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The long time BeOS programmer SHINTA has this autumn been busy with porting the Anthy input method to the BeOS platform. Anthy is an input method add-on for typing Japanese kana-kanji strings. It works in the way that you can type roman letters (romaji), and the Anthy IM generates Japanese hiragana strings. Then push space bar, and IM converts hiragana strings to kana-kanji (mixed with hiragana and kanji) strings.

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There are already a few Japanese input methods available for BeOS/ZETA/Haiku. For instance BeIM was for instance bundled with BeOS 5 Personal Edition, Canna (a freeware developed by Mr. Murai), EGBRIDGE (a commercial product by ERGOSOFT), Kaede (a commercial product by PC-CRAFT). In SHINTA's opinion the EGBRIDGE solution was the the best, but EGBRIDGE for BeOS is now sadly pulled of the market.

The lack of a decent input method, motivated SHINTA to port the Anthy IM to ZETA. Originally Anthy was developed for Linux by Tabata and Yoshida. Anthy has become highly popular and is today included in many Linux distributions and MacOS X, because of it's high conversion quality. Shinta has made the port of the conversion engine in to Lib Anthy (libAnthy.so), and is now busy with developing the more visual parts of Anthy for ZETA after the ZETA coding guidelines to get a native interface. This work includes hiragana generation, kanji candidates window, palette window, and so on.

Allthough Anthy for ZETA is still in development, the following advanced features has been implemented:

1. Support kana input: You can save typing than Roman input in generating hiragana string

2. Powerful post convert: You can convert to not only kana-kanji strings, but also katakana and wide-width (zenkaku) alphabets in various patterns

3. ZETA native: There are some differences in BeOS R5 and ZETA, so former IMs can not act correctly in some situations

SHINTA could tell ICO that he was continuing development of Anthy for ZETA to support more convenient features like auto conversion, complement conversion, word registration and other similar features.

ICO is grateful for all the work SHINTA has done for the BeOS platform through the years, and are looking forward to writing more about Anthy and other projects that SHINTA might involve himself in in the future.

Update:

SHINTA has sent us a newer screenshot of Anthy in action, and asked us to publish it:

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For our Japanese readers that are interested in additional information and trying Anthy for ZETA, please visit SHINTA's project site.

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Bernd Korz updated today his blog with some very good news for (mostly) laptop users out there: the Intel Extreme 9xx family driver is now working and they are looking for testers. As you can see from the screenshot below, they are now able to select any of the card's supported resolutions and color depths. As we mentioned, it's still in testing phase, but it's a big step forward, and of course, due to their cooperation, Haiku gets this update as well.

So head over to Bernd's blog, leave a comment saying you want to test the driver, and he'll get in touch with you.

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Just got home, and when checking my e-mail, a pleasant surprise, an e-mail from the BeGeistert's infoservice, announcing BeGeistert 017. For the first time ever, and as you can tell from the title, BeGeistert will be held outside of Germany, in Milan, Italy, during the 9th-10th weekend in December. Accomodations will cost 90€ (which include 2 nights, Friday and Saturday, and breakfast), of course, booze (strictly sodas) and extra meals (who needs them during BG!) will be extra. The venue will be a hotel in central Milan.

As the mail mentions, it's a unique opportunity to visit a beautiful city while you're there, attending BG (I've done the same in Dusseldorf), so why not take your better half for a romantic trip to Milan, to spend time with other geeks, around computers? So start checking for ticket prices, like I'm doing, and hop over to Milan. As far as BG is concerned, I guarantee you won't regret it. You can check all of the information over at the BeGeistert page.

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Bernd Korz just updated his blog with the news that ZETA's MediaPlayer is now able to play DVDs. After some hard work from a developer, they were able to integrate the mpeg1.decoder, mpeg1.extractor and the ac3.decoder into their sourcetree, and so DVD watching was made possible. Of couse this is just the beginning, the mediaplayer doesn't know yet of the existence of menus (and therefore subtitles, language selection, etc), but it's a start. As a curiosity, the first played DVD was "Power of the Sound" by Soehne Mannheims. Obligatory screenshot follows.

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As I'm sure many of you know, WalterCon was held this past weekend, in Orlando, Florida, USA, the World. During the weekend, demos were held, lectures spoken and as is the norm in events like this, people mingled, talked and had a good time. One of the attendees was Jem Matzan from the Jem Report, and report he did. In it he writes a bit about Haiku's past, its future and of course, gives his thoughts on WalterCon. He has some pics for your voyeurism pleasure, but the mother lode comes from Haiku themselves, as you can see over at the WalterCon page (ok, who's with me here, doesn't my friend Rene look like he's sleeping in this pic? He's the one on the right).

The surprise you ask? Ah yes. One thing that was announced over the weekend, was the winner of the Haiku Icon Set contest. And we here at ICO happen to know which one it was... *opens envelope*... and the winner is... Stippi! As you can see from the shot, it's a very nice looking set, which manages to both stay faithfull to the original BeOS look but with slight changes that make it different enough to keep you looking for what's new. Congratulations to Stippi and to all others who sent their work.

Update: Ryan Leavengood wrote a report, over at the Haiku site, about his experience at WalterCon 2006. It's a very nice write up, so head over and enjoy.

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Quite a few, new things are now in an alpha/beta stage for the next update of ZETA, one of them is the implementation of the latest stable version of SAMBA, v3.0.23. As you can see from the screenshot, ZETA is now "dancing" beautifully with Linux servers.

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If you have two computers in the house, a laptop and a desktop, perhaps running different operating systems, you will be interested in storing some of the files only in one place, and then access these files remotely with one of the computers. Or perhaps you, like me, have purchased yourself a NAS (Network Attached Storage) device. For these two cases, you would most likely be using SAMBA/CIFS.

IsComputerOn used a Lacie Mini Ethernet Disk (300 GB) to test the new SAMBA client. These devices are highly popular, as many have found them perfect for digital media such as photographs, music and video. If you have a laptop, you will soon find out that you need some extra storage space. NAS devices are convenient in that you can just plug them into your home network, mount them remotely from your computer and then use them like any other drive. If you are to move some really big files, you can choose if you want to do it over a faster USB 2.0 or over inbuilt 100 MB Ethernet connection.

The new SAMBA implementation for ZETA simply rocks, you will find that you have no problems moving or deleting files on the SMB share with the Tracker. You will have no problems with using your NAS disk as your Jukebox, keeping your whole music collection in one place, and stream from it either for the computer you have in your living room or in your home office. Users will also be able to stream their DVD backups with the VideoLAN client with ease, or play XVID videos with the default Mediaplayer! On the screenshot you are seeing the old CIFS client being used. It is about to retire, as a complete new graphical frontend is in progress.

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Axel Dörfler is reporting that the work on the networking stack is slow and steadily going forward. UDP and IPv4 protocols are mostly done, and TCP can now send out data, but receiving data is still not implemented.

Current work is concentrated on getting TCP ready, and to implement a network server. This server is responsible for configuring the stack when it's started, and to take over inetd services and similar things that can or even should live in userland.

Once the foundation is done, we're moving on to fill in some holes, like an UI for configuring the stack, and porting our existing PPP solution to the new stack. A network stack might be the Christmas gift to the Haiku community.

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The first commercial game ported by RuneSoft, to ZETA, is now available and shipping. You can buy your copy either at the ZETA-OS page (shortly) or through their distributors, worldwide.

With Airline Tycoon, you will be placed on the driver's seat of your own company, where you have to beat your competition, by keeping your expenses low, profits high and customers happy. Among others, here are some features included in the game:

  • Complete freedom of action and freedom to move within the airport facilities and more than 30 places to be visited
  • Control of all parts of management: purchase of aeroplanes and their fittings, financing as well as stock market listing, planning of routes and filling order books, personnel, marketing and maintenance as well as many other details
  • Use additional security precautions against competitors’ attacks or sabotage competitors yourself

The minimum requirements for the game are: ZetaOS 1.21 or higher; Pentium III/IV at 500 MHz or better, 128 MB RAM; 32 MB Graphics card. The price is 29.95€

So if a challenging yet funny game interests you, this might be the one for you. Thanks to Thomas for the e-mail.

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I spotted this over on HaikuNews, reported by Kian. Michael Lotz, who's involved in more projects than I can count (I suck at math), has checked in (and now released over @ BeBits) his Intel Pro Wireless 2100 (vendor ID 0x8086 and device ID 0x1043) wireless driver for Haiku. The driver supports WEP encryption, in 64 and 128-bit flavours, and works in ad-hoc, infra or monitoring mode.

As Kian wrote, after an e-mail from Michael, the driver works in R5 and was commited by Michael over a wifi connection, using it, yes you guessed it, his own driver. So if you have such a device on your laptop, head over to BeBits and download it, and don't forget to get the firmware the firmware is included (thanks Michael). As always, provide Michael with feedback, even if "just" to thank him.

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Magnussoft, through their ZETA-OS site, posted yesterday a couple of news updates. The first is an explanation, a clarification on something that's caused a bit of fuss and some controversy, the need for the users, who want to purchase ZETA 1.21 as an update, to return to Magnussoft their previous ZETA CD. According to them, there are some factors that make this a necessity, the insolvency of yellowTAB and German law which "does not allow a transfer of customer data". Read the whole post, all doubts should be clarified.

The second piece is about their ZETA support, which since 4 days started. Customers can call their hotline at +49 35204 - 392885, three days a week, from 2pm to 6pm CET (more details on their announcement). According to Magnussoft, this hotline is available only to user "who bought either the Retail- or the Whitebox-Version". For all other customers, e-mail support is still available of course.