A beta test of the next update of GPE for Maemo is available (for OS2008 users only at the moment). If you use GPE on Maemo Diablo or Chinook, please install this update and report any problems (preferably in bugzilla but, if not possible, as replies here) as this is the basis of the next update to be released as a stable release for the Maemo community.

Beta versions for bora and gregale will be available soon (I will announce their availability here). If no major problems are found, I expect to release the stable update in a few weeks. If you do not fancy beta testing please wait for the stable release.

Although the stable update will be made available in the Extras repository, this beta release is available in the "extras-devel" repositories. To see the update you should add a catalogue to the Application Manager as:

Catalogue name: extras-devel
Web address: http://repository.maemo.org/extras-devel
Distribution: your distribution name: gregale, bora, chinook or diablo
Components: free

Note: even if you already have this repository set up, it is essential that the Application Manager gets the latest list of packages. To force this, open up the repository entry as if you are going to change it but just click on OK. When you Close the Catalogue list the application manager will say it is "checking for updates".

After refreshing the package list and checking for updates, the application manager should offer to update whichever of the the GPE applications you have installed: gpe-calendar, gpe-contacts, gpe-filemanager, gpe-timesheet, gpe-todo, gpesummary, gpesyncd or starling. The version should be 2.8+maemo+svn20080720-1 or later. You may want to disable the extras-devel repository again after you have done the upgrade as it contains unreleased versions of many programs.

I recommend rebooting after installing the update. That will make sure the latest versions are running and is the only way to load the latest version of gpesummary.

It would be really useful to me if everyone who installs this beta test could just reply briefly here telling me they installed it, which OS they are using (diablo, chinook, bora or gregale), and which applications they have installed/upgraded.

This update is mainly bug fixes, although it includes the following new features:

o gpesummary (the homepage plugin) watches for alarms and starts gpe-calendar to handle displaying an alarm whenever one fires. This means that gpe-calendar no longer needs to be running for alarms to fire. This feature (and related changes and bugfixes to gpesummary) are most in need of testing.

o gpe-calendar no longer iconises when the close button is pressed. Instead it gives the user a choice of iconising or closing and the choice can be remembered for the future. The close option is most useful if you also use gpesummary so that it can open gpe-calendar when necessary to show alarms.

o Several translations have been improved or added.

Many bugs have been fixed. Notable bugfixes include:

o The crashes and other problems when switching to/from the agenda view when the sidebar is disabled have been fixed.

o gpesummary only runs once per minute, to avoid running the battery down

o Sidebar calendar works

o Several improvements in import and export to/from pe-calendar, gpe-todo and gpe-contact, including support for 8-bit characters, better support for recurring events and support of the birthday field in contacts

o Several bugs which could cause alarms to be repeated even after they have been acknowledged have been fixed. There may be a few unexpected repeats for the first 24 hours but this should be fixed after that. If anyone sees alarms still repeating after they have been acknowledged, please report the circumstances

Graham