TcMenu 5.0 - what's coming soon.

[davetcc]

We're pleased to announce that we're keeping the cadence on TcMenu. Version 4.5 steadied the ship and made the menu framework viable for both us and you. Initializer mode gave you the option of less time in designer, web-designer lowered the barrier to entry and offered both round trip and initializer mode. At the same time, we increased the display footprint.

So, what's coming in 5.0?

In summary, new platforms and production readiness. The entire focus of this release is detangling the technical debt and supporting more native platforms.

Docker image of web-designer

For those that prefer to run a local designer, the web designer will be made available at each release as a docker image. The web-designer licence allows you run a local instance for you or your companies needs, as long as it is not publicly visible. For those that need it, this will give you the freedom to stay on a particular version.

Better input capabilities (already on main)

• ISR Rotary Encoder that's immune to long running tasks. Includes a fast GPIO read on many platforms.
• Touch screen bug fixed that caused it to offset. Carefully debugged and tested on LTDC.

Native STM32Cube, PicoSDK, ESP32-IDF support (on main except ESP32)

• STM32Cube - https://github.com/TcMenu/stm32-examples/
• PicoSDK - https://github.com/TcMenu/tcLibraryDev/tree/main/cmakeProject
• ESP32 - https://github.com/TcMenu/tcLibraryDev/tree/main/cmakeEsp32

Major theme refactor (already on main)

The themes are finally now production ready. The starter themes in web-designer now offer more configuration options out of the box, and even rounded rectangle fills. Creating a new theme includes far less boilerplate than in the past.

Better atomic support (already on main)

We've combined SimpleCollections with TaskManagerIO to avoid implementing atomics twice. We've refactored the atomics with the default now to pretty much always use std::atmoic if the board supports it. Where it is not supported or missing functions on popular boards we've emulated it.

Tested operation on Arduino Zephyr core

We'll make sure the library functions properly on the new Arduino Zephyr core. If any fixes are needed they will be included in the first 5.0 release.

Early snapshot of new Ice White theme

Here's an early snapshot from 5.0 running directly on STM32Cube STM32F429DISC1

Yes, it is only using 15K of heap using the new accelerated frame buffer plugin.

mbed support considered archived.

We don't even have a viable way to ensure compilation any longer. We'll step very carefully around the mbed code and try and keep it working for as long as we can, but no new features will support it.