Hi everyone,

For everyone who is wondering why the next beta version hasn't arrive yet:

At this very moment I am insanely busy. One part of that is caused by the fact that I am porting Arles to a new development environment. Since 2002 I have been using Borland Delphi 7 to create Arles. I am now in the middle of porting Arles to Delphi 2010.

That is a lot of work and to make it worse a lot of components I use don't exist anymore for Delphi 2010. So other components need to be integrated and large portions of the code needs to be updated because Delphi 2010 uses Unicode.

This will take a least a couple more weeks possibly more. No promises, but it will going to be worth it.

Jan Derk



Last edited by janderk on Sun Aug 08, 2010 9:27 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Jan,

So what is going on? It looks like there haven't been any new releases in more than 3 months.

-- Geoff


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Patience is an integral part of Windows 7 64-bit.
- Confucius Gates

Why would Arles need to be a 64 bit application?

- Geoff


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GeoffSchultz wrote:

Jan,

So what is going on? It looks like there haven't been any new releases in more than 3 months.

Hi Geoff,

It is a combination of things.

First I am in the middle of moving Arles from a Delphi 7 (a 2001 programming tool) to Delphi 2010. That is much more work than I hoped for. I won't bother you too much with the details but it includes Unicode issues (which is good for everyone that does not have a western language) and a complete replacement/rewrite of the backend database from DBISAM to SQLite.

Secondly, I am over my head into other work. People pay me very well to do IT consulting and development, which is good as an additional source of income, but is bad too as it leaves less time for Arles. But don't despair, I well get there eventually. Plus I have some really nice ideas for Arles on the backburner.

Jan Derk



Last edited by janderk on Tue May 04, 2010 12:06 am; edited 1 time in total
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GeoffSchultz wrote:

Why would Arles need to be a 64 bit application?

Arles runs just fine for 99.9% of all users on 64bit Windows. I myself use Windows 7 64bit on my main development PC.

The main reason why Arles will switch to 64bit at some point is memory usage. Any 32bit application is limited to 2-4GB memory, even when your computer has 8 or 16GB available. This isn't a problem as Arles uses very little memory and you have to use huge images to use more than a few 100MB of memory in Arles. However, step by step I am changing Arles to make better use of multi-core processors. The current Arles version already generates thumbnails and images in parallel. Meaning that if you have a quad core processor things go almost 4 times as quick. However this also requires 4 times more memory. With 6/8 and more core processors appearing, Arles will eventually run into the 2GB memory limitation.

I do depend on the development environment I use, Delphi, to allow me to create 64bit application. Unfortunately Delphi currently only allows creating 32bit applications. Hopefully next year there will be a version available that allows me to create a 64bit Arles version.

Jan Derk


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Anxious... expecting the new improvements!


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Hi informativos,

I have been working the last three days porting the internal data structure from the DBISAM database to a SQLite database. It probably sounds like boring stuff and it is somewhat technical, but it is needed to get Arles forward in 2010. I did not know I wrote this much code over the years. Still working my way through. EXIF/IPTC data and thumbnails are working again, and the grid view is next.

The good news is that I recently finished a large project for a third party, which allows me to put more time into Arles.

Jan Derk


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I've been using your program for over 10 years and it just keeps getting better and better.

I agree!


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Still working my way through it fixing bugs now that the rewrite is complete. I am at the stage where I am using the Arles Image Explorer myself to view and manage images. Still plenty of functions to check though. I released version 8.3 because I need to room to start an new beta program soon. Due to the rewrite the first releases will probably be buggier than usual though.

Jan Derk


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Progress update on Arles 8.5:

In the Web Page Creator thumbnail, image and HTML processing now all work again. And it is all Unicode proof.

Most users from the America and Western Europe will probably not care, but I just created a template with Russian, Chinese, Swedish and Thai characters and it was properly processed and shown in the generated output.

Next up is checking all image effects and FTP uploading. Still bugs there.

Jan Derk


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Today I fixed the image effects. More testing needed but all seem to work again.

Web publishing is next up.

Jan Derk


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