Release Info

It’s been a long time since we released 1.0 — over 6 months. Today, we’re releasing the first beta of 1.2.0. Everyone is encouraged to upgrade. If you’re upgrading from 1.0, you’ll find that there are a lot of new features. Way too many to list them all. You can go through the previous news items to see the full list. For those of you that have been using our 1.1 developer snapshots, here is what’s newly available in 1.2.0:

• OSSv4 support!
• A new configuration file system. Your config file will be automatically migrated from ~/.manglerrc to a newly created directory of ~/.mangler
• The “send silenty” option is available for setting comments
• An on-screen display (overlay) is available
• Support for the celt codec (note that the Windows/Mac client will not be able to hear this)
• You can right click on the status icon to mute or quickly open the settings window
• You can adjust the master volume by using the mouse scroll wheel on the status icon
• The server ban list editor is available
• The server properties editor is available
• You can specify command line arguments to automatically connect to a server at startup
• Channel mute is supported
• User mute state is remembered
• Ability to record to VRF format (compatible with the Windows/Mac client)
• Some TTS notifications
• G15 Keyboard support (requires g15daemon to be running)
• User paging support
• Many new, exciting and mysterious bugs were added!

Thanks to Haxar, Bob Shaffer, humbaba, Daniel Sloof, cesium, Mesreth, Roman Tetelman, FWishbringer and everyone else that contributed code, donations, provided feedback, and helped test for bugs. Without the community, this project would not have been possible.

The latest developer snapshot is now available and contains the following new features:

• Ability to compile libventrilo3 on Apple platforms
• Added support for many admin functions in libventrilo3 (see the wiki for details)
• Master volume control
• Accessibility fixes for orca users
• Per-user volume settings are saved across restarts
• Channel passwords are saved across restarts
• New admin button to log in as a server admin
• Added an [ADMIN] flag if the user is logged in as a server admin
• Added an [A] channel flag if you’re an admin on a specific channel
• Admin users can drag/drop users into channels
• Admin users can kick and ban users via right-click menu
• Channel admins can move users between channels if they have appropriate access
• Rank tags are prepended to the user’s name in the channel list
• Users are now sorted alphabetically in the channel list
• Added ability to mute a specific user via the right-click menu
• Traffic statistics added to the server panel on the GUI
• Private chat is available (work in progress… there’s some oddities on this one)
• Added Mute Mic and Mute Sound checkboxes to the main GUI window
• The Server Config is now split into tabs so it will be less cluttered
• Auto-reconnect on disconnect and kick
• Transmit button is now “sticky.” Pressing will toggle transmit.
• Last, but certainly not least, support for direct ALSA access for audio

As I mentioned in the 1.0rc2 notes, RC3 will have a fix for users using Speex at 8kHz and 16kHz getting temporarily banned when they try to transmit. This is the only change in this version.

We finally identified an unknown value that we’ve been searching for a couple months now. This behavior would not have affected anyone connecting to a personal server. It seems that the bug Luigi reported in the official Ventrilo client was fixed for the hosting companies’ version of the server.

Mangler 1.0rc2 is available today with some major bug fixes. Thanks to everyone that reported bugs from the 1.0rc1 release. The major bugs fixed are:

• Fixed a few pretty major memory leaks
• Properly implement password protected channel hierarchy (sub-channels are protected by parent channel passwords)
• Support servers that do not allow you to view the channel list
• Added PTT support for mouse buttons 8/9
• Added Gnome desktop information files and icons
• Increased the maximum amplification for per-user volume
• Fix for speex channel specific codec format changes
• Fixed a bug/crash in outbound speex codec processing
• Fixed the last transmit timestamp resetting on comment change or channel change

There is still a major issue on some Speex codec combinations that are causing issues.  It is possible that — depending on your server codec — you can get temporarily banned by attempting a transmit.  Unfortunately, the only way to get yourself unbanned is to restart the server.  This issue is currently our highest priority.  This only affects specific Speex codec formats and specific servers.  For example, Speex @32khz Quality 10 is known to function normally.  Speex @16khz Quality 5 is known to cause problems.  Other formats may or may not work.  When this problem is resolved, we will release rc3 immediately.