[Zope-Annce] Zope 3.4.0b1 released

[Christian Theune]

July 5, 2007 - The Zope 3 development team announces the Zope 3.4.0b1
release

This release is the first beta release for Zope 3.4.0. It was preceeded
by an alpha release in April.

Since the beta we finished repackaging of eggs, added three new features
and fixed more than 12 bugs, please see the change log for details.

Zope 3.4 introduces support for binary large objects in the ZODB,
provides a new postprocessing hook for publishing results and makes all
Zope packages available as Python eggs.

Development release and feedback
--------------------------------

This is a development release with beta quality. It is intended for
developers to check their applications for compatibility with the new
features.

This release *is not intended to be used in production environments*.

We would love to hear about any bugs you encounter. Please use our bug
tracker, the mailing lists, and the IRC channel to contact us in case
you encounter any problems.

This beta release will be succeeded by a release candidate which is
expected to be available by August 5, 2007. 

For status updates on our roadmap check:
https://launchpad.net/zope3/3.4/+milestones


What is Zope 3?
---------------

Zope 3 is a web application server that continues to build on the
heritage of Zope.  It was rewritten from scratch based on the latest
software design patterns and the experiences of Zope 2.

The component architecture is the very core of Zope 3 that allows
developers to create flexible and powerful web applications.


Compatibility with Zope 2
--------------------------

We continue to work on the transition from Zope 2 to Zope 3 by making
Zope 2 use more and more of the Zope 3 packages. But we're not there
yet. **You can't run Zope 2 applications in Zope 3.**


Downloads
---------

Zope 3 can be downloaded from:
http://zope.org/Products/Zope3

Installation instructions for both Windows and Un*x/Linux are now
available in the top level README.txt file of the distribution. The
binary installer is recommended for Windows.

Zope 3.4 requires Python 2.4.3 to run. You must also have zlib installed
on your system.


Resources
---------

- Zope 3 Development Web Site:
    http://wiki.zope.org/zope3

- Zope 3 Developers Mailing List:
    http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-dev

- Zope 3 Users Mailing List:
    http://mail.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope3-users

- Bug tracker at launchpad:
    https://launchpad.net/zope3

- IRC Channel:
    #zope3-dev at irc.freenode.net


Acknowledgments
---------------

Much thanks to everyone who contributed to this release:

Jim Fulton, Dmitry Vasiliev, Martijn Faassen, Christian Theune, Wolfgang
Schnerring, Fred Drake, Marius Gedminas, Baiju M, Brian Sutherland, Gary
Poster