Sunrise XP alpha 3 released

[Laurens]

As always, I'm pleased to announce a new Sunrise XP alpha!

The highlights of this release are support for non-Western language encodings and automatic updates.

• New: Support for non-Western language encodings. (Select the language in the Document Properties dialog.)
• New: Automatic updating of scheduled documents, including integration with Windows Task Scheduler for updating documents when Sunrise XP is not running.
• New: Atom feed support. (Both Atom 1.0 and Atom 0.3.)

See the full change log for more information. This also includes a roadmap for future releases.

Download page

[wyfwyf]

Sunrise (java) has a neat feature that allows different language encodings for the source page and the output page. I can set source page as Big5 (Traditional chinese) and output page as GBK (simplified chinese). Very useful for reading on my palm.

Can this feature be added to the Sunrise XP?

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by wyfwyf

Sunrise (java) has a neat feature that allows different language encodings for the source page and the output page. I can set source page as Big5 (Traditional chinese) and output page as GBK (simplified chinese). Very useful for reading on my palm.

Can this feature be added to the Sunrise XP?

No, sorry. The input encoding should be specified in the Content-Type header or in the <meta> HTML tag. Sunrise XP does not support explicit setting of the input encoding. If this doesn't work for you, you should stick to the Java version.

[Laurens]

Just noticed that PalmAddicts is using a neat Sunrise image. I've been so forward to upload it here. Thanks Sammy!

[Laurens]

Sunrise XP can now automatically update documents when they become due. To enable AutoUpdate, click the icon on the toolbar or select "Update -> AutoUpdate" from the main menu.

You do not have to leave Sunrise XP running for AutoUpdate to work, as it creates a Windows Task Scheduler job automatically upon exit. See the screenshot below. (If you don't want this to happen, you can disable Windows Task Scheduler integration in Preferences.)

As an aside, AutoUpdate in the Java version has always been a pet peeve of mine. I was never comfortable with the fact that you had to leave the application running in the background, especially as it used a lot of memory even when idle. (Which is another pet peeve of mine: Java offers no real control over memory usage. Nor does C# for that matter.)

[Colin Dunstan]

Well done with the Windows Task Scheduler integration!

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by wyfwyf

Sunrise (java) has a neat feature that allows different language encodings for the source page and the output page. I can set source page as Big5 (Traditional chinese) and output page as GBK (simplified chinese). Very useful for reading on my palm.

Actually, thinking about this some more, you should be able to convert to Simplified Chinese just fine. Simply set the target language to "Chinese (Simplified)" in the Document Properties. Any traditional Chinese pages (encoded in Big5, for instance) are then automatically converted to GB2312.

Internally, Sunrise XP handles character conversion as follows:
Big5 -> Utf8 -> GB2312

The character encoding MUST be provided in the Content-Type header or HTML <meta> tag, as Sunrise XP has no encoding detection mechanism.

From my limited knowledge, converting from Traditional to Simplified Chinese is much easier than the other way around. I can't read the language and I don't have a handheld that can display Chinese symbols, though, so there's no way for me to verify that it works. I only checked the encoding support with Cyrillic languages (Russian) and that seems to work well.

[doogie68]

Hi Laurens

I just wanted to let you know that so far, Alpha 3 is running perfectly for me; the documents that were giving me problems now seem to be working.

One feature suggestion-- In the old Sunrise Desktop, you could get a display of the URLs of web sites/images that were being downloaded. I found that to be helpful, as I could observe superfluous files that I didn't want, and later make adjustments to the filters to eliminate those links in future runs. Sunrise now just gives a percent-complete display.

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by doogie68

Hi Laurens

I just wanted to let you know that so far, Alpha 3 is running perfectly for me; the documents that were giving me problems now seem to be working.

Good to hear! Hopefully, most of the issues are resolved now.

Originally Posted by doogie68

One feature suggestion-- In the old Sunrise Desktop, you could get a display of the URLs of web sites/images that were being downloaded. I found that to be helpful, as I could observe superfluous files that I didn't want, and later make adjustments to the filters to eliminate those links in future runs. Sunrise now just gives a percent-complete display.

Open the update report in the browser to get an overview of the links that were downloaded during the last update. The advantage of having a separate update report is that you can view the links directly in the browser and view information on updates that occurred during, for instance, HotSync.

[halr9000]

Laurens, why the apparent conflict here:

• Form logins. Replaced by the option to send cookies from Internet Explorer.
• "Send to Sunrise" from the web browser. Will be replaced by a Firefox extension that can generate documents directly without having to keep Sunrise running separately. Other browsers will no longer be supported.

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by halr9000

Laurens, why the apparent conflict here:

• Form logins. Replaced by the option to send cookies from Internet Explorer.
• "Send to Sunrise" from the web browser. Will be replaced by a Firefox extension that can generate documents directly without having to keep Sunrise running separately. Other browsers will no longer be supported.

Sunrise XP uses the Windows Internet functions to retrieve content, which in turn use the same cookie store as IE.

[doogie68]

Originally Posted by Laurens

Open the update report in the browser to get an overview of the links that were downloaded during the last update. The advantage of having a separate update report is that you can view the links directly in the browser and view information on updates that occurred during, for instance, HotSync.

Excellent! I didn't realize this feature existed. You're one step ahead of me...

By the way, I have Firefox set up as my default browser but the update reports opened up in IE. No big deal, but I thought you would be interested. Is that intentional?

[Laurens]

Originally Posted by doogie68

By the way, I have Firefox set up as my default browser but the update reports opened up in IE. No big deal, but I thought you would be interested. Is that intentional?

No, the reports are opened in whatever application ".xml" files are associated with. (Which might not actually be a web browser.) Most likely, I'll start using a new, dedicated file extension (".sxr") for these reports in the future, so you can easily map them to another application, without affecting your existing ".xml" file association.

[Laurens]

Just released alpha 3a. This fixes several issues with the HotSync conduit. See top posting for the download link.

[Laurens]

Yep, another release! Fixes one major bug and changes the way HTML anchor points and line breaks are handled. Most likely, this will be the last alpha 3 subrelease. I'm going to take a break.