News and announcements

Hi Everyone,

I've just come back from a meeting of FOSS advocates in Bangkok. The focus of the meeting was a FOSS application called Sahana, a disaster management system that has won awards from the Free Software Foundation and other bodies (it has also received a grant from Google SoC). Sahana is a humanitarian ICT effort, whose goal is to help people recover more quickly and systematically after a disaster.

It was started in Sri Lanka after the tsunami and has since been deployed in other places like the Philippines and New York City. Sahana is useful, for example, in coordinating relief efforts, making sure the goods get to the right location, and tracking these relief movements and requests. It also has a module for posting missing persons or requests to find missing persons.

What is Drupal's role in Sahana? The application is often used by NGOs and government agencies who also have their own websites. These websites usually run on FOSS CMS like Drupal, Joomla or Plone. Instead of building a CMS for Sahana and then troubling the organizations to switch to Sahana, the organizers of the Bangkok meeting wanted interoperability with the CMS. That way, NGOs who are Drupal users for example, will only have to deploy a Drupal module (or something else) to be able to link up with Sahana.

RoopleTheme is happy to announce that the LiteJazz and WhiteJazz themes have been updated to resolve numerous problems. Version 0.12 of LiteJazz and Version 0.12 of WhiteJazz are now available on the RoopleTheme Download page. RoopleTheme strongly urges everyone who is currently using version 0.11 of these themes to upgrade to the new version. We will be updating the LiteJazz project page on on the drupal.org website later today.

The RoopleTheme demo site has been updated to use the new themes. We've made a lot of changes to the demo site in the past few days. If you've visited the site before, your browser might be caching old versions of the CSS files. If things don't look right, force a browser reload. Internet Explorer Users should press Ctrl-F5. Firefox Users should press Ctrl-Shift-R.

Thank You to the hundreds of users who downloaded and tried LiteJazz. We've been overwhelmed by the positive response that we have received since its' release. We continue to encourage users to report problems with the new version of these themes on the RoopleTheme forums. And while you're there check out NewsFlash, our latest GPL Drupal theme.

www.roopletheme.com

Hello,

Widont is a module which solves the widow problem for node titles using a client-side approach. In typesetting, a widow is a single word on a line by itself at the end of a paragraph and is considered bad style.

Hello,

I have ported Scribbish to Drupal 5. Its layout standardizes on a simple xhtml structure, blog entries are formatted using the hAtom microformat specification, and styles are separated into individual files which are included in the correct order, making it easier to control the cascade and to figure out ‘what-goes-where’.

Features:
- uses the hAtom microformat specification
- minimalist style
- easy to modify!

Hi all,

I am writing here today seeking help, as so many others do.

My user id is Flipper and I run a Caribbean news and political blog called St. Maarten Private Eye and it desperately needs a new look and upgrades. The problem is that I don't know how to and I don't have the time to learn because I have to work to pay my bills and keep a roof over my head.

SXM PE is a little different from most blogs because it also has a news library, if any of you interested in my proposal below go and have a look, then on the right hand column you will see the main threads, there are now over 10,000 jpg newspaper clippings in there. Only one of our two local newspapers has a minimal presence online, so I started filing away stories and now the whole thing has become a monkey on my back. The library now goes back 2 1/2 years and it is used by students, reporters, politicians, civil servants and foundations, but none are willing to support it too much because much of the writing is critical of govt. It is a small island, small island politics, lots of corruption and it is no lie to say some of the things written about could be life threatening.