Release announcements

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2010-07-12: Version 2.7.2 released

BibleTime 2.7.2 was just released, this is only a cosmetic fix to correct the version. If you already updated to 2.7.1, there is no need to update. You can find source code and Windows installation files at https://sourceforge.net/projects/bibletime/files.

2010-07-06: Version 2.7.1 released

BibleTime 2.7.1 was just released, this is a minor bugfix version. You can find source code and Windows installation files at https://sourceforge.net/projects/bibletime/files.

2010-05-19: Version 2.7 released

BibleTime 2.7 was just released. You can find source code and Windows installation files at https://sourceforge.net/projects/bibletime/files.

2010-04-29: Version 2.7.beta1 released

The first testing version of BibleTime 2.7 was just released. Please find it at https://sourceforge.net/projects/bibletime/files.

Changes since 2.6:

  • new configuration option to toggle window toolbar display in either text windows or main window
  • several bugfixes

2010-02-25: Version 2.6 released

Version 2.6 has been released and is ready to be downloaded.

Installer and binary package downloads

Changes since 2.5

  • New window arrangement mode "tabbed", especially for smaller displays.
  • Smaller user interface improvements, like "Open work" menu item and toolbutton and improved module selection in several places.
  • Important bugfixes.
  • And as usual, translation updates, small fixes and enhancements.


2009-12-21: Version 2.5 (Christmas Edition) released

Version 2.5 a.k.a BibleTime 2009 CE (Christmas Edition) has been released. The release cycle after 2.4 was faster than normally because we wanted to give you a Christmas gift. There you are.

Installer and binary package downloads

The Windows installer should be soon or is already in the sourceforge.net download area. There are some things which new Windows users should notice:

  • We don't have Bible texts in our installer. You have to open Settings->Bookshelf Manager and install works through Internet. Refresh the default CrossWire source, select works and click Install. You can also download a list of remote sources from the CrossWire server by clicking "Add..." and "Get list".
  • You may need to install a good unicode font if you use e.g. Greek and Hebrew texts.
  • There's still a bug in the underlying SWORD library which causes user names, or actually directory paths, with non-ascii characters to not work. If your Windows user name includes letters other than between a...z BibleTime won't work.

Unfortunately many Linux distributions will probably follow only later as usual, missing the Christmas party. (Update: Ubuntu and OpenSUSE packages are ready.)

Changes since 2.4

  • A new display template "Christmastide" which you can turn on from the Configure dialog.
  • A Christmas themed splash screen. It's shown between certain dates if you have splash screen enabled. Outside the Christmas time the old picture is used. We may add other seasonal pictures later.
  • New window arrangement mode: Tile in grid.
  • Enhancements in window arrangement modes.
  • Header above the text window text area with work names and add/remove/replace buttons.
  • View menu has submenu for text windows where toolbars and the new header can be switched on/off. (They can be switched also for each window with the Right Mouse Button menu over the toolbars.)
  • Many user interface and documentation translations have been updated.
  • Some smaller enhancements.
  • Many bugfixes.


2009-12-16 BibleTime 2.5.rc1 "Christmas Edition" released

BT 2.5.rc1 has been released, it includes many bugfixes and a Christmas splash screen and new template. Users are asked to test and provide feedback. Translators are encouraged to work on UI translations by the weekend.

2009-12-09 BibleTime 2.5.beta1 "Christmas Edition" released

BT 2.5.beta1 has been released, it includes many bugfixes and a Christmas coloured template. Users are asked to test and provide feedback. Translators are encouraged to work on UI translations.

2009-11-18 BibleTime 2.4 released

BT 2.4 has been released, all users and packagers are encouraged to update to this latest version.

2009-11-04 BibleTime 2.4.rc1 released

BT 2.4.rc1 has been released. Users are asked to test and provide feedback. Translators are encouraged to work on UI translations.

2009-11-04 BibleTime 2.4.beta1 released

BT 2.4.beta1 has been released, it includes many bugfixes. Users are asked to test and provide feedback. Translators are encouraged to work on UI translations. See release announcement at http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=200911042051.13038.mg.pub%40gmx.net.

2009-10-27 BibleTime 2.3.3 released

BT 2.3.3 has been released, it is a bugfix release, all users and packagers are encouraged to update to this latest version.

2009-10-27 Windows installer available for testing

Are you ready to go cross-platform?

Download

The long anticipated Windows version is finally mature enough to get a public release. At the moment we create testing packages and put them in http://sourcearchives.com/downloads. (In the future the final packages will be in our sourceforge.net download section.) The package is created with NSIS installer and it installs BibleTime and the uninstaller on your machine, just like any other installer for Windows does. Bible or other texts are not installed by default, you have to use the Bookshelf Manager from Settings menu.

In the repository you will see files like bibletime-2.3.+svnr1684-win32.exe. The revision number of the build is the set of 4 numbers shown in bold in our example. You will probably want to choose the latest revision number to download.

Test and report

BibleTime has been reported working in XP, Vista and Windows 7. But remember that until now we have had only few testers and we expect you to find new bugs. That's exactly why we release these testing packages. We have already ground some rough edges and BibleTime works as smoothly in Windows as in Linux/unix platforms, but in these kind of situations problems don't come as surprise. Therefore we hope that you are prepared to report any issues you may find. For the testing package related problems any form of communication goes, including the Windows port wiki page, developers' mailing list or irc channel #bibletime at Freenode. For the future final packages we recommend using the normal bug reporting channel.

We are also happy to hear if you don't find any issues.

Thanks

Several people have made the Windows port possible, including:

  • Martin Gruner (project leader, misc)
  • Greg Hellings (build process, installer)
  • Gary Holmlund (build process, installer, sword config and locale usage)
  • Eeli Kaikkonen (testing, bugfixing)
  • Matthew Talbert (guest starring, Windows specific mentoring)
  • sorry if we forget someone...

Future plans

We will continue with the normal release cycle. We have planned to release the "official" Windows port with the upcoming 2.4 release, but it will be marked as beta unless we can be sure it works without any problems.

Help us!

You can help us develop BibleTime even if you don't know programming. Bug reports and feature requests are always welcome, even though we don't necessarily have resources to work on all of them. If you know for example C++, Qt, MS Visual Studio, NSIS, HTML, CSS or Javascript, we may have direct need for your talent, but with little imagination any skill can be used for a good purpose.

Let us hear from you!


--The BibleTime development team


2009-10-14 BibleTime 2.3.2 released

BT 2.3.2 has been released, it is the second bug fix release as a result of our Bug-a-thon, all users and packagers are encouraged to update to this latest version.

2009-10-10 BibleTime 2.3.1 released

BT 2.3.1 has been released, it is a bug fix release as a result of our Bug-a-thon, all users and packagers are encouraged to update to this latest version.

2009-10-06 BibleTime 2.3 released

BT 2.3 has been released, all users and packagers are encouraged to update to this latest version.

2009-09-30 BibleTime 2.3.rc1 released

BT 2.3.rc1 has been released. Please test and provide feedback.

2009-09-24 BibleTime 2.3.beta1 released

BT 2.3.beta1 has been released, it includes many bugfixes. Users are asked to TEST, TEST, TEST. Translators are encourgage to work on UI translations, see announcement http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=5f5fc3f00909221253i73bcd9c0kba73be18372718a8%40mail.gmail.com

2009-08-26 BibleTime 2.2 released

BT 2.2 has been released, all users and packagers are encouraged to update to this latest version.

Changes since 2.1 are:

  • new shortcut editor
  • bugfix for performance problem when installing many modules at once
  • improvements to verse key choosers, fixing input field height
  • fixed template display problems on dark color schemes
  • fixed mouse cursor vanishing problem when using the verse key chooser scroll buttons
  • internal code cleanups

2009-08-19 BibleTime 2.2.rc1 released

BT 2.2.rc1 has been released, testers are needed and translators are encouraged to submit their work before August 25.

2009-08-12 BibleTime 2.2.beta1 released

BT 2.2.beta1 has been released, translators are encouraged to commence their work.

2009-07-12 BibleTime 2.1 released

BT 2.1 has been released, all users and packagers are encouraged to update to this latest version.

Changes since 2.0.1 are:

  • many user interfac translation updates
  • new Brazilian handbook translation
  • Bugfixes, e.g:
    • Config Dialog does not open for first time starting of BibleTime
    • Config and Bookshelf Manager dialogs will remember their last size and position

2009-07-05 BibleTime 2.1.rc1 released

BT 2.1.rc1 has been released, please download and test. Translators please check the announcement below.

2009-06-28 BibleTime 2.1.beta1 released

BT 2.1.beta1 has been released, please download and test. Translators please check announcement, https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_name=5f5fc3f00906270958j5d673cfav2852c672ca99f296%40mail.gmail.com.

2009-06-06 BibleTime 2.0.1 bugfix released

BT 2.0.1 has been released, addressing three minor bugs, see the release announcement at http://www.crosswire.org/pipermail/bt-devel/2009-June/008965.html

2009-05-30 BibleTime 2.0 final release!

We are proud to announce the arrival of BibleTime version 2.0. Version 1.7 was quite short lived (well, more than a year counting from the first alpha version, but still) and a lot has happened since then.

Features

The user-visible changes between BibleTime 1.7 and 2.0 are:

  • Many bugfixes
  • Improved user interface and handbook translations
  • New dockable windows improve working with bookshelf, bookmarks and the magnifier area - you can drag and drop those windows or tabs to different places
  • Many smaller changes

Many people will move directly to BibleTime 2.0 from 1.6. For such users, there are tons of changes, bugfixes and improvements (and probably some new bugs, too, because the code has changed so radically). See the 1.7 release announcement below.

Behind the Scenes - Less Visible Changes

Cross-platform: KDE -> Qt

BibleTime doesn't depend on KDE any more. We use only Qt now. WebKit is used as the HTML renderer. Most of the recent porting work has been done by Eeli Kaikkonen, Gary Holmlund and Martin Gruner. Many others, too many to mention here, have helped with code patches and bug reports.

The greatest advantage of making BibleTime Qt-only is that it's easy to port to other platforms. It also reduces dependencies on old platforms, so people don't need 100MB of extra KDE stuff just to run BibleTime.

It is mainly this change from KDE to Qt that led us to call this release 2.0, rather than 1.8.

SWORD 1.6

Our backend engine, the SWORD library by the CrossWire Bible Society, isn't directly visible to the users, but is a critical part of the application because it offers the works ("modules", texts) which we use.

The SWORD 1.6 version has been recently introduced with its long anticipated and oft requested support for Deuterocanonical/Apocryphal works. However, there are three things to remember concerning this new capability:

  • First, BibleTime doesn't yet support the broader canon very well. We will work on that.
  • Second, there are not many important works yet to download (as SWORD modules) which would have Deuterocanonical books, though hopefully this will soon change.
  • Third, it depends on the packagers whether SWORD 1.6 is used with BibleTime or not.

Windows and Mac ports

Due to lack of resources, i.e. Windows developers, the Windows port isn't yet ready for official release. Greg Hellings and some others have worked on it, but there are some problems still to be solved. If you know or are ready to learn Qt and CMake on Windows, please help us. We also need a nice Windows installer, so if you have experience with installer packages you can help us.

BibleTime is known to run on Mac, too, but it's not a native Mac application, and therefore suitable mostly for those who want to use one application on many platforms. We could use help for the Mac port and installer, too.

Information on building BibleTime on Windows and Mac as well as on Linux is provided on BuildingBibleTime.

Linux/*nix packages

Especially worth mentioning are the packages for Debian based Linux distros. CrossWire related applications had only one Debian maintainer for a long time, but now a team of new fresh maintainers have arisen lately which creates packages for the SWORD library, BibleTime, Xiphos (previously known as GnomeSword) and some others. Jonathan Marsden has created the BibleTime packages and done a good service for countless of Debian, Ubuntu etc. users.

Packagers for all distros and OS's are invited to update BibleTime to 2.0. Some distros may have even 1.6 which is two years old now. We don't support it any more.

We have a wiki page for packagers with more details. End users may also find links to packages or installation tips there.

Call for translators

Our translator community has been quite active lately, thanks to the translation manager Thomas Abthorpe and the translators themselves. For example the Handbook has new translations. However, there's much room for improvement. Many translations have been silently rotting because there have been so many changes in the user interface and documentation. If you feel even the slightest inspiration in your heart that BibleTime should be available or better supported in your own language, don't stand still -- help us. Even if you don't have previous translation experience you can do it, and we have several information channels where you'll find help:


Call for developers and other helpers

There are always more ideas and plans than time or manpower. We need people who know or want to learn for example C++, Qt, HTML, CSS, user interface design, graphic design or Javascript. The need for help is continuous - see also the release announcement for 1.7beta1 below. Whatever you want to do, you can find more information and help from:


--The BibleTime development team


Pre 2.0 releases

  • 2009-20-05 2.0rc1 release: BibleTime 2.0rc1 has been released for testing. Tentative release for 2.0 is scheduled for May 28. Translators please have your work submitted by May 27.
  • 2009-16-05 2.0beta3 release: BibleTime 2.0beta3 has been released for testing.
  • 2009-29-04 2.0beta2 release: BibleTime 2.0beta2 has been released for testing.
  • 2009-22-04 2.0beta1 release: BibleTime 2.0beta1 has been released for testing.
  • 2009-25-03 2.0alpha3 release: BibleTime 2.0alpha2 has been released for testing.
  • 2009-20-03 2.0alpha2 release: BibleTime 2.0alpha2 has been released for testing.
  • 2009-09-03 2.0alpha1 release: BibleTime 2.0alpha1 has been released for testing.

2009-08-02: 1.7 release

BibleTime 1.7 has finally been released! After almost two years of work we have ported BibleTime to KDE 4 with almost all the old features and tons of fixes, enhancements and new features. If you want to know more about the history of this work, read the previous announcements and the ChangeLog file.

New features after 1.6

For end users

  • Bookshelf Manager installer has been redesigned. It's much easier to use and it doesn't block the rest of the user interface.
  • The main Bookshelf panel has been rewritten. It's possible to group the works by Category and/or Language. Rarely used works can be hidden.
  • Bookmarks have been moved to another tab. It's possible to move and copy folders.
  • Bible and Commentary windows have dropdown lists for book, chapter and verse.
  • Search dialog has an option for AND and OR searches.

For developers, translators and packagers

  • DBUS is used instead of DCOP for interprocess communication.
  • The source code is in SVN repository instead of CVS.
  • cmake has replaced autotools as a build system.
  • Translation is based on Qt .ts files.
  • Large parts of source code have been rewritten and restructured.
  • Wiki is used for developer collaboration.

Lacking features

There's no way to configure the keyboard shortcuts. We hope to reimplement this feature later. There are also some minor features missing, but most of the users shouldn't even notice them. If you start BibleTime from command line the options have changed and --help is not up to date.

Downloads and packages

  • The source code is in SourceForge.
  • There is a new packager team for Debian/(K)ubuntu. They are responsible for all SWORD/CrossWire related packages. BibleTime packages are not yet ready at the time of writing.
  • There will be packages for other distributions which may be downloadable from SourceForge.

Future plans

We have already rewritten most of the code to be dependent on Qt only and not KDE. There are some important tasks left but we are on the way to the Qt-only BibleTime which could work on all platforms, including Windows and Mac. The optimistic estimation in an earlier announcement ("end of 2008 or early 2009") looks too optimistic, but 2.0 should be out well before the end of 2009, possibly even in the 1st half.

Help us!

The pledge for help in earlier announcements is still valid. Especially C++/Qt coders are needed but there are lots of other talents, too, which may be useful for BibleTime.


-- The BibleTime development team

2009-02-07 1.7 release

After a short release candidate cycle, Bibletime 1.7 has been released.

2009-02-03: 1.7rc1 release

Bibletime 1.7rc1 was just released. Please test! Special attention needs to be paid to the Bookshelf Manager that is used to download and install modules.

2008-12-13: 1.7beta3 release

BibleTime 1.7.beta3 was just released. The Sword requirement was set back to 1.5.9. Happy testing.

2008-09-18: 1.7beta2 release

Couple of changes which affect compilation but not the binary. See 1.7beta1 release notes for the changes after the alpha releases.

2008-09-07: 1.7beta1 release

BibleTime 1.7beta1 has been released as a source package. Much work has been done since the first alpha release. Please read the alpha1 announcement - this text supposes you know what happened back then.

Though this version is labeled as beta it is completely usable and should be stable for daily work. It is beta only because it still has some minor missing features, minor inconsistencies due to lacking KDE->Qt port and because it has not been widely tested. With this versioning scheme we wanted to avoid giving impression of fully completed work.

We want to encourage you to download the source code as a tarball or using svn, build it and test it. After finding bugs you can report them in our Prerelease Bugs page as long as you remember that it is for 1.7 branch prerelease bugs only, not for 1.6 bugs or feature requests. You can also use the bt-devel mailing list.

Packages

We strongly encourage the packagers to start their work with 1.7beta1. As already said, this version is ready for public consumption. We also depend on having testers but only few people can or want to build the software themselves. Therefore we need the packagers and new packages. We don't necessarily want the beta packages to be integrated into the official distributions but we may host them in our SourceForge repository or link to them. Packagers can of course choose their distribution methods themselves.

Translations

The translatable strings have changed even more than anticipated. Complete revision of existing translations is necessary. We have now reached a state when the strings will not change so much anymore so translators should start their work if they have not done that already. See our translations page if you find your native language support lacking.

New and lacking features

After enhancing the main Bookshelf we have rewritten the Install page of the Bookshelf Manager. It should be much more intuitive, easy and fast to use. The Bookshelf Manager uses our own paged dialog which looks a bit different from the KDE one. The configuration dialog will be ported to that later. There are some small enhancements like the history list of the searched modules in the Search dialog.

DBUS is now used as a communication channnel instead of DCOP. If some other application has relied on our DCOP interface it must be changed.

The major lacking feature is still the keyboard shortcut configurator. It needs quite much work so we don't know when it comes back. The search analysis has not been ported yet and is disabled. Dragging to the Bookshelf index is not supported. Startup tips have been removed long time ago. There may be some other minor features missing.

Future plans

If everything goes fine we can release the final 1.7 later this year, maybe after one or two betas and hopefully before the KDE 4.1 is released at the end of the summer. 1.7 final will still be dependent on KDE.

The Qt-only version number will start with 2. Qt WebKit should have the API we need in Qt 4.5 but the schedule is still unknown. We can't predict the amount of work needed for Mac and Windows ports so 2.0 may still be Linux/Unix only. Optimistic estimation for 2.0 release date is at the end of this year or early next year.

These plans are not carved into stone and may change if need arises. We need your prayer support to succeed.

We will still continue fixing bugs for the 1.6.x line for KDE 3 but it will be dropped in some phase - maybe after the 1.7 final.

Help!

Last but not least, we need your help. There are more plans than time or people. Whatever you skill is, we might be able to find something to do for you. Important skills include C++, Qt (also with Windows/Mac!), cmake, HTML/CSS, graphics, testing, usability, translating and English (native skill needed for UI strings). If you know one or more of these (or something else) or are even just learning please contact us. You don't have to be a guru to start C++/Qt coding, many of us have started with very little knowlegde. And as already said, we need prayer. That might even be the most important help you can give.


-- The BibleTime development team


2008-01-12: 1.7alpha1 release

BibleTime 1.7alpha1 has been released as a source package. Much work has been done to make BibleTime work under the new KDE 4 environment. There are many known and unknown bugs left but this alpha version is actually almost fully working. We want to encourage you to download the source code as a tarball or using svn, build it and test it. After finding bugs you can report them in our Prerelease Bugs page as long as you remember that it is for 1.7 branch prerelease bugs only, not for 1.6 bugs or feature requests.

Translations

We have changed our translation system, it uses the Qt i18n framework. The translatable strings have already changed and will still change so much that thorough revision of existing translations is necessary for high quality user interface experience.

Packages

We don't expect the alpha version to be packaged for the OS distributions though packagers are of course free to do that. For the final release we want to make packaging as easy as possible; if you have suggestions for that, please contact us. We could for example add some distribution specific files to our svn tree and add scripts for building packages. Packagers should also notice that if KDE 3 and 4 live together in the distribution BibleTime can also have 1.6.x and 1.7.x versions simultaneously.

It is noteworthy that 1.7 uses new configuration files (~/bibletime/) and the 1.7 can run side by side with the 1.6 without problems.

New features

Besides porting the existing functionality to KDE 4 we have also added some new features, especially the main Bookshelf index has new functionality. You can change the grouping of the modules and hide rarely needed modules.

After KDE 4

Though the KDE 4 port is good news for the KDE fans out there we have also bad news for them: we will abandon the KDE platform and move to a Qt-only solution. Our purpose is to make BibleTime platform independent so that it can be used under Windows and MacOS X without installing KDE. This is of course good news to many who have not been using that great but bulky desktop environment.

This change has already been started and at the moment it can be seen in many small details. Even some major functions like keyboard shortcut editor have been disabled. It will take time to write them again using Qt only and some of them may never come back. One critical part for us is the HTML renderer which we use to display the text. We hope that the QWebKit will be enough for our needs but currently it doesn't have adequate API and we have to continue with KHTML.

We will continue the 1.6.x line for KDE 3 in bugfix mode, there will be no feature additions.

At the moment we don't have any schedules for the new versions. Even the final 1.7 (or whatever the version number will be) may take several months, not speaking of the platform independent version. We welcome any help you can give including C++ coding, HTML/CSS, translations, graphics, documentation etc.


-- The BibleTime development team

Retrieved from "http://devel.bibletime.info/wiki/Release_announcements"
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