Foswiki 2.1 Beta is available for testing

We are pleased to announce that Foswiki 2.1 is available for beta testing. Foswiki 2.1 is a minor feature release that implements 7 feature proposals, resolves 29 bugs and 12 enhancement tasks. We expect this to be a relatively short beta test period, with final release at the end of January.

You can download the beta for testing at FoswikiRelease02x01x00Beta1

A few of the feature proposals that have been implemented include:

• AddConcatOptionToAttrs: Add +”more” and key+”more” options to macro arguments. This allows much cleaner and easier to read macro development
• CompleteMIMESupportInEmail: Wrap all outgoing mails into uniform and safe MIME envelope. This permits full Unicode support in email messages.
• CustomNewUserTemplates: Enhance register script to specify a templatetopic param instead of hard-coded ‘NewUserTemplate’. This also restructures the UserRegistration page to allow multiple custom registration pages. For example, using separate “VendorRegistration” and “EmployeeRegistration” pages.
• DeprecateHTTPandHTTPS: Deprecate and restrict System.VarHTTP and System.VarHTTPS macros due to security concerns
• MakeItEasierToBlockSystemWebGuestAccess: Simplify hiding the System web documentation.
• SplitTopicAttachmentNameFilters: Separate the topic and attachment name filters, allow spaces in attachment names, remove colon from Topic names.

In addition to these features.

• Sorting of tables and topics with non-ASCII data is significantly improved. The data is passed to NFKD normalization before sorting. Using perl Locales would still be preferable, but it requires the very latest perl version for proper operation, and this solution is a reasonable compromise.
• Foswiki 2.1 implements Unicode NFC normalization of external data. This provides for better compatibility with users who upload attachments from a NFD normalized file system, such as Apple OS X clients, or when hosting Foswiki on an OS X file system.

For the complete list of enhancements and bug fixes, see ReleaseNotes02x01.

Please keep the bug reports coming at http://foswiki.org/Tasks. We hope to wrap up 2.1 by the end of January.

We are looking forward to an interesting 2016 in the Foswiki space. There are several feature proposals under review which could be quite transforming for the next major Foswiki release.

George Clark