Samizdat News
=============

2006-11-29: Samizdat 0.6.0 is released.

    The version increase attributes to the gradual changes in 0.5.x
    series and incorporates almost two years worth of real-world
    deployment. Now that Samizdat has finally become a mature open
    publishing system, the road is cleared for more intrusive changes
    and major new features, such as free exchange and calendaring.

    In the way of major features, this version introduces ubiquitous
    message translations and RSS syndication. Many old tools are now
    more flexible and easier to use: focus management interface is
    simplified, the front page now packs more information in better
    layout and allows to include static headers and footers.

    There are even more changes under the hood: multi-layer caching,
    gzip and ETag support, support for audio and video uploads,
    BitTorrent links, HTML and CSS filtering, flexible access control,
    new moderation features, new UI translations and themes, code
    reorganization, simplified installation, and more.

2004-10-22: Samizdat 0.5.4 is released.

    In this version, front page layout was changed to the more familiar
    vertial split with the main column featuring focuses and right
    column running recent updates in the open publishing wire. New
    moderation facility allows to take over messages, displace their
    contents completely, and block member accounts. More new features:
    alternative CSS theme Indy is added and now is selectable from the
    Settings page; Belarussian translation is added; database connection
    is now configurable and allows to run multiple Samizdat instances on
    a single server; oversize titles and descriptions are now truncated.

2004-09-20: Samizdat 0.5.3 is released.

    Starting with this version, Samizdat can send out email: currently,
    it is used to recover lost passwords and to confirm that member
    email address is real. Email addresses are now unique, making it
    more difficult to cheat using throwaway accounts. Other changes
    include new dc:description message property for attaching article
    abstract, thumbnail image, or table of contents to a message, new
    preferences infrastructure allowing to add more server-side member
    settings in the future, and the inevitable database schema change.

2004-07-05: Samizdat 0.5.2 is released.

    This version adds Wiki functionality to Samizdat, allowing to edit
    messages and track history of changes. Messages may use Textile
    format for advanced hypertext markup, editing may be limited to the
    original creator or open for all site members. Other highlights of
    this release are FastCGI support, configurable site logo, multiple
    usability improvements, and the usual bunch of bugfixes. Once again,
    database schema is slightly changed.

2004-03-18: Samizdat 0.5.1 "Paris Commune" release is out.

    This release is dedicated to 133rd anniversary of the Paris Commune.
    Main feature of this version is i18n support, with Russian
    translation already in place. Other improvements include ability to
    work as plain CGI without mod_ruby, support for Windows/Cygwin,
    massive speed increase, and a long list of bugfixes. Database schema
    is changed again, but this time it is trivial to migrate from the
    previous version.

2003-12-01: Samizdat 0.5.0 is released.

    This version introduces basic focus management, completing the
    minimal set of features required for an open publishing part of the
    engine, and making Samizdat ready for public beta testing. Other
    major changes in this release include Pingback support, many user
    interface improvements, another rewrite of multimedia upload,
    testing framework, and more.

2003-10-17: samizdat-devel mailing list is created.

    The mailing list is dedicated to development of the Samizdat
    collaboration and open publishing engine. Secondary list topics
    include Samizdat demployment, usage, and other related issues.

2003-09-01: Samizdat 0.0.4 is released.

    This version allows to upload multimedia messages, including images
    and verbatim plain text, and introduces publishing of user-defined
    queries in form of "application/x-squish" messages. When migrating
    from older versions, Samizdat database should be dropped and
    recreated from scratch because of incompatible database schema
    change: content is now stored as a blob. In addition, file upload
    feature relies on StringIO module that is available as part of the
    Ruby 1.8 or can be installed separately from the Ruby Shim library
    for Ruby 1.6.

2003-08-08: Samizdat 0.0.3 is released.

    In this version, query construction UI is added, allowing to compose
    and modify search queries more conveniently and without having to
    manually edit raw Squish. Other major changes include switch to
    Unicode UTF-8 as default encoding, great improvement of browsers
    support in CSS, more code refactoring. Many minor bugs and
    inconsistencies are fixed, UI is enhanced in several places.

2003-07-14: Samizdat 0.0.2 is released.

    This version implements query validation and security limits, making
    execution of user-defined search queries safer. Other changes
    include schema improvements (better integration of Samizdat RDF
    schema with Dublin Core, separate namespace for tags, switch from
    RDF/XML to more readable N3 notation), enhanced search result
    display (resource rendering is separated into a class), UI CSS
    clean-up, documentation updates. Access to utility classes is
    reorganized and simplified.

2003-06-12: Samizdat 0.0.1 is released.

    This is the first version that includes basic RDF search query
    construction UI. Other functionality covered by this version
    includes: registering site members, publishing and replying to
    messages, voting for standard tags on resources.

