Reindexing Files
Stephen B. - October 25th, 2007

Ever attempt to solve a problem – only to realize that you had already solved it several years earlier? While getting my BeOS machine back up and running recently, I ran into that situation. I figured that it was a good time to upgrade the hard drive while I was working on it anyway, and ended up having to reindex some files on the new drive – but I couldn’t remember the proper syntax for the “reindex” app. Fortunately, a few minutes of searching Usenet via Google Groups revealed that some helpful fellow had already posted the answer to comp.sys.be.help back in 2002. And to my amusement, it turns out I had made the post.

For anyone who might find the info useful, here are three examples for reindexing BeMail, Person, and MP3 files (respectively):

reindex -r -v "MAIL:*" mail/
reindex -r -v "META:*" people/
reindex -r -v "AUDIO:*" mp3/

While there’s always the more manual method of duplicating / copying the files and deleting the originals, the reindex app is a bit simpler if you have a large number of files to deal with.

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BeZilla – “I have some good news, and…”
Stephen B. - October 25th, 2007

Oscar Lesta recently wrote in to let us know about an interesting – if disheartening – discussion that took place this summer on the BeZilla LiveJournal site. To quote BeZilla developer “tigerdog”:

The 2.0 chain is the end of the road for Firefox development for BeOS. The continuing addition of dependencies (there are LOTS now) continually increases the level of effort necessary to keep Firefox building. Combine this with the fact that more and more devs are focused on getting Haiku running and released and it leaves us too many demands and not enough resources.

If I had a say, we’d still fix a few niggling problems (like windows not repainting until resized) and in a perfect world, we’d unravel the SSL-induced hang and establish some limited printing support. Throw those changes into the 2.0 branch and move on to a webkit-based browser for Haiku.

He also recommends keeping a close eye on Ryan Leavengood’s efforts to port WebKit to Haiku. While it is unfortunate to read that the BeZilla project is apparently approaching some potentially-insurmountable obstacles, the BeZilla devs still deserve plenty of praise for all the progress they’ve made so far – and it’s great to see that they’re still dedicated to improving the BeOS releases based on the current codebase (as the recent Firefox update shows).

Category: News   -   1 Comment »

“There’s Haiku Logos Everywhere, Man!”
Stephen B. - October 25th, 2007

No, we haven’t been smokin’ the BeDoper – it’s just that lovely time of year up here in Canada when you can’t step outside without seeing a Haiku logo in every direction.

That is some truly-brilliant guerilla-marketing: a logo that literally grows on trees! That also has to be worth some “green computing” brownie-points too.

 

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Firefox 2.0.0.8 Released
Stephen B. - October 25th, 2007

This past Saturday, Firefox 2.0.0.8 was made available for download on BeBits. In addition to bringing the BeOS release up-to-date with the latest official release, the new build also includes a number of BeOS-specific changes. From the release details:

• Faster library loading thanks to building with -bsymbolic (bug 389953)
• Faster icon loading in download manager (bug 327296)
• Pseudo-bold font emulation for typefaces lacking boldface (172785)
• Working shutdown from Deskbar or when shutting down system (bug 164498)
• New resource file eliminates MIME-types for mail and news since Firefox does not handle these (bug 397204). This one did not actually make it into 2.0.0.8 but was added as a patch. It will be in a later branch release.

It’s especially nice to see that the shutdown bug – a long-standing issue – is now resolved.

Category: News   -   1 Comment »

Back in BeOS
Stephen B. - October 18th, 2007

After being stuck in (primarily) Windows for the better part of two months, I finally have my BeOS machine up and running again. From three days of off-and-on troubleshooting, it turned out that the sole cause of the problem (OS refusing to boot fully) was simply a corrupted app_server_settings file.

My apologies if you’ve EMailed me recently and haven’t received a reply yet – I’m hoping to get caught up on replies and recent news over the next few days.

Category: News   -   1 Comment »

Xentronix Moves to OS X
Stephen B. - June 9th, 2007

Remi Grumeau of HaikuNews has recently confirmed – via EMail correspondence with Frans van Nispen – that they are no longer developing software for BeOS-related platforms and have moved to OS X as their target platform. The future of Xentronix’s flagship product – the image editor Refraction – had already been in something of a state of limbo due to the discontinuation of ZETA (development of Refraction had been handed over to Magnussoft just under a year ago), but this is the first official confirmation from Xentronix.

While we’re sorry to see him go, we wish Frans and company success with developing OS X software. The story has also been posted by IsComputerOn and BeGroovy.

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Site Updates
Stephen B. - June 6th, 2007

Despite the apparent recent-inactivity of the site, we’ve been making a few changes behind the scenes. There have been the usual small tweaks and fixes – E.g., author names of news items are now EMail links, registration and login links have been added to the lefthand navigation (handy for frequent comment-posters), some requested links have been added, etc.

One fairly significant new feature has been added: the News Aggregate page. It contains links to several BeOS / Haiku-related sites and their latest headlines (grabbed via RSS). I’ve been using a similar page to keep track of BeOS-related news – hopefully others will find it useful as well. If there are any requests to add (or remove) a feed, please contact us or post a comment.

And one old feature has been added – for lack of a better description. After a few people had written in asking where to find articles from the old version of the site, I finally got around to finding a way to import the old articles into the current, shiny WordPress-powered version. WordPress has a handy option to import articles from the contents of an RSS feed (in a .xml file) – so while it’s not entirely perfect (images are missing, old comments weren’t imported either), the majority of the precious, precious content is is there. Even the horrible, horrible puns.

Stay tuned for a few more tweaks and new additions – and maybe even a few news items (*gasp*).

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