Signs of AbiWord progress, more Flash news
Stephen B. - February 1st, 2006
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With all the new previously-unknown projects popping up, and signs of life from seemingly long-discontinued projects, BeOS news feels a bit like cryptozoology these days. Most recently, HaikuNews has dug up some info on an updated port of the AbiWord OSS word processor which is being worked on by Sokolov “knorr” Anton. Currently the only download available is a bzip2 archive of the source code, but the Polish site haiku-os.pl has a trio of screenshots showing AbiWord 2.2.8 running under R5: one – two – three. While YellowTAB’s OpenOffice port is certainly important, it’s nice to see progress made on something a bit leaner. The site containing the download link – becool.h15.ru – also has an interesting screenshot of a Flash player called “blazer” running under R5. It appears to be different from the Gnash-based Flash player recently reported on by ICO.
A new version of the Zenebona was released today. In addition to some general bugfixes, it looks like some work has been done on the R5 version – the most noticeable difference being that I was able to get this version running in R5, while the previous release crashed on startup. Read on for a few tips on installation in R5, some first-impressions, and a few screenshots.
While there may not be much public discussion in the BeOS community these days, we’ve had many interesting surprises lately to remind us that there are still people out there quietly doing cool stuff. Case in point, IsComputerOn has the first details on a new Flash player in development for ZETA. From ICO:
ICO also has a screenshot of it doing what a Flash player does (no, not showing “Punch the monkey” ads). Very few details are available at this point, but it’s a safe bet that many of us will be watching this project with interest – I give them an A+ for dramatic timing.
Reader “scott mc” wrote in to alert me to the significance of today’s date. AppleMatters.com is running a story on this day in 1997, the day when Steve Jobs officially returned to Apple (as a temporary advisor). It was a pivotal moment in the history of both Be and Apple, as it lead to Apple eventually releasing the NeXT-derived OS X and Be releasing the BeOS for x86. And now, nearly a decade later, we may even be able to run BeOS on Apple hardware again thanks to the Intel transition. Who would have guessed that, nine years ago? P.S.
The developer “ZuMi” has released two new applications that make clever use of the InfoPopper application: PopAggregator and PopWeather. Both programs are implemented as BASH scripts and use the im_kit’s InfoPopper application to display data – RSS newsfeeds, with PopAggregator, and current weather info, in the case of PopWeather. A simple idea, and two useful new apps.
Thanks to Mr. X for the heads-up, HaikuNews has a story on some new software from the BeOS video driver guru himself, Rudolf Cornelissen. His latest project is a video consumer node capable of displaying video (with overlay support) on non-primary graphics cards. What does that mean, you ask? I’m not clear on the exact applications of the software, but I suspect that it’s meant to enable video playback on the second monitor in multi-monitor setups.
Okay, the second part of the headline may be speculation. Over on ICO, the tireless frankps has the scoop on the resumption of Themis development. Themis, a project which aims to build a modern, fully-native browser for BeOS, had been silent for the last year or so. The site currently doesn’t have any details on their upcoming plans, but they do promise that updates will be posted to the Themis mailing lists and website in the near future. You can also find some intriguing tidbits in this message recently sent to their dev mailing list by Raymond “z3r0_one” Rodgers, which mentions plans for the HTML and CSS parsers. Also from ICO: any sheep out there should be afraid, be very afraid ;)
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