F-Spot 0.7.0 Released!
After a month of intense hacking, we have just released F-Spot 0.7.0, the first release of the unstable 0.7 series, which will lead up to a stable 0.8.0 in September. This means radical changes, possible breakage (which we try to avoid) and generally a lot of progress.
The goal of thus cycle is to replace as much code bits by Banshee-code (where possible), clean up, refactor, blingify. All of this will make it much more stable and hackable, allow us to solve some of our long standing issues (performance / memory usage) and do more radical changes (on the UI and internally).
Highlights of this release
Import has been rewritten completely, to make it more hackable and less crash-prone. Along with that, there is now duplicate detection that actually works. Another side effect is that it should be much faster and use a lot less memory (unless you are importing from a PTP camera, that’s quite slow currently, I recommend a cardreader).
Much faster and less memory hungry import, with duplicate detection that works flawlessly
Anton Keks implemented reparenting and detaching of versions. This means that you can combine multiple similar photos (e.g. bursts of photos). You can also detach versions of a photo into a separate photo. Very handy to organize large amounts of very similar photos.
You can combine photos by simple drag-and-drop.
It is now possible possible to select photos by mouse drag and to pan around in photos using the middle mouse button. To very basic features that were missing for way too long. Facebook support has been fixed and there is a brand new user manual. And finally, we’ve seen a large amount of code being replaced by the Hyena (part of Banshee) equivalents (this is an ongoing process) and there were over 100 bugs closed. A full overview of all the changes can be found in NEWS.
What’s next?
In the next release we’re planning to continue our current effort. One of the highlights you can expect is a brand new and extremely tested metadata layer we’ve been building for almost a year now. It will also bring more performance and stability improvements plus plumbing work that will allow us to build really exciting new things. More on that in the recent meeting minutes.
Where to get it
Download F-Spot 0.7.0 from GNOME FTP. OpenSUSE users can get packages using the open build service, in GNOME:Apps:F-Spot:Unstable.
More info
More info can be found in the full release announcement. This release would have not been possible without all the people that contributed to it. Many thanks to them. A full overview is in the announcement.
Want to help out?
F-Spot is made by you. Yes, you! If you want to help out, come and talk to us on #f-spot on irc.gnome.org or on our mailing list. We are there to help you out. Absolutely no inspiration where and how to start? We have easy tasks with instructions to make your first steps.
Related
- A tale about design: part two (June 5, 2010)
- F-Spot 0.6.2 Released! (May 14, 2010)
- Photo support for TagLib# (November 2, 2009)
- Summer of Code 2009 (September 9, 2009)
- F-Spot 0.6.0 (August 8, 2009)