Hi Folks,

I just thought I'd give you all a quick run-down of the current state of OpenLP 2.0.

We've been working hard on version 2.0, which is written in Python, using Qt4 as it's GUI, and the PyQt4 binding to facilitate this. Yesterday evening we reached another minor milestone when we committed revision 600 to trunk!

Some of the implemented features include:

• Cross platform: Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD

• Plugin architecture with ability to switch plugins on and off on the fly

• Song plugin, with verse ordering for songs

• Bibles plugin with web and OSIS (Sword Project) import capabilities

• Media plugin for dealing with audio and video

• Custom Slides plugin for custom text items that are not songs (like liturgy)

• Image plugin, with multiple images aggregated into a single item in the Service Manager (great for slideshows!)

• Presentations plugin which integrates with PowerPoint, PowerPoint Viewer and OpenOffice.org Impress1

• Audit plugin to track song usage

• Remote plugin, for remote control (great for remote nursery alerts!)

• Nursery alerts

• Customisable slide themes

• A separate Bible theme can be selected

1. No support for Keynote yet, as none of the developers has a Mac. If you have a Mac and fancy yourself a developer, *please* contact us!

Some of the features we will be implementing:

• CCLI SongSelect integration (coming soon!)

• Dual Bible translations per slide

• Much better internationalisation support

We are still a long way off from a stable release, but it's really encouraging to see how far we've gotten, and I'm really proud of the team for all the work they've done so far!

If you're interested in just chatting with the guys, come join us in #openlp.org on Freenode.

If you're interested in helping out, join us in IRC, and have a look at our development wiki: http://wiki.openlp.org/

The openlp.org team has decided to up the ante on our marketing, but we need your help!

We've created a Facebook Page, a group on Facebook, a Twitter account and a group on LinkedIn (see the "Follow Us" section below the menu on the left). We're also working hard to improve the SEO of the site.

There are a few ways you can help us out...

You can help by following us on Twitter, becoming a fan of the Facebook Page, and by joining the Facebook and LinkedIn groups. openlp.org's Twitter page is linked to the blog on the site, so you'll always see the latest news via Twitter, and joining the groups on social networks allows you to network with other users of OpenLP, and with the developers too.

Vote for OpenLP

Both Ohloh.net, a social network for open source applications, and SourceForge.net, an open source project hosting service, offer voting and reviewing facilities. So go and vote for OpenLP on Ohloh.net or SourceForge.net.

Furthermore, if you have a blog or a web site, add a link to the openlp.org site with the words "free church presentation software" or "free worship software" on an appropriate page. If you're not so hot on your HTML, we have a sample of each below.

I use some <a href="http://openlp.org/" title="free church presentation software">free church presentation software</a> called OpenLP!

Looking for <a href="http://openlp.org/" title="free worship software">free worship software</a>? We use OpenLP!

V1.2.1 is purely a bug fix release, solving

• A translation bug in the Portuguese language

• A problem if a default display was not selected in the First Run Wizard

• A display numbering issue causing "index out-of-bounds" exceptions

• A bug with the blank screen notification message being on the wrong display at startup

• A bug where in certain Windows display configurations, the Verse search button was not visible

Derek.

Hi All

Just to let you know that CCLI (Germany) that has listed openlp.org on their website as projection software supporting SongSelect as well as supporting the German language.

http://www.ccli.de/songselect/import-praesentationssoftware.cfm#OpenLP

God bless,

Derek.

Well, it would appear as if there are 1 or 2 small (?) issues that I missed in my testing.  Firstly, it's important to select a monitor in the First Run Wizard.  Failure to do so will result in an error message, but the software will still run fine afterwards.

Secondly, in some cases, the Search Button in the Bible Verse Lookup goes missing.

I plan to make these corrections in the next few days and release an update. Feel free to try and find as many bugs  as you can in 1.2.0 so we can make 1.2.1 bug free :D

Derek.

Hi all,

For those of you out there that don't have musicians to play music for your church service and use audio tracks, version 1.2.0 will be a welcome surprise (since it wasn't in the project plan). Due to a personal requirement, I continued development on the v1.x line of openlp.org and added the facility to play audio files. Not only that, but they can be linked to lyrics and managed together.

While I was busy with this I was in contact with CCLI in Germany and was able to get information which enabled me to build in song import support for SongSelect file (txt & usr).  I also added a web based facility to import songs from SongSelect.  For those of you who use SongSelect, I'm sure you will enjoy this.

I was also able to enhance the internationalisation capabilities of openlp.org. This includes being able to select your language preference when the First Run Wizard runs after installation.

In the process of development, a few bug fixes were also taken care of. For a more complete list of the changes, refer to the Changelog.

You can get your all new 1.2.0 edition from the download page.

Derek.

P.S. I should mention that other than urgent bugfixes, this really is the last of the 1.x versions :)

This is a little late, but better late than never... I want to welcome Jon Tibble to the OpenLP 2.0 core development team.

Jon has been helping us out with come coding recently, and has proven himself to be a real asset. He's not only been working on some of the bigger things, he's also gone in and worked on a lot of the smaller bits that we haven't been able to devote time to. He's got a real eye for detail and is a meticulous developer.

So, from me and all the rest of the core developers: Welcome Jon!

Work on the 2.0 version is moving forward at great speed with new developers helping out.

In the last few weeks code has been added to run Impress presentations on Linux. Work is underway to get this to also work on Windows. Powerpoint and PowerPoint Viewer will come later.

In the latest merge a new Audit plugin has arrived to audit songs used during a service. This will record what was actually used during a service. More work is needed on this component but the foundations are complete.

The other month an extension to the alerting component was added allow alerts to be triggered over a network.  This will be useful for creche's and car park attendants

If you haven't noticed it before, let me draw your attention to the bottom little black bar underneath the menu on the left. This is a little counter and a link to our project page on the Ohloh website. Ohloh is a site where open source projects can have a project page, and users of the software can write reviews, indicate that they use the software, and give the developers "kudo". It's kinda like a Facebook for open source projects.

As you can see from the counter, openlp.org currently has 183 594 lines of code, and would cost a dedicated development team $2.5 million to write. If you use openlp.org, and you like it, would you please consider signing up on Ohloh and at least mark that you use it. If you'd like to, please feel free to write a review, and giving the developers kudo is always welcome.

I've just written a blog entry on a blog I take part in for Christians in Open Source Software, and I thought that some folks who use openlp.org might be interested in reading my blog entry, and possibly commenting on it.

Without further ado, here is the link: A Linux Server Distribution For Churches?