[seul-edu] AUC 0.7.0 is here!

[David Moore <dmoore@its.caltech.edu>]

AUC version 0.7.0 is finished!  There are a lot of new features in this
release.  Notable additions are:

- Totally web-based site configuration
- Much easier installation (no more hand-tweaking of the MySQL database)
- RPMS are available
- Support for usernames longer than 8 chars (thanks to Ben Greslick)
- Email client supports persistent connections to IMAP server (very
	significant speed boost)
- IMAP settings can be specified globally (with a lot of other minor
	email configuration niceties as well)
- Course scheduling is far more flexible (no more idiosyncracies with the
	ID field, no longer dependent on "periods", etc.)
- Plugin API allows adding features to interactive classrooms
- Discussions can be shared between courses
- Improved auto-highlighting
- Different location for default graphics and newspaper directories
- New French and Spanish translations
- Numerous bug fixes


I consider this release to be the first that can really be adapted
to almost any environment.

Let me know if you find any bugs, compilation problems, etc.  I want to
put out version 0.7.1 shortly with these updates.  I've updated the
preview page on the website (http://auc.sourceforge.net) with my todo list
for future versions.

Also, make sure you read the INSTALL file if you are upgrading from 0.6.x.
In short, your configuration file won't be imported, but you DO need to
keep it in place for the upgrade to go smoothly.  MySQL tables _will_
be imported, so leave them (but a backup is always a good idea).

Lastly, if you've written any plugins for 0.6.x, they will not work with
version 0.7.0.  However, it's very easy to update your plugins.  Download
the new version of auc-sampleplugin (0.0.2) to see the minor changes you
have to make.  Also, plugins will integrate seemlessly into the web-based
configuration tool if you write up a short XML template file.

Enjoy!

Regards,

David Moore

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  David Moore       California Institute of Technology
 <dcm@acm.org>     http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~dmoore
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