[Odb-help] Update on new ODB release

[odb-help at lists.democracygroups.org]

Dear ODB Users:

Here is some news on developments here...

1)  Version 0.9.5a of the ODB software has been out for 3 weeks now
and 275 people have downloaded it.  It looks like a large number
of organizations are reviewing it as well:  over 1000 people
have download just the new 60-page user manual in October, as
compared with just 250 in all of August!  Now there are almost
1200 people on this email list.

2) We have developed a new design for a new ODB web site!  We
still have to make a final decision between the candidate content
management systems (CMS): Drupal, Plone, and Mambo.  The content
management systems will make it easier for us to update the
site, and even include community features.  We would like to
involve the ODB community in helping to run part of this new
infrastructure.  If you are an existing ODB user and want to assist,
drop us a line.  We can always use a few volunteers!

3) New releases occasionally cause bugs in things that worked
in older releases.  We disclose these things as soon as we learn
about them, so we are telling you now that there were 3 bugs
introduced into 0.9.5a (see below for list).  (Of course there were
over 40 changes in 0.9.5a that were improvements too :)

We have created an new version that fixes these bugs.  You will
have to download the new version and install it.  The best way to
get the new version is to email me; that way we will know that your
installation is successful and then we can release this to everyone
with more confidence.

thanks,

-rich cowan

p.s. people in the odbusers email discussion (a yahoogroup) received
a download link to the bugfix version on Friday.



NOTE: below is the list of bugs fixed on Friday in 0.9.5a.
	
Minor Glitches Fixed
a) When Printing out sorted listings, we inadvertently left off the
street name and city fields from the list of fields you could have
"breaks" on. (10/22)
b) If you install ODB, then move the location of your database, then
select the option to run the setup wizard when you open ODB, ODB
does not show the proper location for templates and thus errors may
occur when trying to create a new ODB database.  Workaround:
delete the file c:\program files\oc\odbsetup.dat before you
try to create a new ODB database.   (10/22)
	
Major Bugs 
a) Exporting "all possible fields" was causing ODB to quit.  ODB
was trying to export the nonexistent "voter" field (should have
been "vreg".  (10/22)
b) The routine handling import errors was not working.  If you
plan to import data with ODB, you might want to upgrade because
ODB will say it executed a "stop statement" instead of giving
an informative error message.  (10/22) 

Also reported over the weekend: the USPS has changed
its web page so sometimes ODB is not able to use it to look
up zip codes...