New Bits of a Be variety
Stephen B. - January 20th, 2006
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Archive for the ‘News’ Category For some time, it was getting to the point where you could visit BeBits once a week and not worry about missing any major updates. Lately though – especially in the last few weeks – it seems that neat updates and new releases are posted almost every day. So after a few days of shamefully neglecting this site, here’s a brief summary of some of the more significant recent postings to BeBits. Version 2.3 of the QuickFox browser/Firefox variant has been posted; the new version sports many tweaks, a new theme, and integrates recent BeZilla patches. HaikuFox, the NetPositive-esque theme for Firefox, has been updated; the new version primarily features improvements to the “BeOS-ness” of the scrollbars. TrackerGrep, an incredibly handy utility that’s been around since Biblical times (aka, it was mentioned in the BeOS Bible), has been updated with the ability to ignore any folder names that start with a dot. As we reported a bit earlier, im_contactlist – a “buddy list” application for the im_kit – has been released and provides a nice alternative to using queries as a contact list. First reported by HaikuNews, new drivers for Echo Audio hardware were released shortly after the beginning of the year. I wonder if one of those puppies would be overkill for recording vinyl/audiocassette for conversion to CD… And last but not least, a new version of the Monkey’s Audio Suite has been posted – now with “APE detractor,” a media_kit decoder so you APE-philes can play your .APE files in any BeOS audio-capable application.
In a sad piece of news sent in by Mr. X, a notice has been posted on ZetaBeOS.com informing visitors that MetaBYte, the site’s owner, has passed away. My condolences go out to his friends and family, and even among those of us who didn’t know him, he will be missed and remembered for his generous contributions of time and effort as a member of the BeOS community.
Cola Coder has released a new application called im_contactlist which displays your im_kit contacts in a standard buddy list-type interface. A useful piece of software that can help make the im_kit more accessible to users who aren’t comfortable with using Queries/Tracker as a buddy list. He’s also posted a screenshot, which shows a very nice clean, simple UI. The application is Zeta only, and according to Cola Coder’s blog it uses several Zeta-specific APIs, so an R5 build is not currently planned. Thanks to Mr. X, who also sent me a note about this one.
Judging from a recent newspost on YellowTAB’s site, their developers have been hard at work on their port of OpenOffice.org. They’re now up to 50 of the 200 packages comprising OO.o (10 more than the previous update), including a major component called the SAL (System Abstraction Layer). From the sounds of it, they needed to create bindings between its functions and native BeOS functions, which made it necessary to add missing functionality to Zeta’s kernel and libroot library. Sounds like fun. The post also mentions that they’ve converted the suite’s cShell make-scripts to Bash and have submitted the changes upstream to OO.o. The post ends by saying that they’re looking for any developers interested in helping to accelerate the porting process.
Italian site Il tuo Sistema has a story on a new Tetris game called BeNetTris written by French BeOS programmer Cedric Vincent (aka CKJ). As well as the standard falling coloured blocks we all know and love, BeNetTris also supports networked multiplayer using a system called TetrisNet (if I read the babelfish Italian-English translation correctly). And judging from the screenshots, it has more settings available than any other Tetris program I’ve ever seen. It’s already been released, you can grab it from here and begin fragging others’ coloured geometric shapes online – or whatever it is exactly that one does in multiplayer tetris. Thanks to Mr. X for this and all the other recent news suggestions
Thanks to Mr. X for spotting this – BeZilla.org has been miraculously resurrected from the dead (or at least a long coma), without any need for lightning, neck bolts, or hunchbacked assistants. The new incarnation primarily features a forum, but it’s expected to change (and possibly break) in the near future according to a post on the BeZilla blog. Great to see the site active again!
In his post-holiday roundup over at ZetaNews, the_leander has the scoop on a new site created by BeWorld’s bs0. The new site, called BeOS Experimental news and tests, examines the various experimental versions and variants of BeOS which Be had in the works. There are a handful of articles up already, including one on the neat Spy-O-Matic app included in Dano. The site is also looking for writers, so head over and use the contact form if you’re interested in submitting content.
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