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Tuesday 19 January 2010

Happy new year and updates

By Arnaud Dupuis on Tuesday 19 January 2010, 00:39 - Association Subscribers Manager

Hi,

First things comes first : happy new year ! I wish you all the best for this 2010 year (a bit late... as usual).

Then, after a quick come back to my Perl modules, I now am back to Association Subscribers Manager ! Things have changed a lot on this side. First, the settings' user interface was to complicated so it have been split in two : association's settings and application settings. During this part of the work Association Subscribers Manager got a highly requested feature : the custom fields.

Custom fields are user defined input fields. This feature, as well with the settings part are all implemented and I now only need to fix some remaining bugs before the release. This "release" thing leads me to another point : the initial release plan was out of scale. Current changes are already lots of changes and I would like to not confuse Association Subscribers Manager's users with to many changes. And, by the way, it took me so much time to get all those working that the next release will occur next year if I keep waiting for the perfect finished program ! So the 3.1 release will feature 2 main things/changes :

  • a complete re-organisation of the settings mechanism (under the hood as well as user interface)
  • the brand new custom fields mechanism

I will post again about this specific feature (custom fields) soon.

Arnaud Dupuis

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Sunday 13 December 2009

Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps v0.4 is out !

By Arnaud Dupuis on Sunday 13 December 2009, 23:56 - Perl modules

Hi,

After many months (years...) Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps have a new release ! The original company which paid me to develop this module have bankrupted so I resumed the work on this module on my free time. It took some time...

This version introduce the new Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps::Response object, fix for the user agent, documentation, a better test suite and many improvements. It also brings a major change in the API which will require you to update your scripts. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the changes since the 0.2 version (well... 0.3, 0.3.1 and 0.3.2 were kind of tests... and thanks to Slaven Rezic and RT it's now stable) :

I hope this will meet requirements and needs concerning geocoding with Perl.
Arnaud Dupuis

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Wednesday 9 December 2009

Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps got its own Google code

By Arnaud Dupuis on Wednesday 9 December 2009, 23:34 - Perl modules

Hi,

I am resuming the work I did more than one year ago on some of my Perl modules. I don't know why but I got tired of Perl coding (certainly because I did a lot of Perl in my professional life). But in holidays, before or after snowboarding, Perl looks fun again ! After updating my Games::CroqueMonsters module, I resumed the work on Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps.

I looked at the CPAN's RT, noted bugs and feature requests and start working again on this module. Then I though that it would be nice to have a code repository for this work. Being a Sourceforge fan I tough about it first, but the over long new project form convinced me that it was not the right choice. So I gave Google Code a chance, and fortunately it do the job pretty well ! So, the new place to find development code for the Geo::Coder::GoogleMaps Perl module is here :

http://code.google.com/p/geo-coder-googlemaps/

Do not hesitate to drop by and even do/request a code review !

Arnaud Dupuis

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Friday 20 November 2009

Back from the deads

By Arnaud Dupuis on Friday 20 November 2009, 23:59 - General

Hi,
once again I gave no news for a while... My bad, but this time I have tons of good reasons !
First, my wife and me are awaiting an "happy event", this kept me busy.
Moreover, I work a lot (and I really mean a lot). I am currently in mission for Orange (European ISP, phone carrier, etc.) where I am technical project manager/coordinator (and developer) on their next set-top box. Believe me it is a lot of work.
The box is the next Intel's STB based on the Sodaville processor, my team and I are developping/integrating lots of cool stuff in this box like a full browser with Flash 10, a video game portal (from Transgaming), and a full bluray player. All those features are well presented in a brand new 3D GUI (thanks to Intel's plateform performances ! See around 1'45 of the video).

Well, all this kept me out of the web for a while but that do not means I have not coded anything ! So on Association Subscribers Manager's side, there was some changes too :
  • theme feature is fully functionnal and fully supported
  • flash plugin have been activated in the help browser and a new entry in the help menu allows you to directly the YouTube help channel in Association Subscribers Manager
  • lots of compilation options added like the possibility for packagers to not compile all code related to the updater
  • initial work on the custom fields editor
I will soon post a screen cast  of all those new features to show you guys the reality behind the words ! You can of course test all this by compiling the code from the trunk.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

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Friday 18 September 2009

Portuguese Brazilian translation update !

By Arnaud Dupuis on Friday 18 September 2009, 00:25 - Association Subscribers Manager

Hi,

After Daniel's recent update on the Swedish translation, it is now the Portuguese Brazilian translation's turn to be updated.

This allow me to introduce a new contributor to Association Subscribers Manager: Márcio Moraes (marciopanto <atnospam> gmail <dotnospam> com). Márcio have updated Diego's initial work on the Portuguese Brazilian translation. And what update ! All the interface is now available localized for Brazilian users ! Thank you very much Márcio. Here are some screenshots:


I don't know if you all know how important those contributions are, but they really are and they really count for me and all users of Association Subscribers Manager.

Once again, thanks to all the contributors !

Arnaud Dupuis.


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Sunday 26 July 2009

Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 release postponed

By Arnaud Dupuis on Sunday 26 July 2009, 02:34 - Association Subscribers Manager

Hi,

I am falling asleep in front of my computer... Release 3.0 is ready but I have not enough remaining power to test all packages extensively tonight, so the release of Association Subscribers Manager is postponed until tomorrow.

Arnaud Dupuis

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Saturday 25 July 2009

Association Subscribers Manager release day

By Arnaud Dupuis on Saturday 25 July 2009, 11:45 - Association Subscribers Manager

Hi,

Today is the Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 release day, so the entire day is dedicated to integration, last translations, last bugfixes, last documentation efforts, packaging and testing !

Let's hope the release will occur without any problem, but I'm quite confident about bugs and software issues. All possible problems may comes from the other part of Association Subscribers Manager : uncomplete documentation, packaging issues, uncomplete translations but somehow, we will manage to deliver a nice piece of software !

Arnaud Dupuis.

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Wednesday 8 July 2009

New video and updates

By Arnaud Dupuis on Wednesday 8 July 2009, 08:26 - Association Subscribers Manager

Hi !

I posted a new video about the AssumaEffect class super powers on YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltABJbAW0Do.

This one show the use of 2 effects combined and control thanks to the signals and slots of this class. This will allow more eye candy in the futur but for the moment that will be all. Indeed I had a support request on Sourceforge's tracker wich pointed some bugs to fix. So since I still have to write user documentation, I will clearly focus on bug hunting in the next few days.

By the way, for you that read this blog and use Twitter there is a #Assuma hashtag for Association Subscribers Manager on Twitter !

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

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Sunday 28 June 2009

Update, progress and release date.

By Arnaud Dupuis on Sunday 28 June 2009, 19:09

Hi,

I have been quite lazy on blog update recently... Sorry for that. In the other hand I was not for the development of Association Subscribers Manager !

First, I fixed lots of the remaining problems and at the top of the list was the license system which gave me headaches ! It is now the past and it cost only a little change in the susbcribers database file format (.adb). Changes in the source code are heavy (of course...) but the good news is : it do not break backward compatibility with development releases !

Talking about release, the Association Subscribers Manager 3.0 release will be on the 25th of july. It lets enough time for writting user documentation and to polish translations.

There is lots of changes I would like to talk about (the new possibility to print the database, the new first-run-wizard, etc.) but today is my first wedding birthday so I will give time to my wife instead of OSS for once ;-)

See you later.

Arnaud Dupuis

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Tuesday 2 June 2009

Here it comes : AssumaEffect unleashed !

By Arnaud Dupuis on Tuesday 2 June 2009, 00:25 - Association Subscribers Manager

Hi,

today I would like to introduce to you all a new class in Association Subscribers Manager API : AssumaEffect (err... the API doc might not be finished right now).

The point is : this class introduce fancy user interface effects in Association Subscribers Manager ! You doubt it ? Ok see by yourselves :

Note: if no youtube player appear, because of the stupid behavior of this blog engine (who wants to escape html in html code ???), just watch it on youtube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Jv3aRuZcI.

It is fancy, isn't it ? Not very usefull but as I always say : useless fancy things that looks great makes the user experience more comfortable !

Arnaud Dupuis

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Monday 18 May 2009

Association Subscribers Manager's new look and feel

By Arnaud Dupuis on Monday 18 May 2009, 02:09 - Association Subscribers Manager

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

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Wednesday 13 May 2009

Romanian translation for Association Subscribers Manager !

By Arnaud Dupuis on Wednesday 13 May 2009, 06:33 - Association Subscribers Manager

Hi ! Another translation have been added to Association Subscribers Manager : Romanian !
This is all thanks to Lucian Lupescu (http://lucianlupescu.co.cc/).
The whole interface support Romanian since SVN revision 182.
And here is a little screenshot (click to enlarge) :


Arnaud Dupuis

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Monday 27 April 2009

Week end progess

By Arnaud Dupuis on Monday 27 April 2009, 08:47 - Association Subscribers Manager

Hi,

There was tons of progress during this week end in Association Subscribers Manager. We are quickly heading to the 3.0BETA1 release and as time pass I think that it will go all smooth !

First things comes first, it is all thanks to all Association Subscribers Manager's translators ! A huge thanks to Daniel Persson who's doing a lot to help me by taking care alone of his SVN part. As a bonus Association Subscribers Manager may be translated in Romanian but I am still waiting for translations files so I'll keep you update.

Now for code updates, during this week end I have made the following fix/improvements in Association Subscribers Manager :

  • fix the bug 2778971
  • finish the addon system
  • add addon management interface to the settings window
  • suppress the blinking in the passive popup windows
  • change settings windows behavior to prevent users to remove items (email, fees, activities, etc.) by mistake. Now all those windows are disabled until users confirm or cancel the deletion
  • add a default account for the update server (oss_user, oss_user_password)
  • fix lots of errors issued at first run (mostly by setting better default values)
  • fix UI bug which was allowing the edition of unselected members (now you have to select a member for the edition features to activate)
  • fix a bug in the postal codes writing code (postal codes files were unconditionally written at application close, now it is done only if there was modifications)
  • and the most important of all : I made a new splashscreen !
(Click to enlarge)


All this works leads to 3 important points :

  1. This week end was string freeze date, no new string will be added before the beta release (though I already spotted some error messages in need of modifications).
  2. This week end was feature freeze date. Until the beta release there will only be bug fix modifications, no new features.
  3. I officially call for artists and packagers. Association Subscribers Manager could really use its own icons theme (instead of borrowing Oxygen's ones), and I will need packagers for different GNU/Linux distributions and for Mac OS X.

See you later !

Arnaud Dupuis

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Monday 9 March 2009

Association Subscribers Manager's new artwork.

By Arnaud Dupuis on Monday 9 March 2009, 00:40 - Association Subscribers Manager

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



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Sunday 8 March 2009

Association Subscribers Manager is on Ohloh !

By Arnaud Dupuis on Sunday 8 March 2009, 14:41 - Association Subscribers Manager

Hi,

As the title states it Association subscribers Manager is on Ohloh and that's good :).

Unfortunatly there is some problems with Ohloh's automatic tools and Assuma is not well analyzed. For example, it is analyzed as mostly written in Ada... since I don't know a word of Ada it is highly improbable that this analyze is true... But maybe it have to do with the Qt code or the users' database being named .adb. Anyway, it is a good way to see what I do bad with this project, so I will do my best to fix those project. One of the first measure was to suppress the huge amount of test users' database from the test/ directory. Another measure will be to accept both of the .adb and .assumaml file extensions for users' database.

Still a lot to do ;-)

Arnaud Dupuis

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Friday 6 March 2009

Association Subscribers Manager is on the road of being fully documented.

By Arnaud Dupuis on Friday 6 March 2009, 17:42 - Association Subscribers Manager

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 !

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Tuesday 6 January 2009

Association Subscribers Manager: Iso-functionnality test surprises !

By Arnaud Dupuis on Tuesday 6 January 2009, 12:10 - Association Subscribers Manager

Hi,

I am still very busy with the upcomming release of the 3.0 version of Association Subscribers Manager, right now I am testing the iso-functionnality with the previous version (2.2).
While doing those test, I ran into something very funny... funny because it was quickly fixed, else it could have been a real drama for Association Subscribers Manager users !
The actual problem was that I forgot to include the "Address" field in the new version. While it look like something completly harmless it is the total opposite. In fact, the 3.0 version introduce a brand new subscribers database XML based file format named ADB. Obviously the old XML format is also supported and Association Subscribers Manager users can import their old file in the new version and Association Subscribers Manager will automatically convert the old file into the new format. All those are pretty well tested features and very bug resistant (since the original file is not modified no informations can be lost). This is where the critical point is : between an old file and a new one Association Subscribers Manager loose the address since it was not supported by the GUI...
Fortunatly, this awfull "bug" is now corrected in the SVN trunk and hopefully I will not run into such big mistakes again !

The final release of the 3.0 version of Association Subscribers Manager is planned to be release by the end of april.

As already described, this software is completly FOSS and can be downloaded and installed from the SVN for free under the term of the GPL.
Additionnaly I will provide purchasable binary build of this software for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows.

Arnaud Dupuis.

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Tuesday 2 December 2008

Some updates.. at last

By Arnaud Dupuis on Tuesday 2 December 2008, 17:54 - Association Subscribers Manager

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 ;-)

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Tuesday 21 October 2008

News and update, my recent development in Association Subscribers Manager

By Arnaud Dupuis on Tuesday 21 October 2008, 07:02 - Association Subscribers Manager

Hi,
It's been a while since I last post here... Sorry, I have tons of super-bad excuses for that (working too much, not enough time, etc.).
The truth is that I am so busy coding that I forget to post on the blog ! :)
Lately, I have coded a lot on one of my project out of slack-get. The project name is Association Subscribers Manager (short name is Assuma) and it is an associations subscribers manager !
The source code is available on Sourceforge's SVN as usual. This software is a little different than my other traditionnals Open Sources ones because I am selling the packages.
The source code is available for free but all services associated with it are not free. In time, when the 3.0 release will be fully ready, you will be able to buy working binaries for the main plateforms available on the market.
The source code is completly free (as "Free Software" and "as a beer"), only the services of compilations, auto-update, etc. will be costing you money.
The reason why I think this software can be better than another ? Because since the 0.1 version (we are now aiming at the 3.0) it has been developped in collaboration with French sports associations.
So I am pretty confident in the application fitting for small and middle sized associations. The application is daily tested with databases exceeding 1000 subscibers, so it can be used for pretty huge associations/clubs.
It is of course not limited to one kind of association/club, it has been developped with multi-usage in mind.
On the plateform support side, until the 2.0 version the only supported plateform was Linux (the application is developped in Perl and PerlQt3). The 3.0 release will bring Association Subscribers Manager to all plateforms with a code completly rewritten in C++/Qt4.

So as you can easily figured I have work a lot on this project and, unfortunatly, not really on slack-get ... Mainly because as all humans I have to sleep sometimes :(
Here are the SVN statistics for the last 7 days:

It has been a busy week :)

See you later !

Arnaud Dupuis

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Sunday 14 September 2008

A little pause from slack-get : coding a Perl module for the croquemonster API.

By Arnaud Dupuis on Sunday 14 September 2008, 13:54 - General

Hi,
After the huge code update I made on slack-get, I must say that I was a bit tired of thinking about the same problems every second.
Fortunatly my young wife is both a good writer and a super-geek, invite me to a new game-to-loose-lots-of-time named croquemonster.
It is unfortunatly only in French, but gues what... They have a XML api ! So, of course, I made a Perl module out of this API.
The Games::CroqueMonster module implements the whole 0.8.1 api specification. The module version is gave after the api version.

You can try this module by downloading it from here (attachement) or from my page on CPAN.


I will release some scripts using this module soon.

Enjoy !

Arnaud Dupuis

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