x1 cell grid) would make the Rasterize tool crash!
	* When scaling a cloud (with 'Edit > Apply scale') the 'global scale' information was (wrongly) updated.
		Therefore the cloud was rescaled to its original state at export time!
	* EDL / SSAO filters were performing badly on entities not centered on Z=0
		(OpenGL Z-buffer was badly initialized in ortho. mode)
	* When GL filters were enabled, labels text or the color ramp title were shifted in the Y direction
	* Command Line mode:
		- when loading a BIN file with multiple clouds inside, only the first one was kept!
		- when saving multiple clouds coming from the same file, all files had the same name
			(and were therefore overwritten)
	* Gaussian curvature formula was wrong (missing square exponent)
	* Several memory leaks have been fixed (2D1/2 mesh triangulation, etc.)
	* Cloning a mesh which was a child of its vertices would cause the duplication of the mesh structure
		in the resulting entity
		

v2.5.3 02/21/2014
- New method: "Edit > Normals > Orient > With Minimum Spanning Tree"
	* This is an alternative method to find the correct orientation of normals based on the
		determination of a Minimum Spanning Tree
	* It may require a lot of memory but it works better on smooth shapes than the former
		method based on Fast-Marching (formerly called "Resolve normals direction" and now
		renamed and move to "Edit > Normals > Orient > With Fast-Marching")
	* It is also automatically suggested by CC if no preferred orientation has been set in
		the Normals computation tool.
- New method: "Tools > Other > Density > Accurate (at a given scale)"
	* More accurate method to compute the local density (= number of points inside a sphere
		centered on each point)
	* The old version is now accessible via "Tools > Other > Density > Approximate"
		(and it simply outputs the distance to the nearest neighbor now)
	* Command line options have been changed accordingly
		(see http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/index.php?title=CommandLine)
- New method: "Tools > Other > Remove duplicate points"
	* Removes duplicate points (creates a new cloud)
- New method: "Edit > Crop"
	* To crop a point cloud inside a box
- New method: "Color banding" (thanks to M.J. Smith)
	* New option of the 'Edit > Color > Height Ramp' method
- Enhancements:
	* Spatial sub-sampling tool ('SPACE' mode):
		- about twice as fast
		- consumes much less memory
		- now the default method when the dialog opens
		- the slider has now a 'logarithmic' behavior (i.e. spacing value will grow much slower)
	* The ASCII file loading dialog is a bit smarter: you can now open ASCII files with
		invalid columns (such as text labels, etc.) as long as the column is not assigned
		to any property.
	* The OBJ importer now supports polylines ('l' tag)
	* Global shift/scale:
		- CC will ask the user when exporting points with the 'Point List Picking' tool if he wishes
			to keep global shift/scale information
		- CC will warn the user if the translation applied with the 'Edit > Apply transformation' tool
			is too big (in which case it can be set as 'global shift' instead)
	* New 'preferred' orientations for the Normals computation tool:
		- relatively to (0,0,0) (positive or negative)
	* Distance computation accuracy slightly enhanced (use of double precision internally)
	* The DXF I/O filter can now even load polylines with no descriptor
	* Command line mode has a lots of new options (thanks to A. Bevan, University College London)
		- computation of the best fitting plane
		- ICP registration
		- crop
		- make the (bounding-box) centers of loaded entities match
		- specify export format (clouds or meshes) as well as the extension
		- prevent CC from automatically a timestamp as suffix for output files
		(see the updated documentation here: http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/index.php?title=CommandLine)
	* ccViewer now supports GL filters (i.e. 'shader' plugins: qEDL and qSSAO)
	* The GL filter banner (yellow) is now smaller, and is displayed at the top of the 3D view
		(it doesn't hide the scale anymore!)
	* Normals are no longer computed by default when loading a mesh without normals
	* Normals can now be computed on a mesh either 'per-vertex' (mean normal vector of
		all connected triangles) or 'per-triangle' (gives a 'faceted' look)
	* The 'Point pair-based registration' tool now handles virtual points with very large coordinates
		(useful to register a cloud with GPS control points for instance)
	* Labels now display both the shifted and the original points coordinates if
		the cloud is shifted/scaled
	* The VTK I/O filter now handles TRIANGLE_STRIP elements
	* Cross section tool: the box position can now be edited ('advanced' button)
- Other:
	* ATOM feed enabled on the forum (http://www.cloudcompare.org/forum/)
		(use the native ATOM support on IE or Firefox, or install an ATOM feed reader app
		on Chrome, e.g. "RSS Feed Reader")
- Bug fixes:
	* Deleting a 3D view and then selecting an entity previously displayed in this view
		would make CC crash
	* The default value for scaling of the 'shift on load' dialog was 0.
	* A bug in the (spatial) sub-sampling tool has been fixed (could make CC crash)
	* The cloud/cloud distance computation dialog was always computing the octrees twice!
	* DXF files generated by CloudCompare were corrupted (bug from dxflib)
	* The Z coordinate of polyline vertices exported in DXF format was wrongly replaced by the Y coordinate
	* Vertical profiles generated by the qSRA plugin were all the same
	* In some cases no SF or invalid SF were generated by the Rasterize tool (point cloud export)
	* The translation obtained by ICP registration with adaptive scale was wrong! (scale was not applied)
	* The 'repetitive slice extraction' option of the 'Cross section' tool was behaving strangely (some slices
		were sometimes fused together)
	* Pixel distances were squared twice in the Bilateral filter (shader) 
	* The 'Point pair-based registration' dialog was not automatically reset
	* Wrong error code returned by PLY I/O Filter when failing to create the output file
	* Meshes color couldn't be changed anymore (with 'Edit > Set color')	
	* GL filters rendering was downgraded when switching from perspective to ortho. view

v2.5.2 12/19/2013
- GDAL library support added:
	- CC can now load dozens of standard GIS 2D1/2 raster formats (Arc Grid, GeoTiff, etc.)
- 'Height grid generation' tool enhancement:
	- when selecting the 'min' or 'max height' projections, the user can now choose
		to 'resample' the original cloud in order to produce a new cloud (instead
		of generating a regularly sampled cloud using the grid cell's centers)
	- the tool can now export the resulting grid as a true multiband raster (geotiff)
	- menu entry renamed: "Tools > Projection > Rasterize (Height grid generation)"
- It is now possible to compile CloudCompare with 64 bits floating point values
	(i.e 64 bits 'doubles' instead of 32 bits 'floats') for coordinates and/or scalars.
	It doubles the memory consumption but it increases a lot the accuracy.
	Moreover there's absolutely no loss of information when importing/exporting clouds
	with very big coordinates (however OpenGL still requires rather small coordinates
	for a proper display, therefore the 'shift on load' mechanism might still be necessary)
- New tool: 'Display > Adjust zoom'
	- let the user set the current window zoom either directly or by specifying a pixel
	size in the (implicit) units of the current entities.
- New tool: Edit > Scalar fields > Set SF as coordinate(s)
	- allows the user to map a scalar field to one or several dimensions (X,Y or Z)
	- useful to convert a 2D raster with a scalar field (gray level, etc.) to a 2D1/2 point cloud
- New method: File > Close all
	- to remove all loaded entities
- New formats:
	- Autodesk(R) FBX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBX)
		* meshes only
		* support for materials is planned but not finished yet
	- Any geo-localized raster (geotiff, ArcGrid, etc.) thanks to GDAL library (http://www.gdal.org/)
		* on input: use 'File > Open' (raster will be converted to a point cloud)
		* on output: use the Height Grid Generation tool (this way, any cloud can be converted to raster)
- New plugin: qSRA (Surface of Revolution Analysis)
	- for comparison between a point cloud and a surface of revolution
	- generates a map of deviations (with cylindrical or conical projection)
	- exports resulting map as an image, a textured mesh or a point cloud
	- can generate vertical and horizontal profiles in DXF format
- Other enhancements:
	- 'Clipping-box' tool:
		* the clipping box position and extension can now be edited
			(see the 'advanced' button in the 'Box thicnkess' frame)
		* when extracting contours, CC will now ask the user if he wishes/accepts
			to split the initial contour in several parts so as to really respect
			the 'max edge length' parameter (this gives a much nicer result).
			This feature works both with the single and multiple slice extractors.
	- the qPoissonRecon plugin is now based on the latest version of PoissonRecon (5.5)
		* see http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~misha/Code/PoissonRecon/Version5.5/
		* new parameters dialog
		* the input cloud colors can now be mapped on the resulting mesh (quick & dirty approach:
			simply assigns to each mesh vertex the color of the nearest input point)
	- the 'Edit > Transformation' tool now offers 3 different ways to input a transformation:
		* classical 4x4 transformation matrix
		* rotation axis, rotation angle and translation vector
		* euler angles and translation vector
	- if you paste a transformation matrix copied from the console, the 'Edit > Transformation' tool
		will now automatically remove the timetsamp (between square brackets)
	- when using 'Local models' when computing cloud-to-cloud distances, CC will now take the
		smallest distance between each point and either the local model or the nearest neighbor
		(in order to avoid clearly erroneous distances due to badly shaped local models).
	- the 'facet' entity's normal vector can now be displayed or hidden via the facet properties
	- BIN file loading/saving is now performed in a separate thread
		* a progress dialog is now displayed during loading/saving
		* multiple loading sessions can be done concurrently (use drag & drop on a 3D view
			- note: only interesting when loading files from different drives)
		* additional check addded to detect corrupted meshes
	- Global rescaling applying at loading time is now properly handled
		* works just like global shift
		* appears in the entity properties as well
		* dedicated menu entry (Edit > Edit global scale)
	- pause button added to the "Graphical Transformation" tool (to allow rotating/panning the 3D view)
	- new shortcuts added to the "Graphical Transformation" tool:
		* space bar = pause/unpause
		* return key = apply transformation (close the tool)
		* escape key = cancel transformation (close the tool)
	- new shortcuts added to the "Graphical Segmentation" tool:
		* space bar = pause/unpause
		* tab key = switch between polygonal and rectangular selection mode
		* I key = segment points inside
		* O key = segment points outside
		* return key = apply segmentation (close the tool)
		* delete key = apply segmentation and delete hidden points (close the tool)
		* escape key = cancel transformation (close the tool)
	- New types of entities can now be cloned:
		* polylines
		* facets
	- Max coordinate absolute value lowered (100.000 instead of 1.000.000)
		in order to avoid accuracy loss and display issues. However the user
		still has the choice to ignore CC's warnings.
	- For the sake of consistency and clarity:
		* the 'Free scale parameter' option of the ICP registration dialog and the 'fixed scale' option
			of the Point-pair based alignment dialog are both renamed 'Adjust scale'
		* the 'Edit > Synchronize' tool is moved and renamed 'Tools > Registration > Match barycenters'
		* the ICP registration tool now issues the same textual report as the Point-pair based alignment tool
	- the Connected Components tool dialog now:
		* displays the octree cell size as the currently selected level
		* the components are automatically 'selected' in order to clearly identify them without random colors
			(the 'random colors' checkbox is not selected by default anymore)
		* the components are sorted by their size (starting from the biggest)
	- new command lines options (see http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/index.php?title=CommandLine):
		* C2C_DIST: cloud to cloud distance computation
		* C2M_DIST: cloud to mesh distance computation
		* SAMPLE_MESH: to sample points on a mesh
		* FILTER_SF: to filter a cloud based on its scalar values
		* STAT_TEST: to apply the local statistical filter
		* MERGE_CLOUDS: to merge all loaded clouds
	- 'Edit > Fuse' entry renamed 'Edit > Merge'
- Bug fixes:
	- the 'dip' value (in "dip & dip direction" computation with e.g. the plane orientation tool)
		was inversed from the currently accepted definition (i.e. 0° for horizontal and 90° for vertical planes)
	- blank lines or commentaries were causing an infinite loop when importing ASCII files
	- primitives (sphere, cylinder, etc.) were not correctly loaded from BIN files (CC would crash when loading them)
	- sub-meshes' bounding boxes were not updated when a transformation was applied to their parent mesh or its
		associated vertices
	- at loading time when an entity was both too far and too big, the (optional) applied transformation to
		recenter and rescale the entity was wrong.
	- a call to the 'Zoom on selected entities' tool on entities not displayed in the active window would be ignored.
	- the 'camera link' tool would sometimes make CC crash (windows were playing ping-pong ;).
	- CloudCompare can now recover from errors encountered in OBJ normals or texture coordinates (normals or textures
		are simply discarded)

v2.5.1 10/19/2013
- The 'Clipping-box' tool has a new feature: 'contour' extraction
	* Contour extraction on the current slice
	* Contour extraction on multiple slices (with the 'repeat' button)
	* Early prototype: computes the concave hull of the slice's points
		- one parameter: maximum edge length (if possible)
		- the smaller the finer the contour (+ the slower)
	* Exports result as one (or several) poyline(s)
- The 'plane orientation' tool is replaced by two tools:
	* Tools > Fit > Plane: same as the old tool
	* Tools > Fit > 2D polygon: almost the same, but the fitted entity is a facet
		(composite entity with a polyline corresponding to the contour and a mesh
		corresponding to the 'inside')
	* Both tools now output the orientation with the "dip direction / dip angle" convention
		(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_geology#Geometries)
- 3D polylines can now be defined with the 'Point List Picking' tool
	* select a list of points then 'export' it as a polyline
	* the polyline displayed width is customizable
	* the 'Tools > Other > Plane orientation' tool can be used on polylines
- DXF (Autocad) support:
	* only to output polylines for now
	* warning: DXF can save 3D coordinates but Autocad doesn't seem to handle them properly.
		The user is advised to save polyines in the (X,Y) plane only.
- Other improvements:
	* Mesh groups are replaced by standard meshes with 'sub-meshes' structures (simple subsets of faces)
	* OBJ materials (and textures) export is now supported
	* New option for Delaunay mesh computation:
		* a max edge length can be specified to automatically remove elongated triangles
	* New check-box in the LAS open dialog: apply same parameters to all files that will be opened next (current session)
	* User can now choose whether overlay items (scale, trihedron, etc.) should be rendered or not by the
		'Display > Render to file' tool
	* the progress bar "Cancel" button has no "focus" anymore:
		for instance, this allows the user to keep the "Enter" key pressed while loading multiple files with the default
		loading parameters (i.e. manually "skipping" the opening dialog for ASCII files for instance)
	* the 'Align camera' tool (right-click context menu for planes, 2D polygons, labels, etc.) now outputs the applied matrix
		so that you can apply it with the 'Edit > Apply transformation' tool to actually rotate an entity the same way
	* Polyline's length now appears automatically in the 'Properties' view
- bug fixes:
	* text was misplaced when rendering screen with a zoom factor greater than 1.
		Other features were also badly reshaped (fonts, scale, color ramp, trihedron, etc.)
	* the 'max distance' parameter for cloud/mesh distance computation was incorrectly squared before being used!
	* materials where not associated to the base mesh when loading composite OBJ files (this could lead to crash when
		saving the composite mesh as PLY for instance)
	* curvature or normal computation would sometimes fail on perfectly flat axis-aligned clouds (division by zero).
	* the 'multiple slices auto extraction' tool (clipping box mode) would crash if at least one 'repeat dimension'
		was unchecked.
	* Height Grid Generation tool would crash when generating a grid with SF interpolation and the 'leave empty'
		option for empty cells.
	* when cloning a cloud, the scalar field display options (color scales, steps, etc.) were not duplicated.
	* when trying to save an entity which name made an invalid filename, the file saving dialog wouldn't open
		(now a warning message is issued and the default 'project' name is used instead)
	* Graphical segmentation area type selection icons would 'disappear' when toggled

v2.5.0 07/12/2013
- New version numbering scheme (build index appended instead of the release date)
- New tool: "Cross section"
	* accessible via 'Tools > Segmentation > Cross Section' or a dedicated icon in the main
		toolbar (next to the scissors icon)
	* manually scale, rotate and translate the clipping box
	* extract the corresponding selection as a new cloud
	* extract multiple slices in an automated way
	* works only with clouds for the moment
- New DB tree context menu options:
	* right click on a plane primitive or a triangle label and choose 'Align camera' to make the camera look perpendicularly to it
	* same thing with 'Align camera (reverse)' (to look in the opposite direction)
- New option for ICP registration (thanks to Luca Penasa once again!):
	* check "Free scale parameter" to register objects with different scales
- New dialog for computing the octree:
	* the user can specify the cell size at the maximum subdivision level
	* or define a custom bounding box
- "Height grid generation" dialog enhanced:
	* the user can now define custom grid limits
	* the tool spawns dialogs to let the user specify the output files (ascii grid and image)
- New tool: "Convert RGB to scalar field"
	* Edit > Colors
- New option in ASCII file load/save dialogs:
	* maximum number of points per cloud on load
	* option to write the number of points as a dedicated header line on save
- Menus modifications:
	* "Primitive factory" menu entry has been moved to the "File" menu
	* "Point picking" and "Point list picking" menu entries have been moved to the "Tools" menu
	* "Edit" and "Tools" menus are now always enabled even if no entity is selected
- The (old) limit of 128 million points per cloud has been removed on the 64 bits version
	(new - theoretical - limit is 2 billions)
- Global shift information can now be edited with the 'Edit > Edit global shift' menu entry
- LAS import/export enhanced:
	* new dialog to choose the fields to import
	* all official fields are now properly imported/exported ("Intensity", "Return Number",
		"Number of Returns", "Scan Direction", "Flightline Edge", "Classification",
		"Scan Angle Rank", "User Data", "Point Source ID", "Red", "Green", "Blue", "Time")
	* the 'classification' field can be split into its 'value' and the 3 associated
		flags ("Synthetic", "Key-point" and "Withheld")
	* a warning is issued if the user attempts to save a cloud with SFs having non "official"
		names
- Stippling (fake transparency) option has been added to meshes
- ccViewer enhanced:
	* GUI updated (pivot visibility options added, isometric default views, new icons, etc.)
	* PDMS format support added
	* 3D mouse support added
- Misc. improvements:
	* new icon for the 'clone' method (thanks to JF Hullo): two sheep instead of one!
	* when computing local density, if two or more points are overlapping, the result density
		will be 'NAN' and the point will appear in gray (in order to be hidden or removed easily)
	* global shift information is now kept by qRansacSD plugin (shape detection)
	* qHPR (Hidden Point Removal) plugin now generates a new cloud with the visible points only
		(instead of hacking the points visibility) along with the corresponding viewport
	* scaled transformation matrix are now properly inversed (i.e. scale is taken into account)
	* point-pair based alignment tool outputs a summary on completion (RMS, scale, etc.)
	* scale estimation during point-pair based alignment has been enhanced
- Bug fixes:
	* applying the interactive 'rotate/translate' tool to an entity and its parent at the
		same time would make CC crash
	* "Intensity", "Time" and "Return number" fields are now properly exported with LAS files
	* "Height Grid Generation" tool accuracy fixed (when dealing with coordinates above 10^5)
	* mesh with a single texture AND colors couldn't be saved properly in PLY format (CC would
		refuse to save the texture)
	* deleting a child object (e.g. labels) in ccViewer would make it crash!
	* old viewports (prior to version 25) were wrongly imported (panning info)
	* deleting groups containing clouds used by shared labels would make CC crash

v2.4 04/25/2013
- 3D mouses (3dConnexion devices) are now supported:
	* OBJECT mode corresponds to ortho. and object-centered perspective
	* CAMERA mode corresponds to viewer-centered perspective
	* can be enabled/disabled via the 'File > 3D mouse' menu
- Dynamic color lookup for displaying scalar fields greatly accelerated
	* a dedicated shader is automatically activated if GPU supports it
	* speed-up of scalar fields display of up to 300%!
- Introducing the "Color Scale Manager":
	* edit, copy and create custom color scales
	* accessible via a button next to the 'current scale' combo-box in the properties view
		or via the 'Edit > Scalar Field > Color Scale Manager' menu entry
	* custom scalar scales are saved along with the entity (in BIN format)
		and are automatically imported when loading the file (on another computer typically)
	* color scales can be relative (to current scalar fields bounds) or absolute (the user
		can specify custom bounds and steps, which can be useful to apply the same color ramp
		to multiple clouds)
- New Scalar Field Properties dialog
	* most color ramp parameters are now saved per-scalar field, and not per-cloud anymore
- New color ramp (with histogram)
	* color ramp is "smarter"
- New entity picking mechanism:
	* press ALT + left mouse button to define a rectangular selection area to select multiple
		entities at once
	* picking speed enhanced
- 3D camera management enhanced:
	* transitions between perspective modes are smoother
	* custom light appears and can be interactively moved (with CTRL+right click) in all modes
	* interactive transformation can be performed in all modes
	* 3D rotation center symbol added (can be 'always visible', 'only when moving' or 'hidden')
	* default views (top, bottom, left, etc.) are more 'intuitive'
	* new default views added: front and back 'isometric' views
	* default FOV (field of view) is now 30 degrees for perspective mode
- New method:
	* 'Edit > Mesh > Export materials/textures to RGB' (per-vertex color)
- New pop-menus added to the 'View' toolbar:
	* selection of the current rotation center visibility (see above)
	* selection of the current view mode (orthographic, object-based and viewer-based perspective)
- New context menu entry for the DB tree: 'Information (recursive)'
	* recursively gather various information (number of points, triangles, colors, etc.)
- Local Statistical Test now works on signed scalar fields!
- No more distinction between (antiquated) 'positive' scalar fields and the standard ones
- New dialog for saving ASCII files
	* choose output numerical precisions, separator, order, etc.
- STL and PLY files can now be saved in both BINARY and ASCII formats
- PLY files can now save texture coordinates (and the texture in a separated file) if only one
	texture is associated to the mesh (otherwise CC will suggest to convert materials/textures to RGB)
- Default materials and lights have been updated
- Bug fixes:
	* BIN files saved with labels would make CC crash when re-opened!
	* Closing the 'About' dialog would make CC crash!
	* ccViewer no longer displays the colorbar if the scalar field is hidden!
	* The cloud/cloud distance with the 'Height Function' model refinement was giving weird results!
	* The cones produced with the Primitive Factory were upside down
	* The following methods were broken:
		- Edit > Normals > Resolve direction
		- Tools > Projection > Unroll (on cone)
		- Tools > Statistics > Local Statistical Test

v2.4 03/10/2013
- Points size can now be independently set for each cloud
	* see the 'Point size' combo-box in the cloud's properties
- The 'Align with point pairs' tool can now be used with only one cloud selected	
	(in which case reference points must be manually added with the 'pencil' icon)
- Point picking mechanism enhanced:
	- point marker is now a (selectable) 3D sphere
	- point marker default size is customizable via display options dialog
	- mesh triangles can now be picked (early version: creates a 3-points label)
	- "Point list picking" tool
		* automatically pastes last picked point in clipboard
		* string format: " CC_POINT_#i(x,y,z) " (where i is the index in the current list)
	- "Point picking" tool:
		* when picking 3 successive points ('triplet' mode), the 3 corresponding angles are displayed
- New tool: 'primitive factory'
	* lets you create custom primitives (plane, box, sphere, cylinder, cone, torus or dish)
	* accessible via the 'Tools > Primitive factory' menu entry or a dedicated icon in the main toolbar
- 'Height grid generation' tool enhanced:
	* the number of points per cell can now be saved as a scalar field ('save per-cell count as SF' checkbox)
- qRansacSD ('Ransac Shape Detection') plugin enhanced:
	* proper handling of cone and torus primitives (display in 3D, etc.)
	* the expected primitive types can now be selected (with checkboxes)
- qKinect plugin enhanced:
	* continuous display of video/3D flow
	* multiple acquisitions are now possible without closing the dialog each time
- Manual transformation tool enhanced:
	* user can constrain rotation around a given axis and translation along custom dimension(s)
- New option "Show 3D name" for 3D entities:
	* display the name of the entity in the 3D view (in the middle of its bounding-box by default)
	* can be (recursively) toggled with 'Edit > Toggle > 3D name' (shortcut: D)
	* with the dedicated checkbox in the properties dialog of each entity
	* with a right click on the entity entry in the DB tree	
- "Toggle materials/textures" entry added to the DB tree context menu (and in the 'Edit > Toggle' sub-menu)
- New display options (display dialog):
	* point marker size (see above)
	* histogram background color
	* label color
- New option for computing normals (CC's way, not qPCL's)
	* +/-barycenter: normals are oriented by pointing outwards or towards the barycenter 
- Limits for auto-decimation are now:
	* 10M. points for a cloud
	* 2.5M. faces for a mesh
- New command lines for ccViewer:
	* '-top' to make the window 'always on top'
	* '-win [X] [Y] [W] [H]' to set the position (X,Y) and size (W,H) of the window
- New icons for CloudCompare and ccViewer
- PCL (Point Cloud Library) 'PCD' files can now be opened without the qPCL plugin
	* only works with ascii and uncompressed binary versions for the moment
- Bug fixes:
	* in the 'Point list picking' tool, when exporting a list of picked points THEN canceling the picking process, CC will crash
	* SF scale is now rendered by the 'Render to file' tool
	* qPCL's MLS tool would crash if the input cloud has no displayed scalar field! (+ dependency to Luca's PCL patch is now optional)
	* 'shift on load' information is now preserved when sampling points on a mesh (and during several other operations)
	* a group of labels could be freely displaced, eventually leading to a crash (under some circumstances) if the destination is not
		one of the label's associated clouds. On the contrary, labels can now be regrouped and displaced as long as they stay below one
		of their associated clouds.
	* applying an interactive transformation to an entity with an octree could make CC crash (octree was deleted but not removed from DB tree)
	* CC would refuse to open an OBJ file declaring using a material while not defining texture coordinates

v2.4 01/21/2013
- New tool: 'Edit > Mesh > Subdivide' (recursive subdivision)
	* interpolates mesh original colors (if any)
	* only works with single meshes for the moment (not with mesh groups)
	(+ 'Edit > Mesh > Measure surface' now also outputs the mean triangle surface)
- 'Set color' and 'Colorize' can now be applied to groups

v2.4 01/13/2013
- LAZ files support (with laszip - thanks to Ingo Maindorfer)
- STL files support (certainly the ugliest mesh file format ever created, but definitely a largely used one...)
- New tool: export clouds coordinates (X, Y or Z) as scalar fields
	* you'll find it in 'Tools > Projection > Export coordinate(s) to scalar field(s)'
	* very useful to display heights with a color scale or to segment out points depending on their height
- New shortcut: 'Z' to zoom and center camera on selected entities (magnifier icon)
- Toggle shortcuts are now applied RECURSIVELY to any kind of object (even a group for instance)
	(reminder: 'N' for normals, 'C' for colors, 'S' for active scalar field and 'V' for visibility)
- Enhancements:
	* primitives don't loose their attributes (colors, SF, etc.) when cloned
		(they still loose them if display precision is changed however...)
	* CC will only display one global progress bar when loading E57 files with many scans (>10)
- Bug fixes:
	* a space character was missing when exporting a cloud with normals in ASCII format!
	* texture files associated to PLY files should be vertically inverted (at least when the files come from PhotoScan?)
	* e57 scan names were ignored on import
	* OBJ (sub)meshes names were ignored on import
	* a selection composed of parents and (some of their) siblings would produce a corrupted BIN file on export
	* in some cases users could freely segment mesh vertices causing a crash
	* in some cases mesh cloning would fail for no (good) reason
	* when loading primitives from a BIN V2 file, a supplementary (empty) 'vertices' cloud was created
	* mesh groups normals are now correctly handled (they can be safely deleted, exported, etc.)

v2.4 12/16/2012	
- Introducing a new alignment/registration method: "Align (point pairs picking)"
	* aligns clouds by interactively picking 'equivalent' points in both clouds (3 pairs at least)
	* replaces the old "Align (auto)" research tool in the main toolbar (same icon)
	* more information on the wiki: http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/index.php?title=Alignment_and_Registration
- Perspective mode and lights activation state are now automatically saved and restored (on the creation of a new 3D view or when CC restarts)
- Overlay dialogs (manual segmentation and transformation, point picking, etc.) don't prevent CC from being closed anymore
- 'Height grid generation' tool now gives more choice for the management of empty cells
	+ all types of output (cloud, ASCII grid file, image) behave the same way
- On-screen message display mechanism upgraded
- Meshes without normals are now displayed with the 'diffuse front' material color (this allows one to change the default color of blank meshes)
- New function: "Add constant SF" ("Edit > Scalar Fields" menu)
	* simple way to add new scalar fields (with a constant unique value)
	* very useful in conjunction with "SF Arithmetic" (to add, subtract, multiply or divide another SF by a constant)
- SF Arithmetic ("Edit > Scalar Fields > Arithmetic") has a new icon (a calculator, instead of the 'diff' text with a colorbar)
- PLY files associated with a texture file (comment with 'TextureFile' keyword - generated by PhotoScan for instance) are now supported
- LAS import filter improved:
	* 'time' and 'return number' fields are now supported (i.e. imported as scalar fields)
	* color coding (8 bits or 16 bits) is automatically detected (see associated bug below)
	* importer is more clever (fields with a unique value are automatically ignored - in case you really need them, they can be created 
		afterwards with the "Add constant SF" method - see above)
- ASCII export filter:
	* adaptive precision when writing point coordinates (typically if the cloud has been shifted at loading time due to too large coordinates)
	* if the file extension is 'PTS', color components will be written after the scalar field value(s) so as to be readable by Autocad
- Bug fixes:
	* color from LAS point clouds were badly imported/exported (treated as 8 bits integers instead of 16 bits!).
	* 'Height grid generation' tool was generating badly shaped scalar fields that wouldn't be correctly saved in BIN files (corrupted files)
	* the plane primitive generated by the 'plane orientation' tool was not automatically added to DB tree
	* per-triangle normals are removed with 'Edit > Normals > Clear'
	* the mesh sampling method was not sampling normals in specific cases
	* custom light materials were wrongly set (in practical, custom light wasn't working at all!)
	* a bug in the display mechanism of meshes with textures (coordinates) could make CC crash... randomly
	* segmenting a cloud with labels would make CC crash (for the moment labels are simply removed... we need to be more clever!)
	* OS X portage --> lots of associated bugs... almost all solved ;)

v2.4 11/06/2012
- Bug fixes:
	* plane orientation tool was always returning a wrong plane normal ( N(0,0,1) by default )
	* segmenting a primitive or an entity with associated primitives would make CC crash
		(primitive segmentation is disabled for the moment!)

v2.4 10/31/2012
- New primitive objects: cone, torus, dish, box, snout and profile extrusion
- New format handled (and the first 'CAD' one): Aveva PDMS '.mac' scripts
	(support for all above primitives + already existing ones: cylinder, planes and spheres)
- Height grid generation (=rasterization) upgraded:
	* source cloud's scalar field(s) can now be projected as well (+ various options to interpolate the SF values in each cell)
	* main projection dimension can be set (X, Y or Z)
- Points sampling on a mesh upgraded:
	* source mesh per-triangle or per-vertices normals are now taken into account
	* user can choose to interpolate colors and/or textures
- New filters available in qPCL plugin (thanks to Luca):
	* remove outliers using statistical approach (SIFT keypoints)
	* smooth (and optionally upsample) a point cloud using MLS estimators
- New button added in the graphical segmentation tool: "confirm and delete hidden points".
	It's a shortcut: hidden points are automatically be deleted and the original cloud is not split in two.
- New entries in the DB tree context menu: "Expand branch" and "Collapse branch" (to fully expand/collapse a branch)
- Bug fixes:
	* the normal index for each face vertex was missing when saving a mesh with per-vertex normals to an OBJ file.
	(this would typically make Meshlab crash ;). Just open them with this new version of CC and overwrite them to fix them.
	* potential crash when using the research option 'enable furthest points removal' during registration (ICP)
- PLY files saved by CloudCompare have (once again) field names "compatible" with MeshLab.
	The 'vertex_indices' field has changed to 'vertex_indexes' in the last versions of CC ... and this make Meshlab crash...
	(I've already ranted about that before: the PLY format doesn't impose any particular field name and it's the responsibility
	of the loader to handle that... Paraview do this wonderfully for instance ;)

v2.4 09/22/2012
- Cloud-cloud distance computation with local models enhanced/fixed: the user can now choose either a number of neighbors or a sphere
	radius that will be used to compute local models. One can also choose to compute a model for every points or, as an approximation,
	to "share" local models between neighbors (faster... but noisier - in fact this was done by default before!).
- New tools accessible in command line mode: density, roughness, curvature and SF gradient.
	(see wiki: http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/index.php?title=CommandLine)
- When exporting a cloud to a LAS file, any scalar field named 'LAS classification' will now be handled as a proper LAS classification
	field.
- PCV plugin (ShadeVis-like global illumination algorithm) can now take a point cloud with normals as input. The normals will be used
	as lighting directions (instead of the default directions randomly sampled on a hemisphere or a sphere). Note that only the normals
	are taken into account as the lighting direction is simulated in orthographic mode (no perspective, i.e. the relative position of
	the light source has no effect on the result).

v2.4 07/28/2012
- Shift applied to clouds with too large coordinates can now be applied to all opened files (in case of multiple selection):
	* "Apply all" button added to dialog
	* shift information is stored in BIN files and is now 'reverted' with ASCII, OBJ, MA, VTK, PLY, LAS & E57 formats (i.e. ASCII or 64 bits formats)
- New menu entry "Display > Active scalar field" (this menu is active if a unique cloud or mesh is selected):
	* Toggle color scale: show or hide color scale (shortcut: SHIFT+C)
	* Show previous SF: show previous scalar field (shortcut: SHIFT + up arrow)
	* Show next SF: show next scalar field (shortcut: SHIFT + down arrow)
- First (skipped) line of ASCII files can now be used to read out 'headers' for columns
	* a new checkbox is available at the bottom of the ASCII import wizard.
	* the header line must have as much blocks as columns in the file (so be sure not to use space characters in names if the file delimiter is also the space character!)
	* for the moment, only the scalar fields names are used by the ASCII importer 
- Bugs fixed:
	* 2D Viewport objects can now be dragged and dropped, and can be loaded properly from BIN files
	* centered perspective mode could behave strangely when zooming in close to objects with large coordinates
	* render to file based on FBO (frame buffer object) with a zoom different than 1 was done without depth component!
	* distance computation timing displayed in Console was in microseconds instead of seconds!

v2.4 07/18/2012
- qRansac_SD plugin is back! (Ransac Shape Detection by Schnabel et. al)
- Bilateral gaussian filter for scalar fields added (Thanks Luca)
- Ranges computation from a sensor added (Thanks Luca)
- Scattering angles computation from a sensor added (Thanks Luca)
- Loaded mesh vertices that are not shared by multiple sub-meshes are not 'locked' by default anymore
- No more system console on Windows
- Bugs fixed:
	* under certain circumstances, when two clouds with different scalar fields were fused, 
		random values would be set to the points that hadn't any before (instead of NaN).
	* a bug with the internal timer was preventing CC from properly updating mesh bounding-boxes
		(after a transformation typically) or the messages in 3D views from disappearing
	* PLY files with comment lines before the format line (in header) would be rejected by
		the new version of RPLY (RPLY has been patched to accept this again).

v2.4 07/03/2012
- LAS file import now handles intensity and classification fields
- The 2D part of labels is no longer displayed in 2D in the 'Point list picking' tool (to mimic the old version)
- New type of label: rectangular area labels can be defined on screen to annotate a particular zone
	(they can be created with the Point Picking tool - don't forget to "save" the label once created)
- Test in progress: weighted ICP with associated scalar field(s) values
- Bugs fixed:
	* some algorithms applied on multiple entities at the same time could make CC crash
	* E57 reading crashed since last version!

v2.4 06/27/2012
- 64 bits version is now compiled with Visual 2010 (should avoid issues with the Visual 2008 redistributable pack on Seven & Vista)
- normals are now supported with E57 format
- shortcut added: 'Pick rotation center' icon added to the left 'view' tool bar (let the user pick a point to be used as rotation center for its hosting 3D view)
- bugs fixed:
	* point list picking now displays proper labels in the 3D view (+ all points are stored in a separate group)
	* Bundler '.out' file containing keypoints without associated color are now correctly handled
	* Bundler v0.4 files are now correctly handled

v2.4 06/24/2012
- CloudCompare 64 bits version available (Windows & Linux) 
- Introducing BIN "V2" format (highly enhanced):
	* almost any type of entity and their display option can be saved (all selected elements with their siblings)
	* this format can freely evolve while keeping backward compatibility (integrated version management)
	* loading time is much faster
	* 32/64 bits compatible
- Point picking now spawns labels
	* labels can simply be created anytime by holding the SHIFT key and clicking on a 3D point
	* labels are independent objects that can be moved on screen, hidden, saved (BIN V2), etc.
	* labels can be collapsed with a right click
	* point list picking and point/segment/triplet picking dialogs have been updated accordingly
- ccViewer upgraded:
	* ccViewer also supports labels (loading and creating with SHIFT+click)
	* selected entities can now be deleted with the DEL key (or Menu > Options > Selected entity > Delete)
- New format supported: E57 point clouds (ASTM E2807 standard) thanks to libE57 (http://www.libe57.org)
- New plugin: 'qPCL' a wrapper to the PCL library (http://pointclouds.org).
	For the moment, it only allows for loading and saving PCD files and computing normals on a point cloud.
	But many filters will follow! (thanks to Luca Penasa)
- New method: conversion from cloud normals to HSV colors (Edit > Normals > Convert to HSV)
- Scalar fields boundaries can now be set by user (check the 'release boundaries' checkbox in the scalar field properties and manually set the desired values in the min and max 'displayed' values spinboxes)
- Distance computation tool can now split the result along each dimension (X,Y and Z) in the case of cloud-cloud distance
	(very useful to get only the vertical displacement for instance)
- DB tree elements now have a context menu (right click) to enable/disable standard features (visibility, color, normals, scalar field) or delete the selected element(s), etc.
- Entities in the DB tree can now be moved manually (with drag & drop) or sorted alphabetically (via the context menu)
- New (empty) groups can be added in the DB tree (via the context menu)
- Graphical segmentation tool has been enhanced (rectangular selection with CTRL key + right mouse button pressed, constant feedback, etc.)
- Display properties dialog has been reorganized
- Histogram labels are now using the color scale 'precision' parameter value (see Display > Display Settings)
- Image ortho-rectification enhanced (Bundler import filter):
  * bug fix: the previous version was generating ortho-rectified images with a non constant pixel scale!
  * a 'ortho_rectification_log.txt' file is now generated along the images with relative position for each (in pixels, relatively to the first image)
  * images are now processed sequentially, and the user can choose whether they should be kept in memory or not
  * ortho-rectification as images (on disk) is now available through command line arguments (see wiki: http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/index.php?title=CommandLine)
- Multiple clouds can now be automatically saved in multiple ASCII files
	* select several clouds then 'Save' them as ASCII files
	* enter a base name with an extension (hint: any occurrence of the string 'cloudname' will be replaced by each cloud name)
	* CC will generate one file per cloud, with an automatic suffix ('basename_000001.asc', etc.)

v2.4 04/24/2012
- Bug fix: crash when displaying the histogram after computing statistical parameters
- Bug fix: once loaded, a VTK mesh couldn't be manually transformed and its vertices didn't appear in the DB tree
- Bug fix: when computing distances between two clouds with a 'maximum distance' threshold fixed, this maximum distance value was assigned to points with zero distance!
- Bug fix: when saving PLY files with scalar fields having spaces characters in their name, reloading was not possible (hack: even for binary PLY files, the header is in ASCII mode and can manually be edited --> replace all spaces in the SF name by underscores)
- Bug fix: when checking/unchecking an item in the DB tree, its properties were displayed even if the item was not selected
- Snavely's Bundler file import tool can now generate 2D orthorectified images (directly saved alongside original images)

v2.4 01/04/2012
- Simple Laplacian smoothing algorithm for mesh added (see Edit > Mesh > Smooth (Laplacian))
- VTK cloud/mesh filter added (import & export - early version!)
- The 'Plane orientation' tool now outputs in the console a matrix that can be used to make the resulting plane horizontal (it can be applied to the input cloud with the new 'Apply transformation' tool)
- qPCV plugin slightly optimized
- qHPR plugin now uses qHull V2012.1
- qPoissonRecon now uses PoissonRecon V3 (http://www.cs.jhu.edu/~misha/Code/PoissonRecon). Works also on Linux now.
- PLY files saved by CloudCompare now use 'properties' names compatible with MeshLab (to cope with the lack of flexibility of this - however great - tool ;)
- All scalar fields associated to a cloud are now saved in PLY files (with their name as property name + prefix 'SCALAR_')
- Bug in Delaunay 2D triangulation on least square best fitting plane fixed.
- Crash during OBJ files loading fixed (the crash occurred when the file was referring to materials but no material file was declared)
- The Windows release has been compiled with Visual Studio 2008. You may have to install Visual C++ 2008 Redistributable Package (x86) to launch CloudCompare.
- Project can/should now be compiled with CMake (www.cmake.org). See http://www.cloudcompare.org/doc/wiki/index.php?title=Compilation_CMake

v2.3 02/14/2012
- Noah Snavely's Bundler import filter is now able to use an alternative cloud (or mesh) as keypoints source.
	If it's a mesh, it can also be used as DTM for generating colored pseudo-DTM vertices
- Transformation matrix is now properly output in console (either after registration process, or after interactive editing).
	This transformation can be copied & pasted in the new 'Edit > Apply transformation' dialog that replaces 'Edit > Translate'.
- A bug in connected components extraction with octree has been fixed (in rare cases, the process could make CC crash)

v2.3 01/28/2012
- Height function (quadric) fitting fixed and enhanced
- Noah Snavely's Bundler import filter is now able to ortho-recitfy images, undistort them and generate a colored pseudo-DTM
- (calibrated) images can now be saved as standard images
- Distance computation between a point cloud and a mesh has been optimized (new multi-threaded version + the old version is slightly faster & needs less memory)
- Bug in scalar field arithmetic fixed (difference between two positive scalar field is not necessarily positive!)
- the 'Render to file' tool with a zoom factor (different from 1) now works properly when based on FBO

v2.3 01/18/2012
- Noah Snavely's Bundler output file (with 'out' extension - see http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/bundler/) can now be opened in CloudCompare.
  CloudCompare will extract the point cloud as well as calibrated cameras information and will then try to load associated pictures.
- This version should fix an issue with distance computation on Windows 7 (crash)

v2.3 01/07/2012
- new shortcuts added (see wiki)
- points and faces count in properties view are now displayed with thousands separator
- 'plane orientation' tool now creates semi transparent planes (polygon stippling in fact)
- color scale now takes 'text color' parameter into account!
- EDL filter has been slightly updated (isolated points appear no more black)

v2.3 12/13/2011
- scalar fields loading bug fixed
- color ramp type and number of steps are now per-scalar field and not per-cloud

v2.3 12/11/2011
- resampling algorithms are now accessible in command line (see the wiki for more information)
- algorithms based on local neighbors extraction (such as roughness, curvature, etc.) can now handle much bigger point clouds (> 20 M. points)
- memory shortage is less likely to make CC crash
- scalar field colors can now be displayed with a logarithmic scale
- precision of color scale displayed values can now be setup with the 'display options' dialog
- bug corrected in ASCII file loading wizard when skipping lines
- various display artifacts or minor bugs removed

v2.3 11/22/2011
- A bug in CCLib (ReferenceCloud) has been corrected. It may have impacted ICP registration for clouds below 20000 points.
- the code has been cleaned-up with 'cppcheck' (http://cppcheck.sourceforge.net/ - great tool!)
- the multi-core octree-based computations mechanism is back! (seems that it has mistakenly been disabled a while ago... hum hum)
- ASCII file loading changed: from now on, only one cloud can be loaded at a time, but the fields order doesn't matter any more
(a scalar field can be set before points coordinates, etc.) and loading is also slightly faster.
- if available, FBO (Frame Buffer Object) is systematically used to store the last displayed 3D scene. This allows very fast redraw
of the 3D view when viewpoint and cloud properties are not changed (i.e. during interactive graphical segmentation, or anytime the
application window needs to be redrawn when requested by the OS or Qt - when a menu overlaps the 3D view, or the window is moved, etc.).

v2.3 10/16/2011
- Point cloud fusion tool improved (much less buggy!)
- Light colors and materials: default colors changed + user can now specify default specular material for mesh
- Mesh per-triangle normals are now correctly handled during interactive transformation
- Console automatically raises when a warning message appears

V2.3 09/18/2011
- Major speed up in point cloud display (2 to 3 times faster!) as well as mesh (up to 30% faster in some cases)
- Major improvement of the point picking mechanism (faster, more robust)
- Excel "CSV" files now automatically recognized as ASCII files
- Minor bug corrections and GUI modifications

V2.3 09/04/2011
- Color scale improvements:
	- user can set multiple settings (square size, font size, whether to always display '0' or not)
	- user can now choose now for signed scalar fields whether saturation is absolute (former default) or signed (new default)
- Scalar field(s) name(s) are now editable (Edit > Scalar Field > Rename)
- Scalar field(s) name(s) are now saved in BIN files

v2.3 07/07/2011
- clouds names are now saved in BIN files
- points number was missing in cloud description since 06/22/2011
- qEDL plugin (Eye Dome Lighting) is now less sensitive to zoom extent ONLY IN NON PERSPECTIVE MODE!

v2.3 07/06/2011
- qEDL plugin (Eye Dome Lighting) is now less sensitive to zoom extent
- Number of randomly sampled points in ICP registration can now be specified by user (default was 20000)
- Bug correction: CC crashed when ICP registration's result was the identity matrix!
- Bug correction: "Edit > Bounding-box > Fit principal components" corrected and warning message displayed when called

v2.3 06/28/2011
- Handling of mesh materials & textures during segmentation
- Storage of cloud center and restoration on save (ASCII only) when cloud has huge coordinates

v2.3 06/22/2011
- Method 'Height Grid Generation' corrected
- Method 'Plane orientation' enhanced (strike plane name contains now strike AND dip information)

v2.3 06/18/2011
- Method 'Plane orientation' enhanced (display of strike plane, etc.)
