As we announced some time ago, last December we started the stabilization process of the next gvSIG version, 2.3. Now we announce the first RC (Release Candidate). This is the moment at which the gvSIG Community helps us to test and refine this distribution to have the final one as soon as possible.

As most of you know, odd gvSIG versions have changes in a functional level, but also in an architecture level. It implies a more detailed testing to identify all the possible errors derived from this re-architecture.

The main novelties in an architecture level are related with the generation of Windows 64 bits and MAC OS X versions, and they are:

• Access to raster files through GDAL
• Projection support through GDAL
• Multi-geometry support

From the users point of view, the main novelties are:

• PRJ format (projections) reading and writing. From this version, gvSIG will identigy the projection system of a layer automatically if it has a PRJ file. One of the most demanded functionalities by the community!
• Dynamic segmentation/Linear Reference System (LRS). We’ve written several posts related to these new tools.
• New editing tools: change sense, curve to polyline, parallel line
• Add layer to locator from Table of Contents
• Scripting improvements. There was a presentation about some of the next improvements in the last International gvSIG Conference
• R support through scripting. gvSIG supports the main programming language for statistical analysis.
• PostGIS improvements. Several improvements for user experience have been implemented.
• CSW 2.0.2 support. Catalog versions have been updated.
• New formats support through GDAL/OGR. Thanks to the architecture changes gvSIG will take advantage of the GDAL/OGR potential to access to different formats not supported like Geojson, MIF/MID and TAB (Mapinfo), etc
• Usability improvements. We are dedicating resources to improve the gvSIG usability.
• Language update
• New installer compatible with 64 bits
• Windows 64 bits distribution available
• Distributions automatic generator
• Debian packages automatic generator
• …and a great number of errors (bugs) that have been fixed.

Even we’ve identified some error to be fixed for the final version, we’ve decided to release this first RC because we are interested in the testing done by the community.

We also are preparing the version for MAC OS X in parallel, that we hope it will be available for the next RC’s versions.

Where can you download gvSIG 2,3? You can do it from the development versions section of the website.

In some days we will have the links for portable versions too.

Any error that you find can be sent to the mailing list. How can you send an error? You can consult this post, where we explain what information we need: https://blog.gvsig.org/2015/06/17/what-to-do-when-we-get-an-error-in-gvsig/

And now you can test the RC1 version…