23.10.99 – 29.10.99

With the recent lose of yet another great coder within the LS
community, I think its time that the coders of the core start looking
into what direction LS is going in.  It seems as if its just “flopping
around” with no real focus except to “pile feature ontop of feature.
Is this what we really want from LS? A feature packed shell with no
reguard to stabilty and bugs? Sounds an awful lot like windows if you
ask me.  Throwing bells and whistles into the code instead of trouble
shooting problems and cleaning up.  I think its time for the coders to
stop, take a step back, and try to come to some agreement among them-
selves as to what direction LS is going in.  If not, we may finally be
seeing the end of a great shell.

- demigod

—————————
TOP NEWS STORIES
—————————

- Desktopwatch.com Reviews LiteStep (2:53pm 26.10)

I just crused over to desktopwatch.com and noticed that they
did a little review of LS.  Although they got the version
number wrong, they did give it a 92/100 overall rating.  Worth
the read imo.

url – http://www.desktopwatch.com/
(source: http://www.desktopwatch.com/)

—————————
MODULES
—————————

- Recycler 4.0.0 ~ Joachim Calvert (10:15am 25.10)

“I’ve upgraded the graphics system again, and this time I’ve
tested it.   There are still some minor flaws, but in general,
it should be smooth as silk.  I’ve started to use the LSAPI
commands to load the images, so if you have Murphy’s preview
build, you can use any format supported by his LSImpGfx plugin.

“I’ve also abandoned the ‘modules.ini’ to allow the module to
be themed more easily. I’m sorry for this, but it would come
sooner or later anyway. I hope not too many will be upset
about this.

“The “true” transparency in the earlier versions has now been
totally abandoned, as the new graphics system is more than
capable of handling it by itself.  Whenever the display gets
corrupted, you need only to click on it to force a complete
redraw. For some odd reason the first click isn’t registered,
but I’m working on it.”

url – http://hem.passagen.se/jcalvert/software
e-mail – jcalvert@hem.passagen.se
(source: LS Mailing List ~ Recycler 4.0.0)

+—————+

- Rainmation 0.3 ~ Rainy (10:22am 25.10)

“New version of the Litestep animation plugin Rainmation has
been released. New features include animation control with
!Bangs.”

url – http://www.iki.fi/rainy/products.html
e-mail – rainy@iki.fi
(source: chunkymunky.com)

+—————+

- LSWallpaper 1.5 ~ Visigoth (9:35am 27.10)

“Welp, I felt like updating my LSWallpaper module to do some
nifty stuff… so I did. This was the first module I wrote and
it turned out nobody really wanted it. I couldn’t quite figure
out why people wanted to keep the same boring wallpaper on
their screen forever. In any case, there’s only one
functionality change, which is you can stop a wallpaper from
loading by holding down Shift at startup. The other change is
LSWallpaper now has a graphical configuration utility. (note:
It doesn’t edit your step.rc, just its own wallpapers.list
file).”

url – floach.pimpin.net/visigoth
e-mail – gandhimail@worldnet.att.net
(source: floach.pimpin.net)

+—————+

- LSDesktopWallpaper 0.53 ~ Fizzie (11:23am 29.10)

* fixed bug causing long weather conditions (e.g., “Light Rain
Showers”) to be truncated
* changed module name to “WeatherDesk” (thanks to Glenn
Krutsinger for the idea)
* changed all step.rc commands from “DesktopWeather…” to
“WeatherDesk…”
* changed bang command names to !ShowWD, HideWD, and !ToggleWD
* implemented support for people behind proxies…if you’re
behind a proxy and still have problems, please let me know
* added feature to overlay weather condition-specific graphic
on top of WeatherDesk
* included 18 bitmaps to work with the condition-specific
graphic feature
* added feature to optionally scroll text while cycling (see
WeatherDeskScrollDuringCycle for more info)
* added new bang command: !MoveWD x,y
* WeatherDeskX and WeatherDeskY now accept negative parameters
* added WeatherDeskStartHidden command
* added metric unit support (see WeatherDeskFormat variables)

url – http://chunkymunky.com/module
e-mail – fizzie7@excite.com
(source: litestep.net)

—————————
THEMES
—————————

- One Small Step ~ Crawford (11:35am 29.10)

“Theme based on the greatest event in my life time. It’s basic
but I hope you enjoy using it.”

url – litestep.net
e-mail – stoney@fullcomp.com.au
(source: litestep.net)

—————————
WEB SITES
—————————

- LSDev Web Site (9:34am 27.10)

“If you didn’t already read, we now have a backend on this
site, which should keep some of the site a little more
maintainable, since I was the only one not having problems
before…. in any case you’ll notice the Must See Sites
section over there, its a list of the sites that are very
important (besides this one =P) The new addition over there
is the LS Dev Team site…. note this is different from the
LSDev site, which is Dustin’s site where he easily maintains
the new builds. The LS Dev Team site is the official site of
the Litestep Dev Team, where you will finally have a place to
see official devteam news. We’ll probably have one person
maintaining the site with weekly dev team updates on what is
going on, but we think this should really really improve
communication, and understanding of what we are doing. There
are some neat things being planned out, and hopefully work will
begin soon on b25.. Yay!”

url – http://lsdev.litestep.net/
(source: floach.pimpin.net)

—————————
PROGRAMS
—————————

- LSTweaker 1.59 ~ Epsylon3 (10:29am 25.10)

- Enhance Module TabSheet
- New Definitions

%%UPDATE%% (11:19am 29.10)

- RealSize Editor : Fix Screen Size, Zoom Fit and BackGround
- Plugins : now include Combo Boxes, Color Edits and Font
- Popup : Fix PopupFolder:”"
Modules :
- Remove Path of Files in LiteStep Dir
- Take desktop.dll the first module in the list
Finally : Optimize some Code

url – tweak.cjb.net
e-mail – epsylon3@ifrance.com
(source: litestep.net)

+—————+

- Edit.RC ~ Dana Browder (11:28am 29.10)

“For the past week or so, I’ve been working on a Step.rc
editor.  I’m not sure how many people will actually want to
use it, but here’s where I’m at.

“The name is Edit.RC – because I’m bland. It’s written in
Visual Basic :(  I’m *just* learning C and I know nowhere
near what it takes to make it in that.  Maybe some day.
It uses tabs to open multiple .RC files at once, and then they
can be saved to their seperate .RC files, or they can be ‘saved
merged’ which will build them all into a single step.rc

“That’s *basically* all it does right now.  So it’s not much
of anything, therefore I name this a ‘Preview Release’… just
to see if anybody is interested.”

url – http://hepkat.com/editrc/
e-mail – az@hepkat.com
(source: LS Mailing List ~ Step.rc Editor – Edit.RC)

—————————
MISC
—————————

- Uedit and SynEdit syntax files ~ Kelly Rabourn (9:38am 25.10)

I have got the UltraEdit and SynEdit Syntax files up at
Litestep Commands.

url – http://members.tripod.com/krabourn/index.html
e-mail – krabourn@bigfoot.com
(source: LS Mailing List ~ Syntax Files)

+—————+

- Kill process kit ~ Fraxinus (10:19am 25.10)

“OK, I have put up my little kill-kit, featuring a whole bunch
of GNU tools.  It should work fine under NT (with cmd.exe),
and it may work under 95 (unable to test when at school).

“The batch file is called killps.bat. Make sure the exe’s are
in the dir as the bat, or you would have to change the paths
in the batch-file, or change the PATH variable (or put the
exe’s in your PATH). I dont know about the licenses of the
tools, but Im quite sure they are free, and probably GNU.

“And, if you already have the tools, then you may not need to
replace them with these (but there could be problems,
especially with sed).”

url – http://www.student.ibg.uu.se/~hugoa/xmarksthespot/
e-mail – fraxinus@home.se
(Source: LS Mailing List ~ OT: kill-kit)

………………………………

—-
Tips
—-

- This weeks tip comes from Gargamale on #ls_help.  He
considers sysedit to be an underrated app, and I agree.

<Gargamale> instead of searching for system.ini
<Gargamale> use sysedit
<Gargamale> goto run dialog

………………………………

—–
Retro
—–

- LSRun b1 ~ TaLoN^LzR (December 15, 1998)

“lsRun is a wharfmodule for LiteStep.  Using this
module you don’t have to pull up the god old
microsoft rundialog anymore under your Litestep-shell.
You just push a wharfbutton (just like any other
wharfbutton) and there you are – A fully BMP’able run
dialog with all the M$ goodies on it.  And what’s
best with it is it’s NO M$-code in it! – Even though
it behaves just like the old one, all the functions
including the function which draws the textbox is
written by me!”

download – chunkymunky.com/lsweekly/retro/lsrun.zip

………………………………

————-
Latest Builds
————-

- Official – b24.5 build
Changes

- Preview – b24.5 build
Changes

………………………………

————-
Mailing Lists
————-

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………………………………

———–
News Groups
———–

- Server news.emci.com
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