[OSCOM] SilvaNewsNetwork 2.0 released

Silva News Network 2.0 released
===============================

Infrae is proud to release version 2.0 of Silva News Network, the news
application and framework for Silva. Silva News Network can be used to
turn a Silva site into a sophisticated news publishing and aggregation
application.

What is it?
===========

Silva News Network provides a News and Events application for Silva that
runs out-of-the-box. It offers the capability to deploy multiple news
sources within an organization, say, in different departments, where
some or all sources can be aggregated into a central news page. The
different departments might have their own news page too. By adjusting
SNN filters, editors can choose what target audiences and subjects their
aggregator collects, and have granular control of display down to an
article level.

Silva News Network viewers can be used ‘as is’ for a news page, or be
included inline into a document. Silva templates can display news feeds
in a related column. SNN has RSS extensions; a news viewer can publish
its contents as RSS. There is also an RSS Aggregator that can be used to
pick up and display news from other SNN sources or external RSS and Atom
feeds.

Features include:
=================

     * Aggregation of news items into single news feeds from multiple
       news sources in a Silva site. Each news source can have its own
       contributors.
     * News filtering based on date, physical location, type and
       categories.
     * Agenda functionality: agenda items such as events can be planned
       in for dates, and a calendar interface is available for end users
       to browse through events.
     * Support for different content types for articles. Silva News
       Network can be extended to allow new article types.
     * Configurable news viewers. News items can be displayed in a single
       page with archive functionality, or as inline news items inside a
       Silva Document.
     * RSS export support: News viewers can expose their contents as RSS
       so that external aggregators can pick up on news published in a
       Silva site.
     * RSS/Atom import support: Silva News Network can connect to
       external RSS feeds and display them within a news viewer.
     * Partitioning of items.
     * Publishing workflow allowing news items to become available at
       future dates, expiry, and so on, integrated with Silva's
       publishing workflow.

In addition, SNN provides an extensible framework for building other
sophisticated news-related applications.

New Features
============

Silva News Network is the new name for Silva News. We've changed the
name to emphasize the extensive featureset and extensibility. For
existing news users, the most important new features are:

     * Full support for editing news articles with the Kupu WYSIWYG
       editor.
     * Images can now be shown in news viewers.
     * More control over the location of items in news viewers.
     * Allows displaying dates in different locales in public views.
     * Allow explicit hiding or displaying the time part of dates.
     * Agenda items are now displayed by end date instead of begin date
       (if available).
     * Added title for subjects and target audiences. The title can be
       changed without breaking integrity.
     * Improved displaying of intros.
     * Removed HTML tables from public views to improve CSS styling
       possibilities.

For a full list of changes, see HISTORY.txt in the package.

Download
========

The package can be downloaded from
http://www.infrae.com/download/SilvaNews.

The http://www.infrae.com website contains more information about how
to report bugs, and related extensions.

Thanks to the University of Luton (http://www.luton.ac.uk/), University
College London (http://www.ucl.ac.uk/), Marc Petitmermet of ETH Zürich
(http://www.ethz.ch/), Andrew Altepeter of Bethel University in St.
Paul, USA (http://www.bethel.edu/), and the Bijvoet Center for
Biomolecular Informatics (http://www.bijvoet-center.nl/) for support.

Regards,

Guido Wesdorp, Infrae