** Image Manager **
- This will allow you to upload images for inclusion in news articles,
forum posts, etc. This module will also help in organizing images through
categorization and group permission features.


** Avatar Manager **
- This will allow you to upload avatar images from which users can select
in profile page, and view custom avatar images that have been uploaded by
users.


** Theme Set Manager **
We have been working tremendously on the new theme structure utilizing the Smarty template system, and we will be changing the old Nuke theme concept to a more robust, scalable, and customizable theme management system, namely Theme Set Manager.

What we have been calling themes will be called skins which
consist a subset of a theme set. A theme set consists of skin files
(skin.html, stylesheet files, skin image files), and optionally module
template files. Skin, image, template files for a theme set are all stored
in database which are injected/compiled to cache directories whenever
needed. Therefore there will be no database interaction when calling these
files from the user side.

Theme Set Manager enables you to edit/preview/download/upload skin
files and edit/preview/delete/download/upload/generate each of the
template files. Also it will allow you to clone/delete a complete
theme set, or download/upload theme set tarballs. In addition, image
files within a theme set are managed in group as an image set and can be
replaced/deleted/added online as well. Currently image files that are
used in skins are managed like this, but we will be implementing this
feature to image files in modules as well, so that images such as icons in
the forums module can be switched via Theme Set Manager.

A theme set tarball should have a directory structure as shown below (the
ones in red are required)



Yes, and the old theme files will still work fine as before by placing them
under the themes directory


** Enhanced module installer and config genearator **
- The installer will automatically add entries in the cofiguration table
based on the contents of xoops_version.php, which will be used to genearate
config option form dynamically. This will elimiate the need of creating a
cache folder/file within each module directory.


** Enhanced blocks management **
You can:
- select which page a block should be displayed on now
- cache block contents by Smarty with settable caching expirations
- edit module block contents via Theme Set Manager


** XML-RPC for News module **
XOOPS will support the following XML-RPC APIs
- All Blogger API methods
- All Metaweblog API methods
- MoveableType API
- XOOPS API
In RC4, only the News module has XML-RPC feature implemented. However, in the future release when we introduce the new sections module, you would be able to post not only news but downloads, links, reviews, and other type of items.


** Fully redesigned core class structure **
What we have been doing for the past several months is to separate data objects from its data resource access mechanisms in XOOPS. Until RC3, data objects and its data
resource accessor was too tightly coupled which prevented the use of other
data storage systems, such as LDAP, XML files, etc. By de-coupling the tight
integration, we can in the future switch to other data resources fairly
easily, which is in general just replacing the data accessor object classes.

The following classes have now been converted to the new structure



All data object classses and data accessor object classes are derived from
the XoopsObject abstract class and XoopsObjectManager class respectively. In
addition, all data accessor object classes are called via the
XoopsManagerFactory class, which further eliminates the need of calling the
accessor classes directly.


XOOPS Team