GnuCash 2.1.2 Released

[Chris Lyttle]

    GnuCash 2.1.2 released

The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.1.2 aka 
"Financially secure yet?", the third of several unstable 2.1.x releases 
of the GnuCash Open Source Accounting Software which will eventually 
lead to the stable version 2.2.0. 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. With this release, the 2.1.x series will go 
into string freeze for translators to update their translations until 
2.2.0 comes out.

*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.

WARNING: Make sure you make backups of any files used in testing 
versions of GnuCash in the 2.1.x series. Although the developers go to 
great lengths to ensure that no data will be lost we cannot guarantee 
that your data will not be affected if for some reason GnuCash crashes 
in testing these releases.

Please test any and all features important to you. Then post any bugs 
you find to http://bugzilla.gnome.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=GnuCash


      Download:

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


      What's New in GnuCash 2.1.2?

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.
    * The Scheduled Transaction code has been refactored. The Scheduled
      Transaction list view is now integrated into the main window, 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 2.1.2.

Bugfixes and improvements since the last version 2.1.1 include:

    * Internal GObject integration is much more advanced by now
    * Crash on OFX import crashing has been fixed
    * Windows timezone problems fixed
    * Some memory leaks have been fixed


      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 test this release already. A string freeze will be announced in
      one of the later 2.1.x releases. Please check
      http://wiki.gnucash.org/wiki/Translation_Status for updates on this.


    Getting GnuCash

GnuCash 2.1.2 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 in 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 when compiling from tarball or when installing a binary.

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


    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.