https://www.psybuilder.com/ Sun, 23 Aug 2026 00:07:15 +0000 MyBB https://www.psybuilder.com/showthread.php?tid=7 Sat, 27 Nov 2021 23:16:22 +0800 admin]]> https://www.psybuilder.com/showthread.php?tid=7 Update history since 16 Jul 2020:
20260720 Updates:
1) Added separate development build scripts and PyInstaller specifications for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
2) Added support for building either a complete online version or a smaller offline version according to the INCLUDED_ONLINE setting.
3) The offline package can now exclude Survey, jsPsych, PyQtWebEngine, python-dotenv, Jinja2, and requests.
4) Added FFmpeg-powered video previews for Video items inside Scene Events.
5) Improved the handling of video dimensions and original aspect ratios.
6) Added a standardized Python dependency list for building PsyBuilder.

20260720 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug where setting the Start Timepoint of a Video Event caused the video image to appear for only a moment while the audio continued normally.
2) Fixed a bug where the End Timepoint controlled the video image duration but did not correctly control audio playback.
3) Fixed synchronization problems between video frames and audio when Start Timepoint or End Timepoint was specified.
4) Fixed a bug where Text Events could generate an undefined Frame Rect variable in MATLAB scripts.
5) Optimized Frame Rect generation so that it is performed only when required by the current Event type.
6) Fixed a bug where image width and height variables were not correctly applied to Scene items generated inside Loops.
7) Fixed problems with Sound Event property synchronization and restored audio preview playback.

20260719 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug where the font, color, and other style properties of Scene Text items were not updated before each drawing operation.
2) Improved the handling of dynamically defined text properties in generated Psychtoolbox scripts.

20260715 Updates:
1) Improved the compilation of typed Loop variables.
2) Made option parsing case-insensitive.
3) Improved the Windows packaging scripts.

20260715 Bug fixing:
1) Normalized the conversion of comparison operators in If and Switch conditions.
2) Improved numeric condition conversion by using str2double where appropriate.
3) Fixed several problems involving comparisons between numeric and string values in generated MATLAB code.

20260713 Updates:
1) Improved support for dynamic timeline properties in jsPsych Image stimuli.
2) Improved automatic screen-resolution handling in jsPsych experiments.
3) Added an Octave-compatible joystick MEX file.

20260713 Bug fixing:
1) Improved the handling of transparent colors and dynamically referenced color values.
2) Fixed Color Combo Box display problems under macOS.
3) Fixed problems where image width, height, background color, or border settings could fail to take effect.

20260712 Updates:
1) Added experimental support for touchscreen devices and touchscreen responses.
2) Enhanced cross-platform gamepad support.
3) Added support for collecting both gamepad button and axis states.
4) Improved gamepad detection and testing under Windows, Linux, and macOS.
5) Added preliminary Linux parallel-port backends based on ppdev and direct I/O.
Note: Touchscreen and the new Linux parallel-port functions should be fully tested with the target hardware before being used in a formal experiment.

20260709 Updates:
1) Added stimulus modulation and SSVEP-related settings for Rectangle, Circle, and Polygon items in Scene Events.

20260708 Updates:
1) Added separate switches for development and online features.
2) Added preliminary stimulus-modification controls to the Duration page.
3) Improved how online-only user interface components are displayed.

20260708 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a background-color display problem in the Color Combo Box.

20260707 Updates:
1) Added a keyboard layout display and keyboard device selector.
2) Improved the configuration interface for response devices.

20260707 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed synchronization problems between the Timeline, Scene/Combo Events, and the Structure Tree.
2) Fixed several problems reported when editing or restoring Video and conditional Events.

20260702 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug where an invalid or relocated project file path could prevent a project from being opened or compiled.
2) Fixed problems caused by copying If Events.
3) Improved restoration of copied If and Switch structures.

20260630 Updates:
1) Added the Survey Event and redesigned its property-editing and HTML-preview interfaces.
2) Renamed the previous Questionnaire Event to Survey for consistency with other Event names.
3) Added an interface switch for enabling or disabling online functions.
4) Improved jsPsych utility functions and Survey compilation.

20260630 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug where response-time distribution fitting failed when the filtered dataset was empty.
2) Improved comparisons involving Widget Response values in If conditions.
3) Fixed several compatibility problems introduced during the Survey interface reconstruction.

20260519 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a Psychtoolbox error that could occur when closing a movie.

20260518 Updates:
1) Added an fMRI stimulus-sequence optimizer.
2) Added support for generating and evaluating fMRI experimental sequences using a genetic algorithm.
3) Added configurable sequence-design and scanner-autocorrelation parameters.

20260413 Updates:
1) Improved the fMRI sequence optimizer by adding weighted and z-score-based fitness evaluation.

20260407 Updates:
2) Improved automatic screen-resolution detection in jsPsych experiments.
3) Improved character-encoding compatibility in generated jsPsych files.

20260308 Updates:
1) Improved the project-opening workflow, recent-file handling, and waiting dialogs.
2) Improved the application update process.
3) Improved MAT-file importing, data aggregation, and data-analysis workflows.

20260308 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed several problems that could occur while opening, restoring, or saving PsyBuilder projects.
2) Fixed multiple GUI stability problems involving Text, Image, Scene, and conditional Events.
3) Fixed several errors in generated Psychtoolbox scripts.
4) Improved error handling for missing properties, invalid data, and older project files.

20260227 Updates:
1) Improved the recording of response timing offsets in Till Release mode.

20260226 Updates:
1) Added local jsPsych resources to generated HTML experiment folders.
2) Updated the Jinja-based template used to generate experiment HTML files.

20251218 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where global variables generated by the Visual Search Location toolbox were not cleared correctly.

20251205 Updates:
Improved response timing by recording the response-time offset in Till Release mode.

20251203 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where changing the target of an If or Switch Event to None did not remove the corresponding item from the experiment structure.

20250722 Updates:
1) Refactored the jsPsych component factory and improved the conversion of PsyBuilder Events into jsPsych components.
2) Improved the conversion of Python values and PsyBuilder variables into JavaScript expressions.
3) Improved the transfer of experiment and stimulus properties to generated jsPsych experiments.

20250721 Updates:
1) Improved the parsing of Loop and Timeline variables during jsPsych compilation.
2) Added support for converting timeline-variable references stored as strings.
3) Made the global jsPsych instance accessible to generated experiment components.

20250718 Updates:
1) Improved keyboard-input conversion for jsPsych experiments.
2) Added MATLAB-to-jsPsych key-name conversion.
3) Added support for Loop nodes during jsPsych compilation.
4) Improved the conversion of strings, numbers, variables, and keyboard parameters.

20250717 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed the style-generation logic for jsPsych Text stimuli.
2) Fixed a problem where Text stimuli were not centered correctly.

20250716 Updates:
1) Improved jsPsych Scene container generation and Z-order handling.
2) Improved duration conversion and error handling.
3) Simplified Image stimulus generation and project-name handling.

20250714 Updates:
1) Added border and background support to jsPsych Text stimuli.
2) Improved horizontal and vertical alignment of generated Text stimuli.

20250707 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where special variables, including response-code variables, were not converted correctly when used in Random Pool tables.

20250701 Updates:
1) Added UBWWrite_APL for sending values through supported UBW devices.
2) Improved response timing by recording timing offsets in Till Release mode.

20250701 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in the Random Color generator.

20250625 Updates:
1) Unified several Event Data helper functions into a common Event Data implementation.
2) Added and updated parPulse MEX files for sending parallel-port triggers.

20250617 Updates:
1) Added If and Switch condition nodes to jsPsych experiments.
2) Added support for more complex conditional logic in generated browser experiments.
3) Improved Scene conversion, including border, background, color, and numeric-property handling.

20250604 Updates:
Added Ex-Gaussian distribution fitting to the PsyData analysis tools.

20250604 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed problems involving class variables in generated experiment results.
2) Improved output-directory and resource-path handling.

20250603 Updates:
1) Improved resource-directory generation for jsPsych experiments.
2) Added jsPsych templates and resources for Dot Motion, Gabor, and Snow stimuli.
3) Improved experiment saving and media-resource management.

20250522 Updates:
1) Added class-variable values to the allResults_APL result structure.
2) Added mergeClassVar_APL for combining class-variable results.
3) Updated parPulse support and platform-specific trigger files.

20250519 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed several problems introduced by the parPulse trigger implementation.
2) Fixed a bug in sendTrigMsg_APL.
3) Improved file-pattern matching and macOS packaging.

20250505 Updates:
1) Added Gabor and Snow stimuli to generated jsPsych Scene Events.
2) Improved Dot Motion stimuli with additional shapes, parameters, and animation optimizations.
3) Added support for passing full-screen settings to generated browser experiments.

20250505 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in the Visual Search Location generator.

20250424 Updates:
Added CDF pooling functions to the PsyData analysis tools.

20250424 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in the PsyData filtering window.

20250409 Updates:
Improved the waiting-progress animation for long-running operations.

20250406 Updates:
1) Added support for exporting generated jsPsych experiments as ZIP archives.
2) Added full-screen support to generated jsPsych experiments.
3) Improved the copying and management of image, audio, video, and jsPsych resource files.
4) Added the initial jsPsych implementation of Dot Motion stimuli.
5) Improved Sound and Scene stimulus conversion.

20250331 Updates:
Added Ex-Gaussian fitting and related response-time analysis functions to PsyData.

20250307 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in makeRandColorVariables_APL.

20250226 Updates:
Added the Random Color generator and support for generating random-color variables.

20250226 Bug fixing:
Improved validation of Random Pool item text and variable references.

20250224 Updates:
Integrated pivoted result-data views into the PsyData Summary interface.

20250221 Updates:
Added a grid-based selector for choosing skipped indexes in data-analysis tools.

20250220 Updates:
Updated the Linux build script to generate a Debian installation package automatically.

20250214 Updates:
Improved waiting dialogs and progress animations.

20250214 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed interface-style problems in the QSS definitions.
2) Fixed compatibility problems introduced by PyQt versions later than 5.15.2.

20250213 Bug fixing:
Fixed errors that could occur in child Widgets belonging to If and Switch Events.

20250207 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug when copying a Switch Event.

20250120 Updates:
Added the Lifetime parameter to Dot Motion stimuli.

20250120 Bug fixing:
Fixed and optimized the generation and updating of Dot Motion stimuli.

20250117 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug when processing TXT and DAT data files.

20250115 Updates:
Added multithreaded processing to improve the performance of data operations.

20241217 Bug fixing:
Fixed compatibility problems when importing and processing TXT or DAT result files.

20241216 Updates:
Improved compatibility with older versions of pandas.

20241128 Updates:
1) Improved the update checker so that automatic checks display information only when a new version is available.
2) Added support for excluding outliers using the Median Absolute Deviation method in PsyData.
3) Added multithreaded loading of result files.

20241128 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed an incorrect min-max normalization result in the Equation Stimulus generator.
2) Fixed a bug where phase values were interpreted as radians instead of degrees.

20240929 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where values in Random Pool tables were not transferred correctly.

20240916 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where importing TXT or DAT files into PsyData could cause an error.

20240903 Updates:
1) Improved the interface for High-DPI displays and Windows display scaling.
2) Added higher-resolution application and interface icons.
3) Changed the location used to store the PsyBuilder configuration file.

20240902 Updates:
Improved handling of delimiter strings containing special characters such as ".", "*", and "$".

20240830 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug when decoding imported data files.

20240627 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug that occurred when opening an empty data file.

20240517 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed problems in the PsyData summary table.
2) Fixed a bug when updating QUEST results.
3) Fixed several EyeLink logging and eye-tracker processing problems.

20240430 Updates:
1) Added the PsyData Data Summary interface and toolbox.
2) Improved the merging and summarization of participant information.

20240430 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug when merging subjectInfo data.
2) Fixed several problems reported during Data Summary testing.

20240425 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where using a Random Pool variable in a filename caused a PsyBuilder compilation error.

20240417 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where child Widgets of copied If or Switch Events were referenced instead of being copied independently.

20231206 Bug fixing:
Fixed incorrect global-variable definitions in EyeLink experiments.

20230720 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in automatic selection of the optimized sound device.

20230705 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where an empty accuracy variable was defined incorrectly.

20230625 Bug fixing:
Improved the generation of previous-response-code variables for If and Switch Events.

20230620 Bug fixing:
Fixed a display and property-handling problem in Scene image items.

20230615 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where formatLoopVarValue failed to format Loop-variable values correctly.

20230614 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where VSLocs_APL.m was not copied into generated experiment folders.

20230609 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where nested citations could cause an error during experiment compilation.

20230530 Updates:
Added the allResults_APL variable to generated result files to provide a unified collection of experiment results.

20230526 Updates:
Improved the Visual Search Location generator.

20230526 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where Image Event names were not processed correctly in If or Switch Events.

20230523 Bug fixing:
Fixed incorrect handling of negative stimulus-location values.

20230504 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in RGB color conversion.

20230424 Updates:
Added validation for generated filenames.

20230404 Updates:
Added the Visual Search Location generator for creating randomized stimulus positions in visual-search experiments.

20230329 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug under Linux where the first gamepad index was returned instead of the selected or final gamepad index.

20230317 Bug fixing:
Fixed a problem where queued gamepad input failed under Windows because KbCheck did not support the selected gamepad.

20221216 Bug fixing:
Fixed problems in the Start Recording and End Recording Events.

20221215 Updates:
Updated the Windows installer so that the PsyBuilder icon is displayed correctly in the Windows Control Panel.

20221201 Updates:
1) Added preliminary support for converting Text items in Scene Events into PNG images.
2) Optimized response-time acquisition.

20221201 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug caused by the queued-keyboard selection status.
2) Fixed an incorrect key-code variable name in generated MATLAB code.
3) Fixed several problems in the Text-to-PNG toolbox.

20220927 Updates:
Added support for setting the number of channels used by a Sound device.

20220926 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug where PsyBuilder could not locate a referenced sound file.
2) Fixed a bug where values in the response-time window were not converted to milliseconds correctly.

20220922 Bug fixing:
Fixed a crash that occurred when an integer value was supplied to a Scene item's position parser.

20220921 Updates:
Changed the default Sound-device selection method to use the optimized audio device.

20220918 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in updateResultVar_APL where cells configured to be filled were not updated correctly.

20220909 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where cloning a Text Event could fail because its node attributes were read before the node information was updated.

20220906Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where "Start from" parameter in duration page failed to be saved.
20220906Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where set the same response device in consecutive event under certain circumstance will cause endless loop.
20220627 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where ShuffleCycleOrder_APL failed to run.

20220615 Update: Added supports to customize the start time of the Duration via options in "Start From" drop-down box.

20220529 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where the saving of veriables for Loops failed as the old version of MATLAB (e.g., 2014a) can not handle the cell values for deal function approciately.

20220511 Updates:
      1) Enhanced counterbalance method to support AB and Latin Square method in Shuffle the Loop table.
      2) Force to save the results file in the same directory of the main program/script.

20220422 Updates:
      Added a toolbox to batch generate png from a text file (can be found under the new added toolboxes menu).

20220411 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where the response trigger under the duration tab will cause unselected output devices.

20220406 Updates: Added the initial implementation of the fMRI stimulus-sequence optimizer.[/color]

20211229 Updates:
      Updated implementation of the QUEST procedure.

20211218 Updates:
       1) Added a new option to let users define the encoding format of the output m files (utf8 vs. GBK in default).
       2) Removed the activation permanently.

20211218 Bug fixing: Fixed bugs in QUEST functions.

20211028 Updates:
       1) Now, the center x, center y, width, height parameters can be specified via percentage. The GUI will transfer it to pixels automatically.

20211028 Bug fixing:
       1) Fixed bugs where the cited reference disappeared when reloading the if/switch widget. Thanks to Chaoji Chen for reporting those bugs.
       2) Fixed bugs that caused the "no response is correct" function failed to work.
       3) Fixed bugs where None type in if/switch widget will cause a compiling error.
       4) Fixed a bug in opening the parallel ports in MATLAB.
       5) Fixed a bug that caused the "Expected one output from a curly brace or dot indexing ...." error when running the script in MATLAB.

20210831 Updates:
       1) Updated the unallowable event name list and made the error info more clear.
       2) Now will give more specific error info for a different type of violation of event naming rules (e.g., conflict with the built-in functions or variables in MATLAB, PsyBuilder, or Psychtoolbox).
       3) Updated the event data variable names to follow our naming rules (e.g., onsettime to onsetTime, cBehData* to eventData*).
       4) Updated the help info and comments for the eventData class functions
       6) Now, it will only print out more detailed info (for developer debug only) when an unknown fatal error occurs.

20210831 Bug fixing:
       1) Fixed a bug introduced by the Preferences menu.

20210825 Updates:
       1) Introduced a new "Preferences" menu to enable us to set the global font and the PTB preferences.
       2) Only static functions will be created separately, which means all separate sub-functions are interchangeable across all projects.
       3) From now on, PsyBuilder will create a *_readme.txt file to explain the usage of them functions.
       4) Now, all-action icons in the Loop event are presented with brief description text underlining them.
       5) Enhanced the tooltip info for allowable keys, e.g., how to set critical names for more than one char "{1!}".
       6) Enhanced error compiling info to make it more readable and precise.
       7) Enabled MATLAB to check the defined gamma correction text file (e.g., should be a size of 256*3).
       8) Enhanced the not-allowable Event name list (Event name is not allowed to be of the MATLAB key built-in names, e.g., break).
       9) Enhanced the not-allowable Event name list: Event name is not allowed to end with '_APL' (it's reserved for PsyBuilder built-in functions only).
       10) Changed GUI configuration for setting the input/output devices for the Event Duration tab.

20210825 Bug fixing:
       1) Fixed a bug in parsing the monitor size info.
       2) Fixed a bug and increased compatibility with OCTAVE.
       3) Fixed a bug in Mac OS with a case-sensitive file system where PsyBuilder failed to start due to unmatched filenames (thanks, Jeff Mulligan, for finding and reporting this bug)

20210620 Updates:
       1) Pre-transfer all images to the mat format to speed up the reading image routine (around 10x faster).
       2) Fixed a bug in the previous version of PsyBuilder (released at 20210619) where loop data failed to get the .raw field in the loop structure.

20210619 Updates:
       1) Added support for using the UBW32 device (Port A) to simulate a parallel port to send triggers.
       2) Pre-generated loop tables to save running time.
       3) Added two demos under the help menu: a cueing task and an RSVP task (Prof. Wen-Feng Chen from Renmin University, China, borrowing image materials from Dr. Krista Ehinger ).
       4) Starts to use parPulse.mex to send parallel triggers under Windows OS (see detailed information about parPulse here).
       5) Added support for Octave (try...).

20210610 Small update: Print out more detailed error information to help us to trace back possible bugs.
20210610 Bug fixing: Increased the tolerance level in loading the Psy file.
20210608 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug introduced by NumPy 1.19.4 that resulted in a fatal error dialog "Failed to execute script PsyBuilder" when ran PsyBuilder in Windows (see details here).
20210606 Bug fixing: Fixed several bugs (reported by Prof. Wen-Feng Chen from the Renmin University of China) in loading the images.
20210517 Updates: Fixed a bug where the file path for image, audio, and video was printed out wrong when it was a citation.
20210514 Updates: Now, for Sound, Image, Video, and Text Event, the background color is linked to the defined Screen color.
20210513 Added a new function: PsyBuilder uses relative file path in the GUI to increase compatibility across different platforms (Linux version will be uploaded soon).
20210513 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug: where codes used to close textures at loop level 0 was ignored.
20210501 Updates: now, PsyBuilder supports specifying a customized CLUTs file (either a text or mat file) for screens (Linux version will be uploaded soon).
20210422 Updates: Start using a new method to fill empty values in the loop variables.
20210402 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug: where the arc items in the scene were shown differently in the GUI and in PTB. While arcs are drawn counter-clockwise from horizontal in GUI, in PTB, arcs are drawn clockwise from vertical.
20210401 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug (reported by Qi Ma): where the effect of the transparent parameter in the makeGabor_bcl subfunction is incorrect.
20210324 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where loading a file via File-Open file in the GUI failed to compile.
20201218 Small update: Introduced class of handle to avoid using eval function to reference a variable.
20201129 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where the maximum number of rows of result variables was incorrect.
20201129 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where the values of *.acc variables were incorrect.
20201113 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug (reported by Dr. XueZhen Xiao from CUHK Sheng Zhen) where the text widget was compiled in the wrong format if the text contained the special character.
20201004 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug: an event's response code will be missed, if it is just followed by a cycle event.
20200716 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug in parsing the text for Text and Scene Events.
20200717 Updates: Now, the text effect will change in real-time in the General tab of Text Event.
20200801 Updates: Added draft tutorials in simplified Chinese and English language.]]> Update history since 16 Jul 2020:
20260720 Updates:
1) Added separate development build scripts and PyInstaller specifications for Linux, macOS, and Windows.
2) Added support for building either a complete online version or a smaller offline version according to the INCLUDED_ONLINE setting.
3) The offline package can now exclude Survey, jsPsych, PyQtWebEngine, python-dotenv, Jinja2, and requests.
4) Added FFmpeg-powered video previews for Video items inside Scene Events.
5) Improved the handling of video dimensions and original aspect ratios.
6) Added a standardized Python dependency list for building PsyBuilder.

20260720 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug where setting the Start Timepoint of a Video Event caused the video image to appear for only a moment while the audio continued normally.
2) Fixed a bug where the End Timepoint controlled the video image duration but did not correctly control audio playback.
3) Fixed synchronization problems between video frames and audio when Start Timepoint or End Timepoint was specified.
4) Fixed a bug where Text Events could generate an undefined Frame Rect variable in MATLAB scripts.
5) Optimized Frame Rect generation so that it is performed only when required by the current Event type.
6) Fixed a bug where image width and height variables were not correctly applied to Scene items generated inside Loops.
7) Fixed problems with Sound Event property synchronization and restored audio preview playback.

20260719 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug where the font, color, and other style properties of Scene Text items were not updated before each drawing operation.
2) Improved the handling of dynamically defined text properties in generated Psychtoolbox scripts.

20260715 Updates:
1) Improved the compilation of typed Loop variables.
2) Made option parsing case-insensitive.
3) Improved the Windows packaging scripts.

20260715 Bug fixing:
1) Normalized the conversion of comparison operators in If and Switch conditions.
2) Improved numeric condition conversion by using str2double where appropriate.
3) Fixed several problems involving comparisons between numeric and string values in generated MATLAB code.

20260713 Updates:
1) Improved support for dynamic timeline properties in jsPsych Image stimuli.
2) Improved automatic screen-resolution handling in jsPsych experiments.
3) Added an Octave-compatible joystick MEX file.

20260713 Bug fixing:
1) Improved the handling of transparent colors and dynamically referenced color values.
2) Fixed Color Combo Box display problems under macOS.
3) Fixed problems where image width, height, background color, or border settings could fail to take effect.

20260712 Updates:
1) Added experimental support for touchscreen devices and touchscreen responses.
2) Enhanced cross-platform gamepad support.
3) Added support for collecting both gamepad button and axis states.
4) Improved gamepad detection and testing under Windows, Linux, and macOS.
5) Added preliminary Linux parallel-port backends based on ppdev and direct I/O.
Note: Touchscreen and the new Linux parallel-port functions should be fully tested with the target hardware before being used in a formal experiment.

20260709 Updates:
1) Added stimulus modulation and SSVEP-related settings for Rectangle, Circle, and Polygon items in Scene Events.

20260708 Updates:
1) Added separate switches for development and online features.
2) Added preliminary stimulus-modification controls to the Duration page.
3) Improved how online-only user interface components are displayed.

20260708 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a background-color display problem in the Color Combo Box.

20260707 Updates:
1) Added a keyboard layout display and keyboard device selector.
2) Improved the configuration interface for response devices.

20260707 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed synchronization problems between the Timeline, Scene/Combo Events, and the Structure Tree.
2) Fixed several problems reported when editing or restoring Video and conditional Events.

20260702 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug where an invalid or relocated project file path could prevent a project from being opened or compiled.
2) Fixed problems caused by copying If Events.
3) Improved restoration of copied If and Switch structures.

20260630 Updates:
1) Added the Survey Event and redesigned its property-editing and HTML-preview interfaces.
2) Renamed the previous Questionnaire Event to Survey for consistency with other Event names.
3) Added an interface switch for enabling or disabling online functions.
4) Improved jsPsych utility functions and Survey compilation.

20260630 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug where response-time distribution fitting failed when the filtered dataset was empty.
2) Improved comparisons involving Widget Response values in If conditions.
3) Fixed several compatibility problems introduced during the Survey interface reconstruction.

20260519 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a Psychtoolbox error that could occur when closing a movie.

20260518 Updates:
1) Added an fMRI stimulus-sequence optimizer.
2) Added support for generating and evaluating fMRI experimental sequences using a genetic algorithm.
3) Added configurable sequence-design and scanner-autocorrelation parameters.

20260413 Updates:
1) Improved the fMRI sequence optimizer by adding weighted and z-score-based fitness evaluation.

20260407 Updates:
2) Improved automatic screen-resolution detection in jsPsych experiments.
3) Improved character-encoding compatibility in generated jsPsych files.

20260308 Updates:
1) Improved the project-opening workflow, recent-file handling, and waiting dialogs.
2) Improved the application update process.
3) Improved MAT-file importing, data aggregation, and data-analysis workflows.

20260308 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed several problems that could occur while opening, restoring, or saving PsyBuilder projects.
2) Fixed multiple GUI stability problems involving Text, Image, Scene, and conditional Events.
3) Fixed several errors in generated Psychtoolbox scripts.
4) Improved error handling for missing properties, invalid data, and older project files.

20260227 Updates:
1) Improved the recording of response timing offsets in Till Release mode.

20260226 Updates:
1) Added local jsPsych resources to generated HTML experiment folders.
2) Updated the Jinja-based template used to generate experiment HTML files.

20251218 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where global variables generated by the Visual Search Location toolbox were not cleared correctly.

20251205 Updates:
Improved response timing by recording the response-time offset in Till Release mode.

20251203 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where changing the target of an If or Switch Event to None did not remove the corresponding item from the experiment structure.

20250722 Updates:
1) Refactored the jsPsych component factory and improved the conversion of PsyBuilder Events into jsPsych components.
2) Improved the conversion of Python values and PsyBuilder variables into JavaScript expressions.
3) Improved the transfer of experiment and stimulus properties to generated jsPsych experiments.

20250721 Updates:
1) Improved the parsing of Loop and Timeline variables during jsPsych compilation.
2) Added support for converting timeline-variable references stored as strings.
3) Made the global jsPsych instance accessible to generated experiment components.

20250718 Updates:
1) Improved keyboard-input conversion for jsPsych experiments.
2) Added MATLAB-to-jsPsych key-name conversion.
3) Added support for Loop nodes during jsPsych compilation.
4) Improved the conversion of strings, numbers, variables, and keyboard parameters.

20250717 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed the style-generation logic for jsPsych Text stimuli.
2) Fixed a problem where Text stimuli were not centered correctly.

20250716 Updates:
1) Improved jsPsych Scene container generation and Z-order handling.
2) Improved duration conversion and error handling.
3) Simplified Image stimulus generation and project-name handling.

20250714 Updates:
1) Added border and background support to jsPsych Text stimuli.
2) Improved horizontal and vertical alignment of generated Text stimuli.

20250707 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where special variables, including response-code variables, were not converted correctly when used in Random Pool tables.

20250701 Updates:
1) Added UBWWrite_APL for sending values through supported UBW devices.
2) Improved response timing by recording timing offsets in Till Release mode.

20250701 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in the Random Color generator.

20250625 Updates:
1) Unified several Event Data helper functions into a common Event Data implementation.
2) Added and updated parPulse MEX files for sending parallel-port triggers.

20250617 Updates:
1) Added If and Switch condition nodes to jsPsych experiments.
2) Added support for more complex conditional logic in generated browser experiments.
3) Improved Scene conversion, including border, background, color, and numeric-property handling.

20250604 Updates:
Added Ex-Gaussian distribution fitting to the PsyData analysis tools.

20250604 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed problems involving class variables in generated experiment results.
2) Improved output-directory and resource-path handling.

20250603 Updates:
1) Improved resource-directory generation for jsPsych experiments.
2) Added jsPsych templates and resources for Dot Motion, Gabor, and Snow stimuli.
3) Improved experiment saving and media-resource management.

20250522 Updates:
1) Added class-variable values to the allResults_APL result structure.
2) Added mergeClassVar_APL for combining class-variable results.
3) Updated parPulse support and platform-specific trigger files.

20250519 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed several problems introduced by the parPulse trigger implementation.
2) Fixed a bug in sendTrigMsg_APL.
3) Improved file-pattern matching and macOS packaging.

20250505 Updates:
1) Added Gabor and Snow stimuli to generated jsPsych Scene Events.
2) Improved Dot Motion stimuli with additional shapes, parameters, and animation optimizations.
3) Added support for passing full-screen settings to generated browser experiments.

20250505 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in the Visual Search Location generator.

20250424 Updates:
Added CDF pooling functions to the PsyData analysis tools.

20250424 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in the PsyData filtering window.

20250409 Updates:
Improved the waiting-progress animation for long-running operations.

20250406 Updates:
1) Added support for exporting generated jsPsych experiments as ZIP archives.
2) Added full-screen support to generated jsPsych experiments.
3) Improved the copying and management of image, audio, video, and jsPsych resource files.
4) Added the initial jsPsych implementation of Dot Motion stimuli.
5) Improved Sound and Scene stimulus conversion.

20250331 Updates:
Added Ex-Gaussian fitting and related response-time analysis functions to PsyData.

20250307 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in makeRandColorVariables_APL.

20250226 Updates:
Added the Random Color generator and support for generating random-color variables.

20250226 Bug fixing:
Improved validation of Random Pool item text and variable references.

20250224 Updates:
Integrated pivoted result-data views into the PsyData Summary interface.

20250221 Updates:
Added a grid-based selector for choosing skipped indexes in data-analysis tools.

20250220 Updates:
Updated the Linux build script to generate a Debian installation package automatically.

20250214 Updates:
Improved waiting dialogs and progress animations.

20250214 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed interface-style problems in the QSS definitions.
2) Fixed compatibility problems introduced by PyQt versions later than 5.15.2.

20250213 Bug fixing:
Fixed errors that could occur in child Widgets belonging to If and Switch Events.

20250207 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug when copying a Switch Event.

20250120 Updates:
Added the Lifetime parameter to Dot Motion stimuli.

20250120 Bug fixing:
Fixed and optimized the generation and updating of Dot Motion stimuli.

20250117 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug when processing TXT and DAT data files.

20250115 Updates:
Added multithreaded processing to improve the performance of data operations.

20241217 Bug fixing:
Fixed compatibility problems when importing and processing TXT or DAT result files.

20241216 Updates:
Improved compatibility with older versions of pandas.

20241128 Updates:
1) Improved the update checker so that automatic checks display information only when a new version is available.
2) Added support for excluding outliers using the Median Absolute Deviation method in PsyData.
3) Added multithreaded loading of result files.

20241128 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed an incorrect min-max normalization result in the Equation Stimulus generator.
2) Fixed a bug where phase values were interpreted as radians instead of degrees.

20240929 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where values in Random Pool tables were not transferred correctly.

20240916 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where importing TXT or DAT files into PsyData could cause an error.

20240903 Updates:
1) Improved the interface for High-DPI displays and Windows display scaling.
2) Added higher-resolution application and interface icons.
3) Changed the location used to store the PsyBuilder configuration file.

20240902 Updates:
Improved handling of delimiter strings containing special characters such as ".", "*", and "$".

20240830 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug when decoding imported data files.

20240627 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug that occurred when opening an empty data file.

20240517 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed problems in the PsyData summary table.
2) Fixed a bug when updating QUEST results.
3) Fixed several EyeLink logging and eye-tracker processing problems.

20240430 Updates:
1) Added the PsyData Data Summary interface and toolbox.
2) Improved the merging and summarization of participant information.

20240430 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug when merging subjectInfo data.
2) Fixed several problems reported during Data Summary testing.

20240425 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where using a Random Pool variable in a filename caused a PsyBuilder compilation error.

20240417 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where child Widgets of copied If or Switch Events were referenced instead of being copied independently.

20231206 Bug fixing:
Fixed incorrect global-variable definitions in EyeLink experiments.

20230720 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in automatic selection of the optimized sound device.

20230705 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where an empty accuracy variable was defined incorrectly.

20230625 Bug fixing:
Improved the generation of previous-response-code variables for If and Switch Events.

20230620 Bug fixing:
Fixed a display and property-handling problem in Scene image items.

20230615 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where formatLoopVarValue failed to format Loop-variable values correctly.

20230614 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where VSLocs_APL.m was not copied into generated experiment folders.

20230609 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where nested citations could cause an error during experiment compilation.

20230530 Updates:
Added the allResults_APL variable to generated result files to provide a unified collection of experiment results.

20230526 Updates:
Improved the Visual Search Location generator.

20230526 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where Image Event names were not processed correctly in If or Switch Events.

20230523 Bug fixing:
Fixed incorrect handling of negative stimulus-location values.

20230504 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in RGB color conversion.

20230424 Updates:
Added validation for generated filenames.

20230404 Updates:
Added the Visual Search Location generator for creating randomized stimulus positions in visual-search experiments.

20230329 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug under Linux where the first gamepad index was returned instead of the selected or final gamepad index.

20230317 Bug fixing:
Fixed a problem where queued gamepad input failed under Windows because KbCheck did not support the selected gamepad.

20221216 Bug fixing:
Fixed problems in the Start Recording and End Recording Events.

20221215 Updates:
Updated the Windows installer so that the PsyBuilder icon is displayed correctly in the Windows Control Panel.

20221201 Updates:
1) Added preliminary support for converting Text items in Scene Events into PNG images.
2) Optimized response-time acquisition.

20221201 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug caused by the queued-keyboard selection status.
2) Fixed an incorrect key-code variable name in generated MATLAB code.
3) Fixed several problems in the Text-to-PNG toolbox.

20220927 Updates:
Added support for setting the number of channels used by a Sound device.

20220926 Bug fixing:
1) Fixed a bug where PsyBuilder could not locate a referenced sound file.
2) Fixed a bug where values in the response-time window were not converted to milliseconds correctly.

20220922 Bug fixing:
Fixed a crash that occurred when an integer value was supplied to a Scene item's position parser.

20220921 Updates:
Changed the default Sound-device selection method to use the optimized audio device.

20220918 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug in updateResultVar_APL where cells configured to be filled were not updated correctly.

20220909 Bug fixing:
Fixed a bug where cloning a Text Event could fail because its node attributes were read before the node information was updated.

20220906Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where "Start from" parameter in duration page failed to be saved.
20220906Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where set the same response device in consecutive event under certain circumstance will cause endless loop.
20220627 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where ShuffleCycleOrder_APL failed to run.

20220615 Update: Added supports to customize the start time of the Duration via options in "Start From" drop-down box.

20220529 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where the saving of veriables for Loops failed as the old version of MATLAB (e.g., 2014a) can not handle the cell values for deal function approciately.

20220511 Updates:
      1) Enhanced counterbalance method to support AB and Latin Square method in Shuffle the Loop table.
      2) Force to save the results file in the same directory of the main program/script.

20220422 Updates:
      Added a toolbox to batch generate png from a text file (can be found under the new added toolboxes menu).

20220411 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where the response trigger under the duration tab will cause unselected output devices.

20220406 Updates: Added the initial implementation of the fMRI stimulus-sequence optimizer.[/color]

20211229 Updates:
      Updated implementation of the QUEST procedure.

20211218 Updates:
       1) Added a new option to let users define the encoding format of the output m files (utf8 vs. GBK in default).
       2) Removed the activation permanently.

20211218 Bug fixing: Fixed bugs in QUEST functions.

20211028 Updates:
       1) Now, the center x, center y, width, height parameters can be specified via percentage. The GUI will transfer it to pixels automatically.

20211028 Bug fixing:
       1) Fixed bugs where the cited reference disappeared when reloading the if/switch widget. Thanks to Chaoji Chen for reporting those bugs.
       2) Fixed bugs that caused the "no response is correct" function failed to work.
       3) Fixed bugs where None type in if/switch widget will cause a compiling error.
       4) Fixed a bug in opening the parallel ports in MATLAB.
       5) Fixed a bug that caused the "Expected one output from a curly brace or dot indexing ...." error when running the script in MATLAB.

20210831 Updates:
       1) Updated the unallowable event name list and made the error info more clear.
       2) Now will give more specific error info for a different type of violation of event naming rules (e.g., conflict with the built-in functions or variables in MATLAB, PsyBuilder, or Psychtoolbox).
       3) Updated the event data variable names to follow our naming rules (e.g., onsettime to onsetTime, cBehData* to eventData*).
       4) Updated the help info and comments for the eventData class functions
       6) Now, it will only print out more detailed info (for developer debug only) when an unknown fatal error occurs.

20210831 Bug fixing:
       1) Fixed a bug introduced by the Preferences menu.

20210825 Updates:
       1) Introduced a new "Preferences" menu to enable us to set the global font and the PTB preferences.
       2) Only static functions will be created separately, which means all separate sub-functions are interchangeable across all projects.
       3) From now on, PsyBuilder will create a *_readme.txt file to explain the usage of them functions.
       4) Now, all-action icons in the Loop event are presented with brief description text underlining them.
       5) Enhanced the tooltip info for allowable keys, e.g., how to set critical names for more than one char "{1!}".
       6) Enhanced error compiling info to make it more readable and precise.
       7) Enabled MATLAB to check the defined gamma correction text file (e.g., should be a size of 256*3).
       8) Enhanced the not-allowable Event name list (Event name is not allowed to be of the MATLAB key built-in names, e.g., break).
       9) Enhanced the not-allowable Event name list: Event name is not allowed to end with '_APL' (it's reserved for PsyBuilder built-in functions only).
       10) Changed GUI configuration for setting the input/output devices for the Event Duration tab.

20210825 Bug fixing:
       1) Fixed a bug in parsing the monitor size info.
       2) Fixed a bug and increased compatibility with OCTAVE.
       3) Fixed a bug in Mac OS with a case-sensitive file system where PsyBuilder failed to start due to unmatched filenames (thanks, Jeff Mulligan, for finding and reporting this bug)

20210620 Updates:
       1) Pre-transfer all images to the mat format to speed up the reading image routine (around 10x faster).
       2) Fixed a bug in the previous version of PsyBuilder (released at 20210619) where loop data failed to get the .raw field in the loop structure.

20210619 Updates:
       1) Added support for using the UBW32 device (Port A) to simulate a parallel port to send triggers.
       2) Pre-generated loop tables to save running time.
       3) Added two demos under the help menu: a cueing task and an RSVP task (Prof. Wen-Feng Chen from Renmin University, China, borrowing image materials from Dr. Krista Ehinger ).
       4) Starts to use parPulse.mex to send parallel triggers under Windows OS (see detailed information about parPulse here).
       5) Added support for Octave (try...).

20210610 Small update: Print out more detailed error information to help us to trace back possible bugs.
20210610 Bug fixing: Increased the tolerance level in loading the Psy file.
20210608 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug introduced by NumPy 1.19.4 that resulted in a fatal error dialog "Failed to execute script PsyBuilder" when ran PsyBuilder in Windows (see details here).
20210606 Bug fixing: Fixed several bugs (reported by Prof. Wen-Feng Chen from the Renmin University of China) in loading the images.
20210517 Updates: Fixed a bug where the file path for image, audio, and video was printed out wrong when it was a citation.
20210514 Updates: Now, for Sound, Image, Video, and Text Event, the background color is linked to the defined Screen color.
20210513 Added a new function: PsyBuilder uses relative file path in the GUI to increase compatibility across different platforms (Linux version will be uploaded soon).
20210513 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug: where codes used to close textures at loop level 0 was ignored.
20210501 Updates: now, PsyBuilder supports specifying a customized CLUTs file (either a text or mat file) for screens (Linux version will be uploaded soon).
20210422 Updates: Start using a new method to fill empty values in the loop variables.
20210402 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug: where the arc items in the scene were shown differently in the GUI and in PTB. While arcs are drawn counter-clockwise from horizontal in GUI, in PTB, arcs are drawn clockwise from vertical.
20210401 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug (reported by Qi Ma): where the effect of the transparent parameter in the makeGabor_bcl subfunction is incorrect.
20210324 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where loading a file via File-Open file in the GUI failed to compile.
20201218 Small update: Introduced class of handle to avoid using eval function to reference a variable.
20201129 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where the maximum number of rows of result variables was incorrect.
20201129 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug where the values of *.acc variables were incorrect.
20201113 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug (reported by Dr. XueZhen Xiao from CUHK Sheng Zhen) where the text widget was compiled in the wrong format if the text contained the special character.
20201004 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug: an event's response code will be missed, if it is just followed by a cycle event.
20200716 Bug fixing: Fixed a bug in parsing the text for Text and Scene Events.
20200717 Updates: Now, the text effect will change in real-time in the General tab of Text Event.
20200801 Updates: Added draft tutorials in simplified Chinese and English language.]]>