[ITK-users] [ANN] SimpleITK 1.0 Release Candidate 1

[Lowekamp, Bradley (NIH/NLM/LHC) [C]]

On behalf of the SimpleITK developers and the Insight Software Consortium community, we please to announce the release of the SimpleITK 1.0 Release Candidate 1!

For the first release candidate we are only providing source code distributions. The source-balls can be found on GitHub(https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITK/releases/tag/v1.0rc1) and SourceForge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/simpleitk/files/SimpleITK/1.0rc1/Source/).


We encourage users to try to build SimpleITK v1.0rc1 from the source (https://itk.org/Wiki/SimpleITK/GettingStarted#Build_It_Yourself).

There are a number of new and updated language specific "front-ends" to use:
 - Python - https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITKPythonPackage
 - R - https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITKRInstaller
 - Lua - https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITKLuaRock
 - Anaconda - https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITKCondaRecipe

Release Notes:

* Key Improvements:
   - Improved Python data bridge
     - New Python method `GetArrayViewFromImage` provides copy free read-only access
     - Updated Python data structures to use `memory view` objects
   - Building SimpleITK wrappers:
     - R devtools based installer (https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITKRInstaller).
     - Python: scripts for building wheels (https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITKPythonPackage) and a Conda recipe (https://github.com/SimpleITK/SimpleITKCondaRecipe).
  - Support use of virtual image domain in the `ImageRegistrationMethod`.
  - OnePlusOneOptimizer added to registration framework.
  - Improved support for R: propogating C++ exceptions into R, additional R tests.
  - Additional tests for Java.
  - Python and R notebooks repository illustrating the basics and more advanced functionality of SimpleITK (https://github.com/InsightSoftwareConsortium/SimpleITK-Notebooks).
  - Added continous integration via CircleCI.
  - Updated version and improved integration of Google Test.
  - Updated ITK version to 4.11
  - Updated minimal required CMake version to 3.0, and numerous CMake changes to support various build configurations.
  - Updated to usage of SWIG 3.0.11 ( using the latest SIWG is strongly recommended for R )
  - Reorganized examples directory into example based sub-directories with multiple languages
  - Improvements to documentation transmogrification scripts
  - Many bug fixes and improvement to the build system!

* API changes:
  - R methods which previously unnecessarily returned self return void.
  - New method `Image::GetNumberOfPixels`
  - New method `LabelMapContourOverlayImageFilter::SetColormap`
  - New method `LabelMapToRGBImageFilter::SetColormap`
  - New method `ImageRegistrationMethod::SetVirtualDomain` 
  - New method `ImageRegistrationMethod::SetVirtualDomainFromImage`
  - New seed parameter to `ImageRegistrationMethod::AddMetricSamplingSeed` method
  - `CastImageFilter::SetOutputPixelType` method no longer accepts the pixel ID by value, uses only enumerated type.


Please try out SimpleITK 1.0rc1, and report any issues!

Enjoy!

Bradley Lowekamp