Ann: Cynthiune 0.9.5

[Wolfgang Sourdeau]

Hi all,


This is to let you know that Cynthiune 0.9.5 was just released.
After more than one year of relentless work, Cynthiune is starting to
become a mature application ready for general use.

Not every planned feature is present nor every bug fixed, hence the
version number < 1.0.

What is Cynthiune?
------------------
Cynthiune is a free software and romantic music player for GNUstep and
MacOSX. I wrote it originally as a christmas gift to a girl that I liked
because she could not listen to the music on her Mac with a free program.

It is very similar in use to XMMS and Winamp, although it is currrently
less complete. A plugin architecture is being designed.
For the moment, input and output bundles can easily be written and
Cynthiune is already quite usable for playing Ogg's, MP3's, Mod's an
plenty of other formats to an OSS device or an Esound socket.

User-visible Changes:
---------------------
(hold your breath...)
- added support for WMA and ASF audio formats through the new
  WindowsMedia bundle (GNUstep only);
- added support for the MPC audio format through the new Musepack
  bundle;
- added support for midi files through the Timidity bundle, which
  requires timidity to be installed;
- added support for the aRts sound daemon through the new aRts output
  bundle;
- song filenames can now be dragged from Cynthiune to other applications
  on MacOS X;
- fixed a bug that could make the MP3 bundle hang forever when seeking
  the beginning of an empty file;
- fixed a bug in the MP3 bundle where it would skip the first few frames
  of a tagged file;
- the MP3 bundles returns a more accurate duration of buggy vbr files;
- added a Song inspector to display and edit song metadata;
- added support for resolving song metadata through the MusicBrainz
  database;
- we now use an image to indicate which song is currently playing
  instead of using the selection mechanism;
- fixed a bug that would mess up the selection when the playlist was
  sorted;
- added a playlist status label that displays the number of songs and
  the total time of the playlist, as well as the time taken by all the
  selected songs, if any;
- fixed a bug that would crash Cynthiune and maybe screw the default
  playlist when a selection of songs was dragged to a position with a distance
  to the end of the playlist inferior to the amount of songs being dragged;
- removed the "mute" button since considered useless;
- the state of the player is saved in the preferences;
- the playlist menus were replaced with a more convenient and standard
  toolbar;
- added German translation, thanks to Julian Frede;
- updated Italian translation;
- added Hungarian translation, thanks to Andras;
- added Traditional Chinese translation, thanks to Yen-Ju Chen;
- added Spanish translation, thanks to Pablo Di Noto;
- added Slovak translation, thanks to Saso Kiselkov;
- added ability to play World and/or Punk music;
- added ability to manipulate the song selection with the keyboard in
  the playlist, the valid keys are the home, end and arrow keys (with or
  without shift) to alter the selection, delete and enter to remove songs and
  activate the selection in the player;
- many GUI tweaking and enhancements.
(more in the NEWS file, but only interesting to developers)

How to build Cynthiune?
-----------------------
Follow the instructions in the README.

On what software does Cynthiune depend on?
------------------------------------------
Read the end of the README.

Downloads
---------
The current version (0.9.5) can be downloaded from
http://organact.mine.nu/~wolfgang/cynthiune/Cynthiune-0.9.5.tar.gz

MacOS X binary:
http://organact.mine.nu/~wolfgang/cynthiune/Cynthiune%200.9.5.dmg

Screenshots:
http://organact.mine.nu/~wolfgang/cynthiune/screenshots/


A new website is under preparation and will be available soon...


Happy thiuning!


Wolfgang
-- 
"An eye for an eye only makes the world blind." (Ghandi)