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The ZETA-OS page has been updated today (a few days after the German counterpart) with news about some of the latest changes to the OS and its contents. This time they list changes to SAMBA (which has reached Beta status), Communicator (a multi-protocol chat center), MediaFire (a new CD/DVD authoring app) and more.
This is a weekly update, so next week, as soon as their site is updated, will bring you more. I'm particularly interested in Communicator, so I'll try to get a screenshot of it for everyone (and who knows, even give it a test spin).
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I received an e-mail today from Michael Lotz, who, among other projects, has been working on USB for Haiku and SVG support. Now he's been dedicating his time to porting Gnash 0.7.2 to BeOS and Haiku. Who better than himself to speak about it, so I leave you with his words, after the break, and a teaser screenshot. Enjoy (I know you will).
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Now that I've shown you I can use fancy words, let's recap the news from the past few days. They encompass (I'm on fire) news from the TuneTracker camp, ZETA camp and even the coming back of a site which has been in hibernation.
As for TuneTracker Systems, they's (un)officially announced a new product named ToneTracker. ToneTracker is a "Broadcast Tools Switcher Package", meaning you will now be able to select from several audio sources, sattelite, other feeds, etc. This tool will give the broadcaster a bigger control over the broadcast, opening new possibilities. They can do manual or even automated switching. There will be three packages available: ToneTracker 4, 8 and 16, allowing to switch between the respective number of stereo sources. Each comes with the switchable, which is rack-mountable. Check it all out over at the ToneTracker page.
From the ZETA world, they've updated their ZETA-OS site with a listing of the development progress they've been making. In this first update they cover MultiUser (one of biggest progress made is that no reboot is required for new users to be recognized), the IntelExtreme gfx driver, MakeMe updates and more pthreads work. Check it out.
As for the website comeback. Remember ZetaNews? I received this morning an e-mail from Frans letting me know that they've resuscitated the site. As of today (or tomorrow, depends on their DNS being updated), you can again visit the site and read some news, posted either by Frans or Joyce.
Last but definitely not least, Kian (aka MYOB), being the self-promoter, narcissistic irish that he is, wrote a news piece about his work on the latest VLC 0.8.6-test1 that he published, for everyone to test. This new version brings, among others, playback of WMV9 files along with Flash8 and Flash9 files. Soon a test2a build will be available for some more testing.
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Luc, aka Begasus, from BeBug fame, wrote an introduction/tutorial to a new tool which can be found in ZETA 1.21, named MakeMe. MakeMe is a all-in-one type of application for developers, with it you can create your app, compile and package it, and more.
Begasus gives you a description of various stages he went through (and which developers will also go through), to create a ZETA theme, a very nice one I might add, I'll have to ask him to send me. Plenty of screenshots can be seen as well, so head over and enjoy the reading.
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No, it's not due to them coming out of the pool, nothing like that. It's in fact, due to some smart coding by Stippi, who developed the Haiku Vector Icon Format, HVIF for short. In his most recently article about it, Stephan discusses the secrets behind HVIF which help make the icons so small and fast to draw.
The topics discusses are Coordinates, Paths, Flags, Matrices and Styles, giving helpful explanations and tips for each one. Anyone wanting to make icons for Haiku (but not exclusively) should read, so head over and enjoy.
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One of the things that has been missing on the BeOS platform, either it is for BeOS, ZETA or Haiku, is pthread, and this was also something that yellowTAB experienced when they were working on a port of OpenOffice.
A few external developers have already shown their interest in getting access to the new lib and it's current header, among them are the BeZilla team and SHINTA, who needs it for his current project "Anthy for ZETA". Others interested in sources should make contact with Bernd Korz.
The pthread sources will be made available to the Haiku project.
Related link:
http://www.berndsworld.com
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Recently, much has been said and talked about, regarding Haiku's icons, due to the announcement of the winner icon set (done by stippi as you know). After that discussion, stippi wrote an article at the Haiku website, where he wanted to, as he says, introduce the reader to "some interesting facts about the new Icon format that Haiku is using". This is more of a tech-oriented article, where he focuses on the differences between Haiku's and Vistas icons, the new classes that were created, etc.
On the opposite, artistic side, you have the Haiku Icon Guidelines, which tries to explain the "artistic subtleties" of the icons and their creation. This piece focus on perspective, colours, light sources and more, making it a definite plus as information source to anyone wanting to create their own icon(s)/icon set(s) for Haiku.
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Magnussoft updated their site a couple of days ago, with the news of the upcoming (for some after the still upcoming 1.21) ZETA 1.5. According to them, ZETA 1.5 will be their "professional" version. Among many fixes and enhancements, fully listed on their site update, you'll find MultiUser, which we here at ICO previewed a while ago. This is a huge, difficult change to implement, since ZETA (and BeOS before) has always been single user oriented. The update will cost 29€ and will be available solely through ZETA-OS.com.
One item they mention which piqued my interest is called MediaFire. They don't say much about it, but from the list of fixes/changes, they do list it as a CD/DVD burning application. We here at ICO will try to get some more information from the sources and will let you know as soon as that happens. Stay tuned!
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Ralf, aka Stargater, recently compiled and released the latest Aspell build. Aspell is a spell checker as the name suggests, an open-source one, aimed at replacing Lspell. You can read more about it over at the Aspell official page.
Queue Stephen B., from BeOSNews fame, who wrote an Aspell how-to, tips and tricks guide, destined to everyone out there wishing to use it. He covers different usages, like creating an extension for the editor Pe or, in alternative, creating a shortcut icon, to where you an drag files to be checked. It's a very interesting read, so follow the link above, head over and enjoy.
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The latest Haiku image (21.21 MB) is now making use of the new, improved Deskbar and Tracker with support for scalable vector graphics. Also Stephan Assmus' award winning icon set, Stippi, has been included:
The improved Tracker supports the following icon sizes: 16x16 (Mini Icon View), 32x32, 40x40, 48x48 and 64x64. As you can see from the screenshot, only a few icons have been finished. Having said that, this is a great start and the quality of the few icons is high.
Stephan Assmus has sent us a screenshot showing Haiku running with far more scalable icons, along with some additional information.
Things noteworthy about the new icons:
1. Each icon takes about Bytes of storage space (600-700 on average), compared to the fixed 1280 Bytes that R5 icons use. The new Windows Vista icons take up to 80 KBytes, Vista is the first Windows that adds support for compressed icons (PNG). PNG support will also be added to Haiku, in order to better support icons which originate from photos.
2. Each icon contains its own true color palette and support for transparency.
3. Icons are rendered in a single pass, not every shape in its own pass, being both faster and more correct (no seems between shapes).
4. There is support for "level of detail" meaning one icon could look different at different sizes, some icons use this to have less detail at small sizes, or have a stronger outline at 16x16.
5. All icons were created with Haiku's own Icon-O-Matic editor, the editor has it's own native format, with for example support for naming each shape, style and path. It also supports reading and writing of SVG (simple, but all McClintock and zuMi icons load fine).
6. The support for the new format in Haiku is throughrough, only few things are missing yet (device drivers that return an icon are unchanged yet). For example both DiskProbe and FileTypes already support it, and every "old" app that uses the R5 icon API will get the new icons, although rendered at 256 colors if necessary. Support for the old icons is also still there, as well as direct support for vector icons in the BNode, BNodeInfo, BMimeType, BAppFileInfo etc classes. There was no special changes to Tracker with regards to vector icons, only the bitmap format changed from 256 colors to true color, and support for using alpha blending was added as well as chosing other icon sizes. The actual vector icon support sits in libbe. There is a new class BIconUtils that can be used to deal with icons.
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