[ODE] new on list, an introduction, and questions and comments about new release

[J. Eric Coleman]

Hello,

I'm new on the list but have been playing with ODE for a couple of 
months now.  I've been using ODE with VC6 and VB6.  So far it's been 
lots of fun.  I've made quite a bit of progress in creating a VB6 
compatible DLL.  I've been working on some simple demos as I learn how 
to use ODE.  They're nothing exciting, but physics simulations are cool 
by default. I majored in physics at LSU, so I find this kind of stuff 
really exciting.

I only just learned of the recent 0.6 release, which is partially why 
I'm joining the list in order to keep myself updated on new releases.  
I'm not too sure if including my question in this introduction email is 
the correct protocol for this list or not. Please let me know if I 
should split different topics into different emails.

And that brings my to my question about this new release.  What's new in 
this release?  I've looked at the change log but it doesn't say much.  
I'd like to know if there are any compatibility issues, such as 
redefined functions, etc.  What are the new functions/features?  I've 
looked at the html files in the /docs directory and it plainly says 
"this document is not yet complete." 

The new documentation is harder to use as well.  With a single large 
document searching is much easier than when topics are split into 
different pages.  It's especially easy with searching a large html 
document via Firefox, the highlight feature is really nice. 

I also noticed in the "INSTALL" file support for VC6 is to be dropped 
because VS 2005 Express C++ is free.  I've tried the express version and 
it's crippled software.  It can not build native code, much less a 
native code DLL.  The C++ Express version is really useless for 
compiling anything except the simplest .NET application.   The C# 
version may be better, I don't know, and it is quite possible I'm just 
too dumb to figure how to to use the Express VC++ edition.  Either way, 
I still use VC 6 and I hope support for it continues.

I hope none of that comes accross as too negative.  I'm just trying to 
share some ideas on how I think this could be more accessable and eaiser 
for people to learn and use.

Thanks,
Eric Coleman