February 14th, 2011· LottaNZB 0.6 makes use of a new backend software called SABnzbd, replacing HellaNZB, which was used in previous versions of LottaNZB. In comparison to HellaNZB, SABnzbd is actively being developed, offers a more complete and stable API to third-party applications like LottaNZB and provides much more features, such as a web interface, a history of completed downloads, support for RSS feeds, and so on.
· SABnzbd has proved to be a perfectly reliable foundation to build LottaNZB on, which aims to provide the smoothest user experience and best desktop integration for both novice and advanced Linux users seeking to download from the Usenet. In LottaNZB 0.6, only a small subset of SABnzbd’s features can be accessed. This will certainly change in the future.
· The main window has undergone a redesign, making it slicker and more customizable. The new buttons on the left can be used to reorder the download queue, in addition to the already existing drag-and-drop support. The information bar at the bottom not only makes it possible to monitor and quickly limit the download speed, but also monitor the amount of free space in the download folder.
· Also other parts of the user interface have been considerably improved, such as the server dialog, always doing the best to adhere to the GNOME Human Interface Guidelines.
· Thanks to SABnzbd, LottaNZB 0.6 provides more information about the state of downloads, especially if something unexpected happens. For instance, LottaNZB displays the progress of verification and extraction operations and allows users to open a dialog that provides more detailed information about a download, such as its age.
· The user is given more control over downloads taking place by making it possible to pause and rename individual downloads and to select what kind of post-processing should be done. Also, users are informed when the requried tools are missing. Operations on the list of downloads are applied instantly, making the interface feel snappy.
· The setup process of LottaNZB has been greatly simplified. The user can choose to either download to the current computer or monitor the downloads of another computer. In either case, nearly all capabilities for managing downloads and preferences are available. LottaNZB even offers assistance if SABnzbd is not installed on a Debian-based system.
· Both the configuration and incomplete downloads of existing LottaNZB users can be imported, making the transition to LottaNZB 0.6 as smooth as possible.
· The whole help content has been rewritten using Mallard. It aims to be an easy-to-understand introduction for users new to LottaNZB and the Usenet, but also useful for people who are interested in more advanced or less-known features of LottaNZB. Specific help topics can be accessed directly through various Help buttons added to the user interface. In addition, the whole help content is available online.
· Please be aware that even though LottaNZB 0.6 has been tested by both the developers and people who have used the daily builds in the past months, the software is still not perfect and crashes or bugs might be encountered. For instance, some users are reporting frequent crashes due to segmentation faults, which is still being investigated. As always, you’re encouraged to report any bugs you find and help translate LottaNZB, as well as SABnzbd.
May 24th, 2010· This release features not only a few minor bug fixes, but also a new plug-in and a bunch of new and updated translations. The new "Inhibit suspending" plug-in prevents the computer from being suspended as long as there are active downloads. The Newzbin plug-in has been removed as the Newzbin.com web service is no longer operational. Besides, a bug has been fixed that caused LottaNZB to crash on startup and the order of the menu entries in the panel menu has been improved.
February 10th, 2010· This release both features some new bells and whistles, making the application ready for future releases of your favorite GNU/Linux distribution, but also includes numerous bug fixes.
November 28th, 2009· While one’s been working mostly on the upcoming LottaNZB 0.6, we spent some time fixing a few remaining bugs and giving translators the time to update the translations. We’ve never had more complete translations of LottaNZB! Thanks everyone who’s contributed to it. Also, an objective was to prepare the LottaNZB 0.5 series for the upload to Debian and Ubuntu.
· An important change is that the proprietary unrar application used to extract completed archives isn’t automatically installed anymore together with LottaNZB. For those who are interested, we made this change to prevent the LottaNZB package from being moved to the “contrib” repository in Debian and “multiverse” repository in Ubuntu. However, installing unrar is as easy as clicking a link and LottaNZB 0.5.2 will display a useful hint if the application cannot be found.
· This version of LottaNZB also works around a bug in HellaNZB that causes post-processing of certain downloads to stop. Marcel did a great job locating the bug in the HellaNZB’s code and providing a true fix that has already been uploaded to Debian.
· In Ubuntu 9.10, all application toolbars are now more compact, which saves space on the screen. We made sure that LottaNZB will also look great on Ubuntu 9.10.
· As always, we’re grateful for bug reports, translations as well as ideas for new features!
September 21st, 2009· Some of you use more than one Usenet server, for various reasons. While it has always been possible to mark servers as backup servers (aka fillservers), until now, it required you to edit the HellaNZB configuration by hand. Starting with LottaNZB 0.5.1, you can do that from within LottaNZB. Backup servers are servers that are only used if a certain file cannot be downloaded from all other servers. It would be interesting for us to know how many people actually use more than one server. You might want to tell us in a comment.
· These days, most paid Usenet servers offer SSL encryption support at reasonable prices. It's now possible to directly enable SSL while setting up LottaNZB for the first time.
· Fixes for severe bugs
· Adding NZB files directly from Firefox hasn't worked properly for a long time. You were required to download the files to the desktop or somewhere else instead and clicking on it. Not anymore! We also fixed crashes that occurred when starting LottaNZB for the first time on newly installed systems and when adding a NZB file.
September 5th, 2009· The wait is finally over. Six months after the release of LottaNZB 0.4.1, I’m proud to announce LottaNZB 0.5! Let’s have a look at all the awesome new stuff in this version.
· We want to keep the default user interface as clean as possible, while making it easy for you to activate extra functionality if you need it. In LottaNZB 0.5, we turned both the categorization and Newzbin support into plug-ins. You can also hide the LottaNZB icon from the notification area if you want to.
· We want LottaNZB to look and behave exactly like the other GNOME applications you love! LottaNZB 0.5 instantly applies changes to the preferences. There’s no need to press a “Save” button anymore.
· There are some issues that should have been tackled much sooner. It’s now possible to open the preferences window also if LottaNZB is connected to another computer and makes it possible for you to change the bandwidth limit. You can finally enqueue NZB files over the network! Have you ever wondered why NZB files just vanish as soon as you add them to LottaNZB? Now you can choose whether you’d like to keep them or not.
· GNOME 3.0 is on the horizon and some technologies are being replaced by new and better ones. This is why we migrated from the deprecated libglade to GTKBuilder. Of course, LottaNZB 0.5 still runs on distributions not older than 1.5 years. The configuration has been moved from ~/.lottanzb to ~/.config/lottanzb, making it easier for you to take all your desktop configuration with you, including LottaNZB’s.
· As always, several bugs have been fixed thanks to reports by various LottaNZB users! A special thanks to those brave people who have participated in the successful public beta test.
· Thanks go out to all who have contributed to this release in some way, no matter if by contributing code, reporting bugs or translating the application to all kind of languages. We will probably release LottaNZB 0.5.1 few weeks after this release, giving LottaNZB users (you!) the time to update the translations and report bugs we haven’t catched during the public beta.
January 28th, 2009· For those who initially used the Ubuntu package of LottaNZB 0.3, this release fixes a severe problem with the automatic extraction of downloaded archives. LottaNZB now always uses 'unrar' instead of 'unrar-free' because unfortunately, the free alternative isn't capable of extracting a majority of downloads. We recommend you to reenable the automatic extraction in the preferences window.
· Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish translation updated.
· Turkish translation added.
· Bug fixed that prevented LottaNZB from working properly on machines with Turkish locale. (LP: #318328)
· Remove unwanted leading and trailing whitespaces from category and download directory names for downloads that were added to the download queue using an older version of LottaNZB (thanks to Mikal Krogstad for reporting this).
· A bunch of Debian/Ubuntu package improvements, which were necessary to make LottaNZB ready for the Debian and Ubuntu package repositories: e.g. a new MAN page and an application menu entry on Debian.
January 6th, 2009Features:
· Use LottaNZB as a front-end for HellaNZB or as a stand-alone NZB Usenet client
· Enqueue NZB files directly from within your file manager and web browser
· Newzbin.com support
· Support for multiple Usenet servers
· Support for secure (SSL) connections
· Arrange the download queue and add NZB files using drag 'n drop
· Bandwidth throttling support
· Easily configure both HellaNZB and LottaNZB without having to manually edit configuration files
· Supported languages: English, Dutch, Danish, French, German, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian Bokmal, Polish and Portuguese
· Detailed documentation
Changelog:
· This is the first version of LottaNZB which is based on the Kiwi framework (http://www.async.com.br/projects/kiwi/). Kiwi simplifies the development of graphical applications by providing an extensive set of high-level tools, which now replace our self-baked ones. Kiwi enabled us to significantly reduce the amount of code required to do certain things and paves the way for a faster implementation of new features, since we can concentrate on the things that matter.
· Beside the graphical parts of the application, also the other parts have undergone a major rewrite. This did not only improve the reliability and maintainability of the code but also fixed a bunch of bugs.
· The categorization feature has been improved notably. Users that don't want to categorize their downloads are allowed to disable the feature completely in the preferences dialog. The others are rewarded with the possibility of creating a custom set of categories and - even more exciting - with a function that automatically moves a completed download to a directory named like its category.
· The algorithm collecting HellaNZB's log messages has become way more intelligent (LP: #245670).
· Thanks to this, we laid the groundwork for a mechanism that analyzes all incoming HellaNZB log messages and extracts the interesting information. HellaNZB's current interface for external application doesn't provide us with much information. In future version of LottaNZB, you can expect more information to be displayed about the state of your downloads and LottaNZB will also know more about potential problems.
· The way how LottaNZB manages its configuration has completely changed. Instead of an XML file an INI-style configuration file format is used. Internally, LottaNZB uses a decentralised configuration system with support for nested configuration sections, which makes LottaNZB more modular end extensible. There are plans for a plugin system which will make use of it. Any existing, old-fashioned XML configuration file is automatically converted to the new format.
· Scrolling should now be possible in both the download list and the message log window and the lists won't flicker anymore when updated.
· Reordering the download queue using drag & drop has been made more predictable and hence sleeker to use. Dropping a download won't unselect it anymore.
· LottaNZB won't crash anymore if the Usenet server configuration contains an optional property such as 'fillserver', 'enabled', 'skipGroupCmd' and 'bindTo'. (LP: #251798, #280302)
· Support for non-ASCII characters in HellaNZB configuration files, which makes it possible to choose a download directory with a name like "Vidéos". (LP: #305248)
· It's possible to enable or disable the automatic extraction of completed downloads.
· Users are informed when something goes wrong downloading an NZB file from Newzbin.
· LottaNZB 0.4 speaks several new languages. Thanks to the work of numerous people, translations to Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian Bokmal, Polish and Portuguese have been added. Upgrading to a new LottaNZB version has become much easier for those who use the source package. The 'install' command will look for existing installations and prevent annoying version conflicts.
· This list is far from complete. There are numerous other minor and major improvements not mentioned here. Give LottaNZB 0.4 a try and see yourself!
December 30th, 2008· This is the first version of LottaNZB which is based on the Kiwi framework (http://www.async.com.br/projects/kiwi/). Kiwi simplifies the development of graphical applications by providing an extensive set of high-level tools, which now replace our self-baked ones. Kiwi enabled us to significantly reduce the amount of code required to do certain things and paves the way for a faster implementation of new features, since we can concentrate on the things that matter.
· Beside the graphical parts of the application, also the other parts have undergone a major rewrite. This did not only improve the reliability and maintainability of the code but also fixed a bunch of bugs.
· The categorization feature has been improved notably. Users that don't want to categorize their downloads are allowed to disable the feature completely in the preferences dialog. The others are rewarded with the possibility of creating a custom set of categories and - even more exciting - with a function that automatically moves a completed download to a directory named like its category.
· The algorithm collecting HellaNZB's log messages has become way more intelligent (LP: #245670).
· Thanks to this, we laid the groundwork for a mechanism that analyzes all incoming HellaNZB log messages and extracts the interesting information. HellaNZB's current interface for external application doesn't provide us with much information. In future version of LottaNZB, you can expect more information to be displayed about the state of your downloads and LottaNZB will also know more about potential problems.
· The way how LottaNZB manages its configuration has completely changed. Instead of an XML file an INI-style configuration file format is used. Internally, LottaNZB uses a decentralised configuration system with support for nested configuration sections, which makes LottaNZB more modular end extensible. There are plans for a plugin system which will make use of it. Any existing, old-fashioned XML configuration file is automatically converted to the new format.
· Scrolling should now be possible in both the download list and the message log window and the lists won't flicker anymore when updated.
· Reordering the download queue using drag & drop has been made more predictable and hence sleeker to use. Dropping a download won't unselect it anymore.
· LottaNZB won't crash anymore if the Usenet server configuration contains an optional property such as 'fillserver', 'enabled', 'skipGroupCmd' and 'bindTo'. (LP: #251798, #280302)
· Support for non-ASCII characters in HellaNZB configuration files, which makes it possible to choose a download directory with a name like "Vidéos". (LP: #305248)
· It's possible to enable or disable the automatic extraction of completed downloads.
· Users are informed when something goes wrong downloading an NZB file from Newzbin.
· LottaNZB 0.4 speaks several new languages. Thanks to the work of numerous people, translations to Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Norwegian Bokmal, Polish and Portuguese have been added. Upgrading to a new LottaNZB version has become much easier for those who use the source package. The 'install' command will look for existing installations and prevent annoying version conflicts.
· This list is far from complete. There are numerous other minor and major improvements not mentioned here. Give LottaNZB 0.4 a try and see yourself!
Find us on Google+
