# Samizdat 0.6.0 is released **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [November 29, 2006, 9:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/samizdat-0-6-0-is-released/77712 "2006-11-29T21:30:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![kmeaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/ebca7d/32.png) [@kmeaw](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kmeaw)\ **Post date:** [November 29, 2006, 9:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/samizdat-0-6-0-is-released/77712/1 "2006-11-29T21:30:58Z")
What is Samizdat? Samizdat is a generic RDF-based engine for building collaboration and open publishing web sites. Samizdat provides users with means to cooperate and coordinate on all kinds of activities, including media activism, resource sharing, education and research, advocacy, and so on. Samizdat intends to promote values of freedom, openness, equality, and cooperation. What’s new in Samizdat 0.6.0? The version increase attributes to the gradual changes in 0.5.x series and incorporates almost two years worth of real-world deployment. Now that Samizdat has finally become a mature open publishing system, the road is cleared for more intrusive changes and major new features, such as free exchange and calendaring. In the way of major features, this version introduces ubiquitous message translations and RSS syndication. Many old tools are now more flexible and easier to use: focus management interface is simplified, the front page now packs more information in better layout and allows to include static headers and footers. There are even more changes under the hood: multi-layer caching, gzip and ETag support, support for audio and video uploads, BitTorrent links, HTML and CSS filtering, flexible access control, new moderation features, new UI translations and themes, code reorganization, simplified installation, and more. Changes in more detail: - message translations: message replies that are related to focus:Translation are now treated as translations and are displayed in place of original message wherever appropriate; Accept-Language browser setting is now fully respected - syndication: it is now possible to syndicate Samizdat front page (both features and recent updates), focus pages, and Squish RDF queries using RSS 1.0 - focus management interface: select focus from a pull-down menu directly on the vote or new message page (you can also enter focus id if it’s not in the list), preliminary setting of current focus is no longer necessary - new front page layout: top focuses are now listed in the left column, central column lists feature articles (messages most recently related to focuses, with rating above configurable threshold); old-style main focuses list is now displayed on a separate page - static header and footer: new fields in config.yaml can be used to display, or include from file, arbitrary header and footer for the site front page; bandwidth-constrained users can disable static content in their member settings - audio and video uploads, BitTorrent links: Ogg, MP3, MPEG, AVI, WMV, and BitTorrent are added to the list of supported file formats - HTML filtering: all HTML issued by Samizdat is now filtered through Samizdat::Sanitize and HTMLTidy to protect from XSS (cross-site scripting) attacks - multi-layer caching: front page, messages, page fragments, and query results are cached in memory, filtered HTML rendition of text messages is also cached in the database; to (re)generate database cache, run: - gzip and ETag support: transferred page size is severely reduced for browsers supporting gzip encoding and/or ETag content negotiation flag (contributed by Hleb V.) - access control: new access control facility is configurable from per-site yaml config file and distinguishes between two actions (post, vote) and three roles (moderator, member, guest); guest users can now be allowed to publish messages without registration - moderation: moderation log can now be viewed online, moderators can hide and unhide messages (members can opt to view hidden messages) and reparent comments under a different message - new translations: site interface is translated to Esperanto by Antono Vasiljev, to Ukrainian by Indymedia Ukraine, to Polish and French by Boud - new CSS themes: Savannah, mimicking the style of [savannah.gnu.org](http://savannah.gnu.org) where Samizdat project is hosted, and snow-white Sky contributed by Indymedia Ukraine - code reorganization: the code is reorganized to support running multiple sites from single Samizdat engine installation; Storage, Cache, and Sanitize libraries are untied from Samizdat engine core - easier installation: Samizdat can now be installed from a Debian package; new site can be set up in several minutes with help of new database generation script and ready to use example of Apache configuration file; experimental support for SQLite3 will one day make Samizdat installation even simpler - more: improved security, numerous usability tweaks, bugfixes, documentation updates. Where to get it? Project page: [http://samizdat.nongnu.org/](http://samizdat.nongnu.org/) Download: [http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/samizdat/samizdat-0.6.0.tar.gz](http://savannah.nongnu.org/download/samizdat/samizdat-0.6.0.tar.gz) Debian packages: [Index of /debian/pool/main/s/samizdat](http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/s/samizdat/)