We can now add colleges and universities to the list of victims of the financial crisis. The stock-market collapse has badly eroded endowments, forcing schools to suspend capital projects, freeze hiring, rethink need-blind financial-aid policies and cut budgets. The Journal reported this week that Harvard University's giant-killer endowment, which stood at $36.9 billion as of June 30, has lost 22% of its value in the months since and that the university's administration is planning for a 30% decline for the fiscal year ending next June.

There were a couple other new features added this week, which I’m also kind of mystified by. I did ask on IRC, but I don’t think Ian’s response was very direct. It seems the only requirement to qualify for addition after the freeze is that Ian must be able to frame the new a feature as a response to at least one email sent over a two year period.

• Libraries - All libraries must be placed in a folder named "libraries", inside the sketchbook folder. Do not use the main "libraries" directory in the Processing distribution, as it is reserved for the core libraries, and is not visible on Mac OS X.
• XML - The XML library is now included by default, so you won't find it in the Import Library menu anymore. In addition, the XML library since 0135 has been greatly improved, making it compatible with far more documents.
• Processing.app - The Mac OS X release of Processing is now a single .app file, more befitting an OS X application.
• Processing.exe - The Windows release has a new launcher based on launch4j. Unfortunately, some machines have a problem with the new launcher that we haven't been able to track down. If you have trouble, please help us find the problem. PDE files are also now double-clickable on Windows.
• OpenGL - All OpenGL sketches now use 2x full screen anti-aliasing. This means that these sketches are always smooth, and the smooth() and noSmooth() commands are ignored. To return to the behavior found in the beta releases, see the hint() reference.
• P2D and P3D - The P2D renderer has returned (see the size() reference) and smoothing is now enabled for both P2D and P3D. Smoothing support is unfortunately incomplete, however, and sometimes thin lines can be seen inside shapes. This is a very high priority bug to be fixed in a future release.
• Candy and PShape - The Candy SVG library has been merged into the core, which brings along a new loadShape() command and a new PShape object. The special powers of PShape will be rolled out in future releases. For the time being, loadShape() works best with the default renderer (JAVA2D). Complex shapes will often appear jagged or not at all when rendered with P2D, P3D, and OPENGL. We've also added better support for SVG files created with Inkscape.
• PVector - We've added a new class called PVector, which is a simple three-dimensional vector (also known as point or tuple) class. This is useful for storing point data, or operations on 3D points.
• Tools - A new Tools API has been created for developers who want to contribute code that extends the Processing Development Environment in some fashion. Let your creativity flow with fantastical contributions like "Color Selector 2.0", "ROT13 Code Mangler", and "I Am Rich". Visit the developer page on tools for more information. Similar to libraries, tools are installed in a folder of the same name within your sketchbook folder.
• Asynchronouse Images - Big JPEGs and small pipes? We've added a new requestImage() that loads an image in the background so that your sketch doesn't freeze when loading lots of large images over a slow connection.
• Present - Present mode (full screen) is handled differently. When run inside the PDE, only Mac OS X uses exclusive mode with Present. Windows and Linux just do full screen windows. When run outside the PDE, all three simply create an undecorated window the size of the entire screen, and on the Mac, an option is added to the Info.plist file to hide the dock and menubar (since that cannot be done programatically from Java).
• Compiler - We've removed the old Jikes compiler and are now using another. We've also tried hard to improve the quality of error messages, though some are still real gems that invoke the complaints of mainframe computers in 1970s films.
• Internationalization - For better internationalization support, we've changed to UTF-8 encoding when loading and saving sketches. Sketches that contain non-ASCII characters and were saved with Processing 0140 and earlier may look strange when opened. Garbled text and odd characters may appear where umlauts, cedillas, and Japanese formerly lived. If this happens, use the "Fix Encoding & Reload" option under the Tools menu. This will reload your sketch using the same method as previous versions of Processing, at which point you can re-save it which will write a proper UTF-8 version.
• Java - Linux and Windows now inlude Java 6 update 10 with the download. We still don't have support for Java 1.5 syntax yet, but we hope that the performance boosts in Java 6 will help applications run well.