====== New Features in Release 2.12 ======

Release date: March 19, 2012.

Release 2.12 is now available on the [[download:start|Downloads]] page. Below we list the most important new features.  In addition to that we have a number of minor additions and bug fixes.

==== Integer hull computation ====

Two scripts simplify the computation of the convex hull of the lattice (integer) points in a polyhedron. The script will be described in more detail in the tutorial [[user_guide:tutorials:optimization|polymake and Optimization]].

==== Interface to Sketch 3D/TikZ ====
Polymake is now able to produce and display TikZ pictures via an interface to [[http://www.frontiernet.net/~eugene.ressler/|Sketch 3D]]. Here is a simple example:
<code>
sketch(cube(3)->VISUAL);
sketch(cube(3)->VISUAL, File=>"cube.sk");
</code>
With the second command one can export a polytope to a sketch input file.  To get the TikZ code just call sketch.

The interface can handle most of the basic customization options like colors for facets and vertices as well as thickness, transparency, ... (see also [[user_guide:tutorials:visual_tutorial|Tutorial for Visualization]])
<code>
sketch(cube(3)->VISUAL(VertexThickness=>3, FacetColor=>"blue", FacetTransparency=>1));
</code>

The visual object now has three more options to customize the viewing parameters for the sketch output.
<code>
sketch(cube(3)->VISUAL(ViewPoint=>[1,2,3], ViewDirection=>[0,0,0], ViewUp=>[0,1,1]));
</code>
  * ''ViewPoint'' is the point from where one is looking at the object (Default: ''[10,11,9]'').
  * ''ViewDirection'' is the point to where one is looking (Default: ''[0,0,0]'').
  * ''ViewUp'' defines which direction should be up (Default: ''[0,1,0]'').
(see also [[http://www.frontiernet.net/~eugene.ressler/sketch.html#Transform-literals|Sketch 3d documentation]])

==== Fans with non-trivial lineality space ====
Minor improvements in the application fan include the possibility to handle fans with non-trivial lineality space and the ability to efficiently extract individual cones from a fan.
==== Unification of template parameters ====

On the Perl side all coordinate based big object types (such as ''Polytope'', ''Cone'', ''Fan'') as well as the related small object types (such as ''Vector'', ''Matrix'') now have ''Rational'' as the default template parameter.  It may thus be omitted.

==== Pipe shell ====

polymake can be called from the command line with the option "-".  It then reads commands from stdin and writes the output to stdout.  This is just a fallback if you need to interface to polymake and cannot use the callable library.