GnuCash 2.1.5 Released

[Chris Lyttle]

    GnuCash 2.1.5 released

The GnuCash development team proudly announces GnuCash 2.1.5 aka 
"Release Candidate 2", the second release candidate for 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*: In version 2.1.2 the format for scheduled 
transactions in the data file was changed. Files using the old format 
will be read without problems by this new version, but the new version 
of GnuCash only writes the new format. The new file format cannot be 
loaded by older versions of GnuCash. (If you try, the file will fail to 
be loaded with an error message.) As a result, if you begin using the 
new Gnucash, and you have data files with scheduled transactions, then 
these files will not be readable by older versions. If you have to make 
a new data file readable by older versions of GnuCash, this can be 
achived by deleting all records of scheduled transactions in the 
scheduled transaction editor.

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


      What's New in GnuCash 2.1.5?

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, XP,
      or Vista is required; GnuCash does not run on Windows 98 or 95.
    * SWIG is now used instead of g-wrap for providing language bindings.
    * The Scheduled Transaction list view is now improved and summarized
      more compactly. The Since-Last-Run dialog has been simplified.
    * Check printing has been improved, with new formats and simpler
      format descriptions.
    * Automatic saving of the data file was added

Bugfixes and improvements since the last version 2.1.4 include:

    * Updated translations
    * German translation of Online Banking wizard is activated on Windows
    * Improvements to Windows packaging
    * When adding custom reports to the menu, appropriate user feedback
      will be given
    * Automatic saving of the data file was added


      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 2.1.5 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.