# OpenACS Release Notes

The ChangeLogs include an annotated list of changes () since the last release and in the entire &majorversion;.&minorversion; release sequence .

## Release 5.6.0

- Added new package dependency type, "embeds". This is a variant of the "extends" package dependency type added in OpenACS 5.5.0. It allows one to write embeddable packages, with scripts made visible in client packages using URLs which include the embedded package's package key. An example embeddable package might be a rewritten "attachments" package. The current implementation requires a global instance be mounted, and client packages generate urls to that global instance. Among other things, this leads to the user navigating to the top-level subsite, losing any subsite theming that might be associated with a community. Using "embeds", a rewritten package would run in the client package's context, maintaining theming and automatically associating attachments with the client package.

  Added global package parameters - parameters can now have scope "local" or "global", with "local" being the default..

  Fixes for ns_proxy handling

  Significant speedup for large sites

  Optional support for selenium remote control (acs-automated-tests)

  New administration UI to manage mime types and extension map

  Added acs-mail-lite package params for rollout support

  Support for 3-chars language codes in acs-lang

  Added OOXML mime types in acs-content-repository

## Release 5.5.0

- PostgreSQL 8.3 is now fully supported, including the use of the built-in standard version of tsearch2.

  TinyMCE has been upgraded to 3.2.4.1 with language pack support.

  acs-mail-lite now correctly implements rollout support.

  Added new package dependency type, "extends". Implements a weak form of package inheritance (parameters and, optionally, templates). Multiple inheritance is supported. For instance, the non-core "layout-managed-subsite" extends the "acs-subsite" and "layout-manager" packages, resulting in a package that combines the semantics of both.

  Added new package attribute "implements-subsite-p" (default "f"). If true, this package may be mounted as a subsite and is expected to implement subsite semantics. Typically used by packages which extend acs-subsite.

  Added new package attribute "inherit-templates-p" (default "t"). If true, the package inherits templates defined in the packages it extends. This means that the package only needs to specify templates where the UI of an extended package is modified or extended. This greatly reduces the need to fork base packages when one needs to customize it. Rather than modify the package directly, use "extends" rather than "requires" then rewrite those templates you need to customize.

  Added a simple mechanism for defining subsite themes, removing the hard-wired choices implemented in earlier versions of OpenACS. The default theme has been moved into a new package, "openacs-default-theme". Simplifies the customization of the look and feel of OpenACS sites and subsites.

  The install xml facility has been enhanced to allow the calling of arbitrary Tcl procedures and includes various other enhancements written by Xarg. Packages can extend the facility, too. As an example of what can be done, the configuration of .LRN communities could be moved from a set of interacting parameters to a cleaner XML description of how to build classes and clubs, etc.

  Notifications now calls lang::util::localize on the message subject and body before sending the message out, using the recipient locale if set, the site-wide one if not. This will cause message keys (entered as #....# strings) to be replaced with the language text for the chosen locale.

## Release 5.4.2

- This is a minor bugfix release.

  Site node caching was removed as doesn't work correctly

  Critical issues with search on oracle were fixed

  More html strict work etc

## Release 5.4.1

- This is a minor bugfix release.

## Release 5.4.0

- New Templating API added to add scripts, css, etc to the HTML HEAD and BODY sections of the generated HTML document. Please see /packages/acs-templating/tcl/head-procs.tcl or visit the template::head procs in the API browser for details.

  Templates have been modified to comply with HTML strict

  The Search package's results page has been improved

  TinyMCE WYSIWYG support has been added, RTE and HTMLArea support dropped

  acs-mail-lite's send has been cleaned up to properly encode content, to handle file attachments, etc. "complex-send" will disappear from acs-core in a future release.

The ChangeLogs include an annotated list of changes () since the last release and in the entire &majorversion;.&minorversion; release sequence .

## Release 5.3.1

- Bug fixes.

  New TIPs implemented.

  All Core Automated Tests for Postgres pass.

  New Site and Blank master templates and CSS compatible with the .LRN Zen work. Compatibility master templates are provided for existing sites.

The ChangeLogs include an annotated list of changes () since the last release and in the entire &majorversion;.&minorversion; release sequence .

## Release 5.3.0

- Bug fixes.

  New TIPs implemented.

  All Core Automated Tests for Postgres pass.

## Release 5.2.0

- Bug fixes.

  New TIPs implemented.

  This release does not include new translations.

## Release 5.1.4

- Bug fixes.

  The missing CR TCL API has been filled in, thanks to Rocael and his team and Dave Bauer.

  This release does not include new translations.

## Release 5.1.3

- Bug fixes, primarily for .LRN compatibility in support of upcoming .LRN 2.1.0 releases. This release does not include new translations since 5.1.2.

## Release 5.1.2

- Translations syncronized with the translation server. Basque and Catalan added.

- For a complete change list, see the Change list since 5.1.0 in .

## Release 5.1.1

- This is the first release using the newest adjustment to the versioning convention. The OpenACS 5.1.1 tag will apply to OpenACS core as well as to the most recent released version of every package, including .LRN.

- Translations syncronized with the translation server.

- Bug 1519 fixed. This involved renaming all catalog files for ch_ZH, TH_TH, AR_EG, AR_LB, ms_my, RO_RO, FA_IR, and HR_HR. If you work with any of those locales, you should do a full catalog export and then import (via /acs-lang/admin) after upgrading acs-lang. (And, of course, make a backup of both the files and database before upgrading.)

- Other bug fixes since 5.1.0: 1785, 1793, and over a dozen additional bug fixes.

- For a complete change list, see the Change list since 5.0.0 in .

## Release 5.1.0

- Lots of little tweaks and fixes

- Complete Change list since 5.0.0 in Changelog

- Many Bug fixes

## Release 5.0.4

- New translations, including for .LRN 2.0.2.

## Release 5.0.3

- Bug fixes: 1560, #1556. Site becomes unresponsive, requires restart

## Release 5.0.2

- Bug fixes: #1495. Croatian enabled by default, #1496. APM automated install fails if files have spaces in their names, #1494. automated upgrade crashes (halting the upgrade process)

- Complete Change list since 5.0.0 in Changelog

- File tagging scheme in CVS changed to follow TIP #46: (Approved) Rules for Version Numbering and CVS tagging of Packages

## Release 5.0.1

- All work on the translation server from 7 Nov 2003 to 7 Feb 2004 is now included in catalogs.

- One new function in acs-tcl, util::age_pretty

- Complete Change list since 5.0.0 in Changelog

- Many documentation updates and doc bug fixes

## Release 5.0.0

This is OpenACS 5.0.0. This version contains no known security, data loss, or crashing bugs, nor any bugs judged release blockers. This version has received manual testing. It has passed current automated testing, which is not comprehensive. This release contains work done on the translation server http://translate.openacs.org through 7 Nov 2003.

Please report bugs using our Bug Tracker at the OpenACS website.

You may want to begin by reading our installation documentation for . Note that the Windows documentation is not current for OpenACS &version;, but an alternative is to use John Sequeira's Oasis VM project.

After installation, the full documentation set can be found by visiting `http://yourserver/doc`.

New features in this release:

- Internationalization support.

  A message catalog to store translated text, localization of dates, number formatting, timezone conversion, etc. Allows you to serve your users in their language.

- External authenticaiton.

  Integrate with outside user databases through e.g. LDAP, RADIUS, Kerberos, MS Active Directory. Imports user information through IMS Enterprise 1.1 format. Easily extended to support other authentication, password management, account creation, and account import mechanisms.

  This includes improvements to the basic cookie handling, so logins can be expired without the user's identity being completely lost. You can set login to expire after a certain period (e.g. 8 hours, then password must be refreshed), or you can have all issues login cookies expired at once, e.g. if you have left a permanent login cookie on a public machine somewhere.

- User interface enhancements.

  All pages, including site-wide and subsite admin pages, will be templated, so they can be styled using master template and site-wide stylesheets.

  We have a new default-master template, which includes links to administration, your workspace, and login/logout, and is rendered using CSS.

  And there's a new community template (/packages/acs-subsite/www/group-master), which provides useful navigation to the applications and administrative UI in a subsite.

  In addition, there's new, simpler UI for managing members of a subsite, instantiating and mounting applications, setting permissions, parameters, etc.

  Site-wide admin as also seen the addition of a new simpler software install UI to replace the APM for non-developer users, and improved access to parameters, internationalization, automated testing, service contracts, etc.

  The list builder has been added for easily generating templated tables and lists, with features such as filtering, sorting, actions on multiple rows with checkboxes, etc. Most of all, it's fast to use, and results in consistently-looking, consistently-behaving, templated tables.

- Automated testing.

  The automated testing framework has been improved significantly, and there are automated tests for a number of packages.

- Security enhancements.

  HTML quoting now happens in the templating system, greatly minimizing the chance that users can sneak malicious HTML into the pages of other users.

- Oracle 9i support.

- Who's online feature.

- Spell checking.

Potential incompatibilities:

- With the release of OpenACS 5, PostgreSQL 7.2 is no longer supported. Upgrades are supported from OpenACS 4.6.3 under Oracle or PostgreSQL 7.3.

- The undocumented special handling of ~ and +variable+ in formtemplates, found in `packages/acs-templating/resources/*`, has been removed in favor of using <noparse> and \@variable\@ (the standard templating mechanisms). Locally provided formtemplate styles still using these mechanisms will break.

- Serving backup files and files from the CVS directories is turned off by default via the acs-kernel parameter ExcludedFiles in section request-processor (The variable provides a string match glob list of files and is defaulted to "*/CVS/* *~")

($Id: release-notes.xml,v 1.28 2010/10/17 21:06:08 donb Exp $)

## Release 4.6.3

Release Notes for 4.6.3

## Release 4.6.2

Release Notes for 4.6.2

## Release 4.6

Release Notes for 4.6

## Release 4.5

Release Notes for 4.5

## Changelog (most recent release only)

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## Changelog for &releasebranch;

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