[Kde-extra-gear] K3b 0.12 released

[Sebastian Trueg]

Hi everybody!

The highly anticipated (at least by myself) new K3b release 0.12 is finally
here. K3b 0.12 features a lot of cool stuff and also fixes many problems that
drove user, especially unexperienced, crazy. As always my ChangeLog is not
complete and way too large to state in full. So here an overview of

the highlights in K3b 0.12


* The main focus of this release is clearly the audio project. It has been
  nearly completely rewritten. As a result one can now merge tracks, split
  them, or add silence at the end or the beginning of a track. The unusual
  handling of pregaps in older K3b versions is gone. Now the unexperienced
  user  does not need to bother with pregaps at all. K3b does not add two second
  pregaps by default anymore. It now works like it should: the pregap is
  simply  a property of the track and if one wants to add a real gap there is always
  the silence source which can be added whereever needed.
  One can now drag audio tracks directly from the audio CD browser into an
  audio project. No need to rip the tracks manually. Just drag the tracks you
  want and let K3b do the rest: it will ask for the CDs when writing the
  project.
  Apart from that we have new audio decoding plugins for Musepack audio
  files,  for all libsndfile and ffmpeg supported audio formats (this includes wma
  audio files), Musicbrainz support to fetch CD-Text information, as well
  as a  Cddb plugin which queries the internet for a cddb entry for an audio
  project.  The audio project now features a "prelisten" feature. Listen to your
  audio CD  before writing it. This results in a funny sideeffect when used in
  combination with dragging audio tracks from the audio CD browser: K3b
  can be  used as an audio CD player.
  It is now possible to convert a complete audio CD project into any audio
  format supported by K3b. The used dialog looks a lot like the audio CD
  ripping dialog and also features things like file naming patterns or cue
  file  creation.
  Last but not least K3b 0.12 improves the "Auto" writing speed selection in
  audio CD projects. It will not as before simply use the highest supported
  writing speed but check for the highest possible writing speed. That
  means it  will test how fast the tracks can be decoded when writing on-the-fly.
* Another audio CD related feature is the support of audio cues. K3b is now
  able to import audio cue files into an audio project or simply write
  them to  CD using the write CD image feature.
* K3b now has proper session management. Don't bother with saving your
projects  when logging out of KDE. K3b will restart with the exact same open projects
  as before once you log on again.
* Also very nice is the new automatic multisession handling in the data
  project. K3b automatically decides whether to start, continue, or close a
  multisession CD/DVD based on the size of the project and the remaining size
  on the media.
* K3b 0.12 features simple HAL support: K3b will automatically add and remove
  devices that are turned on or off while K3b is running (for example usb or
  firewire devices).


K3b 0.12 also features some interesting changes for developers and artists


* K3b 0.12 has a highly improved_DCOP_interface which allows for some nice
  scripting.
* I enhanced the theming support. All the pictures now have proper names and
  themes can be installed and removed from the GUI. There is also a little
  K3b  Theme_Howto which should help a lot when creating a theme for K3b.
* K3b is now split into three parts:

  o libk3bdevice provides the low level device handling and detection
  including    an implementation of big parts of the MMC standard.
  o libk3b provides all one needs to write CDs and DVDs along with all the
    project types but without all the GUI elements used in k3b.
  o k3b itself, the main application providing the user friendly GUI we all
    know.

  This allows other applications to link against the k3b libs to simply
  include  CD/DVD writing support.
  Be aware that the API of both libk3bdevice and libk3b are highly
  unstable and  I cannot even guarantee source compatibility before the 1.0 release. So if
  you want to use one of the libs it might be best to link them statically
  for  now.

Get it from http://www.k3b.org and have fun.

Cheers,
Sebastian