Reflections and Projections

*Please read prior to RC2 installation*

Due to an unforseen glitch with a fault correction, Powerpoint is not functioning in the RC2 release.  We are aware of the problem and it has been corrected.  Unfortunately, we cannot provide a correction release immediately, as there is an  incomplete feature enhancement in the software.  Once this enhancement is completed, we will provide the correction in RC3.  You can expect that hopefully towards the end of the month.  Sorry for the inconvenience if you use Powerpoint.

God bless,

Derek.

Release Candidate 2 out

Hi there folks!

I've just uploaded openlp.org 1.0 RC2 to the SourceForge servers. This release fixes a few bugs that we have noted before, the main one being the loading of saved order of services. We also rewrote the Bible CSV importer, so this should work as advertised. As usual, you can download it from the Download page.

Once again, please post your bug reports in the appropriate forum topic. Please also read through the documentation on how to submit a bug report before submitting a bug.

A big idea for the release of openlp.org 1.0

Hi Folks,

I was in a local Christian bookstore yesterday, and I suddenly thought, "What if, for the release of openlp.org 1.0, we make a distribution kit for people to distribute openlp.org to churches and to Christian bookstores?"

My idea is basically this: we create a professional distribution kit for people to download, burn to CD, and then hand out to churches, Christian bookstores, and other places.

The distribution kit would contain the following:

A CD ISO image containing the following:

  • A nice autostart screen that opens when the CD is inserted into the drive, with a menu to get started.

  • A full manual, including a "Getting Started" guide, in several formats.

  • The openlp.org 1.0 installation application, of course.

A professional-looking CD label for people to print and stick on the CD.

A professional-looking CD cover for CD cases containing the CD.

A big poster.

A smaller poster of sorts.

A brochure that could be handed out as well.

If you can think of anything else to add, let me know!

Of course, to do all of that we'll need a few things:

  • Graphic designer(s) to design the CD label, CD cover, posters, brochure and autostart screen.

  • Some technical writers to write the documentation.

  • LOTS of people to distribute openlp.org to their local Christian bookstores, churches, and other places.

So, if you can and would like to help out, please let me know. Use the contact page to get into contact with us.

The road to RC2

Hi All

No doubt most of you are as keen as we are to get openlp.org into a full version 1 status. Well, we are nearly there. Sorry about the few hiccups in the last few releases, they were due to last minute corrections and optimisations in the software and slipped though due to the fact that we were trying to honour our release date promises.

With this in mind we would like to make the RC2 release on the 15th/16th of June and we appeal to all of you out there to give the software a thorough testing in the next week or so, so that RC2 can be our last release candidate. I should mention at this stage that there is a rather unpleasant bug in rc1 regarding the loading of saved Orders-Of-Service. This has been corrected and will be in RC2, so please don't highlight this problem in your feedback. To work around this, you need to rebuild the OOS each time before you use it. Frustrating I know. Sorry!

You can post bug reports in the openlp.org 1.0 rc1 forum topic.

We do appreciate all your feedback, and without your input, openlp.org wouldn't be where is is today.

Derek.

Hot on the heels of beta 6...

I am proud to announce the release of Release Candidate 1. This is the first in our release candidate series. Once we are satisfied that no more bugs exist in openlp.org, we will release the final version of 1.0. Remember to post your bug reports in the forum topic.

Many thanks once again go to Derek for his part of the development of openlp.org 1.0. I don't think we'd be where we are now without him.

Just insofar as the next version of openlp.org, we follow the Linux kernel's versioning system, with stable releases being even numbers, and development releases being odd numbers. So that means that the next stable version of openlp.org will be 1.2. All new features will be in the development version, version 1.1, while we maintain the 1.0 branch, just bringing out bug fixes for any bugs that may still arise.

Some of the first jobs we will be doing in version 1.1 will be a major code cleanup. This means that internally we will be tidying up the openlp.org code, which often results in faster code, and making openlp.org more flexible internally. We also will be moving to SQLite 3. Currently our song and bible databases are all in SQLite 2.8 format, and we want to upgrade to make use of the updated features in version 3.

We will obviously also bring in a number of the features that have been requested so far. We have a nice long list of features, and we would like to implement as many of those as is possible. Once again, however, we will have to make a call on some features, on whether or not they make sense to be included, and on how long they will take to implement versus getting a product out.

Hope this helps to clear up what direction we are headed in for the short run.

openlp.org 1.0 beta 6 has been released!

Yes folks, that moment has finally arrived! I have released openlp.org 1.0 beta 6. This is the last beta release of openlp.org, the next release will be Release Candidate 1, where we hope to have the majority of bugs out of the system.

One of the big highlights of this new release is the translation. Want openlp.org in your own translation? Just copy the english.xml file, open it and replace the strings in there with translations of your own language, import the new xml file, and then select your new translation!

There are a number of other small improvements here and there, including a few feature requests. Plenty bugs have been squashed too, although I doubt it's all of them.

Well, download openlp.org from the download page, and post your bugs to the forum topic.

A few more stumbling blocks...

Howdy folks...

We've found a few more bugs, so we haven't released yet. That said and done, I think that we will release in this week, even if there are still known bugs, just to get the release out there.

Also, I didn't have the time I thought I would have, since my fiancée arrived on Thursday and so I was otherwise occupied. So yes, as if to confirm what I already knew, a woman can take up a lot of a man's time - not that I'm complaining!

beta 6 release end of this week.

Well, thanks to Derek's sharp eyes, we've managed to weed out a few more bugs, and now all that remains is some minor testing from us to make sure there are no show-stopper bugs, and then on Sat (12 May) I will release beta 6.

Please note that we have not yet managed to fix the CCLI SongSelect problem. That was a hack at best, and now CCLI have changed their authentication method on the SongSelect, which means that we can no longer log in. We're gonna have a look at that "bug" in the release candidates, but Derek and I are leaning toward just leaving it broken until the next version of openlp.org. Then we'll have a look at it again.

Translation is working!

Many thanks to Derek for his sharp eyes! Derek had another glance over my code and spotted a few things, and managed to get the translation working. I'm now busy cleaning up the code, finishing it off, and hopefully should be releasing beta 6 later this coming week.

openlp.org 1.0 beta 6 contains the last of the new features. After beta 6 we will be releasing release candidate 1, and from there we have maybe 1 or 2 more release candidates, and then it's 1.0 final! I'm looking forward to releasing version 1 and I know you are too!

Thanks for supporting our project!

beta 6 glitches

Well, we're still working on beta 6. It's almost there... I implemented the internationalization, but to my dismay it's not working. I'm going to look into it further to see if I can work out what's wrong. So hopefully, if I can figure that out soon, we can have beta 6 out by the end of this week, next week the latest.

Thanks also to a post in the forums, we think we might have solved the CCLI SongSelect login problem. We're gonna also be looking at fixing that this week. Derek has also managed to pick up another 2 bugs and has fixed one of them in the mean time.

Like I think I mentioned in my previous blog post, we're going to RC1 next release, so that's gonna call for intense testing. So get your testing gear out, and pile into beta 6 and RC1 when they are released.