Free Indian Language Software is hot

The IT ministry of India is giving away free CDs of Hindi versions of OpenOffice, Firefox, Gaim and Columba among others.

Read more…

Scripting Java with Beanshell

Another article written by Frank Sommers about Scripting Java: The BeanShell JSR.

Columba 1.0 RC3 Released

Hi everyone,

we finally released 1.0 RC3!

I’d like to thank especially, Mark for tracking down sooo many bugs and Timo for not getting tired to fix all of them…

Personally for me and I know for Timo, too, this was a very hard release. Timo just moved to Saarbrücken and is doing his Ph.D. in Computer Science, I started work at SAP Germany. We both had almost no spare time to work on Columba. Nevertheless, I’m really proud of this new release. It has a couple of very interesting new features, *lots* of code/design cleanups and dozens of bugfixes.

Last month alone, we had almost 300.000 web hits on our new website. Columba’s is a great success in India where it is shipped alongside OpenOffice and Mozilla Firefox. And still, my feeling is that its going to become even more exciting.

As you might have heard already, this is our last release candidate before the final 1.0 release, which is about to happen in 4-6 weeks. So, stay tuned, help us tracking down the remaining problems and download the new version!

Download
Release Notes

Have fun,
-Frederik

No – Columba is not sponsored by a company

Timo and me are currently preparing some answers for an interview on ClientJava.com. This first question is “Who sponsors Columba?”.

Hmmm… Nobody does. We are a group of open source developers, who like to play with new technologies, most notably Java. And we are convinced that the time is right for Java-based desktop software. We are not a company, selling some product!

To circumvent such confusion in the future, I’ve added a prominent PayPal donation button on the front page and also a page dedicated to this matter. Additionally, checkout Timo’s and my Amazon wishlist on the page bottom

Java Content Repository API

There’s an interesting article from Frank Sommers on artima.com

Relational and object databases lack many data management features required by modern applications, such as versioning, rich data references, inheritence, or fine-grained security. Content repositories extend databases with such additional capabilities. The Java Content Repository API (JSR 170) defines a standard to access content repositories from Java code, and promises to greatly simplify Java database programming. This article reviews the Java Content Repository API and its open-source implementation, Apache Jackrabbit, from a developer’s perspective.

Addicted to Questionable Content web comic

My name is Frederik, I am 27 years old, working as a software engineer and I am an addict for 3 months now:-)

A must read:
http://www.questionablecontent.net/

You have been warned!

Thanks Jeph for saving my Monday mornings…

Another JGoodies Binding Tutorial

Rob Smith has written an interesting article Introduction to JGoodies Binding.

Currently, the Binding framework is not used in Columba, instead we use a simpler approach which works nicely for easy dialogs. Usually, we have a simply model for the data and use updateComponents(boolean), method to pass the data from the model to the view and back.

I definitly will take the time to evaluate the further application of Karsten’s Binding Framework. Additionally, I’d like to suggest the Validation Framework. There a demo available.

JNLP 1.5 and Desktop Integration

Java Webstart has a couple of very interesting new features.

Especially the improved desktop integration is very nice, featuring shortcuts creation, file extensions and MIME association and related content integration in the Start Menu.
Additionally, on Windows Java Webstart Applications integrate in the Control Panel’s Add/Remove Programs Panel.

Font subpixel antialiasing in JDK 6.0

Its finally there. Take a look at some screenshots.

And download the
JDK 6.0 Binary Snapshot Releases.

Scripting support is in development

Celso proposed this actually and already started work on a separate branch.

Guess, this feature is going to be the first new thing right after the 1.0 release.

You can read the draft here:
Scripting Engine Draft

Feel free to join our discussion in our mailinglist.