|
![[Applications]](../images/64x64/applications.gif) | More creative destruction. Another long-time milestone has been reached.
It has always been our plan to factor out the web rendering engine of
ABrowse into a library with a native Syllable View widget on top, so it
can be embedded into more applications than just a web browser.
Kristian did just that: building on Arno's WebCore port, he updated
that and then stepped up the modularisation by creating the WebView
class. He rewrote the browser on top of that and named it Webster. The
first alpha version is available in our applications downloads. The
latest Syllable 0.6.6 development build is required to run it, as
several bugs in the system were fixed for the new browser. The source
code is available on our development site. | |
![[Syllable]](../images/64x64/Syllable-emblem-63x64.gif) | We slept through a storm on the ship. We docked alongside a clipper a bit too hastily; another clipper, the
Hollandia, crashed into us. Nothing new, shippers from Holland have
always sucked. We saw a Black-headed Gull die; we saw a Great Crested
Grebe feed a fish to her young. Nothing else is important, is it? Oh,
there's another cycle of destruction and creation. We demonstrated a
new development build of Syllable
Server that we created just before the conference.
While we were sailing in Friesland, Kristian produced a new development build of Syllable
Desktop in England. Both are now published here. | |
|
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | Unfortunately,
we had to replace our Spanish web site. We extended our content
management system to create a fully integrated new one, so it is now an
official branch of our main web site. Lucas Murad created the old site
and will be editing the new one. We took the opportunity to
also
overhaul our Dutch site and pull it into the content management system.
Bas de Lange is the editor. The sites currently still show the original
English content. The editors will be translating it over time. | |
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | As
last time, we have been invited again to the BeGeistert BeOS meeting,
the 019 edition. It will be held from 10 to 12 October in the same
venue in Düsseldorf in
Germany. Bas will be there to represent Syllable again. | |
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | The
Syllable Conference 2008 will start in a week. We will be holding
presentations and workshops around the upcoming Syllable Desktop 0.6.6
and Syllable Server 0.3. There will be a workshop showing how to set up
a complete network with Server and Desktop machines and how, if you
know one, you know the other. We will also try to install Syllable on
an Asus EeePC. | |
![[Syllable]](../images/64x64/Syllable-emblem-63x64.gif) | We released a development build of Syllable
Server.
This version has a number of updated components, including the kernel,
and several fixes. Most importantly, a lot of server functionality was
added. Included is a REBOL software stack with a web server and a web
programming framework. Support and start scripts are integrated for a
number of standard
servers, such as CUPS, OpenSSH, BIND, Apache, RSync, SaMBa and VSFTP.
However, the configurations of these new modules are not complete yet. | |
|
![[Ports]](../images/48x48/port.gif) | Ruwen Boehm ported
the VLC and MPlayer multimedia
players to Syllable Desktop. The behaviour of both is still a bit
rough, but watching DVDs on Syllable is possible now. Some of the
needed parts were ported by Rui Caridade, Andrew Kennan and Kaj de Vos.
Newly ported components include FAAD2, FLAC, FontConfig, LibA52,
LibCDDB, LibDVDNav, LibDVDRead, LibID3Tag, LibMAD and LibMPEG2. These
packages don't have to be installed separately, as the libraries are
included in VLC and MPlayer. Packages for both are in our resources
downloads. They need to be started from the command line,
until someone writes native Syllable graphical control interfaces for
them. | |
![[Syllable]](../images/64x64/Syllable-emblem-63x64.gif) | Michael Saunders got
Syllable
Desktop to run on his new Asus Eee PC - a machine for which it is
uniquely suited.
There is some work to do to support all hardware, but most
functionality already works. Michael reports that video, audio,
touchpad, USB and battery monitor all work. Widescreen video and
network don't and there may be reliability problems with USB storage
devices. As installing Syllable from a USB device doesn't work yet,
Michael used an inventive method for installation. It can be done by
imaging your Eee drive with the dd utility (from Linux), installing
Syllable on it through QEmu and then dd'ing the image back to the real
drive. Note that the drive number needs to be adjusted in the GrUB boot
file. We are looking into distributing Syllable especially for the Eee
PC in this form. | |
|
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | Bas
has announced the Syllable Conference 2008. Like last year's successful
conference, it will be held in the Netherlands on the Frisian sailing
vessel the Stêd Sleat (the former racing ship of the city of Sloten).
There is limited space available. Make sure you don't miss the
atmosphere, the adventure, the comradery, the Syllable presentations,
the talks, the plans and the announcements in this break-through year
for Syllable. Read the full announcement at
the forum and enlist with Bas de Lange. | |
![[Ports]](../images/48x48/port.gif) | Rohan reports that an
otherwise unknown contributor going under the name Bean has rewritten
the AFS
filesystem driver for GrUB 2.
The original driver was for GrUB 1 and was derived from the full AFS
driver. This meant that the copyright could not be reassigned to the
FSF, so the GrUB project didn't want to integrate the code. The new
driver is much smaller and looks like it will be integrated into GrUB,
so we will have a new boot loader and maintenance will become much
easier. Before that happens, though, we may have to do more porting
work on GrUB 2 to integrate it in our build process and installer. Here
is a separate
test CD that is capable of booting an existing
Syllable installation on disk. | |
![[Ports]](../images/48x48/port.gif) | Kelly Wilson has
ported Squeak
to Syllable.
Squeak is a multimedia
environment based on the Smalltalk
programming language. There are no
video and sound drivers yet that interface between Squeak and Syllable,
so the Squeak graphical environment is not available yet. However,
headless Squeak programs that don't need a graphical user interface
run, and the screenshot shows a web site in ABrowse, produced by the
Seaside web application framework. | |
![[Announcement]](../images/64x64/announce.gif) | Here
is a photo of the Syllable stand at FOSDEM last week, by Jesús
Corrius. | |
![[Applications]](../images/64x64/applications.gif) | Michael Pavone has created a new programming
language: Rhope.
It's a very interesting language that is based on dataflow and also
uses transactional concepts to make parallel programming easy. Rhope is
an interpreter that is available for Syllable, OS X and Windows. Mike
mentions that it was for a large part developed on Syllable and that
its web site runs on Syllable Desktop, on a web server and web
framework programmed in Rhope itself. Rhope currently has preliminary
support for programming graphical user interfaces on Syllable and
Windows. | |
|
![[Screenshot]](../images/screenshots/Desktop/0.6.5/SyllableDesktop-0.6.5-on-EeePC-200x150.jpg) Syllable Desktop 0.6.5 on Asus Eee PC
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