TRB143's blog

After six months of testing, we are proud to announce the release of Version 1.0 of the Android client.

In addition to various features and bug fixes, 6 new translations have been added, which brings the total of supported languages to 25.

If you already have the remote client installed, you should see an update for it. If you don't have it installed, and you want to try it out, you can get it from the Google Play store, just search for "OpenLP"

This release arrives with a number of bug fixes and the inclusion of the remaining Song importers.

We are very proud to announce the Second  release candidate for OpenLP 2.0, codename "Ophthalmic Obadiah". 

This new release, version 1.9.11, is a preview of what the final version of OpenLP will look like. This release does not contain any major new features, and mostly consists of bug fixes and minor enhancements. 

There will be no more development on features in this version, all new development will happen in the next version of OpenLP.

Minor features and enhancements in OpenLP 1.9.11

•  - New Sunday Plus , SongPro and Media Shout song importers
•  - Print Service layout improvements 
•  - Undated translations inc new Slovak translation
•  - Improvments in image's to the show in services

 Major bugs fixed in OpenLP 1.9.11:

•  - Various fixes to Song importers
•  - Bug fixes for Formatting tag dialogues

Following hot on the heels of the 1.9.10 release the next version of the Android client has escaped.

This client version works best with 1.9.10 but will also work (with restricted functionality) with other versions.

The new features added since 0.4 are:

• Changes to the panels to allow them to be swiped left and right instead of only being accessed via the menu. This should improve  the usability of the application.
• Provide the ability to poll the main application for updates. This will allow two users to work together. In the settings there is a "Refresh Displays" setting which allows the refresh time to be set. The default is 5 seconds and a refresh time of 0 seconds turns this feature off.
• Following requests from a number of users it is now possible to have Server profiles for different locations. These are accessed again via the settings panel.
• To aid usability, the displayed verse is now highlighted on the live tab so it is obvious which slide is selected.

We are very proud to announce the first release candidate for OpenLP 2.0, codename "Admirable Anna". This new release, version 1.9.10, is a preview of what the final version of OpenLP will look like. This release does not contain any major new features, and mostly consists of bug fixes and minor enhancements. There will be no more development on features in this version, all new development will happen in the next version of OpenLP.

Minor features and enhancements in OpenLP 1.9.10

• OpenLP now has a portable version in PortableApps.com form
• Users can now set a custom location for their data files
• DreamBeam song importer
• PowerSong importer
• ZionWorx CSV song importer
• Improved rendering times
• Keep/restore selected book, chapters and verses when changing the bible translation in advanced search
• Added a dialog to edit metadata of Bibles, and additional language options.
• UI and usability improvements to the web remote

Major bugs fixed in OpenLP 1.9.10:

• The new BibleGateway web site was causing issues with the web Bible importer
• OpenLP did not exit properly on some Windows systems
• Disabled VLC integration on FreeBSD due to it not being supported by VLC
• Theme wizard now uses the current output display geometry when creating a thumbnail for a theme
• Fixed a problem where newly imported Bibles would throw an error
• Fixed most of the issues surrounding the progress bar for videos

Known issues:

When using song imports, if the filename or its folder contains non-ascii characters, then this may cause a crash. A workaround is to rename the file/use a different folder with plain a-z characters. Only affects imports from openlp.org 1.x, OpenLP 2.0, EasySlides, EasyWorship, PowerSong, and ZionWorx.

Getting Ready for the Final Release of OpenLP 2.0

Web Site

Are you a web designer? Do you know Drupal? We need you!

We're looking for a web designer who knows Drupal to redesign our web site for the upcoming OpenLP 2.0 launch later this year. We will be upgrading the web site to Drupal 7, and moving our forums over to Vanilla Forums, so we need someone who at least has experience with Drupal 7, and possibly experience with Vanilla Forums too. The theme needs to be based on our new logo and the colour scheme that goes with it. We can provide you with the SVG file, and any other help you need.

We're also looking for some people who can help maintain the site. This isn't a huge job, thanks to Drupal, but we do need folks who can troubleshoot any bugs that arise (there have been a couple since our recent upgrade to Drupal 6), and update the Drupal installation with newer versions of modules and the Drupal core when new minor releases come out.

Release Parties

Some people have also mentioned having regional release parties, similar to the Ubuntu Linux release parties. Please go ahead and try to organise a release party in your area, to celebrate the long-awaited final release of OpenLP 2.0. Release parties don't have to be anything fancy, just a couple of folk meeting somewhere to celebrate the new release of OpenLP 2.0 in a few months.

There was also a prophet, Anna, the daughter of Penuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.

Luke 2:36-38 NIV

Hot on the heels of the Christmas 1.9.8 release, an updated version of the Android client has been added to the Android Market.

This release contains two updates:

• The ability to blank the screen to the theme or desktop as well as the screen.
  This change requires version 1.9.8 to function fully.
• A number of translations.

The next release should be available at the same time as 1.9.9 is released.

Changes have been made to the songs plugin to give users the ability to edit songs in a service when the "Add missing Songs when Opening Service" option is disabled. In the past, this was not possible.

This has meant that we needed to make a change to the songs database to protect the database. Thanks to the new internal upgrade system, you do not need to make the change yourself, OpenLP will do so automatically. In addition to this, the songs plugin will be disabled if the version of the database is newer than the version the code expects.

There have been changes made to Impress 3.4 which make it incompatable with OpenLP if the Impress has been selected as a presentation player.

This is known to effect Fedora 16 and may impact other builds.  If the presentation plugin is enabled then OpenLP will fail to start.

More details will be provided as we find out the impact.

OpenLP one point nine point seven
It's like a match made in heaven,
With plenty new features
And fewer bug creatures.

(Stupid poem courtesy of Raoul - you can moan at him!)

NB: Please note that OpenLP does not work on OS X 10.7 Lion. This is a known issue, and we are working on a solution.

It's release time again, and once again this new version will not disappoint. Along with over 79 bug fixes there have been a large number of features added.

Today changes have been added to OpenLP v2 allow Images, Presentations and Media items to be dragged from the desktop (or any folder) into the relevent  media manager plugin.  This will allow the selected items to be loaded more quickly.

If a folder is selected then all the contects of the folder will be added. When the items are added, only items withe correct file suffix for the plugin will be loaded. So if you try to drop a presentation into the images folder, an error message will be generated.

Some improvements have been added to build 1496 to change the way songs and custom slides are paged. A new feature has been added to allow a song verse to be split IF it does not all fit on one slide.