 6.0 RC2:
 - Brushed up the camelizer dialog with a new dialog icon and improved descriptions.

 - Brushed up the clipart dialogs and fixed some bugs there.

 - Decreased memory usage for animated GIF export. So there should be no more OutOfMemoryErrors
   when exporting large animations.

 - New export dialog (Menu "File" > "Export..." and in the toolbar)
   combining the old "export result" and "ascii2gif" dialogs.

 - Some users complained about problems with the file chooser dialogs. There seem to be some issues
   with the current JRE (e.g. http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6578753).
   So I decided to add an options to switch to the "native" file chooser
   implementation ("View" > "Preferences..." > "Advanced" > "Use native file chooser dialog").
   Using the native file chooser has some consequences:
     - Advantages:
        - much faster
        - same functions and look&feel as in other applications
     - Disadvantages:
        - the filter combobox for file types always shows *.* instead of
          dedicated types actually supported
        - the dialog appears in the top left corner instead of centered to
          the application

 - Decoupled color scheme settings: You can configure a default color scheme in
   "View" > "Preferences..." > "General" which will be applied to new documents. Each open
   document can have it individual color scheme, adjustable via "View" > "Color".

 - Bugfix: JavE did not start on some linux systems.

 - Bugfix: CPU consumption was high when moving the mouse on the screen.

 - Bugfix: In text mode, sometimes the cursor was not displayed correctly and artifacts where left
   on the screen.

 - Bugfix: The Ascii animation player Applet did not show the first frame after startup.

 - Bugfix: The selection tool created new threads each time the tool was switched.

 - Separated disy-commons.jar from jave.jar for the upcoming release of disy-commons as new
   open source library by disy Informationssysteme GmbH (http://www.disy.net).

 - Added a file jave.bat to maybe make it a bit easier for Windows users to start the application.

 - Decreased the download archive size a bit by removing tests and demos from the binary.

 6.0 RC1:

 - When starting up JavE, there is now a "Quick Start" dialog for choosing one of the popular
   features of JavE.

 - Updated the FIGlet fonts library to version 4.0

 - Improved and extended preferences dialog (menu "View" > "Preferences...")

 - Improved behavior when dropping a selection outside the document bounds:
    - By default, on text editors the document is being resized automatically
    - By default, on animation editors the document is not being resized automatically
    - This can be adjusted independently for text and animation editor in the preferences dialog
      (menu "View" > "Preferences...")
    - When auto resize is enabled for animations, the resize operation will now resize all frames,
      in order to have the frames properly aligned.

 - Improved Mac Os X integration. Many thanks to Zak for testing!

 - From the 3d renderer (menu "Special" > "Render 3d") animations are directly opened in the
   animation editor.

 - Updated the program icon to have colors (like the JavE logo)

 - JavE now supports Drag'n'Drop for opening files. Just drop a file on the application to open it.

 - When opening an image file instead of opening the image2ascii converter the user is now
   asked what to do: Image2Ascii Conversion, Camelizer or Using the image as Watermark

 - Fixed inconsistency in file dialogs for images: Now every file chooser offers the same set
   of image formats.

 - Brushed up the camelizer dialog.

 - In the animation export wizard the initial output file is filled in automatically.

 - JavE now uses the new Splash-Screen functionality in Java SE 6 in order to show the splash
   screen much earlier.

 - Brushed up the Image2Ascii conversion dialog a bit.

 - Opening the Image2Ascii converter for the first time automatically opens the file chooser
   for choosing the image file.

 - The color scheme settings (Menu "View" > "Color") are now respected in the Image2Ascii converter.

 - The color scheme settings (Menu "View" > "Color") are now remembered when restarting JavE.

 - Moved button for tool options dialog to the status bar. When closing the dialog, you will
   see a little animation to help remembering, where the dialog can be reactivated.

 - Bugfix: "Convert 'Making Of' to Animation" caused an error when the document had not yet been
   edited.

 - Bugfix: The tool "Freehand Algorithmic" broke from M7 to RC0.

 6.0 RC0:
 - Added a JRE check at startup in order to report outdated JREs as error. The check is
   even JRE 1.1 compatible. So migrating from JavE 5 should be a bit easier.

 - New Java Runtime Environment (JRE) requirements: 1.6.0 or greater required to run JavE
   (this is mainly because the underlying library disy-commons for the user interface has
   been updated).

 - Bugfix: Version check (menu "Help" > "Check for Updates") did not work on some systems.

 - Lots of other minor improvements and bugfixes.

 6.0 i20070819:

 - New image2ascii algorithm "3d" for converting monochrome images to
ASCII Art like this:
______________________________________________
 __________________/\\\\\______________________
  _______________/\\\\\\\\\\\\__________________
   _____________/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\_______________
    ___________/\\\\\\\\\\\\/\\\\\\\\_____________
     __________/\\\\\\\\\///\//\\\\\\\\____________
      _________/\\\\\\\\\_____/\\\\\\\\\____________
       _______/\\\\\\\\\\_____/\\\\\\\\\_____________
        ______/\\\\\\\\\\___/\\\\\\\\\\\______________
         _____\/\\\\\\\\\\/\\\\\\\\\\\\/_______________
          _____/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/_________________
           ____/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\//___________________
            ___\/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\//______________________
             ___/\\\\\\\\\\\\\////_________________________
              __\/\\\\\\\\\///____________/\\\______________
               __\/\\\\\\\\\_____________/\\\\\\\\\__________
                __\/\\\\\\\\\________/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\_________
                 __\/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\__________
                  __\/\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\//___________
                   __\//\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\/______________
                    ___\///\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\////________________
                     _____\/\\\\\\\\\\\\\/////_____________________
                      _____\/////////////___________________________
                       ______________________________________________

 - The experimental VT100-Viewer can now be accessed via menu
   "Animation" > "Open VT Animation". The VT-Viewer has been included
   with JavE for many versions, but it only could have been started from
   the command line. You can use it for playing VT (Virtual Terminal,
   VT100) animations. There is no editing, conversion or export to other
   formats available yet.
   Example animations are included in the distribution in the folder
   /examples/vt/

 - The distribution now contains a few example files for animations in the
   /examples/ folder.

 - Animation editor: Less important controls can be hidden
(http://wiki.jave.de/index.php/Feature_request:More_Animation_Editor_Space)

 - Animation editor: Added navigation buttons to toolbar

 - Renamed "Mix Characters" checkbox to "Merge Characters" to better
   reflect its meaning.

 - Tweaked user interface a bit (splash screen, about dialog, toolbar
   buttons, colors, etc)

 - Bugfix: SWF animation export respects actual frame size

 - Bugfix: Exception caused by double clicking outside the document when
   the text tool is active.

 - Bugfix: Hitting the save button on an animation editor will save the
   animation, not only a single frame. Also: Removed the "Save" and
   "Save As..." buttons from the animation menu (since they only
   duplicated the ones from the file menu).

 6.0M7 (4th December 2005):

 - Moved the mouse characters panel from the status bar to the tool options dialog.
   So mouse characters assigned to left/right mouse buttons can now be adjusted only
   where it makes sense to do so.

 - Dynamic font greyscale tables for Image2Ascii converter
     When converting using a greyscale algorithm, the greyscale table for the
     current display font can now be computed automatically.
     This makes it easy to use special fonts (e.g. symbol fonts) for image2ascii
     conversion, where there are no predefined greyscale tables available for.
     Note that the predefined tables usually leed to a better conversion result,
     since they are manually optimized.

 - Macromedia Flash File (SWF) export from Ascii-animations
     Requires the free MTASC compiler (http://www.mtasc.org) to be installed
     (tested with 1.11 on Windows 2000, should work on other systems, too).
     The path to the compiler binary must be specified on the export options page
     for SWF export

 - Added tool tips in order to somewhat explain the difference between generic and algorithmic tools.

 - Added a new example 'key' to the 3D rendering tool - many thanks to Adam Robbins.

 - Bugfix: Exception with using TextTool

 - Bugfix: Problems saving/loading cliparts

 - Lots of other minor improvements and bugfixes, brushed up some dialogs


 6.0M6 (19th June 2005):
 - New font chooser for display font. It is in the menu "View", "Display font..." and you can
   use it to select any true type font installed on your system.
   The font will be used for the editors, for the preview in
   the image2ascii converter and the FIGlet editor. It will
   also be used as default font for GIF export.
 - Reduced startup time, reduced system resources for crash recovery
 - Java ImageIO API is used for loading image files. So JavE now supports all image file formats
   that are supported by the Java runtime you have installed.
 - Replaced the old FIGlet font export assistant by a new wizard implementation.
 - Cliparts are now sorted by name
 - Brushed up some icons, added icons to more menu items
 - Brushed up dialog for adding current selection as new clipart
 - Improved the Steganogram feature and added some help text (Image2Ascii Converter
   with the 'Gradient' converting algorithm / menu "'Special', 'Decode Steganogram')
 - Changed the about dialog to be an ordinary dialog with close button
 - Added CeeJay's Gradient: .:%oO$8@#M
 - Added icons to the fill style chooser in the fill tool options dialog
 - Bugfix: High CPU load when closing asciimation player in looped mode
 - Bugfix: Error when opening fractals editor
 - Bugfix: JavE did not find its configuration files when not being run from installation folder
 - Bugfix: JavE player applet was not JDK1.4 compatible
 - Bugfix: FIGlet font export assistant did not start
 - Bugfix: Games (AscTris/Labyrinth) did not get keyboard focus when started
 - Distribution: Moved icons from root folder to separate icons folder
 - Distribution: Added Alberto Schianos cool folder icon (icons folder)

 6.0M5:
 - In the new batch conversion wizard in the image2ascii converter you can now choose the source
   image files
 - Improved animation editor: More buttons, more icons, more context menues
 - Cropping (Menu Edit->Crop) in animation editor crops all frames
 - Resize Document (Menu Edit->Resize Document) in animation editor resizes all frames
 - New export wizard for animations. 'Loop' option can be configured for animated GIFs and JavaScript
 - Improved JavaScript player for animation export. Player controls are now optional.
 - Added Java applet export (JavEPlayer) to animation export wizard.
 - New dialog for animation properties http://www.jave.de/developer/animationproperties60m5.png
 - Removed the capability of animation frames having a specific frame duration and color
   for each frame. Those are now settings for an animation.
 - Bugfix: Frame title updated correctly to the current active editor
 - Bugfix: Animation properties frame duration/color was not saved/loaded
 - Bugfix: Animation GIF export produced black images

 6.0M4:
 - Editor windows are now arranged as tabs.
 - Integrated animation editor into the main editor window
 - ActionScript export for the animation editor
 - Added Icons to some of the Image2Ascii algorithms
 - Added Icons to trasform, rotate menu items
 - Online version check (menu 'Help' -> 'Check for Updates')
 - Contains all fonts from the FIGlet fonts library
 - Bugfix: Controls in Image2Ascii Dialog from appearing on other tabs with JRE1.4

 6.0M3:
 - Rulers for the editor window (optional)
 - Brushed up the animation player a bit - will be continued in M4
 - First version of Asciimation import: Scrollbar animations as well as
   raw text animations can be imported as movie (Menu "File" ->
   "Import")
 - Tool Options Dialog: Visibility can be toggled by menu item and
   toolbar button
 - JavE remembers grid visible/not visible and other settings
 - Lots of critical bugfixes and internal code cleanup

 6.0M2:

 - Replaced the old FIGlet dialog by the new one from my JFIGlet project
 - User preferences are no longer saved into the jave.ini file. The Java Preferences API
   is used now, which will for example write the preferences to the registry on Windows systems.
 - Improved look and feel on most systems (by switching from AWT to Swing)
 - All tools support automatic scrolling when the mouse cursor is dragged outside the visible
   part of the document.
 - Improved layout and controls in most dialogs
 - Menubar contains icons
 - Increased performance for large documents
 - Auxiliary lines tool simplificated a lot.
 - Lots of changes to the software internals.

 6.0M1:

 - Improved layout and controls in most dialogs
 - Improved the "Thumbnail Browser" - it's now more like a file open dialog with preview
   should work well on Windows, has not been testen on Linux or other systems.