Association Subscribers Manager and Open source stuffs

Hi,

I made tons of modifications in Association Subscribers Manager this week end, I will blog about them next time. For today, I just wanted to let a quick post to show you the most visible update : the look and feel.

This is how Association Subscribers Manager used to be (click to enlarge):

and this how Association Subscribers Manager now look like (click to enlarge):

From my point of view, it is a big improvement !

Arnaud Dupuis

Hi,

I am very pleased to annouce the immediate availability of the first Beta
version of the 3.0 branch of Association Subscribers Manager.
I want to particularly thanks Daniel Persson and Diego Ferreira for their
amazing work on Association Subscribers Manager translations. Thanks to them
the software is now also available in Swedish and Brazilian Portuguese.

You can download packages and installer at :
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=211536&package_id=254244&release_id=680291

You can report bugs and ask for new features at:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=211536

Here is a list of the main changes :

Association Subscribers Manager version 3.0BETA1

Releases main changes are :

* Translations:
Association Subscribers Manager now supports the following languages :
  - Swedish (Daniel Persson)
  - Brazilian Portuguese (Diego Ferreira)
  - French
  - English

* Software changes:
        - Add 8 countries' postal codes : Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Great
Britain, Mexico, Netherlands, USA.
        - all code is now fully licensed under the GPLv3 license
        - multiple bugfixes in the XML handlers
        - update user interface layouts to make it fit in many screen types (from
netbooks to wide screens)
        - group all regionalisation related settings into a Locales tab in the
settings window
        - Code-rewrite for a better support of translations
        - Add country flag icons (borrowed from http://www.IconDrawer.com)
        - fix bug 2778971
        - suppress the (ugly) blinking effect on passive popups
        - fix code in the setting window to prevent user from unwillingly removing
emails, fees or activity
        - add new artworks : application icon and splashscreen
        - fix some of the error messages issued at application's first run
        - fix postal codes writing codes (now save postal codes only when it was
changed)
        - fix a bug in the UI allowing the edition of non existent members.
        - lots of UI behaviour modification (click on edit action now hide config
widget if shown, on edit mode, on settings activation edit mode is unchecked,
etc).

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

Update: I have updated this tutorial to include the testing part.

Hi !

My "Help wanted" call for translators on Sourceforge was quite a success. It is a success since I had answers, but not that much since I have no actual work done so far. That may be because of a lack of informations on how to do the translation job in Association Subscribers Manager.

So ! For all the peoples who wants to translate Association Subscribers Manager (or any other Qt4-based software) in their own language, here is my super quick howto.

Prepare to fight !

First thing comes first : be sure that your system have all required software installed. To work on the Association Subscribers Manager translation ou will need to access the code repository on Sourceforge. This is the place were all the files related to the project are stored (code, artwork, data, translations, etc.). This is publicly accessible for reading but I have to give you write access for you to be able to put your work on the repository.

The repository is a Subversion (shortened in SVN) on, and is accessible on Sourceforge.To be able to retrieve files from this SVN repository you have to install a subversion client on your system. On GNU/Linux based system their is high chances that you already have one, if it is not the case install it via your distribution package manager. On windows... well, obviously if you did not installed it before, you don't have a subversion client. You have to install one like TortoiseSVN. On Mac OS X I have no idea about the pre-installed SVN client, but I found a package from Martin Ott. So maybe you don't have any SVN client installed either.

Once the SVN client installed, please install the Qt 4 framework (if not already installed). On GNU/Linux it should be already installed (take care : we are talking about Qt 4 >= 4.4.0 not Qt 3 !). If it is not, for all plateforms, the quickest way to install Qt 4 and all the required tools is to install the brand new Qt 4.5 SDK. To do this, go on http://www.qtsoftware.com/downloads and choose the LGPL / Free downoad. Download the SDK (Software Development Kit) for your plateform. Once downloaded install it on you computer.

You are now ready to translate (or develop...) Association Subscribers Manager. If I summarize, you need :

• a SVN client
• the Qt 4 framework.

Retrieve files from the repository.

This is called "check out", you check the code out of the repository, easy to remember; isn't it ? You have various ways to do this, with tortoiseSVN it looks like you have to right clic in your file explorer and select "check out repository" (or something like that...), but the easiest way is to type in a console :

svn co https://assuma.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/assuma assuma

It will create a new directory called "assuma" (for ASsociation SUbscribers MAnager). This one contains all the code (and the translation files).

You are now ready to start translating !

Translate Association Subscribers Manager.

First, you have to be sure that your  translation is supported by the project file. To do so, edit the association_subscribers_manager.pro file. This is a text file saved in the UTF8 encoding. Search for the line starting with the word TRANSLATIONS and check if the language you want to work on have a translation file (ending with .ts). Translation files are named after this template : assuma_<language code>.ts. For example for Italian : assuma_it.ts. All .ts file are stored in the i18n/ directory. If there is no file for your language, just add it at the end of the TRANSLATIONS line. For example for Italian, I just have to add at the end of the line : i18n/assuma_it.ts

Once this is done, just save the file to continue.

You will need to update the translations tokens. To do so, open a terminal, go in the assuma/ directory and type :

lupdate association_subscribers_manager.pro

This will create the new files and update existing one with new and deprecated translations tokens.

Now it is easy, all the translation is done with Qt Linguist, so start the (Qt) Linguist tool. On windows it is in Start -> Qt SDK by Nokia ... -> Tools -> Qt Linguist, on Linux it is wherever your distribution linked it but probably in the "Development" section of the Gnome or KDE menu, or wherever you installed the SDK. Mac users... please search by yourself, I don't have any Mac to test.

Load a translation file, they are in the assuma/i18n/ directory (where assuma is the SVN repository you checked out before). The .ts files are the one you are interested in (the .qm are the compiled versions). You now should have a list of tokens to translates. Please refer to the Qt Linguist manual for translators to learn how to use this tool efficiently.

Once you have finished the job or you have something else to do, please save your work and commit it to the repository. Commit your work is done by selecting the appropriate "commit" command on whatever graphical interface you use, or by typing this in a shell :

svn commit

You can also commit a specific file :

svn commit i18n/assuma_fr-FR.ts

Sometime the EDITOR environment variable is not set and the svn command complains about it. In this case just do :

EDITOR=vim svn commit

Off course you can use any text editor instead of vim.

Test the result of your work

Actually this should be done before committing anything...

To test your work, it is very easy. First you need to compile the .ts file into a .qm one (Qt 's own binary format for translation files). To do this, open a terminal, go to the assuma/ directory and type :

lrelease association_subscribers_manager.pro

This will create all the .qm files. Then you have to file the language list description. This is the data/langpack.lst file the format is :

Language name;Language icon;Translation file

for example for Italian:

Italiano;images/flags/it.png;i18n/assuma_it.qm

Then you just have to restart the Association Subscribers Manager binary and go to Settings -> Locales and you will see be able to change the language to your freshly created one.

Conclusion.

That was not that difficult no ? I hope it helped a little, please feel free to ask questions in the comments or by dropping me an email at: a dot dupuis at infinityperl dot org. You can also try to find me on skype (arnaud underscore dupuis).

I hope this post will generate new vocations !

Arnaud Dupuis.

Hi !

Thanks to Diego Ferreira, Association Subscribers Manager is now available in Brazilian Portuguese !

The whole interface support this new language from the SVN r146.

My great thanks to Diego for his excellent work on this translation. He told me that it is his first time helping an Open Source software so I welcome him in our great community ! Once again thank you very much Diego.

Here is a screenshot of the result (click to enlarge):

Arnaud Dupuis

Hi,

once again, the title of the post states something true : Association Subscribers manager have a brand new icon ! Here it is (click on image to enlarge) :

You may wonder why a new icon ? First, because the old one was ugly, then because the first alpha version is not far from being released.

The first alpha release will lack some features like the plugin system and some features may still not works correctly like the fee calculation system wich will be fully functionnal only after the federation's file parser. But as soon as the public API is fully documented and code is stabilized I will release the first alpha version of the 3.0 branch.

Expect the first 3.0-alpha version before the end of april.

Arnaud Dupuis

Hi,

in the development process one thing is very important : the documentation. And Assuma lakes one very important thing: documentation !

But fortunatly this problem is about to be solved ! Starting with the revision 119 I will change this and documents all public methods/slots of the Association Subscribers Manager API. At this point of the project, documentation is really importante since I plan on openning the source code to external contributions. Moreover the upcomming plugin system will also need an excellent documentation if I want people to develop plugins for Association Subscribers Manager ;-).

Arnaud Dupuis

PS: I am almost done with the super-ultra-absolute-comprehensive-howto-install-cutting-edge-Slackware-Linux-on-EeePC !

Hi,

I've been busy recently so I forgot to update the blog. Actually, I worked a lot on Association Subscribers Manager and got most of the application working.
The last progress I made were in the updater. Here is some screenshots of it (windows version) :



As you can see it is perfectly functional ! The only major features that the current version lack are :

• Support for federations (current state: 5 %)
• Better comparison system for embed fees (current state: 80 %)
• Support for plugins (current state: 0 %)

When the 2 first are finished to be coded, I will launch the first pre-alpha test phase (I think in a week or two).

Well, work is getting done slowly but surely

As you may have noticed I put slack-get in a stalled mode until I release the 3.0 version of Association Subscribers Manager.

See you later.

Arnaud Dupuis

Hi,
It's been a while since I last update the blog... Sorry for that, but in the other hand I worked a lot on Association Subscribers Manager.
I worked so much that I'm almost ready for a pre-alpha release. Some features are still not yet implemented but most of the hard work is already done. There is tons of new features in this new 3.0 version. I can list, from my deficient memory, the followings :

• direct edition in the list view by double-clicking on a subscriber
• the whole software has been recoded with C++/Qt4 which means that it is now available on microsoft windows and apple mac os x
• new subscribers' database format which allow, for example, to embed fee settings
• a brand new interface with fancy elements like sliding popup
• a new user interface paradygm : popup limited to the minimum, most of the time all windows are embed in the main one
• lots of performance improvements
• compatibility with previous versions of Association Manager
• and so on, and so forth...

All of these things are available right now on the SVN repository. For those who subscribed to the "Assuma Service Pack", the latest compiled version is available at http://download.infinityperl.org/association_manager/3.0-poc/.
Once again, I remind to all people who may read this, that Association Subscribers Manager is an Open Source software and the sources can be downloaded from Sourceforge's SVN. But, I am selling some services around this software, like trainning, packaging, automatic updates, etc.

I am planning a final release of the 3.0 version in the beginning of 2009 (maybe during february). Anyway I will keep you informed.
And concerning slack-get... Well... I have work a lot on Association Subscribers Manager