Dear members of the transLucid yahoogroup. I want to thank you for
holding on to us. Subscribers of this group and our mailinglist have
continuously increased to about 80 interested parties by now. I can
not say enough how important every one of you is to us and we want
transLucid to be a product that will make a difference in your lives,
for whatever you plan to use it.

As this post is a little bit longer than usual, here an index of its
content.
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* Download& Install; where to get the latest release from and how to
install
* Demo site; give it a try
* Feedback; we can not wait to hear from you
* What has changed; everything that's better with this release
* Who is it for and what hasn't changed; a re-iteration of what we are
about
* Issues with release 1.25 that we are aware of
* An outlook into the not-so-distant future
* THANK YOU... AND AGAIN
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Download& Install
You may download the latest release 1.25 now on:
http://pantha.net/index.php?request=displaypage&NodeID=5

You can always check on our progress on http://www.pantha.net/team/ by
following the notes of our meetings. I will however send around
updates more regularly from now on but if you can't wait, here you go.

To install simply upload the files contained within the .zip file and
upload them to your web-server. Create a MySQL database, write down
its name and your username/ password. Then point your browser to
http://yourdomain.com/translucid_directory/ and the installer will
take you through the necessary steps.


Demo site
You are invited to give transLucid a try on our demo site where the
latest release is installed on. It is on public mode so anyone can
edit! Visit:
http://www.pantha.net/sandbox/


Feedback
Please do inform us of any trouble that you may encounter. Either on
the yahoogroup or write us to info@... . Compliments and
donations always welcome as well. :)


What has changed
We wanted to provide you with a fully stable product before starting
the work on the many new features we plan to roll out in the next 3-6
months. The result is:

* Installation: Fully re-vamped and therefore much easier to go
through and totally foolproof; just do remember that so far you still
need a MySQL database installed (and know the URL, username/password
to it)
* Performance: vastly increased (viewing and saving) due to cleanup
and rewriting of over half the codebase
* Security: improvements everywhere; you can use transLucid in a live
environment and be assured that no one can delete/access sensitive data.
* Layout templates: easier to understand and use due to an overhaul of
the underlying engine which is now well on its way to where we want it
to be

On top of these more backend orientated improvements, you can now:

* Switch lightning fast between viewing and editing of your content as
we are using AJAX to do our magic
* Enjoy to work with transLucid because we fixed long-standing bugs
* Choose between different WYSIWYG editors, we currently support
TinyMCE (default) and FCKEditor which are the most widely adopted
graphical editors on the planet


Who is it for and what hasn't changed
We are still dedicated to our original, core-fans of PersonalBrain
users because this is where we are coming from ourselves. This is why
we are going to finally allow you to import AND export your notes from
and back into PersonalBrain very soon (release 1.3 to 1.4). Next on
and scheduled is an import/export of the MindManager xml format.
What you still get with transLucid is a publishing system that will
allow you for an easy install, easy publishing and simple
collaboration with others on the web.
This is why - contrary to other wiki-systems or CMS - we will continue
to keep the core functionality of transLucid lean and extend features
that will allow for more ease of use.


Issues with release 1.25 that we are aware of
* We have not yet updated the documentation but will do so ASAP
* When you change from public to restricted editing mode you have to
wait for 20 minutes before you yourself will see this change. Don't
worry, for others this will be instantaneous.
* Import/ Export of accentuated characters does not work. This will be
fixed in release 1.26.
* Limited support on international multi-language websites which we
will support from release 1.3 onwards. Use it at your own risk for the
time being.


An outlook into the not-so-distant future
Our situation has much improved in the last few weeks. We currently
have one and soon two programmers working on new features. Agnes
(http://agnes.schliebitz-ponthus.name) joined in on the fun already
and Till from Germany will follow end of June. What I want to imply is
that we are here to stay! In fact Ton and I have been on this project
(and Flashbrain as it used to be called) since 2003. We are all very
happy that the core-team is growing.

We are therefore going to release more often and work in an
incremental fashion. We need your feedback on the product to shape it
to the way YOU want it to be like. For now, write us your suggestions
to info@.... More on another set of structured questions and
transLucid tour next week.

THANK YOU... AND AGAIN
We are very excited to be on this journey with all of you. In
particular, kudos go to the core-team Ton and Agnes (can I thank
myself?) as well as our dear advisor Carine who always has something
more to add that will make us doubt ourselves. There are also the new
transLucid supporters like Chris Case and Scott Ayon who give us the
energy to continue ever onwards.

Peace, Bjoern
PR director for the transLucid team