Tip. You can use file:/// in the Vienna "New Subscription..." sheet to specify the path to a local data file when subscribing to a feed. This will read the file and the articles within it as if they were on a remote server. For example, if the file is named rss.xml and is located in your Documents folder, then specify file:///Users/username/Documents/rss.xml in the input field. (Substitute username with your actual user name.)

If you have some process by which the file is being continuously updated then Refresh will read the latest articles and only display those.

I haven't posted much lately so I thought I'd give a summary of what has been happening this past month with Vienna.

1. Version 2.1 is under active development and a few new exciting features have already been committed to the repository. If you have the right set of tools, you can build the latest changes yourself. The latest change makes a minor revision to the database schema but the change is backward compatible so you can switch back to 2.0 with the same database without any problems.

2. Version 2.0.3 is my current priority and I'm presently fixing some feed parsing bugs. Japanese localisation has finally been completed for this version. If all goes well then I expect to release it sometime next week.

3. Jeffrey Johnson has joined the Vienna project as a fully fledged developer. He has already contributed a few of the 2.1 features and some valuable bug fixes. Thanks Jeffrey! I still welcome other contributors with some time to spare.

That's pretty much it.

Just a quick note that 2.0.2 has been released. Check for Update on the Help menu will get it for you otherwise pop over to the Vienna Downloads page.

Compared to 2.0.1, this release is pretty much a quick bug fix release to address the performance regression in the previous version. However it also includes full Spanish localisation bringing up the total number of localisations supported to 6. Japanese and Danish remain on-going.

Incidentally there's a new Vienna Developers forum over at CocoaForge for purely development discussions. If you're looking for 2.1.0 pre-release builds then that's the first place they'll show up over. If you've got any Cocoa development bent then feel free to join in and contribute to the development!

The good news is that the performance regression in 2.0.1 has now been fixed in 2.0.2. The problem was down to the SQLite sources which were slightly out of sync with the static library used in 2.0. My mistake but, perhaps, not an easy mistake to detect without a wider range of testers.

Spanish localisation has also been completed and will be in 2.0.2. Japanese and Danish are ongoing and will wait for a future point release.

Work on 2.1 continues, buoyed with the assistance of a couple of other active contributors so I'm optimistic of releasing this sometime this summer. (This is the point when I can say how much better Subversion's branch and merge support is compared to CVS, although still not close to the ease of use in Perforce which still remains my favoured SCM system).

Version 2.0.1 has just flown the coop. Check for Updates on your current version will grab it, or head over to the Vienna Downloads page.

This update has the following changes:

- Universal binary build.
- Updated to Growl 0.7.4.
- Fix a build 2025 crashing bug.
- For feeds that have no title and one cannot be synthesised, we now set the title to (No Title).
- Correctly set focus on the web page in a new tab. (Code contributed by Jeffrey Johnson).
- No longer prompt if Vienna is exited while a connection is in progress.
- Better truncation of feed names in the folder list. (Code contributed by David Kocher).
- Handle HTML redirects in the feed for sources such as MSN Spaces.
- Save and restore the currently selected article when you exit and restart Vienna.
- Support use of the Shift key to open a link in the alternate browser. (Code contributed by Jeffrey Johnson).
- Shift+Spacebar scrolls up the article view or goes to the previously viewed message.
- Added four more built-in styles: Broadsheet Clipping, Perlucida, Prague and Prague-light.

Unfortunately both the Japanese and Spanish localisation weren't completed on time for this version but likely they'll be done for the next one.