Changelog

One entry per version, newest first, in a user’s words: what a script can do that it could not before, what changed in what James prints or writes, and what was fixed. The version number’s rule: before 1.0.0 the minor number rises with each release that changes what a user can do, and the patch number with a release that only fixes.

This manual was first published for version 0.3.1. From the next version on, every entry is written with the version it describes.

0.3.1 (01OCT2026)

This version reports more of what a run does and settles a few cases that 0.3.0 left open.

• James keeps every line the engine prints, up to 4096, where 0.3.0 kept 64. --engine-lines n raises the limit. When a run raises more lines than it keeps, a line before the summary says how many were lost and names the flag.
• James prints the merge report after it writes the file. A write that cannot open its file prints no report, where 0.3.0 printed a report for a mesh that was never written.
• A second format command that names a different format now warns (E1104), and the later command governs. The warning appears only when no write has used the first format. Repeating the same format is silent.
• A second title replaces the first, with no message.
• sds takes a plain list of surface numbers. The colon shorthand is refused (E0104).
• An mb or mbi offset may carry the angle of a cylinder part past 360 degrees. James neither wraps nor rejects the value. It converts periodically when the part ends, so 390 degrees lands where 30 does.
• A part whose every element is deleted warns and writes none of its nodes, unless you pass --write-unref-nodes. A repeated inline surface is a second surface, not a reuse.
• An index progression that selects nothing now warns (E0107) and names the command it ignored.
• An ms whose region has no extent in one of its two cross directions is the script’s error (E0808). The message names the direction that lacks an extent.
• Six near-term commands, bb, trbb, dom, cycorsy, neui and unifmi, are refused by name with the page of TrueGrid’s manual that documents them (E0100), where 0.3.0 reported them as words James does not know (E0105).

0.3.0 (29SEP2026)

The first version you can run. James reads a script of the commands in the command reference, meshes hex solids, merges nodes under the four tolerance commands st, stp, t and tp, and writes James’s neutral file or an Exodus II file.