You know it’s no coincidence that the Cassini space craft spotted a hurricane-like storm measuring 8000km (5000 miles) across with wind-speeds of 550kph (350 mph) at Saturn’s south pole on the eve of phpBB 3.0Beta3’s release, because though that storm is monstrous (it’s two-thirds the diameter of Earth!), once the next generation of phpBB is ready and version 3.0.0 lands, it’s going to cause a storm that’ll make the one raging on Saturn look tiny! ;)
Meik “Acyd Burn” Sievertsen, phpBB’s Development Team Leader, had the following to say regarding changes since 3.0Beta2:
Thanks to our community 299 bugs were spotted and fixed since the 12th August. We not only received reports about bugs but also opinions about existing features as well as reports for “strange environments”. We also replaced the provided visual confirmation image and added full UTF-8 functionality.
Indeed, the reason why the time between the current and previous beta was so great was due to the pulling forward of UTF-8 support from the planned 3.2.x series to the 3.0.x series. phpBB 2.0.x already supports over 60 translations into the world’s major and minor languages and it’s obvious (with help from the translation community) that phpBB 3.x will support at least as many and possibly many more!
So despite the limitations of the current versions of PHP non-Unicode awareness; after many-many internal discussions, it was decided that it will prove far better for phpBB 3.x to support one single “Universal character set” now, rather than converting between a dozen or so “local” character sets, which was what happened in phpBB versions 3.0Beta1 & 3.0Beta2.
Advanced users are encouraged to download the beta and give it a good pummelling then report bugs to quash remaining outstanding issues and possible regressions that were missed in the UTF-8 transition. Newbie users and/or those requiring to set up a production forum now should stick with the tried and tested 2.0.x line. ;)
With a bit of luck, the next release shall be 3.0RC1 rather than 3.0Beta4 (though there may well be a 3.0Beta4 if deemed appropriate!), marking the end of the beta-testing period and into the time-to-run-live period complete with upgrade and conversion scripts. It’ll also be the time for translators to get down and dirty in pulling the multi-lingual rabbit out of the hat.
It’s been a road of nearly 4 and a half years though the end if almost in sight, so happy beta testing and bug reporting and see you lot at the top of Olympus! ;)
