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Towel 0.4.0 released. This release features further UI enhancements, a fix for a nasty bug in the playlist handling code, and introduces dependencies on gtkmm 2.4 and libxml++ 2.6. These updated libraries provide much-needed enhancements to Towel's UI and behaviour.
Contrary to the last release's announcement, Towel does not use libglademm yet. With the addition of the action-based menu and toolbar APIs, and the UIManager class, in GTK+ 2.4, it is not necessary to switch Towel to libglademm at this point, as the user interface simply isn't complicated enough to justify the effort.
Towel 0.3.0 released. This release features numerous UI enhancements, a return to using external metadata reading code which means MP3 files now load in a tolerable amount of time and the debut of support for FLAC files.
After this release we intend to target gtkmm/GTK+ 2.4.0, libxml++ 2.6.0 and switch to using libglademm for the user interface, so it may be a while before a new moderately stable release is completed.
Also released today is an ebuild for installing Towel 0.3.0 on Gentoo Linux. This is also available from our download page.
Towel 0.2.0 is released today. There are numerous new features in this release, including seeking, automatic save and restore of the playlist on shutdown and startup, and a few other things of less importance.
Towel is still not entirely perfect, and there is a known issue with ID3 tags in some MP3 files in this release due to our new metadata reading code which we hope to fix in time for Towel 0.3.0. Still, it's improving all the time and may now be used as a primary music player - especially if your music collection consists of mostly Ogg Vorbis files. As usual, you can get it from the download page.
It has come to our attention that Towel 0.1.0 doesn't build out of the tarball without some intervention by the user. Therefore, Towel 0.1.1 has been released which should rectify this problem.
After some work on the random track selection system, Towel 0.1.0 has finally been released. I decided to dub it "Screaming Baby" because that's basically what it is, and I read too many GNOME module release announcements which have amusing titles. Towel now depends on libxml++ 0.27 in addition to its other dependencies, which should be unchanged since the last release.
Playlist save/load now works, and some major UI revision has been done — see the screenshots page for a preview of what Towel now looks like. Playlist save/load has also been implemented, and we're not all that far off another release.
Adding save/load to the playlist system has introduced a dependency on libxml++ 0.25.0, or a later API-compatible version. This in turn adds a dependency on libxml2, but that is also a dependency for GStreamer, and so should not pose a problem.
Some major UI work has been done on Towel since 0.0.2 was released, along with various other bug fixes, including a rather irritating issue which arose from deleting the currently playing file from the playlist. Before 0.0.3 we intend to have playlist save/load support working, which will introduce a dependency on libxml++.
The bug in the GStreamer interfacing code should be fixed now, but we're still testing to make sure of that before we release 0.0.2. It might be ready later today, or tomorrow. Until then probably best not to download 0.0.1 - wait, or try the CVS code instead.
Towel 0.0.1 is released. This is not especially usable and has one serious known bug somewhere in the GStreamer interfacing code, but it contains an almost-complete playlist and is a highly appropriate milestone at this point in time.
It is hoped that Towel 0.0.2 will not be far behind this.
Towel has now gained itself a new, improved playlist. It's not yet complete, but the basic functionality already exceeds that of the old playlist in most areas. Playlist saving and loading is possible due to our new dependency on the wonderful libxml++.
There has also been some progress with GStreamer on FreeBSD, so changing to GStreamer might be able to proceed more quickly than we had hoped. We're not being too optimistic about that though.
Nothing much has happened in recent months, except that Towel is pretty useable and is now available in SourceForge CVS. A new screenshot is now available, and of course gtkmm 2.0.0 has been released.
We're also changing audio backend at some point - we want to start using GStreamer as the audio backend. However, we won't be putting a lot of effort into this until GStreamer works properly on FreeBSD - which hopefully will be quite soon, given its newfound place as a gnome-media dependency for 2.1.2.
The Towel website uploaded, and the Towel development project for gtkmm 2 has begun in earnest. An FAQ can be seen here, but currently there is no Towel code available for download. This should change in the near future.