Here is the latest installment of the 1.2.x line sporting the following corrections:

• Correction for loading of OOS where the name of a song in the OOS existed multiple times in the song DB

• Correction for corruption of OOS when no theme selected for storing in the OOS

• Correction for handling of embedded items in a PowerPoint slide in Office 2007 and above

Enjoy :)

From all of us OpenLP folks, we would like to wish everyone a blessed Christmas. We pray that your day is (or has been) filled with joy, happiness, and reflection on His birth and His message. Let's not get carried away by the presents and the food and the celebrations, but take time to think about the "reason for the season".

About that time Caesar Augustus ordered a census to be taken throughout the Empire. This was the first census when Quirinius was governor of Syria. Everyone had to travel to his own ancestral hometown to be accounted for. So Joseph went from the Galilean town of Nazareth up to Bethlehem in Judah, David's town, for the census. As a descendant of David, he had to go there. He went with Mary, his fiancée, who was pregnant.

While they were there, the time came for her to give birth. She gave birth to a son, her firstborn. She wrapped him in a blanket and laid him in a manger, because there was no room in the hostel.

There were sheepherders camping in the neighborhood. They had set night watches over their sheep. Suddenly, God's angel stood among them and God's glory blazed around them. They were terrified. The angel said, "Don't be afraid. I'm here to announce a great and joyful event that is meant for everybody, worldwide: A Savior has just been born in David's town, a Savior who is Messiah and Master. This is what you're to look for: a baby wrapped in a blanket and lying in a manger."

At once the angel was joined by a huge angelic choir singing God's praises:

Glory to God in the heavenly heights, Peace to all men and women on earth who please him.

As the angel choir withdrew into heaven, the sheepherders talked it over. "Let's get over to Bethlehem as fast as we can and see for ourselves what God has revealed to us." They left, running, and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in the manger. Seeing was believing. They told everyone they met what the angels had said about this child. All who heard the sheepherders were impressed.

Mary kept all these things to herself, holding them dear, deep within herself. The sheepherders returned and let loose, glorifying and praising God for everything they had heard and seen. It turned out exactly the way they'd been told!

Luke 1:1-20 (The Message)

We have decided to delay the release of OpenLP 1.9.4 (aka 2.0 Alpha 4) for two weeks, till the 9th of January. Due to some unforseen technical difficulties (namely my Internet connection at home giving up the ghost), we have been unable to fully prepare for the release.

By delaying the release for 2 weeks, we hope to give the translators a chance to get their translations up to speed, and give the testers and developers a chance to iron out most of the remaining bugs. This will hopefully ensure that we have a well-rounded release.

Are you eager to help out with OpenLP but aren't a developer?

We need folks to help write the manual for OpenLP 2.0. You don't need to be a developer, but a good working knowledge of how to do things like set up dual monitors is essential. Experience with markup systems like BBcode, Markdown or even HTML is an advantage, but not necessary.

So what does it entail?

Basically, you'll be writing up documentation in something called reStructuredText, which is plain text with a little bit of markup. It might sound pretty intimidating, but it isn't that complicated. You will also need to work a little with Bazaar, the version control system we use, but that's not that complicated either. And don't worry, we will help you every step along the way.

Interested?

Send an e-mail to info [at] openlp.org with a subject line of "Help with Manual" and your name, e-mail address, and username on the site.

Version 1.2.7 is a correction release enabling the correct functioning of PowerPoint 2010 presentations.

OpenLP is now available in the Arch User Repository (AUR). If you are an Arch user I'm sure you are familiar with the AUR, but just in case check out the wiki on the AUR. If you are using Yaourt to install from the AUR a simple 'yaourt -S openlp' will install OpenLP 1.9.3 (Alpha 3). I have used OpenLP some on Arch Linux and I am extremely impressed even using a fairly heavey desktop like KDE, Arch and OpenLP fly.

We would like to think "floft" for making this happen for OpenLP. floft, we would love for you to contact us so we could give you more formal recognition for this great contribution to the OpenLP community.

I've just finished setting up a new support tracker so that those folks who want to send e-mails to "support (at) openlp.org" can do so. Unfortunately I noticed as I was setting it up, that people have been sending mail to that address, but due to our old support tracking software falling over, we didn't see those e-mails. Hopefully now this should be fixed.

Please remember, however, that the fastest and easiest way to get support is via the Live IRC Chat page.

I'm really excited to let everyone know that recently I was interviewed by Mark Shropshire of the Geeks and God podcast for their October podcast! If you want to hear my funny voice and weird accent, go right along to Episode 135 and listen the interview.

We are pleased to announce the release of the third alpha version of OpenLP!

It has been three months since our last alpha release, and the developers have been working hard to fix bugs and add new features. We're getting ever closer to a complete application, and there are already enough finished features that some Churches are using the alpha releases in their Sunday Services. We hope more people will be willing to give this new version a try. Read on for more details about this release.

*Note, if upgrading from 1.9.2 you will need to convert your song database, or OpenLP will fail to start.*

The complete list of features can be seen on the Version 2.0 Features page of the developers' wiki. Some of the new features we have been working on for this release are:

• More song imports have been added, including openlp.org 1.x and OpenLP 2.0, OpenSong, CCLI, Words of Worship and EasyWorship.

• The display code has been rewritten, and as a result video backgrounds are possible as well as text formatting.

• A lot of effort has been put into internationalization. Some additional languages are now available, although some of those available within OpenLP are incomplete. If you would like to help translate your language, more information is on our wiki.

• Spell checking within the song editor.

Important Note

If you have been running a previous release, then you will need to be aware of a few changes:

1. The songs database has been changed and will cause OpenLP to crash. Details to upgrade this are in a previous blog post

2. Due to the display code changes, your themes may no longer work the same. You will need to review your themes to check they are OK.

3. In addition, the theme indent and the transparent background options have been removed.

4. Presentations may need to be reloaded to rebuild their thumbnail cache

5. The user interface has changed in places, so take the time to familiarize yourself with the new layout

Version 1.x Users

If you are upgrading from v1, it is now possible to import your song database direct from the Song Import menu option. At the file open dialog, enter:

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\openlp.org\Data\songs.olp

Testing

This version is still in alpha. Although quite stable now, it is still incomplete and not completely tested. Some bugs may exist and some features may be missing or not working as expected. We would very much like you to report any problems you find at Launchpad.net

Any questions, please *first* check the Frequently Asked Questions, and then, if you cannot find a suitable answer to your question, contact us on IRC via the Contact Us menu on the left. (Ask a question in IRC that is already answered in the FAQ at your peril - the developers don't like repeating themselves! :)

We are now starting work on our next alpha, which we're hoping will be our last before we go beta, and are aiming for a Christmas release. Check our Milestone page to follow progress. Please remember that dates/milestones may change as the developers work in their spare time.

Download

To download this version, please go to the Development Release section of the Download page.

If the 1.9.3 version for your system is not there yet, please check back in a day or two as the packagers work to complete their builds.

Finally, a big thank you to the developers, testers and translators for the work that has gone into this release.

Version 1.2.6 is a small bug fix release to enhance the Powerpoint handling capability with MS Office version 2007. This should make some of you out there still running version 1 a bit happier :)