Render 8a is now available on the TechDoc 8 Downloads page. If you already have a Render 8 VM, you can update it by simply following the section called "Periodic Maintenance of the Render VM" in the Render Installation guide. The following is a list of changes from Render 8 to Render 8a:
- Improved rendering of PDF files that have a transparency group that specified parameters directly rather than using an indirect object. The original issue could result in multiple pages in the watermarked PDF appearing blank in some PDF viewers.
- Allow rendering of iGrafx FlowCharter documents that have an empty "Print Set". Now, if the "Print Set" is completely empty, render defaults to rendering all diagrams in the file like printing from the iGrafx application does.
- Rendering of Microsoft Word templates (.DOT, .DOTM, and .DOTX files) and Microsoft Excel templates (.XLT, .XLTM, and .XLTX) have been added to this release.
- The embedded Java JRE have been updated to Java 8 update 51.
- Additional messages are returned for certain render failures to potentially make debugging of problems easier.
Note that there are no product version changes from Render 8 to this release.