[compiz] Compiz Fusion Release 0.5.2 is out!

[Jeffrey Laramie]

Compiz Fusion Release 0.5.2 is out!

This is the first development release of Compiz Fusion, the result of more 
than six months of work and polish.  The first stable release, 0.6.0, will 
follow after the Compiz 0.6.0 release.

Compiz Fusion is the result of a merge between the Compiz community plugin 
set "Compiz Extras" and the parts of the Beryl project that are independent 
of the window manager core.  The two communities have re-united to create a 
user experience for Linux that rivals anything available on other platforms.

The merge between Compiz and Beryl, combined with the continuing increase in 
stability, reliability, and usability both in Compiz, Compiz Fusion and the 
surrounding software environment (better driver support and so on), means 
Compiz Fusion will be included in many more distributions.  Compiz and Compiz 
Fusion will be enabled by default in some of them, making Compiz usage easier 
for everyone.

The Compiz Fusion 0.5.2 tarballs are available at 
http://releases.compiz-fusion.org/0.5.2/ . You can verify these tarballs 
using the sha1sums in 
http://releases.compiz-fusion.org/0.5.2/compiz-fusion-0.5.2.sha1 , which are 
signed by Compiz Fusion Release Team GPG key (C2B8F46E) at 
http://releases.compiz-fusion.org/0.5.2/compiz-fusion-0.5.2.sha1.asc . The 
matching Compiz Core tarball is available in the compiz/ subdirectory.

This release includes:

Compiz Plugin sets (Plugins are split into three packages according to their 
usefulness and stability.):

compiz-fusion-plugins-main:
	Animation: Animations for window open, close, minimize/restore, focus and 
shade events.
	Colourfilter: Provides various filters to improve accessibility to vision 
impaired users.
	Expo: Displays all viewports and allows the movement of a window from one 
viewport to another.
	Enhanced Zoom (ezoom): Improved version of the Zoom plugin, featuring 
interaction with windows while zooming, plus several accessibility 
improvements such as focus tracking.
	Jpeg: Adds jpeg images support to Compiz.
	Neg: Shows negatives of windows.
	Opacify: Reduce opacity of windows overlapping the window currently hovered 
over by the mouse pointer.
	Put: Adds bindings to move windows to several positions.
	Resizeinfo: Provides a small information window about the window dimensions 
during window resize.
	Ring: An alternative application switcher plugin that arranges all windows in 
a ring.
	Scaleaddon: Improves Compiz Scale plugin by displaying hovered windows titles 
or highlighting the currently selected window.
	Shift: An alternative application switcher plugin that provides a 3D view of 
the switching process.
	Snap: Adds snapping during window movement if the wobbly plugin is disabled.
	Text: Offers pango-cairo based text rendering for different plugins.
	Thumbnail: Shows a small thumbnail of a window if the mouse is over its entry 
in the taskbar. 
	Vpswitch: Uses mouse actions performed on the background to change the 
current viewport.
	Wall: Arranges all viewports as a wall and features visual sliding between 
viewports as well as a preview window during switching.
	Winrules: Enables setting of window properties by matching them by name, 
type, or other criteria.
	Workarounds: Features several workarounds to improve behavior of legacy 
applications and such.
	
compiz-fusion-plugins-extra:
	Addhelper: Darkens unfocused windows so the user can concentrate on the 
focused window.
	Bench: Displays the current frames per second as a simple benchmark.
	Crashhandler: Creates a backtrace of a compiz crash and is able to start an 
alternative window manager.
	Cubecaps: Displays top and bottom caps on Compiz Cube.
	Cubereflex: Adds a reflective ground to the Compiz Cube plugin.
	ExtraWM: Adds additional window manager actions to Compiz.
	Fadedesktop: Fades windows out to display the desktop background.
	Firepaint: Draw with fire on the screen.
	Gears: Renders the famous "glxgears" gears inside of the transparent cube.
	Goto-Viewport: Switches to a given viewport by pressing a keybinding and the 
viewport number.
	Group: Enables the grouping of windows to resize and move them, and the 
tabbing of several windows together.
	Motion blur (mblur): Creates a motion blur for different screen animations.
	Reflex: Draws a reflection behind transparent areas of a window.
	Scalefilter: Provides a way to filter and select windows by title while using 
the Compiz Scale plugin.
	Showdesktop: Slides all windows toward the edges of the screen to expose the 
desktop.
	Splash: Displays a simple animated splash image.
	Trailfocus: Gradually dims windows as other windows gain focus.
	Widget: Features a widget layer similar to OS X Dashboard.
	
compiz-fusion-plugins-unsupported:
	Fakeargb: Makes a special color of a window transparent.
	Mswitch: Enables the switching of viewports with mouse gestures.
	Snow: Displays falling snow over the desktop and windows.
	Tile: Enables the tiling of windows on the desktop in a manner similar to 
ion3.

BCOP:

compiz-bcop: BCOP is a code generator that provides an easy way to handle 
plugin options by generating parts of the plugin code directly from the xml 
metadata file.  It is used for most of the Compiz Fusion plugins.

Window decorator:

emerald: An alternative themeable window decorator.
 
emerald-themes: Different themes for emerald.

A brand new Compiz configuration system:

libcompizconfig: Libcompizconfig is an alternative configuration system for 
compiz and provides the following features:
	- Automatic plugin list generation.
 	- Import/Export of the current configuration.
 	- Configuration profiles.
 	- Parsing of Compiz metadata files to provide an easy to use API for 
configuration managers.
 	- Conflict handling for plugins and actions.
 	- Support for different configuration storage backends.
 	- Desktop environment integration.  If a backend provides desktop 
environment integration, then Compiz will share the keybindings and settings 
with the default desktop environment window manager like metacity or kwin.
 	- Its own Compiz configuration plugin "ccp" to provide all features of 
libcompizconfig with compiz.

compizconfig-backend-kconfig: The kconfig backend for CompizConfig. It uses 
the KDE configuration system to store the compiz configuration and provides 
integration into the KDE desktop environment.

compizconfig-backend-gconf: The gconf backend for CompizConfig.  It uses the 
Gnome configuration system and provides integration into the Gnome desktop 
environment.

compizconfig-python: Python bindings for the compizconfig library.

compizconfig-settings-manager(ccsm): A fully featured Python/GTK based 
settings manager for the CompizConfig system.

We'd like to thank everyone who contributed their time and skills to our 
project.  Compiz Fusion was made possible by our dedicated developers, 
administrators, translators, and testers.  These individuals gave their time 
freely to a project they believed in, and we are all grateful for their 
efforts.

We hope you will enjoy using Compiz Fusion as much as we enjoyed writing it!

- The Compiz Fusion Team.