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Issues
Mar - Oct 2005 Links |
March - October 2005 NewsletterSyllable is an open source desktop operating system, with its own kernel, GUI and libraries. The Syllable Development Newsletters are condensed reports on the project's activity -- highlighting progress made and other project updates. For previous issues, please see the links on the left of this page. There were 2,189 posts to the Syllable mailing lists between March and October 2005 (inclusive). It's been several months since the last issue, due to the author being busy elsewhere, but this issue catches up on all the major developments since. And there's plenty to read about -- the OS is making great strides, with new features, drivers, software and updates all over the map! Read on to see what's been happening... Contents
1. New PDF readerPDF, the well-known document format developed by Adobe, has become something of a standard for transferring files between different operating systems -- MS Word documents can get mangled when opened in a different word processor. Prolific Syllable coder Arno Klenke announced his port of Xpdf, a popular PDF reader for UNIX-like systems. His post to the mailing list: The first beta of xpdf 3.0 is now available for syllable. Please note that it doesn't support all the features of the xfree version yet. The binary is available here: Project lead Kristian Van Der Vliet tested it out on a 256-page document, and found it
to be fast and reliable. Marlon Pause was impressed too. Shortly after, Arno announced beta 2
of Xpdf, which can be downloaded from here.
2. SDL port and various appsSDL, the Simple Directmedia Library, is used widely on UNIX flavours for games, emulators and multimedia software. Being lightweight and with no large dependencies, it's the ideal choice of library for coding graphic and sound-intensive software -- and with such a weight of software behind it, a Syllable port was more than welcome. In June, Arno Klenke announced to the core developers for testing: I have seen many requests for a real SDL port and so I just did it. The basic support was really easy and fast to do (basic port was running after just an hour) because I could use a lot of code from the BeOS driver. Currently video and audio is supported. And yes, sdlquake and sdlquake2 are running, although sdlquake is slower than in linux and also than the native Syllable port.Naturally, this brought much cheer. The SDL port suddenly opened up the OS to a whole wealth of software (just browse around freshmeat.net for programs built on SDL -- there are hundreds). Later on, Arno notified his work to the community: To avoid doing duplicate work I now announce that I have an almost complete port of sdl (video and sound) which already runs quake, quake 2 and bochs. It will be released with Syllable 0.5.7. In November, Mike Saunders started porting various SDL programs to Syllable, most of which he made available on his website. These include DOSBox, SuperTux and early work on ZSNES -- plus a build of SDL that also included SDL_mixer and SDL_image, as used by many apps. 3. Whisper rewriteWhisper is Syllable's email client, written by Kristian Van Der Vliet. The original version, although workable, was in need of many updates so Vanders decided to rewrite the program from scratch. His initial post about the first preview version: Following on from the release of 0.5.6a, I'm happy to announce the release of Whisper 1.0, Alpha 1 This was followed three months later by alpha 2, which included massively improved attachment support, new toolbars, GUI cleanups and a multitude of small additions. Vanders also supplied a screenshot. In early October, he announced the third alpha: Whisper Alpha 3 is out now. Get it from 4. Syllable 0.5.7On the 28th of August, Syllable 0.5.7 arrived. This is due to be one of the last 0.5 releases before the 0.6 series starts, when the API will have settled. Developers can then begin coding applications on top of less-frequently changing foundations. Vanders posted to the list: After an epic battle which involved recompiling all of Syllable, a week of testing, a near-fatal mistake involving "format" and a long weekend of headaches, Syllable 0.5.7 is finally available for download! Highlights from the changelog: new Savage video driver; i810 audio and rtl8139 network driver updates; icons shown while dragging; DM_BLEND support for line drawing; new shutdown process; ColdFish music player updates; 'Launch' utility; new login screen; and more. 5. Moving towards 0.6.0Syllable 0.6.0 will be a major release for the project, as it'll be the bedrock on which many new developments can take place. The goal is to have stable foundations (particularly the API), making it easier for coders to write apps and add new features without everything breaking. In mid-September, Vanders outlined his plans: I feel I need to set out a basic plan of getting from 0.5.7 into 0.6.0 with the minimum of fuss. I don't want us to lose the momentum we've found over the last few weeks. So here goes what I see as required, in cronological order: Daniel Gryniewicz suggested waiting for GCC 4 to stabilise first, based on problems he'd seen in bleeding-edge Linux distros, while Arno Klenke announced another batch of updates: I am now using an appserver which stores the windows as bitmaps in the video memory! 6. Other news and updatesAnd3mD posted about the beta release of his file manager: I've released And3mD Commander 1.00 beta 1. What do you think about it? Meanwhile, Vanders noted that AEdit 2.1 was finally in the CVS tree. Arno Klenke was also making progress on adding ACPI support to Syllable -- already able to read the status of laptop batteries. Newsletter edited by Mike Saunders. |
