Tuesday, November 16, 2010

QComicBook 0.7.0 released!

QComicBook 0.7.0 has been released! From the ChangeLog:
  • added hints (warning, information) to System information dialog; display warning if free unrar is used.
  • added 'Cleanup list' option to Recently opened files menu.
  • added Dutch, Korean, Russian and Simplified Chinese translations.
  • added 'About donations' and 'About Qt' help menu items.
  • added experimental 'Frame View' mode for frame-by-frame reading.
  • added preliminary support for printing.
  • fixed bug with 'Open Next' disabled on first comic book archive in the directory
  • Qt >= 4.5.0 is now required.
Grab the new release here.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

QComicBook 0.7.0 is close, feature plan for next releases

As QComicBook 0.7.0 is nearing (just waiting for a few translations to be updated), I've started planning new features for  next releases. Here is the list of "big" features planned for QComicBook 0.8.0 / 0.9.0 to wet you appetite:

  • Support for PDF file format - this is actually almost ready and already available in the dev/pdf branch of QComicBook repository. Thanks to the great Poppler library and good, modular design of QComicBook (of course! :)) this feature took me literally a few hours to implement. There are still some rough edges, but it works and will for sure be a part of QComicBook 0.8.0. By the way, I think that comic books distributed as PDF files esentially do suck (as there is no benefit from keeping a bunch of images in a pdf file), but well, apparently some people have different opinion on this, so QComicBook will support them so that you can read pdfs and use all QComicBook's goodies (like bookmarks for example).
  • Comicbook library management - a tool to manage and browse your comicbooks collection. This feature still has a lot of question marks: how to organize the library and UI, make it user-friendly and useful etc. I will definately make and publish some mockups first. If you have any nice ideas about how this feature should look like, please drop me an email!
  • CBR archive editing / creation - make it possible to rearrange order of the pages, remove pages and create a new CBR archive out of existing one.
  • Fancy frame-by-frame reading - QComicBook 0.7.0 will introduce a new "Frame View" reading mode which displays single comic book frame, with shortucts for advancing to the next / previous frames. The idea is to implement a more "fancy" mode which displays an entire page and scroolls and zooms it in/out frame-by-frame.
  • Editable keyboard shortucts - this has been a problem for a long time in QComicBook. I've received already too many complaints about keyboard bindings, so with this feature one will be able to redefine keybord to his/her liking.
  • Simplified user interface - a way to switch between standard and clutter-free UI with a minimum set of buttons / menu options. Of course, all "hidden" options would still be available via keyboard shortucts.
That's it. I'm planning the next 0.8.0 release to be available by the end of this year and throw one or two of the above features in it. In the meantime, get ready for 0.7.0!