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What's new in 2026.8.1

The release that put pictures on the screen and let the terminal be lent out — and the one where the numbering changed, so it is worth reading that part even if nothing else here applies. Migrating to 2026.8.1 is what needs an edit, and the changelog is the full record.

A version says when it was cut​

Numbering is year.month.build: this was the first release of August 2026, and the number no longer claims anything about what is safe to upgrade across. A break is written down in the changelog whichever digit moved, so the entry is what to read rather than the digits. See Versioning.

A fourth package reads picture files​

Arlecchino.Pictures turns PNG, JPEG, BMP, Netpbm, QOI and Targa into the pixels a picture draws, with no dependency of its own:

var raster = PictureFormats.Read(bytes, PictureLimits.For(region.Width * region.Height * 4));

The limits are the point of it. A header claiming more pixels than the ceiling is refused before anything is allocated against it, and a format that can read itself smaller does — a photograph drawn into a pane is decoded at a quarter or an eighth of its side rather than in full.

The terminal can be lent to another program​

An editor, a pager or a shell cannot share a screen with a frame loop. Now one is handed the terminal outright and handed it back afterward, with the alternate screen, the mouse and bracketed paste left and re-entered around it — see Lending the terminal out.

An application can draw the keys itself​

ArlecchinoOptions.Hints replaces ShowHints with three answers rather than two: the framework's box, nothing at all, or a box of your own. A screen with a status bar of its own no longer has to choose between the framework's corner and its own row.

Two smaller things went the same way. A binding can be a character rather than a key — new KeyBinding('!') answers wherever that character can be typed, which is the only dependable way to name punctuation across layouts. And the hints box follows the focus: a screen of unlike panes lists the keys of the pane being used rather than the same list wherever the cursor is.

Clicks and rings​

A click now goes to the pane it landed in, worked out from the same tree that laid the panes out, so a mouse event reaches the widget under it without a screen routing it by hand. And a FocusRing is itself focusable, so one goes inside another: a ring of panes, each with a ring of fields, steps the way a reader expects. See Focus.