[Syllable-announce] Syllable 0.6.6 is, finally, released!

[Kristian V. D. V. <va...@li...>]

I am very proud and very very happy to announce the release of Syllable
0.6.6 at long last!

This has been the longest, most difficult release we have ever overseen,
and I'd like to say a huge, massive thank you to Kaj and Anthony for
their help and support, to every single person who has contributed to
making this release happen, and of course to everyone in the community
to continuing to support Syllable even when things have been very quiet.

The highlights of this release include:

o A new web browser based on a newer version of the Webkit rendering
  engine.
o Support for running virtual machines inside of Qemu
o Improved installation and upgrade processes
o Improved POSIX compatability
o The usual clutch of bug fixes and enhancements.

You can download Syllable 0.6.6 now from various sources, the links to
which are on the website http://web.syllable.org/pages/get-Syllable.html

An upgrade from the previous release and a pre-configured VMWare image
are also available.

If you are installing Syllable for the first time you should read the
installation instructions, which are available on the Syllable
installation CD or from http://web.syllable.org/Desktop/Install.txt

The changes and bug fixes for this release are below, and you can find
the full release notes for this release at
http://downloads.syllable.org/Syllable/i586/systems/Desktop/0.6.5/README-SyllableDesktop-0.6.5.txt

--
Changes for Syllable 0.6.6

Drivers
 o Added an AGP bus manager
   o Added Via, nVidia, SiS & ALi AGP GART HCD drivers. All of this is
from Dee Sharpe <dem...@ne...>
 o Detect the Intel i945GME chip in the i855 driver.
 o Updated the GeForceFX driver with PCI IDs for newer cards. Largely
untested. Patch from Alexandru Mizeranschi <le...@ya...>
 o Synced the ACPI bus manager with Linux 2.6.26.2. Patch from Zoltan
Kovacs <gi...@ny...>
 o Minor bugfixes to iso9660 driver and kernel/cpuid, thanks to c0x.
 o Added a workaround to the rtl8169 driver for a GCC optimisation bug
which creates a reference to memcpy() after the pre-processor has run,
hence is undefined.
   o Small fix to the rtl8169 driver so it doesn't crash when it's
loaded.

Kernel
 o A bunch of PThreads improvements:
   o Implemented thread cancellation. pthread_cancel() &
pthread_testcancel() now work.
   o Fixed a couple of stupid errors in libpthread where || (Boolean OR)
had been transposed for && (Boolean AND) causing some simple sanity
checks to fail.
 o Added kernel boot parameters to get_system_info(), raising
SYS_INFO_VERSION to 4
   o Removed old get_system_info() code for versions 1 & 2
 0 Added kernel parameter printk_max=n to limit boot messages
 o Fixed alignment check in descriptors.c as pointed out by c0x.
 o Export get_bool_arg() properly from the kernel and remove the
duplicate get_bool_arg() code from drivers
 o posix/limits.h: Moved certain macro definitions to be outside the
gaurd for __STRICT_ANSI__. This ensures macros like PATH_MAX are defined
when -ansi is used.
 o Implemented POSIX timers with setitimer() & getitimer(). ITIMER_REAL
timers appear to work. ITIMER_VIRTUAL & ITIMER_PROF timers have not been
tested.
   o Re-wrote sys_alarm() to use the POSIX ITIMER_REAL timer instead of
it's own list. The send_signal_alarms() function has been completely
removed.
 o Never return -EINTR from tcp_connect()
 o Make fcntl() F_SETLK more standards compliant. A process can now call
F_SETLK for a region which it already holds another lock on, and the
existing lock will be replaced or adjusted to acomodate the new lock.

Appserver
 o Added 'Swap left & right mousebuttons' pref to appserver; thanks to
Adam.
 o Fixed Winter, Blue and Warpspeed decorators.
   o Added unload_decorator() method to appserver decorator API.
 o Added an improved shutdown tool to do a clean shutdown via the
appserver.

Libsyllable
 o Modified os::Resources to internally use std::vector< ResourceDesc* >
instead of std::vector< ResourceDesc >; this bypasses the strange
rescopy crash.
 o Removed the default parameter from MessageQueue::FindMessage() to
remove the ambiguity.
 o Added os::Directory::SetPath(). Patch from Dee Sharpe
<dem...@ne...>
 o Documentation updates and bugfixes for BitmapImage relating to
Bitmap::SHARE_FRAMEBUFFER flag
 o Make the mousewheel work properly in DropdownMenus
 o Make ctrl+home, ctrl+end, shift+ctrl+home, shift+ctrl+end work
properly in
   AEdit and TextViews
 o Changed StringView to use os::drawtext_flags flags for alignment,
rather than os::alignment
 o Added a way of adding global shortcuts by registering shortcuts and
corresponding events to the appserver.
 o Added Spinner::Increment(), Spinner::Decrement() methods
 o Make Spinner correctly send value in status changed message
 o Send a "selection changed" message from TabView when a tab is
deleted.
 o TextView
   o Added a new event flag EI_WAS_EDITED which is created when
EI_CONTENT_CHANGED is created and persists until EI_ENTER_PRESSED or
EI_FOCUS_LOST is generated.
   o When the TextView is in single-line mode the text will now follow
the cursor when the text is wider than the width of the View.
 o DropdownMenu
   o Use the "events" flags from the child TextView to decide how to
generate the "final" flag. "final" will now only be set when
EI_WAS_EDITED is set by the TextView, so simple de-focusing the TextView
will not generate a spurious edit message to the client.
   o Don't generate a notification from the child TextView in
SetCurrentString()
 o Added a keymap class.  

Media
 o Fixed a handful of bugs in the ffmpeg plugin, although a lot of files
are still corrupted.

Applications
 o Patch for p7zip to workaround double-initialization of signatures.
 o Upgraded SDL to 1.2.13 from patches by Rui Caridade.
   o Upgraded SDL-Image to 1.2.7, SDL-Net to 1.2.7 and SDL-Sound to
1.0.3.
 o Added OpenSSH & NetCat to the base installation
 o Modified appserver/libsyllable to work correctly with new keymap code
 o Replaced ABrowse with Webster

Desktop
 o Bugfixes for dock plugin unloading.
 o Updated apps to use Webster rather than ABrowse: Address dockplugin,
SimpleBurn, Launch.
 o Corrected the DateTime preference applet for the new locations of
GLibC and /etc/localtime.
 o Added a keymap selector to dlogin
 o Added Mouse preferences. Patches from Jonas Jarvoll
<jon...@sy...>

Misc
 o Added experimental support for installing from and to USB memory
devices to the installer and GrUB menus.
 o Standardised main documentation location, from /atheos/Documentation/
and /boot/Documentation/ on Desktop and /Documentation/ on Server,
to /documentation/. This also gets rid of the last use of the /atheos/
symlink.
   o Added a Documentation/ symlink in the desktop templates
to /documentation/.
 o Added ReadLine to the build at a tip from Anthony and made BASh use
this external version. The added value is that INetUtils FTP now also
uses it.
 o Introduced a symlink /resources/ to /usr/. This will serve the
migration in the coming time of resource packages to /resources/, which
is a much clearer name and separates our packages from the legacy
content of /usr/ (Unix System Resources).
 o Added a number of extra GrUB entries to the install CD for hardware
testing, known emulator configurations and serial debugging.
 o Make lsattribs and dumpattribs work with read-only filesystems.

Localisation and Internationalisation
 o Added Russian translation of the welcome document, from Alexander
"azlk".

-- 
Vanders
http://www.syllable.org