This is the first beta version of Retrospect-GDS 2.0. Although the user interface looks very similar to previous versions, the backend has been completely rewritten in order to use the Smary Template Engine. Each of the modules (previously called options), such as family, pedigree, and ahnentafel have been separated from the display templates and have been moved into the product core. This should make modifying or creating new templates much easier for people who don’t have any knowledge of PHP.

Here’s what’s new in 2.0 beta 1:

• The smarty template engine is used now, so the templates can be modified without having to modify the php code itself. Some of the php template pages were very complicated and difficult to modify.
• The default template has a cleaner look and feel and is compatible with IE and gecko based browsers. (Opera compatibility has not been tested yet)
• The gedcom upload/import page now supports zip files containing multiple gedcom files. The old zip decompress functions did not work on all servers and only decompressed the first gedcom in the zip file.

There are still many things left to do before the full 2.0 release. While not strictly necessary, I’ll be completely rewriting the administration module to use Smarty as well. I’ve found that the development time for designing new pages is significantly shorter when using Smarty.

Here’s the other changes that are planned for 2.0:

• Rewrite the sentence generation functions. These functions were written before I added date parsing, so they don’t take into account the differing sentence structure for different types of dates. I’ve avoided rewriting these functions until now because I know that they are going to have to get a whole lot more complicated than they are already.
• Add a default date format for each language. Currently, there is only a global date format that is applied across all languages.
• Enhance the alert system in the administration module. The basic idea is to use the front page of the admin module like a dashboard that shows you various stats about the system and displays any warnings or things that need tending to.
• Add a comment system. This is easy, but needs to wait until the admin module has been re-written. The dashboard (see above) will alert when there are comments pending approval.
• Add a photo/multimedia gallery. I will probably add just some basic photo gallery functionality for the initial 2.0 release and add additional functionality in later releases.
• Allow editing of individual and family data in the administration module. Initially, this will probably be very bare bones but will be enhanced in future releases.

I’m also looking for volunteers to help document the new template system. Please email me if you are interested in helping.

And, as always, the more feedback I get the better Retrospect-GDS will be. Please post your comments, suggestions, complaints, bugs, bug fixes, etc in the forums.