Highlights of What’s New in Version 32.0, 5 Jan. 2017

Here is a summary of what’s changed since release 31.

A bug was fixed in the amplification_factors command that resulted in a crash when the corrected amplification factors were requested. This was reported by S. DiMitri (ELETTRA).
A bug was fixed for twiss_output, which was incorrectly reporting the quantities (parameters dalphax/dp and dalphay/dp in the output file) in some cases.

Added the BRANCH element, which permits branching between parts of a beamline based on the number of passes executed.
Apertures specified using MAXAMP or an external aperture file (using the aperture_data command) are now enforced inside CSBEND and CSRCSBEND elements. There may be small changes in, for example, momentum acceptance as a result of this, particularly when gradient dipoles are involved.
The longitudinal location of losses inside KQUAD and KSEXT elements is now computed more accurately. Previously, it was simply the start of the element.
Removed the non-functional FRINGE parameter of the CSBEND element.
The BGGEXP (B-field Generalized Gradient Expansion) element now supports symplectic integration using an implicit method, implemented by R. Lindberg (APS).

Added exclude parameter to chromaticity command, allowing exclusion of some sextupoles that may match the list in the sextupole parameter.
Added alter_at_each_step and alter_before_load_parameters parameters to the alter_elements command, allowing better control of potential conflicts with load_parameters.
The random number generator seed is now permuted bitwise in order to add a greater level of apparent randomness. Thus, changing the seed by a small amount will now have a bigger effect on the sequences generated, making it easier to deliberately perform several runs with very distinct random values. This can be defeated using the global_settings command by setting inhibit_seed_permutation=1. This issue was pointed out by V. Sajaev (APS).