Ozone 2 Shapes Up.
24 August 2002, 21:39gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the ozone layer department...

Vitaliy, aka Vitviper (those who frequent BeShare know him) has been hard at work with Ozone 2.

Ozone 1 has been out for sometime, being the (was out before JavaShare 2) the only beshare client for windows, for a while

After JavaShare got a lot of air time due to Bryan's code-a-thon, it was only fair that Ozone got it's "15 minutes of fame" as well. So i asked Vitviper to write a few lines about what's in store for Ozone 2. Well, he wrote those few lines... multiplied by a nice number...

Here's a couple of snips from the full text (to read it all click on comments at the bottom of the news):

Well, it may seem that work on Ozone has stalled. This is both true and false. Work on the Qt based Ozone 1.x has been halted. I do not plan on adding anymore features to it or extending it in any way. This includes UNICODE support, since this is pretty much impossible with Qt 2.3. I also would like to thank Jeremy very much for the Mac OS X port of Ozone! But, work on an Ozone MUSCLE client has not been stopped. (...) - Ozone 2.0 has multi-connection capabilities! There is no longer a need to launch a new instance of Ozone for every server you want to connect to! You can just spawn another window and connect to a different server, or the same one if you wish :^D. Along with this capability, Ozone 2.0 will have multi-server queries! When you launch a query, it will be sent to every server that you have a connection to!

Like i said, it's only a couple of snippets, i'm glad i didn't ask him for A LOT of info

Like i said earlier, to read it all, click below.
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Visual Component Framework For BeOS.
20 August 2002, 22:05gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the cross-dress...er... platform department...

Jim Crafton has posted some interesting info here at the TBJ forums. It's about the Visual Component Framework, or VCF for short.

As Jim goes on to say, the framework has it's similarities with Borland's (and Java) VCL. There is also an IDE builder available.

Here's more, from Jim himself:

All changes made to the form are reflected immediately in the C++ code - there is no need for a separate code gen step, like Qt's Designer, or Glade, etc. (...) Future plans include supoprt for debugging so this would be a sophisticated IDE that is unique as far as I can tell (from a price/functionality standpoint).

Very interesting indeed. We can never have too much apps for BeOS and most importantly (in my opinion), OpenBeOS, as well as the other "phoenix" projects.

For his complete post click here. For VFC's site, point your mouse.this way.

OpenBeOS Is 1 Year Old!
19 August 2002,08:50gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the goo-goo-daa-daa department...

Yes, it's been one year already... wow... time sure flies doesn't it?

OpenBeOS celebrated yesterday (still today to some around this blue sphere we call Earth) 1 year of life.

In this short (in OS time) amount of time, a great deal of progress was achieved, far greater than it was thought possible, at the time the project took off. We have a near complete BFS replacement, an even closer to completion Translation Kit, the kernel is moving along quite nicely as well... all in all, a huge amount of work and effort has been put into it, and still is, everyday that goes by, by an amazing group of coders around the world, working together with the same goal, to keep BeOS breathing and thriving.

And to celebrate it, they have a special newsletter, number 24, for you all to read. Head over to their site to check it out.

Let's all sing Happy Birthday (i won't break any glasses, i promise) and give a nice round of applause to OpenBeOS.
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Gobe Productive Released Under GPL.
19 August 2002,00:51gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the open-sauce department...

This is old news i know, but not only have we here at TBJ had a bit of a problem last week as i'm sure you've noticed, but also, i've been away since last Thursday (much needed rest away) and just arrived today.

You've all read about it, Gobe will be released, soon, as an Open Source software, under the GPL license. It was first reported by Eugenia Loli-Queru over at Os News. Click here to read their story.

Why am i'm posting this you ask? Well, in addition to everything you've read about it, i asked Simon Gauvin from BeUnited what their stand on this was, to which he said:

It would not change anything. We are still continuing with our OpenOffice support, and if we get GP, we would also continue this as well.

Not only that, but he added this:

(...)we are actively looking to get the code for GP and start it as another beunited.org project as well.

Well, i think that was worth the posting no? Straight from the... B.U.'s mouth. Let's see what the (near) future holds.

P.S.: I would like you all to welcome our new member/journalist here at TBJ, Misza as you might recall from BeShare, Brent Miszalski is real name. Welcome aboard Brent.

Update:As you can see at the BeUnited site, the project is already underway, with well known Tom Hoke joining beunited.org to lead the effort to bring GP3 to BeOS.

Here's a quote from their website:

Tom has joined beunited.org as a member of the board and will be spearheading the effort to first port GP 3 to BeOS (...) and then continue development to support open XML file standards and beyond"

A long, long time ago...
15 August 2002,12:22gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the ancient history department...

Apparently....One year hence today was when the light in our eyes faded....That B_IDEA_ALERT vanished...

And yet..WE, The BeOS Community, have survived!

As incredible as it seems, we have achieved the insurmountable in such a very short time.

OpenBeOS is charging ahead to resurrect that castle in the air which we all love, by laying in quality code at an amazing pace. They deserve our sincerest thanks and support (I hear they like cookies).

Xentronix is producing some top-class applications, namely SampleStudio and Refraction that have that nipple-hardening effect bundled in.

On the development horizon from the author of dockbert lies a modified Tracker that supports icons so beautiful you'll want to cry. BeUnited.org has stepped up to the fold, covertly going about their business of securing lucrative deals and coding without sleep.

Yes, the BeOS Community is thriving, and you only need to look around to see that there is more to us all than a "Dead" OS. Stick around...'cause the party is only getting started!!!

Xentronix=Non-Stop Action.
11 August 2002,19:40gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the busy bees department...

They do? No, they don't. They NEVER do!!! No... i'm not going insane (though some might disagree)... i'm just saying these guys never stop... they just keep going and going and going...

Xentronix gurus have updated not only their site with some very nice features, like polls, commenting made easier and also a ChatBox Online (for registered users only), but also their flagship apps, Refraction and Sample Studio, with new betas released few days ago. Closed betas, no news still about their next open beta, if you're like me, you can't wait!

One of the most interesting (and useful) new features in their site, is the "Project Information" feature. You can easily report bugs, request features and in general just follow the project status.

Like i said, these guys don't stop (oh, and they rock too).

Get the full monty at the Xentronix site.
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Storage Kit Milestone 1 Reached.
11 August 2002,19:00gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the Small Step for OBOS, Giant Leap for The Kit department...

The Storage Kit has reached Milestone 1, according to their roadmap, as was reported by Ingo Weinhold.

This is very good news for OpenBeOS. Here's a quote from the OBOS' site:

Implemented features:
1 BMessenger: Completely.
2 BRoster: Almost everything that has to do with running applications, i.e. the private methods for app registration and the public methods IsRunning(), TeamFor(), Get[Running]AppInfo(), GetAppList().
3 BApplication: The signature constructor, InitData() -- not completely: the connection to the app server is not initialized as well as a lot of members -- Run() and Quit(). The registration with the roster is complete, and hooks like ArgvReceived(), RefsReceived(), ReadyToRun() are called properly.
4 Registrar: The registrar skeleton: An application class dispatching messages, an empty clipboard handler, an empty MIME database manager. The TRoster class, the actual roster, is almost complete.

As Ingo says, there is still a lot of work, and testing to be done though, much is to be done still.

He, and the rest of the Storage Team are doing one hell of a job, then again, that's not new in OBOS land is it. As always, you can catch the latest at the OpenBeOS site.
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BeUnited & Sun Microsystems Agreement.
08 August 2002, 20:00gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the Step Into My Open Office department...

BeUnited has announced they have been approved by Sun Microsystems, Inc as a

copyright-approved organization for the porting of OpenOffice to BeOS

They go on to report that the project has just began and it's still an "infant", so they are asking the BeOS dev community for help in this effort.

If you want to contribute, and you know you do, head over to OpenOffice.org projects page, found here and hop on the wagon.
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OpenBeOS News Bulletin.
08 August 2002, 19:48gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the "changes-galore" department...

David Reid of Network (and B.A.) fame has left the OpenBeOS project. His contribution has been most valuable and he will be missed.

I hope he has much happiness and success in whatever projects the future holds for him.

Now welcome the new Networking Team lead, Philippe Houdoin. He's already started work as you can see from the Team's page and we can rest assured the Networking Team is in (very) capable hands.

On a related note, Marcus Overhagen (of CD Manager fame) has taken over the Game Kit, from Robert Medeiros. He's a busy bee and he'll need all the help you coders out there can provide.

Still (phew) on the OpenBeOS front, there has been a lot of changes to the kernel, Michael Phipps and the rest of the team have been quite busy lately, and the result shows.

You can catch all that and more over at the OpenBeOS site.

UPDATE:These guys don't stop... just as i was posting this, another news piece from OpenBeOS. This time, DarkWyrm has posted a screenshot of the "Appearance App", an OBOS only app, not present in BeOS R5, which will allow folks to change their colour settings. Nice.. very nice. Check it out right here.
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Translation Kit Team Reaches Beta!
08 August 2002, 19:17gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the "no-babel-tower-for-us" department...

Nice... very nice indeed.

The OpenBeOS Translation Kit Team has reached Beta stage in their development effort.

Has you can see in the Team Info page right here, they are pretty much finished with libtranslation.so which Michael Wilber has been using in his machine for quite some time now, without any problems. Talk about stability. He has also implemented the BMPTranslator and is on his way to start developing the TGATranslator, and i'm sure more will follow.

So 3 cheers everyone, for the Translation Kit Team, and while we're at it, for everyone else who's working in OpenBeOS.
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JavaShare 2 Code-A-Thon.
03 August 2002, 16:32gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the going and going and going department...

Bryan Varner is insane. Why do i say that? Well, he is on an ongoing, non-stop, 72 hours long code-a-thon, to bring JavaShare 2 to beta stage. See? Now you agree with me.

He had this idea not long ago, and decided to come through with it. For that he asked for help from the community, in this site. As you can see at the bottom of the page, the response was very good and it's currently underway as we speak (well, as I type).

And here's a status update from the man himself:

Progress made in the last 18 hours:
You can now 'share' files, however other users cannot download them yet, they now show up in queries.
A user-editable mime-type database exists withingJavaShare, and when files are shared, mime-types are mapped to the files extension. We play very nice with BeShare.
Currently, the query user interface is under construction, and I'm finishing up the underlying network code for queries. These should be operational by the end of the day.
So far, it's not moving quite as quickly as I had hopped, but it's moving about the speed I expected. At this rate, come Monday afternoon I'm still hoping for a beta.
Thanks to everyone stopping in on BeShare to keep me going! It really does help!

Bryan

So far so good, he hasn't dropped stiff yet. So everyone who's in BeShare, or drops by, give him a cheer, i'm sure he'll appreciate it, and need it.

UPDATE:The Code-A-Thon is now over, and what do you know, Bryan made it in one piece... or something similar to it. You can read the end result right here. Also, check out the interview he gave Neil Morris over at the BeOS Radio site.
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New OpenBeOS Site Is UP.
03 August 2002, 16:16gmt, by , Contributing Journalist
From the "it's the same? No it's not" department...

Well folks, Kurtis Kopf has done it. It's been in the forges for sometime, and the day has arrived. The new OpenBeOS site is up and running.

What's that you say? It looks just the same? Well... almost, but not really. Outside there are some changes, but the underlying is what got the most work done. Here's a small quote from the man himself:

Things You Should Take A Look At:
There is now a "Print" feature for News Articles, Newsletters, and the FAQ's Section. The small Print icon will allow you to currently select from two different printable forms.
There is a new and improves News Article Archive system to make it easier to find the news you're looking for.
The Teams Pages have had a new Tasks system added, which allows Team Leaders to post important tasks that need to be done along with information about the tasks.
The old Members page has been replaced with a new Contributors page, in order to reflect the new structure of the project. Just as a general rule of thumb, if you have contributed code to the CVS tree, then you are probably on the list or will be quite soon. Names are constantly being added, so don't panic if you're not there yet.

And that's just a small part of it all. To catch the whole news, head over to the OpenBeOS site. The adress you ask? Well, that hasn't changed, it's still this one :)
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