Reflections and Projections

OpenLP 2.0 Release Parties

Cape Town

After much discussion, the developers have tentatively put the final release of OpenLP 2.0 in mid-October this year. This is a very auspicious occasion, since OpenLP 2.0 has been in development since September 2008. So after 4 long hard years of work, we can think of no better way to celebrate the release of OpenLP 2.0 than to throw a big party.

Unfortunately, being much of a global affair, it will be rather difficult to get everyone from around the world to the same place to celebrate the release of OpenLP 2.0. A better solution would be for people in various areas to host regional release parties.

There are a number of OpenLP developers living in the UK, and they are quite eager to get together for a release party. I live in Cape Town, South Africa, and I'm keen to host a release party here in Cape Town too.

If you are interested in attending a release party, or hosting a release party, please post your location in an appropriate release party topic in the forums. If there isn't a release party topic, create one!

Remember that release parties do not need to involve computers at all! You can get together at a local pub or restaurant, or host a bit of a party at someone's house. The release parties don't have to happen on the day of OpenLP's release either, they can be a week or two or three later. If you have any ideas of how to celebrate OpenLP's release, feel free to post your ideas in the forums too.

Android Release : 0.5 has escaped

OpenLP for Android

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.

Release Candidate 1: OpenLP 1.9.10 "Admirable Anna"

OpenLP 2.0 Release Candidate 1

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

More Video Tutorials

OpenLP Video Tutorials

Thanks to some hard work from one of our users, Joey Sour, we now have a whole bunch more video tutorials on how to use OpenLP! If you want to watch them, check out the A/V Tools page on his church's web site, where he has uploaded them.

In addition to Joey's videos, we have a couple of tutorials we've done ourselves on our YouTube channel. You can view those, plus Joey's and other videos from the community on our channel page.

OpenLP is Officially part of Ubuntu 12.10!

Ubuntu Linux

This week is only halfway through, and it has an exciting few days! First we found out that OpenLP has made it into Debian, and now I can proudly announce that OpenLP is part of Ubuntu as well (and Kubuntu, Lubuntu and Xubuntu by extension)!

OpenLP is in the "main" repository for Ubuntu 12.10, which means that when you install Ubuntu, you can immediately install OpenLP too. No more PPAs or extra repositories to enable.

We have also been able to get OpenLP "backported" into Ubuntu 12.04! This means that once you have enabled the "backports" repository (in Software Sources), you can also download and install OpenLP in Precise Pangolin.

Don't forget that you can find OpenLP in openSUSE and Fedora too.

OpenLP is Officially in the Debian Repositories!

Debian - The Universal Operating System

Ladies and gentlemen, I am extremely happy to announce that as from today you can install OpenLP in Debian Linux (unstable) by simply typing in apt-get install openlp - yes, that's right, OpenLP is in the Debian repositories.

This is a really significant step for OpenLP because a number of the really popular Linux distributions are based on Debian, and thus OpenLP will filter down into distributions like Ubuntu, Kubuntu and Linux Mint in the near future. For instance, you should find OpenLP in Ubuntu 12.10 when it comes out in October this year.

Show Off Your Action Shots!

Over the last few weeks, we've started collecting action shots from many of our users on our OpenLP page on Facebook. If you'd like to see your action shot in our album, please just post it to our wall, and we'll pick it up from there. If you're not yet a fan of the OpenLP page, I recommend you "Like" us now!

A Quick Video Tutorial

Hi folks,

I've just put together a very basic tutorial on how to get your first service up and running. I've embedded it below in HTML5 video. If you can't see it, you can download it and watch it in VLC using the link below, or you'll have to wait a little until I've uploaded it to our YouTube channel.

Download OpenLP Service Tutorial Video

Announcing OpenLP 1.9.9: The Last Beta

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you read that correctly. OpenLP 1.9.9 is the last of the beta series. From now on, OpenLP is in release candidate phase! Release candidate phase means that we will not be adding any more features and will be concentrating on fixing bugs.

We believe that all the functionality which was in version 1.2 has now been included in version 2.0, and for the next few months we will be focusing our efforts on fixing as many outstanding bugs as we can.

Features added:

  • Transparent themes, for background videos (theme video backgrounds not yet possible)

  • On-the-fly changing of backing tracks

  • Repeating of backing track list

  • Use VLC for displaying videos - not on Mac OS X yet, unfortunately. (Note: To be able to use this feature the VLC media player has to be installed on your computer.)

  • Search songs by song book/number

  • Configurable automatic service file names using the date

  • The reference format used to look up Bible verses has been localised, and can be changed along with the interface language

  • Configure the "next slide" action when at the end of the current item in the slide controller to either move to the first slide again, to the next slide of the next item, or nothing.

Of course we have also fixed over 46 bugs in this release!

The full list of changes can be seen on our launchpad page.

Wanted: Facebook Timeline photo

OpenLP v1 in use

In just over a weeks time, the OpenLP facebook page will be switched over to the new Timeline view. The new view gives us the opportunity to add a cover image to go along the top of the page, and this is where we would like your help...

Ideally we would like to use a picture of OpenLP being used, with a full worshipping congregation and both the operators screen and the projector screen in view. For example a long time ago when v1 was just being born and monitors were still the size of a small car, the photo on the right was taken. We would like to bring it up to date..

As always, there are a few restrictions. This makes it significantly harder, but we might accept an image close to the mark:

  1. We would like to see a view of a recent v2 version, with close to the default layout.

  2. Any lyrics on the screen ideally in the Public Domain, if possible. Although Scripture will be fine too. English would be preferable.

  3. A fairly full looking congregation, who don't look like they are bored ;)

  4. The trickiest bit.. the image has to be an unstretched 851x315 resolution.

  5. In focus ;) and not too dark.

  6. Note that facebook displays the OpenLP logo over part of the bottom left of the image

  7. Oh and full permission for OpenLP to use the picture, although you'll retain the copyright.

Also if you have other ideas for a type of image we could use, then please share them in the comments too.

You can post images to our facebook wall or use an image sharing site such as imgur and post the links below.

Disclaimer: We don't guarantee we'll use your photo as the cover even if it the only one created and has a 1000 likes. Therefore we don't recommend you spend 3 solid days setting up the perfect shot, and going out to buy the latest Canon or Nikon DSLR just to take this picture! Raoul has the final word.

We look forward to seeing your photos :)