Guinea Pig - Changes

This document describes changes and additions to the GuineaPig system from one version to other.

New in version 2.05

Parallel independent sessions: running a test with multiple parallel independent sessions at the same time is now possible.
Old obsolete test item classes: Old obsolete test type specific test item classes have been obsoleted and they are not installed by default when GP 2.05 is installed. The old item classes have been replaced by the new generic test item class.
The old Java classes may be needed if old classes have been hardwired to test items as in very old versions of the GP or the recommendations of using new generic item class in newer versions were ignored. Also, old serialized results files that require old item classes need old classes installed to be able to print the results. To install old item classes, mark subsystems guinea.sw.obsolete (old item Java class files) and optionally guinea.web.obsolete (their manual pages) for installation in inst or swmgr.
Soundplayer: The sndplay program had some trouble with multi-device initialization. Poked at it a bit, seems to work better.
Remote subject UIs: updated information on the Remote UI Demo info page, Example HTML Page, and manual entries for Remote UI Applet and Remote UI Client.
Soundplayer: An old limit in sndplay limited maximum number of samples per one command to eight. It has now been increased to 32.
GradeBar components: Formatting of grade and adjective display is customizable and more flexible. Default formatting the numeric scale now uses Java's java.text.DecimalFormat formatter which should eliminate extra unwanted digits.

New in version 2.04

RunTest: Manual updated for graphical RunTest version.
Multidevice support: Multiple audio ports can be used at the same time. For example, two ADAT cards show as a 16 channel port for GP.
Virtual players (VPs) are now better integrated to testing. The output channels of GP can be divided into smaller sections. VPs can now be used for implementing hardware tests.
Generic ABC Test: More information about the test and also information about how to use special item parameters and virtual players for hardware testing.
Test session can be aborted by the subject. Items that have been tested will be saved to session log. A subject can abort the session with the 'close-window' button on the UI panel. The results file shows the final status of the item. If multiple subjects take part in the session, aborting test by a subject doesn't affect the other subjects in the session. The whole session aborts only when the last subject aborts.
Logging: Logging information about the test session is also written in a file. The verbosity of the logging can be configured.
New ResPrint fields: New fields PLAINTIME and STATUS have been added.
Lot of internal changes in test engine, session subject handling, etc.

New in version 2.03

Demo samples are removed from the package to reduce the size of the package. Demo samples are available separately as GuineaPig Patch #6 (or its newer replacement patches).
Graphical RunTest tool: A graphical tool for running a test. Allows setting session IDs, playlists and adding local and remote subjects.
SSMS test: User controlled signals' levels match better with the UI's controllers slider position. Allows use of random initial value in GradeBar.
'Rank order' question component: A question component that allows ranking samples (or whatever). Allows any number of items to be ranked. Allow/disallow ties configurable. A formatter class for ResPrint for formatting the ranking order answer object in several ways.
Generic ABC test: Can test unlimited number of samples at the same time (extended version of A/B/C test where 3 was the maximum). All other tests have been changed to use GenericABC test as their base.
Results processing: A new version of the ResPrint tool. New configurable options: which fields to include in results, order of fields and parameters, subfields (one parameter or result can be split into several fields), fields' formatting can be changed with plug-in modules, simple filtering of results.
Automatic sample play when item starts: In free sequence tests the test can be made to automatically start playing a sample when the item starts.
Aliases for test class names: The test class names can now be given as a shorter alias of the class name instead of a fully qualified java class name. See each class' documentation for supported class aliases. It is recommended that aliases are used instead of fully-qualified class names.
Player's class name: The sound player's class name in test config file should now normally be omitted unless a special player is used. Default class will be used if classname is omitted.
Test items: All test specific test item classes have been replaced by one generic test item class. Also defining, extending and configuring test items have been made easier and more powerful. See items documents and test type documents for details for specific tests.
Document additions: Added documentation for PlayPanel sample play controller.
Remote subject UIs: Testing using remote terminals now works for the most part. Some features still need some work.
Test parameters: Added a new parameter testDirectory to test configuration. All test's files are loaded and saved relative to the test directory (unless absolute paths to files are used. If no test directory is specified, the directory where the test config file is loaded is used.
GradeBar components: The default answer of the component can be set with a parameter. Default answer is used as the value of the grade bar (and the position of the knob in the grade bar) when the component is reset. Also the default answer can be configured to use a different random value every time the component is reset.

New in version 2.02

SSMS test changes: Now variable gain control affects only signal S3 only by default. Test can be configured which signals are controlled by the variable gain (S3 only (default), S2 only, both S2 and S3).
GradeBar components: The adjectives can now be shown without the grade's value.
Added Remote subject UIs. Most features of subject UIs work remotedly too.
- Added remote UI server test tool gpUIServerTester for testing remote UIs.
- Added remote subject UI client gpRemoteUIClient (application) to launch the subject UI from remote terminal and connect to remote UI server.
- Added remote subject UI client applet for using a web-browser as the remote terminal.
Added Test Progress Indicator: indicator shows the number of current item and the total number of test items in the form of 'Item: 3/20' (current item is the 3rd item of total 20 items in the test).
Results saving: the results to the items are saved in the same order they were presented to the subject. Before the order of the items in the results file were random (playlists could have been used to reorder the item results).
Fixed size of subject UI: Subject's UI's size can be set manually. The width or height or both can be set to fixed sizes. Window can be set so that the subject cannot resize the window.
Soundplayer improvements: Improvements to sound player and new virtual players. Virtual players allowing dividing a set of output channels into a set of smaller players, for example, divide an 8-channel ADAT device to 4 stereo players. Timing measuring allows to get the time when a sample started to play from the outputs, etc. Is also be used to measure the delay from a command to when the audio comes out of the machine.
Documentation updates: Updates and additions in API documentation and system manual.
MCLL parameters: MCLL parameter names have changed slightly since version 2.01. See MCLL docs in the manual.

Last modified: Fri Dec 10 00:15:29 EET 1999