GnuCash 2.1.4 Released

[Chris Lyttle]

    GnuCash 2.1.4 released

The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.1.4 aka 
"Release Candidate 1", the first release candidatefor the upcoming 2.2.0 
stable release of the GnuCash Open Source Accounting Software. With this 
new release series, GnuCash is available on Microsoft Windows for the 
first time, and it also runs on GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Mac OSX. 
This release is intended for developers and testers who want to help 
tracking down all those bugs that are still in there.

*DATA FILE NOTICE* If you are using Scheduled Transactions, the data 
file saved by GnuCash 2.1.2 and higher is *NOT* backward-compatible with 
GnuCash 2.0 anymore. Please make a safe backup of your 2.0 data before 
upgrading to 2.1.2.


      Download:

    * http://www.gnucash.org/pub/gnucash/sources/unstable/2.1.x/
    * http://download.sourceforge.net/gnucash


      What's New in GnuCash 2.1.4?

This release has only a few user-visible new features, except for the 
completed port to the Microsoft Windows operating system. In summary, 
the following features are new, compared to the older 2.0.x series:

    * Port to Microsoft Windows completed. Note that Windows 2000 or
      newer is required; GnuCash does not run on Windows 98 or 95.
    * The Scheduled Transaction code has been refactored. The Scheduled
      Transaction list view is now integrated into the main window, the
      Editor has been re-designed for compactness, and the
      Since-Last-Run dialog has been simplified.
    * SWIG is now used instead of g-wrap for providing language bindings.
    * Check printing has been improved, with new formats and simpler
      format descriptions.
    * *DATA FILE NOTICE* If you are using Scheduled Transactions, the
      data file saved by GnuCash 2.1.2 and higher is *NOT*
      backward-compatible with GnuCash 2.0 anymore because of extensions
      in the file format. Please make a safe backup of your 2.0 data
      before upgrading to 2.1.3.

Bugfixes and improvements since the last version 2.1.3 include:

    * Bugfixes with the graphical reports
    * Fixing the Online Banking wizard
    * Updated translations
    * Improvements to Windows packaging


      Caveats for testers:

    * Any 2.1.x version might crash unexpectedly at any point during
      runtime. If you test some serious work in a 2.1.x release, make
      sure you hit "Save" after ever non-trivial workstep.
    * The documentation has had screenshots updated, however, many help
      texts usually only refers to the 2.0.x or even 1.8.x series.
      Everyone is invited to help improve the documentation; see
      http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development on how to get involved.


      How can you help?

    * We would like to encourage people to test this and any further
      releases as much as possible and submit bug reports in order that
      we can polish GnuCash to be as stable as possible for the 2.2.0
      release in a few weeks. Then post any bugs you find to bugzilla
      http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=GnuCash
    * If you have the urge to help beyond testing please get involved in
      the discussions on the GnuCash mailing lists which you will find
      at http://www.gnucash.org. We especially need people to help with
      updating the documentation. Please see
      http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Development on how to get involved.
    * Translating: The new release comes with some new translation
      strings. If you consider contributing a translation, we invite you
      to work with the translation template in this package. Our
      development is in String Freeze now, so you can safely work on our
      translation. Please check
      http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Translation_Status for updates on this.


    Getting GnuCash

GnuCash 2.1.4 can be downloaded from gnucash.org or sourceforge.net. It 
is available as source code. For the Microsoft Windows operating system, 
a self-installing setup program will be made available on the 
sourceforge.net site within a few days which includes all necessary 
additional libraries.

To install GnuCash, users will need Gnome 2, guile, and slib. Neither 
the currently used swig nor the previously used g-wrap packages are 
needed anymore when compiling from tarball or when installing a binary.

    * http://download.sourceforge.net/gnucash (Source code and Windows
      binary)
    * http://www.gnucash.org/pub/gnucash/sources/unstable/2.1.x/ (Source
      code only)


    About the Program

GnuCash is a free, open source accounting program released under the GNU 
General Public License (GPL) and available for GNU/Linux, *BSD, Solaris, 
Mac OSX, and Microsoft Windows. It is collaboratively developed by 12 
people from over 5 countries.

Programming on GnuCash began in 1997, and its first stable release was 
in 1998.