raoul's blog

Tracking usage of OpenLP is incredibly difficult. Because it is an open source project, there are no registrations to check, you don't know how many times OpenLP has been copied and given to other people. So we don't ever have a true idea of how many churches are using OpenLP.

Tracking downloads is also quite difficult due to OpenLP being available in a number of distribution channels. We know roughly how many downloads there are of the Windows and OS X versions because most folks just download them from our SourceForge.net mirrors. There are a couple of BitTorrent downloads, which we cannot track, but it is such a small download that most folks just do a direct download.

Tracking downloads for the various Linux distributions is far tricker, as there are no download statistics available. We cannot retrieve any number from FreeBSD, Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian or Arch. Having said that, we do have a PPA (Personal Package Archive) on Launchpad.net for our Ubuntu users, and we are able to track those downloads.

So, using the data we do have available to us, we can surmise that as of the time of posting, OpenLP 2.0.1 has been downloaded 43,781 times. That's over forty thousand times! The real figure is probably a lot higher, thanks to the downloads we can't track, but this still gives us a rough idea of the impact of OpenLP.

If you haven't downloaded OpenLP yet, DO IT NOW!

The OpenLP team has always supported older versions of Ubuntu, even when they were no longer supported by Canonical. Unfortunately this places a strain on the team and on which tools we can use to continue developing OpenLP. For this reason we have decided to only support versions of Ubuntu that Canonical themselves support.

Recently Canonical announced that they would be ending support for Ubuntu 10.04 and 11.10 at the end of April. This means that only versions of Ubuntu 12.04 and higher are supported by Canonical. OpenLP therefore will only be supporting releases on Ubuntu 12.04 and higher as of immediately. This also means that the upcoming 2.0.2 bugfix release of OpenLP will only be available on Ubuntu 12.04 and higher.

Since 12.04 is the latest Long Term Support release of Ubuntu, we are hoping that this should not affect anyone. If you are affected, and there is some reason why you cannot upgrade to a later version of Ubuntu, you can come into our IRC channel and chat with us about getting OpenLP running on your computer.

We, the OpenLP team, wish you all a very blessed Easter time. We hope that you remember our Lord almighty, who sent his son Jesus into the world to save us.

Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?"

John 11:25-26 ESV

Unfortunately it seems that the 2.0 release of OpenLP didn't go quite as smoothly as planned, and a few bugs crept into the release just a few days before the deadline. Fortunately we've been able to track these bugs down and fix them.

The bugs we've fixed are:

• Song export and import now works correctly
• Transparent themes are once again transparent
• PowerPoint/lmpress files with unicode characters in the filename can be imported
• OpenLP is now more usable with the XFCE desktop on Linux

Please note that it will still be necessary to use an older version of VLC on OS X (2.0.3) as more recent versions are still troublesome (2.0.4 and 2.0.5) and we are attempting to rectify the problem.

We hope that despite the name, this version is less buggy than the previous one and that you can use it with confidence during your acts of worship.

As usual, you can grab this release from the download page. The torrents, portable versions and various Linux packages will be updated over the next week or so.

We've had a number of reports recently of users with Windows 8 being unable to run OpenLP. Unfortunately from our side we have not had any problems with our tests on Windows 8. If you have Windows 8 please contact us to let us know your experiences, both good and bad. Even if everything is working perfectly fine, we want to know that.

We also need a few technically-inclined people who are experiencing these issues to help us figure out what is going wrong. You should be comfortable with the command line as there are a number of technical bits and pieces that you will need to do, such as installing Python and some of OpenLP's dependencies.

Secondly, we have found two regressions in version 2.0, which have been fixed but are waiting for a release. The first is an issue with transparent themes which are no longer transparent, and the second is a bug in the export function.

Interestingly, we never realised how much the export feature was used until it was broken. We've had quite a number of folks reporting the issue.

If you are experiencing either of these issues on Windows or Mac OS X then we recommend downgrading to version 1.9.12, which can still be found on SourceForge. Users on Linux can either patch their version of OpenLP with help from us, or sit tight until we make a bugfix release.

We're hoping to make a release sometime in December.

Release Update

We're hoping to release version 2.0.1 on Sunday the 6th of January, the first release of the new year.

O sing unto the Lord a new song: sing unto the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, praise his name; proclaim his salvation day after day.

Psalms 96:1-2

We are ecstatic to announce the first stable release of the 2.0 series of OpenLP! We've been developing this new version of OpenLP for four years now, and this long awaited mature release contains numerous improvements over OpenLP 1.2.

New Features We Like Most

It is difficult to pick a single favourite with so many new features, so we decided make a list of our top favourites instead:

• Support for four major operating systems - Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and FreeBSD (a first priority for many of us)
• Better media support by integrating VLC into OpenLP (requires VLC to be installed)
• An enormous list of programs to import songs from, so that switching to OpenLP is fast and easy (see below for a full list of supported programs)
• More Bibles available (there are more import formats supported)
• Remotely control OpenLP via any device with a browser
• Android remote control app
• Stage view
• Show and control PowerPoint presentations through OpenLP

For a full list of features, check out our Features page.

Features You'll Know From Version 1.2

And of course most of the old core stuff works just as well as, or even better than before:

• Presenting songs and Bible verses
• Showing images and playing videos
• CCLI reports

Making the switch

We all know that the worst part of switching to a new program is getting all your songs from the old one into the new one. Typically this involves a whole lot of copying and pasting between programs, or just plain re-typing songs from scratch. We realised that this is a huge pain, and so OpenLP ships with a song import wizard which can import your songs from a record number of existing applications. OpenLP will save you time and import your whole lyrics database from any of the following programs:

• DreamBeam
• EasySlides
• EasyWorship
• FoilPresenter
• MediaShout
• OpenSong
• PowerSong
• SongBeamer
• SongPro
• SongShow Plus
• Songs of Fellowship
• Sunday Plus
• Words of Worship
• ZionWorx

Known Limitations on Some Platforms

• Not all versions of VLC work with OpenLP.  VLC 2.0.3 has been tested and is known to work well.
• On Windows, OpenLP is a 32bit application and therefore only works with a 32bit VLC.
• On Mac OS X, the only version of VLC that works with OpenLP is 2.0.3. Using an alternate version will cause OpenLP to crash.
• Transparent themes have stopped working on Windows.

What Makes OpenLP So Awesome?

The number one thing we are proud of is that it is free software, and is licensed under the GNU General Public License. This means that OpenLP is and always will be free. Not only free in that you don't have to pay for it, but also you can freely download the source code and add your needed feature or let someone else do it for you. Furthermore, as long as there is at least one developer who needs improvements in OpenLP, the project will not fade away, like a number of commercial solutions have, leaving you with a program which will not run on your current operating system and all your songs locked away in a now-useless database.

In short, even if your church's budget is not that tight, there are plenty reasons why OpenLP is still a winning solution.

Where Do I Start?

Wow, you made it all the way down here without rushing off to download OpenLP? Impressive dedication! Well, go ahead and download OpenLP now!

If you are new to OpenLP, take a look at our list of video tutorials done by members of our community. A good video to start with is the Getting started with your service in OpenLP tutorial. If you get stuck, or want to learn more, we have a user guide (currently still being worked on) to show you how to do the most common tasks in OpenLP, and a reference manual which contains everything you'll ever need to know about OpenLP.

Finally

Last, but not least, I want to thank all the folks who have managed to make OpenLP 2.0 a reality. I would not have been able to accomplish such a huge task by myself. So, to the core team, Tim Bently, Jonathan Corwin, Andreas Preikschat, Martin Zibricky, Stevan Pettit, Wesley Stout, John Cegalis, Philip Ridout and Mattias Põldaru, and to all the others who have contributed to OpenLP, I want to say a big THANK YOU. You guys have been awesome, and I really appreciate all the hard work you do. It is often a thankless task.

In His name,
Raoul Snyman
OpenLP Project Leader

It seems that we made a bit of a miscalculation, as some of us thought that the 1st of December was a Sunday. Only once we were getting closer to the release date did we realise that it was a Saturday!

So, we're still releasing OpenLP 2.0 this weekend, just on Sunday the 2nd of December, rather than Saturday the 1st. Are you ready for version 2.0?

In semi-related news, we'll be running some maintenance on the web site this weekend just before the release. So don't panic if see a "website under maintenance" page, the web site will be ready for the release on Sunday!

Update: Instructions on how to test your translation out have been added to the bottom of this blog post.

This is the final call for all translators. If you wish to have OpenLP in your langauge you need to have completed the translation of OpenLP on the Transifex site by midnight UTC (GMT) on Friday the 23rd of November 2012.

Because we believe strongly in quality over quantity at OpenLP, we will not be including any translations that are incomplete into the final build. This means that if you want your language to be part of the final release of version 2.0, you need to make sure it is 100% done by the end of Friday the 23rd. This deadline also gives you just over a week to complete any outstanding translations.

Just a quick note to say that the media kit has been updated, the release date of OpenLP 2.0 in the media kit needed to be changed in light of the recent decision to postpone the release. Additionally, we've added another wallpaper.

You can download the media kit either as a zip file, or a tarball.

As many of our users know, we've been aiming to make the final release of OpenLP 2.0 this coming weekend. After much thought and consideration, we have decided to postpone the release till the end of November.

When releasing software there comes a point where you need to decide whether or not it is good enough to be released. With OpenLP we had a look at the number of major, minor and trivial bugs outstanding and made the decision that it is not quite good enough for a final release. We would rather release OpenLP when we are happy with the quality of the software than with a bunch of glaring bugs we could have fixed if we waited just a little bit longer.

Don't forget that this gives everyone an extra couple of weeks to translate OpenLP, find more bugs, or just promote it in your Church circles.

See you at the end of November!

Update: After some discussion the development team has decided to release OpenLP 2.0 on the 1^st of December 2012.