[Communicator-user] Announcing GalaxyCommunicator 3.0beta2

[Samuel L. B. <sa...@li...>]

All - 

We are, as usual, pleased and relieved to announce the availability of
Galaxy Communicator 3.0beta2. Version 3.0 has been under development
since late summer, and this beta is complete; the code has been frozen
since late December. Even though the internals of the infrastructure
have changed in some major ways, the upgrade from 2.1 to 3.0 will be
quite simple for the great majority of users.  Version 3.0 features:

    1. Vastly improved tools for managing simultaneous sessions 
    2. More flexible and robust Hub-server interaction, including the
       introduction of continuations and the elimination of deadlocks  
    3. Support for server location files, which help maintain
       consistent port location information across Hub and server  
    4. Many infrastructure improvements, including cross-language
       support for distinguishing among Galaxy Communicator versions, 
       improved timed task control, and a consistent, event-driven
       programming model for embedding the Galaxy Communicator library  
    5. Improvements in the frame library, including support for
       dynamically expandable lists and arrays, better memory management 
       options, and access to the full range of Communicator types as
       frame fills  
    6. More flexibility in the Hub syntax and organization, including
       better management of servers and service types, new support for 
       choosing among available servers, and an alternative syntax
       which provides a wider array of control options and eliminates 
       some of the idiosyncracies in the default syntax 
    7. A completely revised communications protocol, including XDR
       encoding for all brokering and message traffic and better 
       encapsulation of administrative information 
    8. Significant brokering improvements, including access to the
       full range of Communicator types for brokering and automatic support 
       for multiple subscribers for outgoing brokers 
    9. A PDF version of the HTML documentation (thanks to
       http://www.easysw.com and their open source conversion tool!)  

Changes from 3.0beta1 include: 

    1. Expanded availability of the new alternative Hub syntax 
    2. Elimination of all known memory leaks 
    3. Bug fixes 
    4. Improvements in Java documentation and upgrade notes 
    5. Better support for broker aborts, including updates to all
       audio examples  
    6. Improvements to PDF rendering of the HTML documentation 
    7. Expanded Hub debugging support, featuring an interactive loop to
       explore the Hub state  
    8. Final implementation of encapsulation of administrative
       information between Hub and server  
    9. Shortening of default poll increment from 100 ms to 5 ms 

We are continuing to test the infrastructure extensively, and will
release 3.0 final in the near future. There will be no feature
changes, modifications or enhancements between this beta and the final
release, only bug fixes. Please direct all bugs, as usual, to
bug...@li...; please do not send mail directly to
members of the Communicator team.

The GalaxyCommunicator 3.0beta2 distribution comes with extensive
documentation (see docs/index.html), a detailed list of new features
(see docs/new_features.html), and an upgrade guide for 2.1
installations to 3.0beta2 (see docs/3point0upgrade.html). Upgrade
assistance and guidance is also available at
bug...@li....

The GalaxyCommunicator 3.0beta2 release is an open source
distribution. It is available at http://fofoca.mitre.org/download.

Samuel Bayer 
For the Communicator team 

P.S. MIT Galaxy users: The MIT Galaxy system will not compile against
Galaxy Communicator 3.0beta2 without minor modifications.  MITRE has a
set of working patches, which you may contact me directly in order to
obtain.