Just in time before the new year, it is with great pleasure that I announce the release of BillReminder “Keep Their Heads Ringing" 0.4.0 after a 27-month hiatus! During this period I tried many different approaches and techniques to both improve the user interface as well as the overall experience. Many of the “core” changes were performed only to satisfy my own curiosity and experimentation with other technologies out there, but overall you should have a good time playing with it.

BillReminder is not a replacement for your accounting system or elaborate services such as Mint.com. It’s purpose is to provide an easy way for getting notified about upcoming payments keeping yourself ahead of your bills!

BillReminder “Keep Their Heads Ringing” 0.4.0 can be downloaded from: http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/billreminder/0.4/

• billreminder-0.4.0.tar.bz2 (sha256sum 6a89584a1c90f661a7954a0c5c8bd392b8e2712d6cfd759fb6e588548ac8ff4e )
• billreminder-0.4.0.tar.gz (sha256sum 9a81ac46f3688a2a25d3114de2ffbc88760ec50d55d12827fc6d83a9859e9cef)

Features:

• Switched most of the user interface code to Glade files with the hope that it will ease future contributions from ui developers.

• Support for configuring notification alarms.

• Switched database layer from custom code to SQLAlchemy.

• Changed license from BSD to GPL v3.

• A set of default categories are now created by default on new installations.

• Better overall data validation when adding or editing bills.

• Changed menu to use standard “File" entry instead of previous "Bill" menu entry.

• Borrowed GConf handler from the Conduit project and register gconf schema by default.

• Added charting support from the Hamster project for better visualization of your expenditure.

• A new calendar widget has been added to replace the calendar from the add/edit dialog. In order to display the calendar, it is necessary to expand the widget by clicking on the displayed date.

• Recurring bills are now handled by selecting a frequency (the current allowed values are: once, weekly, and monthly) and setting the end date. Multiple records will then be added using the start and end date to figure out their correct due date.

• A new timeline widget has been added to replace the calendar from the main window. You can now use it to change the way you view your bills by selecting an specific date with a single click as well as drag the timeline to view past and/or future bills. The following keyboard shortcuts are available:

  • right arrow     go to next day

  • left arrow      go to previous day

  • Ctrl + right    go to same day next month

  • Ctrl + left     go to same day previous month

    • (plus)        zoom in

    • (minus)       zoom out

  • HOME            go to today’s date

  • PAGEUP          scroll to next screen*****

  • PAGEDOWN        scroll to previous screen

* go to current day plus the number of days displayed in widget.

Bug Fixes:

• #551953: It should be possible to add bills without an amount defined.
• #553890: Different install/data paths.
• #554228: Changed Record to Bill to be consistent with nomenclature.
• #555136: Import sqlite3 if using python 2.5, or pysqlite2 if using python 2.4.
• #556748: Don’t try to cast a dbus.String into an int type, if catId is ‘None’.
• #561550: Make ‘notes’ widget scroll when number of lines go beyond the widget’s height.
• #561751: UI Doesn’t refresh when deleting a record.
• #563736: Warn users of overlapping dates for recurring bills.
• #569023: Timeline widget will not support displaying multiple bills with different states on the same day.

Translations:

• ca, courtesy of Jordi Estrada
• ca@valencia, courtesy of Francesc Dorca i Badia
• cs, courtesy of Marek ?ernocký
• da, courtesy of Joe Hansen
• de, courtesy of Mario Blättermann
• el, courtesy of ??????? ???????????
• en_GB, courtesy of Jen Ockwell
• es, courtesy of Jorge González
• fi, courtesy of Ilkka Tuohela
• fr, courtesy of Bruno Brouard
• gl, courtesy of Fran Diéguez
• he, courtesy of Yaron Shahrabani
• hr, courtesy of Mario ?ani?
• hu, courtesy of Gabor Kelemen
• it, courtesy of Sergio Zanchetta
• lv, courtesy of Toms Bau?is
• nb, courtesy of Tommy Mikkelsen
• nl, courtesy of Martijn Cielen
• pl, courtesy of Tomasz Z. Napierala
• pt_BR, courtesy of Mateus Zenaide
• pt, courtesy of Susana Pereira
• ro, courtesy of Ionu? Jula
• ru, courtesy of Ilya B
• sl, courtesy of Andrej Žnidarši?
• sv, courtesy of Daniel Nylander
• tl, courtesy of Jerome S. Gotangco
• tr, courtesy of Rail Aliev
• zh_CN, courtesy of du baodao

A special “THANK YOU" goes out to Toms Bau?is for keeping me excited about programming by making the Hamster project an awesome tool, never shying away from lending me a hand every now and then and for letting me bounce ideas whenever I feel like trying some new approach to a problem!