Dear Gobby users,
we are again proud to present you our newest release candidate which got
the codename "Firenze" assigned to by Armin, the lead developer.
We will use this pre-release to weed out some of the remaining bugs and
to fill the time waiting for more complete translations. Today's date was
set as a time-based deadline by some entity which wanted a specific feature
set to be included. All the important ones are included now. From most you
could also profit, please see the next section for more information.
In our long-standing tradition to break both API, ABI and every other
interface every of those packages is incompatible to the previous stable
series. But at least for this branch you could consider them frozen.
If you consider to write wrappers, especially for `obby', please look at
SWIG[1], which might help with this task and makes porting to other languages
simple.
Gobby 0.3.0 might however still get some extensions until it is finally
released. So this is not a final release, please keep the echo about it
low. We have to change server carrying the released files before the final
announcement.
1. What's New
1.1. Gobby
Please refer to section 3 of this document if you encounter problems.
We need to fix any obvious bugs in this release which might still exist.
This release candidate had almost no testing, so this is the time to
get some bit of bug hunting.
Version 0.3.0rc1:
* This release depends on net6 1.2.0 and obby 0.3.0, it is *not* backwards-
compatible protocol-wise to the 0.2.x series.
* No more pending changes due to the new merging algorithm
* Cursor is left-gravity now, which relieves some problems with newlines
* Joins are now threaded and thus abortable
* Connection status is displayed in the status bar
* Lines in the chat log are now wrapped to the display width
* Session serialisation and restore
* Name and colour could be changed directly when they are already in use
* User and document list are now separate windows, their position and state
is preserved by default
* Close document now just unsubscribes from the document
* Scrollable document folder
* Search and replace
* New translations:
- Swedish (complete)
- Catalan (partial)
- Chinese (partial)
- Spanish (almost complete)
URL: http://gobby.0x539.de
1.2. Sobby
Most people did not notice the presence of a dedicated server and wanted
this feature to be integrated into Gobby. Well, try it out and report us
if it works. You might also adapt Sobby to your personal needs (e.g.
preservation of more chat log lines), feel free to do so. If it's worth
to include into the main branch, please send us a patch and we'll realise
it as a command line option.
Version 0.3.0rc1:
* Updated for obby 0.3.0
* Automatic save of serialised sessions (e.g. for web presentation through
the script provided by `obby')
* Ability to restore saved session files
1.3. obby
To keep the posibility to fix bugs in this release, `obby' is not yet
finally released.
Version 0.3.0rc1:
* This version is *not* protocol, ABI- or API compatible to the 0.2.x series!
* New merging algorithm (Jupiter)
* Session serialisation and restore, containing documents and chat messages
* PHP-based script to parse and visualise saved sessions
* MSVC8 build environment added
* New translations:
- Catalan (partial)
- Swedish (partial)
1.4. net6
Version 1.2.0:
* This release is both API- and ABI-incompatible to the 1.1.x series.
* New boolean type added
* Heavily refactored through intensive use of templates
* MSVC8 build environment added
* Redesigned type concept with thread safety in mind
* New translations:
- Swedish (complete), thanks to Daniel Nylander!
- French (partial)
2. How to get it
2.1. Microsoft Windows
An installer containing a binary build of Gobby is available as usual.
The containing application requires Microsoft Windows 2000 or newer.
Please follow the platform guide[2] this time, it *is* important
to install Gtk+ and Gtkmm first.
The same issues as 0.2.0 still apply to this release candidate:
- Drag'n'drop of documents into Gobby is not supported as this needs to
be solved with the use of the WinAPI. This is not yet done.
- No Zeroconf support yet. Howl does not compile with the POSIX layer we
use to ensure both *nix and Windows compatibility.
Additionally we encountered new issues in 0.3.0:
- The new Tool Windows are not sticky on top of the application, but are
normal windows instead which disappear behind the main window if you
do not place them outside of it.
We would appreciate the help of a WinAPI guru on those problems. Especially
the latter is very annoying.
URL: http://releases.0x539.de/gobby/gobby-0.3.0rc1.exe
2.2. Linux
Gobby is now included in most major Linux distributions. We expect them
to update the builds in their unstable branches in the next weeks.
Backports to the stable revisions would also be appreciated, please tell
us about them.
2.3. Mac OS X
The only supported way of installing Gobby is currently by using
DarwinPorts[3]. Updated Portfiles for this release candidate will be
provided on request and as soon as possible through the ports system
itself. A simple `port install gobby', or `port -a upgrade', will then
be sufficient.
This supersedes the old way of manually installing the dependencies.
At this time DarwinPorts was the only system providing us with all the
necessary libraries in their needed versions.
2.4. Source
net6: http://releases.0x539.de/net6/net6-1.2.0.tar.gz
obby: http://releases.0x539.de/obby/obby-0.3.0rc1.tar.gz
Gobby: http://releases.0x539.de/gobby/gobby-0.3.0rc1.tar.gz
Sobby: http://releases.0x539.de/sobby/sobby-0.3.0rc1.tar.gz
To compile either Gobby or Sobby you need the newest versions of both
net6 and obby installed.
The MD5 checksums:
70a3572bcf8148a46cc26727223a8a75 net6-1.2.0.tar.gz
91259d5dba2cf4a8925312d6e079b270 obby-0.3.0rc1.tar.gz
a5d96561f64a19a41acaba6f559f2c6e gobby-0.3.0rc1.tar.gz
cf6e2a3276f9323084f5ec5e79356223 sobby-0.3.0rc1.tar.gz
3. Problems
When you encounter problems with the installation please refer to the
relevant platform installation guide in `INSTALL' or to the one at the
Wiki[4].
When you find reproduceable bugs you could report them into our ticketing
system[5]. Please try to provide a testcase how to reproduce the crash and
include a backtrace.
You could also contact the `obby-users' mailinglist for help. You could
find information how to subscribe on [6].
4. How to help
Are you skilled in writing English documentation? Do you know C++ very well?
If you could answer any of those two questions with `yes' and want to help
us, just contact me at [EMAIL PROTECTED]'.
Translations
There is also the possiblity to make a donation to us. The money will be
used to develop these projects and to keep the morale up. Those who work
well need to eat well.
5. Disclaimer
We release our software to the public WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY. We cannot be
held liable for any data loss occuring at your side, like e.g. open
documents lost due to a crash. So better be save than sorry and save
your files more often when working within Gobby. Please note that this
software is published under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
6. About us
We, the 0x539 dev group, are a small group of prospective freelance hackers
dedicated to pursuing the philosophy of free software and open standards,
while having fun. We will put our efforts into making it possible for others
to reuse our code, by making it compatible with standard interfaces and
libraries that are used on a wide variety of platforms.
Kind regards,
Philipp Kern
0x539 dev group
[1] http://www.swig.org
[2] http://darcs.0x539.de/trac/obby/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/wiki/InstallationGuide
[3] http://darwinports.opendarwin.org
[4] http://darcs.0x539.de/trac/obby/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/wiki/InstallationGuide
[5] http://darcs.0x539.de/trac/obby/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/newticket
[6] http://list.0x539.de/mailman/listinfo/obby-users
