Mangler
A Ventrilo Compatible Client for Linux
Mangler with ALSA support
Jan 5th
For all of the PulseAudio haters out there, “Haxar” in our IRC channel has written a patch that gives Mangler native ALSA support. This is now in the latest SVN revision with a couple of new options to configure. To build with ALSA, run:
./configure --enable-alsa
Then rebuild Mangler and give it a go. It hasn’t been tested extensively, so let us know if it does or does not work for you. And come join us on IRC and give Haxar big slobbery kisses for his effort.
Update: In the latest SVN revision, ALSA is enabled by default if you have the appropriate libraries.
Mangler 1.0.1 is released
Jan 3rd
Mangler version 1.0.1 is now available. This release fixes a couple of minor bugs:
- Removing/changing the mouse used for PTT no longer causes a crash
- The server options in the server list configuration are now honored (accept pages, allow recording, etc)
This release also fixes a number of documentation errors that were preventing inclusion in the Ubuntu repositories. This means Mangler is on track for inclusion in Ubuntu 10.04.
Admin functionality progress update
Jan 2nd
Over the past month, we’ve taken what we feel is a well deserved break from coding. However, with the new year, we’re ready to start going again. We’re not quite to the point of having a new snapshot available, but we’ve made good headway in the past few days. If you’re running directly from SVN, the following features are now available:
- You can now log in as an admin
- Drag and drop users to move channels
- You can kick and ban users via right-click
- Per-user volume settings are saved between restarts
- Channel passwords are saved between restarts
- A master volume control is available in the Audio Settings menu
Remember, the SVN build is unstable. Things may or may not work as expected. But if you’re feeling adventurous, test it out.
As previously stated, the next release will focus primarily on administrator functionality. Also in the works is version 1.0.1 which fixes some minor issues and gets us on the path to inclusion into the Ubuntu repos.
Features for 1.1 Announced
Dec 5th
We went through all open tickets and set up a targeted feature list for Mangler v. 1.1. Obviously other features are likely to be added as we go along. The majority of enhancements will be centered around administrator functionality. In addition to those already announced in the current 1.1 snapshot, we will be adding:
- Private Chat support
- Channel editor (creating, removing, modifying channels)
- Server properties editor (setting idle time limits, chat filters, auto-kick, etc)
- Master volume control
- Saving per-user volume across restarts
- Saving channel passwords across restarts
- Force Channel Move
- Kicking and banning users
- Detecting voice level to auto-transmit
- Sending and receiving pages
For a full list of raw tickets, you can view the Trac Roadmap. We have not yet set a date for the 1.1 release, but it will likely be some time around March or April.
First 1.1 Developer Snapshot Available
Dec 2nd
Along with our 1.0.0 release yesterday, we also posted the first 1.1 developer snapshot which contains some new features. This weekend, we hope to go through unscheduled trac tickets to assign features for the 1.1 milestone. If you have feature requests, now is the time to make them.
New features in the 1.1 snapshot are:
- Global Chat
- Phantom Support
- Interface changes to use less screen space (ability to hide the buttons and server information panel)
- Window size is remembered across restarts
- Per-server character set setting
- Remember channel passwords (only during current connection at present)
As always, developer snapshots can be found on the download page.
Mangler 1.0 officially released!
Dec 1st
Today marks the end of an interesting period full of research and development. On October the 4th, we promised to have a fully functional native Ventrilo client for Linux on the 1st of December. Now that the day has come, our users can finally decide if we have lived up to those expectations.
As always, our latest release can be downloaded from our download page. There is also an (incomplete) list of fixes and enhancements to be found on trac.
For the people that are wondering what is next:
- We will be working hard on our next version of Mangler which will bring several more enhancements and bugfixes. A release date for Mangler v1.1 will be announced in the near future.
- We have been experimenting with the Android platform and are successfully able to run our libventrilo3 library on top of an Android phone. Your feedback on this idea is always appreciated!
You may also be interested to know that we have (mostly) documented the libventrilo3 library. This should make it a lot easier for developers to build their custom software for the Ventrilo 3 protocol.
Last but not least, we would like to give credits to:
- All the people that reported bugs and made suggestions for improvements.
- Idlers in our IRC channels that gave us great company, feedback and debugging assistance.
- People involved in earlier research to the Ventrilo protocol, namely; the Spux Project and Luigi Auriemma. Mangler would not exist today if it wasn’t for these previous efforts.
- Package maintainers, designers, wiki editors, patch submitters, and anyone else that in any way contributed to Mangler!
Last RC before release — 1.0rc4 — is ready for testing
Nov 25th
With any luck, this is our last RC before release date. RC4 adds a couple of bug fixes and by popular request, a new feature.
Changes in RC4:
- Ability to copy comment and url to clipboard
- Hopefully fixed all temp bans on transmit. Please tell us if you’re still seeing these. We have only had a few reports of this problem, but I imagine this must have been widespread. If you’re getting banned from your server, we need to know about it.
- Do not attempt connections if we know required data is missing
Mangler makes its way into Portage!
Nov 22nd
Gentoo users can rejoice: it is no longer required to build Mangler from source manually.
Thanks to the efforts of Ben de Groot (yngwin), Mangler’s latest release candidate (1.0rc3) can now be found on portage. This makes Gentoo the first distribution to include Mangler in its official repositories!
If you’re feeling adventurous, there is also an ebuild available to automatically build from subversion trunk.
Instructions can, as always, be found on our download page.
1.0rc3 Is Available
Nov 21st
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.
Problems With 1.0rc2
Nov 21st
A number of users reported problems with 1.0rc2 crashing whenever someone tried to talk. 1.0rc2.2 is now available for download which should correct this problem. My apologies for not catching this.
There have also been some reports about Mangler hanging when starting up. This is caused by errors reading the configuration file, but we cannot reproduce. If this is happening to you, you can remove your ~/.manglerrc file (save your server list information!) and start Mangler again. This will recreate the file.
