Welcome to the May 2012 installment of our what's coming from the open source projects in the next month. (Apologies for running late this month.) If you feel that your project was left out, we invite you to email us at [email protected] to have a project representative added to the list of people we contact for updates.

Calenco

In May, the folks working on Calenco (news, site) released Calenco 2.5, which brings the following features and enhancements:

  • The ability to output in HTML5 and ePUB3 formats
  • Language support for Estonian and Esperanto
  • The ability to use complex HTML directory structures
  • The ability to create deep FTP publication directory trees if needed
  • Automatic line numbering and syntax highlighting
  • MathML support for PDF

Composite C1

In May, the folks at Composite C1 (news, site) created a new start page that will appear whenever users open the console. This page will list tutorials, documentation and news from Composite. For more on this feature, see the video below:

May also saw the release of a Swedish translation of Composite C1 (courtesy of Emelie Mikaelsson from Invinn.se), along with the release of a guide for those who want to use Composite C1 to build sites in multiple languages, while the Chinese and German versions debuted in the Windows Web App Gallery. The community homepage also received an update, and Composite C1 is now available through the NuGet gallery, making life easier for Visual Studio developers. Also, there's now a Community Hero page that will feature prominent community members.

dotCMS

In May, the folks at dotCMS (news, site) released dotCMS 2.0. Features new to 2.0 include:

  • A new customizable, extendable workflow engine
  • The ability to treat files as content
  • Full-text document and metadata indexing
  • Content editing UI improvements
  • Pessimistic content check-in/check-out
  • A new key/value field type
  • The ElasticSearch scalable content index, including auto-replication and auto-data-sharing
  • Data model/API improvements
  • A beta implementation of the OSGI package manager
  • Spring 3 MVC support
  • Improvements to logging

DotNetNuke

In May, the folks at DotNetNuke (news, site) released DotNetNuke 6.2. This new release focuses on helping businesses build internal social networks for employee productivity, and external communities to turn customers into advocates. DotNetNuke also announced global partnerships with fellow Microsoft (news, site) Gold Certified Parkters Infinite Computing Systems, SSW and Yahara Software.

Drupal

In May, Dries Buytaert, the founder of Drupal (news, site), announced a new Drupal distribution: Spark. This Drupal 7-based distribution's purpose is to test authoring experience improvements that are ultimately meant for Drupal 8. Features initially launching with Spark include:

  • Inline editing and drag-and-drop content layout tools
  • Enhanced content creation with auto-save, save as draft and more
  • Dashboards for content creators
  • Mobile content authoring and administration support

Drupal company Acquia (news, site) is funding the Spark distribution. The company is currently seeking Boston-based members to add to the Spark team.

Acquia also announced a partnership with NetSuite, which will result in Drupal-Netsuite product integrations offering:

  • CRM-enabled content in Drupal Gardens (news, site)
  • Social CRM with Drupal Commons
  • Drupal connectors for content-rich and social shopping experiences

eZ Publish

In May, the folks at eZ Publish (news, site) released eZ Publish Enterprise Edition Etna (4.7). This release adds features such as:

  • The eZ Publish Cloud Edition
  • An integrated eZ Odoscope for smart site analytics
  • The eZ Live Viewer for live content performance and trending
  • A/B and multivariate testing
  • Enhanced productivity tools
  • The eZ App Factory for downloading mobile apps with one click
  • Improved user experience with eZ Exceed
  • A browser-based debug output visualizer for Chrome
  • A polished version of eZ Bash Completion

It also released eZ Publish Community Project 2012.3 and 2012.4. Version 2012.3 brought in-page preview and the first results of the translation campaign, while 2012.4 brought more translations in up to 26 languages.

Development also started on eZ Publish 5.0. This release will consist of two parts: An enhanced version of Etna (the 4.x stack), and Kilimanjaro (the 5.x stack). Both parts will be integrated so they can be used side-by-side, or in combination. The 4.x stack will remain supported for "several years to come."

Kilimanjaro brings with it significant changes, such as:

  • A move to an Hierarchical, Model, View and Controller (HMVC) architecture
  • A refactored Business Layer
  • A new Persistence API
  • A Storage Engine using the current database model
  • A planned move to NoSQL
  • A planned move to handle permissions through the Public API
  • An updated Editorial interface
  • The second generation of the eZ Publish REST API

Registration has opened for the eZ Publish Summer Camp 2012, which will be held in Croatia from September 5-8. June will bring eZ Publish Community Project version 2012.5, more work on eZ Publish 5.0, the launch of The eZ Publish Show (a community-driven developer hangout), a continuation of the "UX enlightenment" campaign and an expanded footprint for eZ Systems in the Asia-Pacific region.

Jahia

In June, the folks at Jahia Web CMS (news, site) plan to attend CMSDay in Paris, and present a worldwide preview of a Document Management product. Jahia was also ranked as having the strongest "transformation rate" in large corporations by Smile, a European open source consulting group.

Joomla

In May, the folks at Joomla! (news, site) hosted people from over thirty countries at its international conference, learned that eight students were chosen to contribute to Joomla for the Google Summer of Code (news, site) and welcomed three new board members to Open Source Matters (news, site): Leonel Canton, Ofer Cohen and Paulo Griiettner.

Coming in June is Joomla Day Greece, which will be held in Athens on June 2-4.

Nuxeo

In May, the folks at Nuxeo (news, site) released a a configuration management template. It also put online the results of its webinar, Why enterprise content management projects fail, and what you can do about it.

Coming in June is the Nuxeo Code Sprint (June 21-22) in Paris.

Orchard

In May, the folks with Orchard (news, site) released Orchard 1.4.2. This is a bug fix release that also brings:

  • An auto-route feature for setting up token-based patterns for your URLs
  • A projector that lets you create arbitrary queries on site contents, then displays the results in projection pages and widgets
  • New field types for Boolean, Date/Time, Enumeration, HTML5 Input, Links, Media Picker and Numeric

Plone

In May, the folks at Plone (news, site) learned that Plone is to be featured at Europython 2012. It  also published a new Plone roadmap, and started accepting submissions for the upcoming Plone Conference 2012.

Coming in June is the 57th Plone Tune-Up Day, which will be held on June 15 worldwide.

SilverStripe

In May, the folks at Silverstripe (news, site) announced its successful Google Summer of Code projects. SilverStripe CEO and Co-Founder Sam Minnée also shared some reasons that developers might open source their code, inspired by SilverStripe's own journey from closed to open source.

May saw the release of the final beta for SilverStripe 3.0, which focuses on polishing the user experience through its usability testing. Users can now insert media from YouTube, Flickr, Vimeo and other sites using the oEmbed protocol. Check out the video below:

SilverStripe CMS 3 Beta - 90 second preview. from SilverStripe on Vimeo.

Squiz

In May, the folks at Squiz (news, site) released Edit+ for Squiz Matrix, which offers a premium WYSIWYG editor and Accessibility Auditor that checks against WCAG 2.0 standards. For more on the new editing features, see the video below:

For more on the Accessibility Auditor, see this video:

May also saw the release of Squiz Matrix 4.6.6 and Squiz Matrix 4.8.2. Features new to 4.6.6 include:

  • New JavaScript API functions
  • Performance enhancement for the Create Asset Link function
  • An improved system_integrity_invalid_links.php script
  • An improved HIPO Management Script

New features for 4.8.2 include:

  • A New Asset Cloned trigger event
  • The ability to hide unlinked navigation text in the Asset Listing and Search Page
  • An e-commerce checkout that supports the option for no payment gateway
  • The ability filter logs by date range
  • The enhancements added to 4.6.6

June sees the release of Squiz Matrix 4.8.2, which will offer:

  • A REST resource that lets you control replacing keywords in the response
  • The ability to specify binary attributes on an LDAP data source
  • Asset Content Keywords on as_asset Modifier

Tiki Wiki

In May, the folks at Tiki Wiki CMS Groupware (news, site) released Tiki 9.0 Beta. Tiki 9.0 brings new features such as:

  • Improved batch actions, cron jobs and token access
  • Improvements to calendars, file galleries, maps and other features
  • Additional plugins
  • Improved security and spam protection

Tiki also added three new members to the admin team: Rodrigo Primo, Jean-Marc Libs and Jean-François Bilger. The project also celebrated passing the 1 million download mark on SourceForge, and it also released Tiki 8.4. This version adds the following features:

  • New, detailed user permissions
  • Stateful SOAP session support
  • UI enhancements

WeWebU

In May, the folks at WeWebU (news, site) released OpenWorkdesk 3.2. Enhancements in this release include:

  • Support for the latest versions of various enterprise CMS platforms such as IBM FileNet P8 5.1 and Alfresco 4.0
  • Improvements to usability such as document manipulation functions in Advanced Document Viewing

There are also now free 30-day trial versions of both the Enterprise and Pro versions of OpenWorkdesk and Zero-Install Desktop Integration.

WordPress

In May, the folks at WordPress (news, site) released WordPress 3.4 beta 4, called for contributors for the Community Summit 2012, refreshed the plugin directory and released the first Release Candidate for WordPress 3.4.

June should see the release of WordPress 3.4, which brings features such as:

  • New methods for introducing custom backgrounds and image headers, including flexible header image sizes
  • A new Theme Customizer (see the video below)
  • A new XML-RPC API for custom content types and taxonomies
  • Numerous internationalization and localization changes