[DPP-Announce] Saros Release 14.10.31

[Zieris, F. <Fra...@fu...>]

Dear Saros users,

The Saros Team is happy to announce release 14.10.31. Since the previous release
we mostly removed unnecessary code, refactored, removed again, refactored again:
There were over 500 commits since the last release.
As a result, the Saros binaries' file size shrunk from 9.9 MByte to 7.0 MByte.
So don't expect many new features, but an improved user experience.

With this release we also set a record we are not particularly proud of:
Instead of intended one-week release process, it took us eleven months to push
Saros 14.10.31 out of the pipeline.
One reason for that: We're busy working on the IntelliJ IDEA version and a shiny
new GUI for both Saros versions. Stay tuned!

New and improved Features
* Your account information is now stored in your home directory inside a
  ".saros" folder. It's therefore independent from one specific IDE instance.
* Away messages of XMPP contacts will be displayed
* Alternative minimalistic chat layout in "IRC style" (which is way more compact
  than the default layout)
* Newly implemented, now session-independent file transfer
* Choose the Socks5 proxy candidates
* Starting a session with multiple projects at once is now faster since all
  files are put into one archive (instead of multiple per-project archives
  put into one big archive)

Disabled Features
* The optional feature "Concurrent Undo" was disabled due to Bug #836. This
  needs further investigation; as of now, activating this feature would do more
  harm than good.

Removed Features
* Need-based synchronization
* Screensharing
* VoIP

Improved GUI
* Sorting of contacts in session view: Now by display name (i.e. optional
  nickname), not by Jabber ID 
* Improved explanation on how to get started with Saros
* Improved UPnP explanation in network preferences
* Notification when receiving projects using unavailable charsets
* States of the invitation process have better labels
* Optional: better looking remote selections (cursor and blocks for multi-line
  selections)
* Restructured the "Add XMPP Account" dialog
* The 1-to-1 chat is no longer colored with session user colors

Fixed network-related issues introduced with last release (13.12.6):
* Local Socks5 Proxy was always enabled, i.e. the options to only allow
  connections over IBB and an external Socks5 Proxy Server
  (under Saros > Network) were not honored.
* Changing accounts on-the-fly without clicking reconnect was not possible

Additionally, you will find many minor fixes and usability improvements.
(For details, see the changelog at
 https://sourceforge.net/projects/dpp/files/Saros/DPP%2014.10.31/#readme.)

For stability reasons some internal changes have been made.
As a consequence Saros 14.30.31 is *not* compatible with previous versions,
so that all session participants need Saros 14.10.31 to work together.

Install and update Saros 14.10.31 via our Eclipse Update Site:
   http://dpp.sf.net/update

For more information visit http://www.saros-project.org.

Many thanks to the users who participated in our survey (although it is
currently offline) and to everyone who helped us improve our plug-in!


Best Regards,
Saros Team