Kamaelia 0.4.0 RELEASED - Faster! More Tools! More Examples! More Docs! ; -)

Wed Jun 21 18:37:46 EDT 2006

Hi!

(OK, slightly silly subject line :)

I'm extremely pleased to say - Kamaelia 0.4.0 has been released!

What's New & Changed?
=====================

Kamaelia 0.4.0 is a consolidation, documentation and optimisation enhanced
release. Whilst there are a wide variety of new components, existing
functionality has been consolidated, and is now in use in a handful of
(beta) production systems.

Notable New Components
  * Tools for Timeshifting Digital TV (DVB-T handling to be precise)
    (These tools are only intended for use as legal under UK law,
     you need to check locally if you can use them.)
  * A software data backplane -
       http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Introduction.html
       has an example using this.
  * Tools for piping data easily/trivially through external processes
  * Tools for taking advantage of system optimisations allowing quiescent
    behaviour. (both in terms of pygame & network based systems)
  * Tools for using UDP

***  Kamaelia 0.4.0 requires the use of Axon 1.5  ***
***  (released at the same time as this release). ***

Also, virtually all components now have highly detailed documentation inside
their sourcefiles. A (large) subset of this is available here:
  * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Components.html

The examples have been duplicated onto the website, and are here:
  * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Cookbook.html

Our tutorial for helping getting started is here:
  * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/MiniAxon/

This has now been battle tested by a good few dozen people, and we feel is a
good introduction to Kamaelia's approach, and others have also stated they
find it a good way of understanding generators too. (even if they're not
interested in Kamaelia)

New Examples
  * Tools for using UDP & SingleServer

  * A collaborative whiteboard "sketcher" which is both a server to other
    whiteboards and/or a client to other whiteboards. (Due to changes, when
    not in use CPU usage for these is as close to zero as it can be for any
    software) This is also a good example of usage of the backplane
    component.

    This application is particularly nice to use in conjunction with a
    tablet PC!

    An overview of the sketcher can be found on our systems page:

      * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Systems.html
        (see Collaborative Whiteboarding)

  * Examples for using the tools for timeshifting including:

  * Tuning into a TV channel on Freeview and recording it to disk
  * Dumping a DVB multiplex transport stream
  * Demultiplexing a prestored DVB multiplex

    A system for grabbing a TV channel and it's now & next information, such
    that this can allow the programmes to be captured and transcoding as
    individual programmes for watching later.

    This is the core of the BBC Macro system (an internal prototype) that
    can be seen here:
       * http://bbc.kamaelia.org/cgi-bin/blog/blog.cgi

An overview of the architecture can be found here:

  * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/KamaeliaMacro.html

Essentially, this allows you to build your own space efficient PVR.

General overview of other large scale changes

Massively improved documentation across the board (no file left untouched).
This is all largely in the form of pydoc based documentation, a fair chunk
of it is available at
  * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Components.html

However the documentation in those files goes further than that, including
many, many more examples than are even at:
  * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Cookbook.html

*NOTE* Kamaelia 0.4.0 requires Axon-1.5.0 to run due to a number
of system optimisations which Kamaelia 0.4.0 takes advantage of.

Full release notes and change log:
    * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Kamaelia-0.4.0-ReleaseNotes.html

What Is Kamaelia?
=================

See also: http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Introduction.html

GOAL:     Kamaelia is a general component framework for
          all programmers and maintainable development.
          Write clear and simple snap-together components
          using Unix Pipes for the 21st Century.

Kamaelia is a library of networking/communications components for
innovative multimedia systems. The component architecture is designed
to simplify creation and testing of systems, protocols and large scale
media delivery systems. A subset of the system has been tested on
series 60 mobile phones.

It is optimised for simplicity, such that people can get started very
rapidly, and such that maintainers can pick up the code of others
without misunderstandings.

It is designed as a /practical/ toolkit, such that you can build
systems such as:
   * Collaborative whiteboards
   * Transcoding PVRs for timeshifting TV
   * Ogg Vorbis streaming server/client systems (via vorbissimple)
   * Create Video players & streaming systems (for dirac).
       * With subtitles.
   * Simple network aware games (via pygame)
   * Quickly build TCP & Multicast based network servers and clients
   * Presentation tools
   * A networked audio mixer matrix (think multiple audio sources over
     network connections mixed and sent on to multiple locations with
     different mixes)
   * Look at graph topologies & customise the rules of display &
     particle types.
.... Mix and match all of the above.

These are all real examples you can do today.

You can also do a lot of this *visually* using the new PipeBuilder
application in Tools.

Essentially if the system you want to build involves audio or moving
pictures, and you want to be able to make the system network aware,
then this should be quick and easy to do using Kamaelia. (If it isn't,
then a) it's a bug b) needs improving :-)

Oh, and due to things like the visual editor, the use of pygame in a
lot of examples, the use of dirac & vorbis, it's a lot of fun too :-) 

It runs on Linux, Windows, Mac OS X with a subset running on Series 60
phones. (Linux is the primary development system)

Requirements
============

    * Python 2.3 or higher recommended, though please do report any bugs
      with 2.2.
    * Axon (1.5 required)

Optional extras: (all available via the Kamaelia download page)
    * vorbissimple (if you want to use the vorbis decode
      component/examples)
    * dirac bindings (again from kamaelia site) if you want to use the
      dirac encode/decode components & examples). (And dirac of
      course :-)
    * python-dvb bindings

Axon, vorbissimple and python-dirac are separate parts of the Kamaelia
project,  and available at the same download location - see below)

Platforms
=========

Kamaelia has been used successfully under both Linux, Windows and Mac OS
X (panther). A subset of Kamaelia has been successfully tested on Series
60 Nokia mobiles when used with the Axon SERIES 60 branch.

Where can I get it?
===================

Sourceforge Download:

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=122494&package_id=133714

Web pages are here:
     http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Docs/
     http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/ (includes info on mailing lists)

ViewCVS access is available here:
     http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/kamaelia/

Tutorial for the core component/concurrency system:
    * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/MiniAxon/

Project Motivations:
    * http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Challenges/

Licensing
=========

Kamaelia is released under the Mozilla tri-license scheme
(MPL1.1/GPL2.0/LGPL2.1). See
http://kamaelia.sourceforge.net/Licensing.html

Best Regards,

Michael.
--
Michael Sparks, Senior Research Engineer, BBC Research, Technology Group
michael.sparks at rd.bbc.co.uk, Kamaelia Project Lead, http://kamaelia.sf.net/

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which are not the views of the BBC unless specifically stated. 