Sailfish OS update from Jolla
It probably goes without saying that we have been super busy last two weeks. In this fortnight we do not have the usual repository roundup from @dcaliste (Damien) due to vacation, but the usual app roundup from @flypig (David) is there. With regards to the repository round, this means that we have more repository changes right before Christmas in the next fortnight.
We’re pleased of the of the Support Days that we hosted. There were many good discussions during those and it was very pleasant to meet you all. Once again, thank you to all who joined – stopping by, discussing or needing support. Feeling after these discussions is that together we can achieve great things 
– doing it together.
After Slush we have been busy as you may have realized. There was a lot of interest towards Mind2 during Slush.
The new Sony Xperia 10 IV and 10 V binary blobs were published a few days ago, but combined with the public Sailfish OS release they do not work well yet. Stay tuned for an update! If you have already flashed the newer blobs, you probably should flash previous blobs back.
You, the Sailfish Community, have been asking about the devices that you sent to repair. We have been working hard to deliver service repaired devices back to you. You can be rest assured that we do our best. We apologize for the trouble and effort this may have caused you and appreciate your understanding. There is one thing more – the customs on between EU and NO, CH and UK has been causing a bit of headache. Devices sent to service from outside EU will be handled through inward processing procedure (in Finnish Sisäisen jalostuksen menettely) – that is information that we received from Finnish customs. This procedure is quite laborious, and we have to take care of it too.
One thing that has been cooking up is a Community Coordination team – together with you. This was discussed during the Sailathon in Prague and it gained traction there as well. We’ll start with something small and aim is that this leads to something bigger. We’d expect that during January we get this rolling. More news on this later.
For you who have order Jolla C2 but haven’t yet completed the payment process, now would be a good time to do it.
And as the last for this fortnight, if you didn’t order your Jolla C2 from the first batch, or it was sold out before you tried to order one, you can soon order yours! We have secured the next batch of 1000 device that will be available for you to purchase soon. We will announce separately when the next batch is available.
App roundup
It’s just a short app roundup for the newsletter today. Not because there weren’t plenty of new apps to include, but for other reasons that I won’t go in to here.
But we do have two nice app updates for you to consider. As a surprising coincidence, both apps also received welcome updates back in May of this year, when they appeared in the newsletter at the time. So it’s great to see them continue to advance and improve.
First up we have an app that should appeal to all readers of this newsletter, given that it’s an app that allows you to access the newsletter on your phone. The app is of course SFOS Forum Viewer from szopin. It does of course allow you to access more than just this letter, opening up the entire Sailfish OS Forum to access on the move.
And it’s a winner of an app with it’s intuitive interface that allows you to flick between the list of topics on the left and a page on the right for you to choose which category to peruse. You can then drill down into the topics, in full native Silica style, but nevertheless including all of the things you might hope to see: embedded media, avatars and full stats for each post.
It’s a very clean and slick way to access the forum. What’s more, by logging in you get full interaction: favouriting posts, posting new content and editing posts you made previously.
When we last looked at the forum viewer it was on version 1.10.1. It’s now up to 1.13.0 and there have been a whole host of improvements in the interim, including improved username tags, support for polls and in the latest release improved error handling for the polls. It’s great to see it get such great contributions both from the author and from members of the community.
If you don’t already have SFOS Forum Viewer then it comes highly recommended: get yourself over to the Jolla Store or OpenRepos and download yourself a copy!
Our second app is iCalendar Filter from hsjpekka. When I first tried this I thought it would just be a simple utility, but it’s actually a very sophisticated calendar filter. Nevertheless after trying it I noted some drawbacks:
“I also experienced some glitches: it struggled to handle all-day entries, which are quite common especially for public calendars online. The filter-creation process can be a bit fiddly, although typically you won’t need to make big changes to the filtering. Finally, there’s currently only a 32-bit version of the app available on the Jolla Store.”
I’m pleased to see that hsjpekka has been resolving many of these issues in the meantime. There have been two releases since which have introduced new features and fixed bugs. There’s even a new aarch64 build available, so there’s now no excuse not to give it a go!
In terms of new features, the main change is that the list of calendar components can now be modified. This actually makes setting things up considerably easier so is a nice change. The filtering still works great; I did still have some difficulties getting dates to work as I expected, but filtering on categories was really straightforward and effective.
If you want to regularly import iCal files, either from the Web or some other source, the iCalender Filter is going to be just what you need. It’s great that hsjpekka is continuing to develop it and I look forward to it appearing again (maybe alongside a new version of the Forum Viewer?!) in a future newsletter.
iCalendar Filter is available exclusively form the Jolla Store.
Two really nice updates today I hope you’ll agree. And if all goes to plan, you can expect a return to normal service next week with a full complement of new or update apps to enjoy.
Please feed us your news
Hope you enjoyed reading this fortnight! As always, please do not hesitate to share your ideas, thoughts, or suggestion for future newsletter topics.
Let’s keep working together!
Please do also join us at our community meetings on IRC, Matrix and Telegram. Next community meeting will be on the 12th December.
