amaroK 1.3 'Airborne' Released!

[Mark Kretschmann]

The amaroK team announces version 1.3 'Airborne' of the amaroK audio player

The amaroK Development Team is very proud to clear version 1.3 of the popular
audio player for takeoff. After four months of focused work, we feel that this
release has again substantially improved on amaroK. We hope you enjoy amaroK
1.3's greater usability, exciting new features and many bugfixes. 


Highlights of amaroK 1.3:

  * Wikipedia artist lookup, a revolutionary feature providing information
    from the free online encyclopedia. 
  * Redesigned sidebar, with improved look-and-feel. 
  * Automatic download of scripts and themes with KNewStuff. 
  * HelixPlayer engine. 
  * New Playlist Browser, powerful and easy to use. 
  * Cue file sheet support. 
  * Dynamic playlist mode. 
  * PostgreSQL database support. 
  * Much extended DCOP scripting interface. 
  * Multiple analyzer visualizations for the playlist window. 
  * Editable Smart Playlists.
  * Podcast support, including live streaming and download capability.
  * Crossfading for the xine audio backend.


ChangeLog since 1.3-beta3:

  FEATURES:
    * The tyranny of deleting covers every 90 days is over. Instead, amaroK
      now automatically downloads the covers every 80 days to comply with
      Amazon.com requirements.

  CHANGES:
    * Removed 'Apply' button from dynamic config, all config options are now
      hot! (Automatically applied on alteration)
    * Minimum score changed from 1 to 0. (BR 107944)
    * Playlist item lengths now shown with hours when necessary.

  BUGFIXES:
    * M3U playlists would be broken after editing. (BR 109774)
    * When there's no artist tag, don't show tons of unrelated songs and
      albums in Context Browser. (BR 110319)
    * Advertisements were showing up in Lyrics Tab for some songs.
    * When editing tags in Playlist Window, only try to write the new tag if
      it's different from the old one. (BR 110299)
    * Changes to the score in the Edit Track Information dialog should only be
      applied after clicking on the "Save and Close" button.
    * When only the score is changed, amaroK shouldn't complain if the file is
      read-only. (BR 109054)
    * Mark/Unmark as compilation wouldn't work with SQLite. (BR 109275)
    * Album Covers whose name or artist contained "'" wouldn't show up when
      fetched from Amazon. (BR 109700)
    * Edit Track Information dialog wouldn't update collection database if
      filename contained non latin1 characters. Patch by Andrey Yasniy
      <yasniy at gmail.com> (BR 110030)
    * SmartPlaylist category created in the PlaylistBrowser once the
      collection has been built for the first time.
    * Refresh the context browser as appropriate when editing tags.
      (BR 108884)
    * Cover image shown if track has no title.
    * Statusbar cancel button will terminate a podcast download.
    * Don't show multiple popup messages when retrieving podcast information.
    * Don't crash when adding podcasts. (BR 109982)
    * Tracks with urls containg apostrophes would not cache lyrics.
    * PostgreSQL compile problem (BR 110033)


The amaroK team
---------------

amaroK is a soundsystem-independent audio-player for *nix. Its interface uses 
a powerful "browser" metaphor that allows you to create playlists that make 
the most of your music collection. We have a fast development-cycle and 
super-happy users. We also provide pensions and other employment-benefits.

"Easily the best media-player for Linux at the moment. Install it now!"
    - Linux Format Magazine

WWW:  http://amarok.kde.org
WIKI: http://amarok.kde.org/wiki
IRC:  irc.freenode.net #amarok & #amarok.de
MAIL: amarok-devel at lists.sourceforge.net