[gt-users] New feature announcement

[Sascha Steinbiss]

Hi everyone,

I am happy to announce that there is an official beta version of the 
next GenomeTools release with some substantial improvements to the 
feature set of the AnnotationSketch library.
It is now possible to take more control over layout details to further 
customise the output.  For example, blocks can now arbitrarily assigned 
to tracks (which can be created on the fly) based on individual block 
properties (see http://genometools.org/trackselectors.html) instead of 
just the type. Furthermore, it is possible to use the internal Graphics 
object to draw to something called custom tracks. Custom tracks (see 
http://genometools.org/customtracks.html) are an extension of a generic 
AnnotationSketch track in which free user-defined drawing of arbitrary 
shapes (e.g. generated from any data source which can be accessed from 
Python) is allowed.
Also, there is a new 'rectangle' feature style and support for 
specifying an alpha value for every color has been added.

The URLs above point to short tutorials on how to use this functionality 
in practice. I am also still working on extending the FeatureNode 
bindings to include everything in the feature_node_api.h, and more is to 
come soon.

In the meantime, I will be happy to get feedback on the new features. 
Feel free to pull from the official repository at 
git://genometools.org/genometools.git and have a look at what is new.

Best regards,
Sascha Steinbiss

-- 
Sascha Steinbiss
Zentrum für Bioinformatik
Universität Hamburg
Bundesstr. 43
20146 Hamburg
Germany

Email:  steinbiss at zbh.uni-hamburg.de
URL:    http://www.zbh.uni-hamburg.de/steinbiss
Phone:  +49 (40) 42838 7322
FAX:    +49 (40) 42838 7312