ImageJ

According to our roadmap for ImageJ2, we should be releasing the first beta of ImageJ v2.0.0 today. Unfortunately, the program is still not ready to be released as a beta. Thus, we are pushing back the beta1 release to some time in July, with a deadline of July 31st.

The main reason for this decision is compatibility: the primary goal of the first ImageJ2 beta is to behave like ImageJ1 does. Existing plugins, macros and scripts must be executed as faithfully as possible in the new infrastructure. The alpha releases feature an initial version of this "legacy layer" that enables IJ1 code to be executed in IJ2. However, we recently realized that the legacy layer needs some adjustment to better support certain types of plugins (see ticket #542 for technical details). We are in the process of these adjustments now, after which we will perform a battery of tests on a variety of IJ1 plugins (see ticket #652), to verify that the legacy layer is working well.

Furthermore, there are still dozens of tickets of varying urgency and importance, many of which must be addressed for the first beta. Much work remains in many areas, from the data and display architecture, to ROIs, to the event mechanism, to documentation. ImageJ is a complex piece of software and creating a flexible design that successfully accommodates the plethora of use cases has been a time-consuming effort.

We apologize to everyone for the delay, but hope that taking the needed time now will ultimately result in better software for many years to come.