[LAA] Release: New Session Manager Version 1.4.0

Linuxaudio.org presents: New Session Manager Version 1.4.0 ## Summary The theme for this release is to fix known bugs and issues with both the original Non-Session-Manager ("nsmd") server as well as its GUI (our "nsm-legacy-gui"). Problems and inconsistencies that have piled up for years were finally cleaned up (full changelog below). Users do not need to take any action (besides updating), the session save-format remains unchanged. Client programs, or rather their developers, do not need to change or adjust anything; all changes are "under the hood". We have no self-hosted website yet, but plan to establish one in the future. Until then the project can be found on Github: https://github.com/linuxaudio/new-session-manager/ https://github.com/linuxaudio/new-session-manager/releases/tag/v1.4.0 ## Full Release Announcement: New Session Manager (NSM) is a tool to assist music production by grouping standalone programs into sessions. Your workflow becomes easy to manage, robust and fast by leveraging the full potential of cooperative applications. It is a community version of the "NON Session Manager" and free in every sense of the word: free of cost, free to share and use, free of spyware or ads, free-and-open-source. You can create a session, or project, add programs to it and then use commands to save, start/stop, hide/show all programs at once, or individually. At a later date you can then re-open the session and continue where you left off. All files belonging to the session will be saved in the same directory. Check your distributions in a few days for New-Session-Manager 1.4.0 You can find the source release on Github: https://github.com/linuxaudio/new-session-manager/releases/tag/v1.4.0 Bullet Points * Drop-In replacement for the non-session-manager daemon nsmd and tools (e.g. jackpatch) * Simple and hassle-free build system to make packaging easy * Possibility to react to sensible bug fixes that would not have been integrated into original nsmd * Stay upwards and downwards compatible with original nsmd * Conservative and hesitant in regards to new features and behaviour-changes, but possible in principle * Keep the session-manager separate from the other NON* tools Mixer, Sequencer and Timeline. * Protect nsmd from vanishing from the internet one day. * The goal is to become the de-facto standard music session manager for Linux distributions Changes since new-session-manager v1.3.2 (2020-06-20) Add documentation and manpages. Highlight: Provide updated API-Document (core documentation) on https://linuxaudio.github.io/new-session-manager/api/index.html Legacy-GUI: Overhaul look and feel. Rewrite labels and buttons with unambiguous descriptions. Protect text-input dialog windows from empty strings, like "Add New Client" or "New Session" Scale icons, support more icon formats. Show all icons and buttons when attaching to a running nsmd session Various small fixes. Always show correct session name, no matter how the session was loaded or how the GUI was started nsmd: NSM_API_VERSION_MINOR from 0 to 1 (1.0 -> 1.1) Repair nsmd to correctly send client data when running headless and a GUI announces later. ClientId generation now prevent collision with existing IDs. nsmd command line option --load-session to directly load one (Berkelder, Rik) Better detection of clients that failed to launch leads to faster session startup (by 5 seconds) Users get informed by client-label if an executable is not present on the system or permission denied Fixed reply for listing sessions from a plain "Done." to proper reply path with empty string as terminal symbol "/reply", "/nsm/server/list", "" Fix operation reply to last treated client instead to reply to sender (Picot, Mathieu / houston) /nsm/gui/session/name send consistent session name/relative-path pair to the annouced GUI, no matter how the session was loaded. nsm.h :optional-gui: support to nsm.h, for other applications to include and use. (Meyer, Hermann / brummer ) This is a joint release from multiple people under the linuxaudio.org "brand". https://github.com/linuxaudio/new-session-manager Greetings, dvzrv, falktx and nils