After an extremely short release cycle, we're proud to present OpenLP 2.4.

Some folks might be wondering why we're releasing a new version after such a short amount of time. Others might be looking at the new features, and wondering why there's almost nothing there. The reality is that we were forced to upgrade some of the libraries we use sooner than we had anticipated.

Some of the Linux distributions removed one of the components of the GUI library we are using (Qt), and in order to continue using that component we had to upgrade the GUI library. When the component was removed from those Linux distributions, OpenLP was also removed. So in order to make sure OpenLP is in the next version of Ubuntu, we had to move fast.

We're getting closer and closer to a release. Today we're excited to bring you our release candidate of OpenLP 2.4. If there are no major issues with version 2.3.3, we will release version 2.4 in a week or two.

OpenLP 2.4 is a short release with the main goal being upgrading OpenLP to use Qt 5. Up until now, we've been using version 4 of the GUI toolkit called Qt ("cute"). The GUI toolkit is how we display our interface.

We're really happy to announce our first beta release of the upcoming OpenLP 2.4.

You might think this is really soon after the last release, and it is true. We are having to accelerate our release to move to PyQt5 due to a packaging problem on Debian, Ubuntu, Mint and other Linux distributions. As of today, OpenLP is no longer in the Debian repository because a package it relies on has been removed.

We're long overdue moving to Qt5 as it is, so this just means we're moving to Qt5 a little sooner than we had anticipated.

A number of features have been added, and some bugs fixed, in this release:

• Removed unnecessary ‘?’ help buttons, and fixed the remaining ones

• Double verses at end of song now show correctly on stageview

• Ctrl-F selects all text in the search field

• Verse order can now be either upper or lower case (e.g. "v1 v2 v3" or "V1 V2 V3")

• Songbooks now support multiple songbook entries

• Fixed various issues with song importers

While version 2.3.1, the first alpha, was release, we didn't blog about it. The following updates were released in 2.3.1:

• Upgrade to PyQt5 from PyQt4

• Add proper shortcuts for Mac OS X

• Don't hide the dock and menu bar on Mac OS X when using only a single screen

• Allow the display to drop below the main window when using only a single screen on Mac OS X

• VLC not available after upgrade to 2.2

• Improve the notificaions of deletion of themes when used by Plugins

• All the implementation of custom stage.css ouside core code

• Fix Alert with line break from remote so it does not fail from Remote Interface

• Amend Search as you type settings as configured to use wrong Settings Tab

• Unable to distinguish between songs with the same title in Remote Interface

• Allow Print service change font size by allowing configurable style sheets

• Fix images disappearing from images list

• Better Labeling on Menus and Labels.

• Add support for song import from VideoPsalm

Due to a packaging issue on one of our supported platforms (Debian, to be precise), we have had to radically shift forward the release date of OpenLP 2.4, as well as cut out a whole lot of features we had hoped to include.

The biggest feature of OpenLP 2.4 will be the move to Qt 5.x. Qt is the GUI library we use for OpenLP's interface, and up until now we've been using version 4.8 of Qt. Just like all software projects, Qt has been moving on (they recently released version 5.5), and we've unfortunately been lagging behind.

We had always intended to upgrade to Qt5 in OpenLP 2.4, but thanks to the aforementioned packaging problem, we have to release a version of OpenLP which uses Qt5 by the end of January. With this in mind we decided to cut the release cycle short and just release 2.4 with Qt5 and some bugfixes.

The good news in all of this is that we should be able to make OpenLP's multimedia capabilities more powerful thanks to the reworking of media in Qt5. This should also encourage developers to continue contributing to OpenLP, which means that we all win.

Here's our intended release cycle for OpenLP 2.4:

If we feel we need it, we may release a second beta on the 24th of January, but this depends on developer availability, and how many bugs we have found and/or fixed.

Over the years people have asked us about financial contributions and donations to the project. OpenLP, like many other open source projects, is largely funded by open source project sites (SourceForge.net, etc), donated resources, or (in some cases) the developers themselves. Until recently, this has meant that donations have mostly been unnecessary.

After some upheaval in the open source community recently, we decided to start building our own server infrastructure around the project to reduce our reliance on third parties who can exercise control over our digital assets. This means that OpenLP is now in charge of funding our own servers, bandwidth, build tools and other things.

Now that we are funding a lot more ourselves, we've decided to accept donations from folks. You can either give us a once-off donation, or you can donate on a regular basis (automatically), or you can buy swag (t-shirts, mugs, caps, stickers and more). Take a look at our Donate page for more information on where and how to donate.

Check out some of the stuff you can order from our online store:

[ Image Credit: Money by GotCredit ]

As with any piece of software, OpenLP is not bug-free. Sadly, in this particular case we didn't pick up some pretty major bugs until just after the release of 2.2.

In this release we have only fixed the most glaring bugs. These are the showstoppers that prevented people from actually using OpenLP. There will be more releases as time goes on to fix other, smaller, bugs.

Bugs fixed in this release:

• The German, Estonian and Chinese (Taiwan) translations caused OpenLP to crash on startup

• Error when VLC is not installed on Linux

• OpenLP on Windows unable to detect VLC

• ZionWorks import fails in OpenLP 2.2

You can grab this bugfix from the Downloads section on our site.

Download

[ Image Credit: Roadside Bicycle Repair by Erik (HASH) Hersman ]

With much fanfare, we released OpenLP 2.2 last Sunday. It's been a roaring success so far, but sadly it has also been plagued by unforseen bugs. A number of users have had OpenLP just crash on startup, and some folks have been unable to play videos. In this blog post, I'll show you how to figure out which issue you're running into, and a workaround for it until we can get a fix out (hopefully in the next 2-3 weeks).

There have been two main problems which cause OpenLP 2.2 to crash on startup. Firstly, three languages were hit by translation errors, and secondly, OpenLP on Linux won't start up due to VLC being missing.

The issues with videos can be divided into two situations. Firstly, our initial build of OpenLP for Windows was unable to detect VLC, and secondly, some folks might have been using video players that are not supported on their platforms anymore.

Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "<string>", line 44, in <module>
   File "/Users/raoul/Projects/OpenLP/OpenLP-2.2/openlp/core/__init__.py", line 388, in main
   File "/Users/raoul/Projects/OpenLP/OpenLP-2.2/openlp/core/__init__.py", line 141, in run
   File "/Users/raoul/Projects/OpenLP/OpenLP-2.2/openlp/core/ui/mainwindow.py", line 526, in __init__
   File "/Users/raoul/Projects/OpenLP/OpenLP-2.2/openlp/core/ui/aboutform.py", line 44, in __init__
   File "/Users/raoul/Projects/OpenLP/OpenLP-2.2/openlp/core/ui/aboutform.py", line 50, in _setup
   File "/Users/raoul/Projects/OpenLP/OpenLP-2.2/openlp/core/ui/aboutdialog.py", line 82, in setup_ui
   File "/Users/raoul/Projects/OpenLP/OpenLP-2.2/openlp/core/ui/aboutdialog.py", line 264, in retranslate_ui
TypeError: not all arguments converted during string formatting

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/openlp", line 44, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/__init__.py", line 384, in main
    sys.exit(application.run(qt_args))
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/__init__.py", line 142, in run
    Registry().execute('bootstrap_initialise')
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/common/registry.py", line 137, in execute
    result = function(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/lib/pluginmanager.py", line 60, in bootstrap_initialise
    self.hook_media_manager()
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/lib/pluginmanager.py", line 122, in hook_media_manager
    plugin.create_media_manager_item()
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/lib/plugin.py", line 204, in create_media_manager_item
    self.media_item = self.media_item_class(self.main_window.media_dock_manager.media_dock, self)
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/plugins/media/lib/mediaitem.py", line 56, in __init__
    super(MediaMediaItem, self).__init__(parent, plugin)
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/lib/mediamanageritem.py", line 82, in __init__
    self.setup_item()
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/plugins/media/lib/mediaitem.py", line 86, in setup_item
    self.media_controller.setup_display(self.display_controller.preview_display, False)
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/ui/media/mediacontroller.py", line 322, in setup_display
    player.setup(display)
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/ui/media/vlcplayer.py", line 147, in setup
    display.vlc_instance = vlc.Instance(command_line_options)
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/ui/media/vendor/vlc.py", line 1359, in __new__
    return libvlc_new(len(args), args)
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/ui/media/vendor/vlc.py", line 3355, in libvlc_new
    ctypes.c_void_p, ctypes.c_int, ListPOINTER(ctypes.c_char_p))
  File "/usr/share/openlp/openlp/core/ui/media/vendor/vlc.py", line 211, in _Cfunction
    raise NameError('no function %r' % (name,))
NameError: no function 'libvlc_new'

Traceback (most recent call last):
   File "D:\OpenLP_Development\OpenLP_Code\2.2\openlp\core\ui\servicemanager.py", line 1462, in on_make_live
   File "D:\OpenLP_Development\OpenLP_Code\2.2\openlp\core\ui\servicemanager.py", line 1478, in make_live
   File "D:\OpenLP_Development\OpenLP_Code\2.2\openlp\core\ui\slidecontroller.py", line 808, in add_service_manager_item
   File "D:\OpenLP_Development\OpenLP_Code\2.2\openlp\core\ui\slidecontroller.py", line 896, in _process_item
   File "D:\OpenLP_Development\OpenLP_Code\2.2\openlp\core\ui\slidecontroller.py", line 1360, in on_media_start
   File "D:\OpenLP_Development\OpenLP_Code\2.2\openlp\core\ui\media\mediacontroller.py", line 376, in video
   File "D:\OpenLP_Development\OpenLP_Code\2.2\openlp\core\ui\media\mediacontroller.py", line 532, in _check_file_type
   File "D:\OpenLP_Development\OpenLP_Code\2.2\openlp\core\ui\media\mediacontroller.py", line 345, in resize
   File "D:\OpenLP_Development\OpenLP_Code\2.2\openlp\core\ui\media\vlcplayer.py", line 234, in resize
AttributeError: 'MainDisplay' object has no attribute 'vlc_widget'

It's finally here! After almost three years in development, the next major version of OpenLP has arrived!

A lot of work has gone into making this new version more stable, less buggy and easier to use, resulting almost 300 bugfixes and improvements. This version also sees some changes under the hood, in terms of moving to Python 3 and adding unit testing to increase the quality of the codebase.

If you'd like to see OpenLP in your language, now's the time! We are about 2 weeks away from the release of 2.2, and now is your opportunity to translate OpenLP's interface into your own language.

In order for your langauge to be included you need to have completed the translation of OpenLP 2.2 (you'll need to be logged into Transifex to see this page) by midnight UTC (GMT) on Saturday the 10th of October 2015.

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 2.2, you need to make sure it is 100% done by the end of Saturday the 10th of October. This deadline also gives you just over a week to complete any outstanding translations.

We're very close to releasing OpenLP 2.2 now. We've made a few additional bug fixes and have decided to release another Release Candidate. If we don't find any major bugs in this version, the next release will be 2.2.

These are the bugs we fixed in this release:

• #1473632: crash on every file dialog

• #1420356: sending presentation live with libreoffice initially is minimized to taskbar

• #1463703: When diplaying a presentation from a loaded service the slidecontroller is blank

• #1465390: Traceback when going from blanked presentation to video

• #1201293: Unexpected Power Point dialogues triggers exception

• #1464421: Connection errors in SongSelect are not handled

• #1450596: Failure to verify SSL cert in SongSelect importer

I'd like to say a special thank you to Tomas G who has been fixing bugs and pushing this release, and to Jonathan S for doing a lot of work on PyInstaller and OpenLP to make OpenLP sail on Mac OS X.

A Windows build will be uploaded during the course of the week.

Translators, now's your chance to finish up the translations for OpenLP 2.2!

As with the previous major release of OpenLP, we will only be bundling translations which are 95% or more complete. If you want to see OpenLP in your language, take a look below and update the translation for your language on Transifex, no download necessary!

Sign up on Transifex and join the community!

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

  a time to be born, and a time to die;

a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;

  a time to kill, and a time to heal;

a time to break down, and a time to build up;

  a time to weep, and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

  a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;

a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

  a time to seek, and a time to lose;

a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

  a time to tear, and a time to sew;

a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

  a time to love, and a time to hate;

a time for war, and a time for peace.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

With my grandmother's passing recently, and reading the Bible to my kids at night, these verses have been coming up a lot recently. I think it is important for us to always be aware of the timeousness of what we're doing. Make the best use of your time here on earth, so that you can reap the rewards of your eathly work in Heaven.

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[ Image Credit: Road Ends 300 Ft. f/4 by Atomic Taco ]