Ringlink 2.0 is available for download.
Ringlink 2.0 looks and works about the same as the last release (1.2).
Nevertheless, extensive changes have been made, and under the surface
it's a new generation of the Ringlink program.
There are two things I'd like to highlight:
- Ringlink 2.0 is multilingual
- Ringlink 2.0 is ready to be run under mod_perl
The language handling feature
-----------------------------
Translations to other languages than English can be easily done by
creating special language files, one file per language. A default
language is set for each Ringlink system, and the ringmasters can choose
ring language among the available language files.
When navigating a ring, the displayed language is determined through the
prefered browser language at first hand, and if no browser language
matches any of the available languages, the ring language is used. When
doing admin things, the ring language is used as soon as the program
knows which ring you are working with, or else the default language is
displayed.
So far there are three languages besides English included in the
distribution: French, Spanish and Swedish. In a few months I hope we
will be able to distribute Ringlink with a fair number of language
files. Translations to German, Russian and Turkish have been started;
maybe there are more that I'm not aware of yet. If you have started a
translation into some other language, please let us know by sending a
note to this list. More info about the language handling feature can be
found at http://sf.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=5971&group_id=15568
Those, who are primarily interested in using English for their rings,
can still benefit from the language handling feature by making an
'English to English translation', i.e. replace some of the program
strings with alternative English strings.
Prepared for mod_perl
---------------------
The code for Ringlink 2.0 is 'cleaner' than before. I'm not talking
about bugfixing, but I'm claiming that the code is much stricter and
better structured than was the case with the previous releases. Among
other things, this will make further developement of Ringlink easier.
The stricter code makes it also possible to run Ringlink under Apache
mod_perl, and with that reduce the server load and increase performance.
One of the Ringlink developers, Pete Jordan, is doing mod_perl
installations professionally, and he has helped with the preparations in
this respect. A couple of example files for mod_perl set-ups are
included in the distribution.
So far, only limited tests of running Ringlink under mod_perl have been
carried out. If you run Apache on your own box, or as a 'dedicated
server', I think you should give it a try. We are very interested in
getting to know about experiences from running Ringlink under mod_perl.
Other changes in Ringlink 2.0
-----------------------------
There are a few other new features in this release:
- The checker can be used for checking of inactive sites as well as
active ditto.
- The default colors are set in rlconfig.pm.
- The maximum number of characters in the site descriptions is also
set in rlconfig.pm.
- Ringlink now makes use of a Perl feature called CGI::Carp
'fatalsToBrowser'. This means that, if something goes wrong during
the installation, for instance, there is a fair chance that the
browser displays some meaningful information about what caused the
error.
Some of the new details in the code are of such a nature that you will
probably never notice... They are there simply to make the program run
more smoothly and reliably. ;-)
Enjoy!
/ Gunnar