Is Salamander dead ?

Alfred · Post by **Alfred** » 08 Jan 2009, 18:55

Is Salamander dead?

There are only posts for feature requests or problems.
The last announcement for 2.51 was 03/19/2008...thats pretty long time ago.

You should keep a more up-to-date backlog whats going on
or it looks like it is now

ABANDONED.

Even the statement that there will be an announcement for a 2.52 beta 1
is ~1 Month ago...

The way it is doesnt look very faithful, why paying for something that looks pretty dead!

I hope you will take this as a man and give us more details
in what direction salamander will go and keep us more informed.

Ether · Post by **Ether** » 08 Jan 2009, 19:25

I know that there's a lot of activity from the developers on the forums, but I agree that there should be at least some notice of progress on the main web page, because most of the people probably won't bother to look further when they see that last update was 2008-03-19 (according to the 'Highlights' and the RSS feed and the New Version page).

I'm not talking about any detailed information or dates, just something like 'We've just added support for viewing BLP images to the upcoming version; more about our activities on the forums (link).'

Maybe adding a new sticky topic with these short announcements (and links to the respective threads with additional details) won't be a bad idea either. With such feature, people could see that AS is being actively developed.

Post by **Jan Rysavy** » 08 Jan 2009, 20:11

Alfred, you can walk through our latest posts:

Jan Patera (did a lot patches across several plugins recently):
http://forum.altap.cz/search.php?search ... Jan+Patera

Jan Rysavy:
http://forum.altap.cz/search.php?search ... Jan+Rysavy

Petr Solin:
http://forum.altap.cz/search.php?search ... Petr+Solin

Salamander is not dead, we are working on release of AS 2.52 beta 1. There are some issues related to year 2009 (Slovakia switched to Euro currency, etc) that we must handle before we can release new beta version of Salamander.

Alfred · Post by **Alfred** » 08 Jan 2009, 22:14

Jan Rysavy wrote:Alfred, you can walk through our latest posts:

Jan Patera (did a lot patches across several plugins recently):
http://forum.altap.cz/search.php?search ... Jan+Patera

Jan Rysavy:
http://forum.altap.cz/search.php?search ... Jan+Rysavy

Petr Solin:
http://forum.altap.cz/search.php?search ... Petr+Solin

Salamander is not dead, we are working on release of AS 2.52 beta 1. There are some issues related to year 2009 (Slovakia switched to Euro currency, etc) that we must handle before we can release new beta version of Salamander.

I did such a search before, the problem is, i dont understand polish as many other english native do as well...

Even doing so, even not understanding whats the post regarding, thats even if its for a new version not very clearly arranged and not much.

The first thing a customer sees is the website altap.cz , not the forum!

Kindly translate whats going on so it is for non polish understandable
and show it on the main website.

I cant understand what the euro has to do with programming and showing progress.

Thats a bad excuse for letting your customers in the dark

Post by **Jan Rysavy** » 08 Jan 2009, 22:34

Please be assured we are working on AS 2.52 beta 1. We are also doing support and selling Salamander. So we must solve problems related to current currency of our customers.

Did you notice part our posts are in English? For our Czech posts you can use Google Translate, it works pretty well.

Ether · Post by **Ether** » 08 Jan 2009, 23:46

Alfred wrote:I did such a search before, the problem is, i dont understand polish as many other english native do as well...
...
Kindly translate whats going on so it is for non polish understandable
and show it on the main website.

I don't understand Polish either (mostly, anyway), but I'm completely happy to be a native speaker of Czech language, being coincidentally also the native language of Salamander developers and one of the languages used on this forum. No offense, I just had to correct you.

Ether · Post by **Ether** » 09 Jan 2009, 00:02

But I must agree with Alfred here that the webpage altap.cz should display that Salamander is not dead. Not everybody's going to look through the forums for signs of active development. Actually, I think nobody will do that if you don't tell them to. Please consider adding a visible box to the Salamander's page which will somehow tell users that AS is not dead and providing a link to the forums.

Alfred · Post by **Alfred** » 09 Jan 2009, 01:03

Jan Rysavy wrote:Please be assured we are working on AS 2.52 beta 1. We are also doing support and selling Salamander. So we must solve problems related to current currency of our customers.

Did you notice part our posts are in English? For our Czech posts you can use Google Translate, it works pretty well.

We are posting in the english part but most of your links shows czech.
My mistake with polish.

No offense, but google translate is bad as hell and makes mostly no sense.
Why should a common customer go so far to even translate forum posts
where he guesses that they are talking about the progress in further releases ?

A lot in Salamander is outdated like 7z/rar/zip/winscp and so on.
Thats why i startet to check the forum and saw that iam not alone having trouble with it.

As ether said, usualy no one looks in the forum !

It should be easy for the Altap Staff to make a summary and to post it on the website.

Post by **zarevak** » 09 Jan 2009, 03:33

Alfred wrote:A lot in Salamander is outdated like 7z/rar/zip/winscp and so on.

Are you encouterring any problems when using these "old" components? Why do you say they are outdated? Or are you just craving for the latest versions just for you to be happy?

IIRC you can update UnRaR.dll manualy from www.rarlab.com and replace the old one in plugins/unrar folder.

7z and WinSCP are custom builds based on open source code.

I don't know what code lies behind the Zip plugin. There are too many Zip handling libraries.

<joke>If you want all your libraries from 2009, you can just change the file timestamps to today's date and libraries are no longer outdated

</joke>

Post by **Jan Rysavy** » 09 Jan 2009, 08:00

Alfred, we will consider some developer blog, as other proposed here. Thank you for your voice.

For now: Salamander is not abandoned as you can see from our activity here. Version 2.52 beta 1 with change log in English will be released soon.

If you want to report any problem please let us know.

Alfred · Post by **Alfred** » 09 Jan 2009, 18:56

Jan Rysavy wrote:Alfred, we will consider some developer blog, as other proposed here. Thank you for your voice.

For now: Salamander is not abandoned as you can see from our activity here. Version 2.52 beta 1 with change log in English will be released soon.

If you want to report any problem please let us know.

Thats good to hear, but a date when we can calculate with 2.52 beta 1 would be nice.
Last time someone asked was a ~month ago and got told soon.
Saying soon is like maybe or maybe not, we will see. Not very confident.

zarevak wrote: Are you encouterring any problems when using these "old" components? Why do you say they are outdated? Or are you just craving for the latest versions just for you to be happy?

Obviously not, for rar, ok i didnt know that its compatible because using the old gave a lot problems when other ppl used new versions to pack it.
Same goes to 7z. WinSCP doesnt even work properly for me so i had to use the original.
There are other problems, most of them are already posted in the forum.
So a lot ppl wait for the rumored new 2.52 beta 1 to have a lot fixed.
Makes sense or?

Post by **Jan Rysavy** » 09 Jan 2009, 19:25

Alfred wrote:Saying soon is like maybe or maybe not, we will see. Not very confident.

Do you think we are postponing release without reason to upset Altap Salamander user base? We will release it asap. We are on market from 2001 and we always delivered features we implemented -- all announced fixes and improvements will be included in AS 2.52 beta 1.

Alfred · Post by **Alfred** » 09 Jan 2009, 19:51

Jan Rysavy wrote:
Alfred wrote:Saying soon is like maybe or maybe not, we will see. Not very confident.
Do you think we are postponing release without reason to upset Altap Salamander user base? We will release it asap. We are on market from 2001 and we always delivered features we implemented -- all announced fixes and improvements will be included in AS 2.52 beta 1.

No Offense but i dont like keep hearing soon.

Lets make a bet, if you keep the release till 03/19/2009 (last time news was announced 03/19/2008) then it was a hard year for the customers.
If not - a friend of mine was unsure to buy AS bcuz it is still missing support for complex text like japanese, give him a full license.

I already supported you guys in buying mine a long time ago.

Its not that i personaly want something for free, but i like the gamble part in it against the time.

omega · Post by **omega** » 09 Jan 2009, 21:55

I can understand your frustration. As i've requested unicode support almost 4 yrs ago and still waiting for it

Ofcourse i know implementing new features takes time especially with a small developing team like Altap, not to mention bug fixes. Issues like switching to a new developing software, support for 64 bit, a new OS (for example Vista) and don't forget Win 7 is coming plus the many features on the to do list. In the past many ppl requested some accurate release dates from the developers and well they play it on the safe side by saying 'soon'. I'm sure not many users like this kind of answer but whatelse can they do about it if the release are delayed all the time. I just hope i'm still alive by the time they have unicode support

, overall i'm a happy SS user (still prefer the old name)

nanuit · Post by **nanuit** » 23 Jan 2009, 14:17

Jan Rysavy wrote: -- all announced fixes and improvements will be included in AS 2.52 beta 1.

So we will see in this Beta then:

ALTAP Roadmap (updated 03/19/2008)

* Altap Salamander 2.52
o Czech, German, and other localizations.

One year development to bring localizations? Urgently needed features as Unicode Support, UAC handling will then be available in 2010?
I dont mean good features most of the other OFMs as Totalcommander speedcommander ... have build in for years like tabbed browsing, file synchronisation, ... these are then in salamander about 2013?

The suggestion to translate with google translate is a bad joke. Have you tried it? I get only jibberish. Its really sad that you are not interessted in informing your customers about the progress. A "soon" says "leave us alone" nothing more. At least when i read the information available wihtin your Website and Forum.

Salamander is in my oppinion the best OFM on the market. But at least when Windows7 is released i have to change this to "was" the best OFM, since it has so many shortcommings that i am forced to abandone AS. As much as it hurts me but using AS on a 64 bit Windows ist not useable. Most of the Time you get access denied and viewing most are not readable within the viewer and and and...