After more than 5 years, I am proud to announce the release candidate for
a new "stable" version of the cdrtools package. The next version will be 
called cdrtools-3.0 and be released in about a week.

The last official "stable" version (2.01) was published on Setpember 9th 
of 2004. Further development was delayed for about 20 months in favor of 
creating the basics for all OpenSolaris based UNIX distributions.

On May 15th 2006, the next externally visible cdrtools development cycle
was announced to the public starting with a lot of new code under OpenSource
and with nearly all sub-projects (works) being under the CDDL. In my opinion,
this gives more freedom to developers and users as it does not try to impose
restrictions that would not pass in court anyway. With the first version of 
cdrecord being published on February 4th 1996, the cdrtools project now looks
back onto more than 14 years of sustained and reliable OpenSource project 
activities. During the last development period between Setpember 9th 2004 
and now, nearly as much new code was introduced as between February 4th 1996 
and September 2004.

The most important enhancements since May 15th 2006 are:

-	BluRay support was added

-	The DVD support code was moved to the OpenSource part of cdrtools

-	DVD Double layer support was added

-	DVD-RAM support was added

-	DVD Multi-border support for DVD- was added to cdrecord

-	Support for reading and writing Hidden Tracks (audible content before
	Track 01) on Audio CDs was added to cdda2wav and cdrecord

-	Cdda2wav is now able to create CDRWIN CUE files instead of *.inf files

-	Cdrecord now understands the CUE file enhancements from ExactAudioCopy

-	SCSI autotarget mode makes cdrtools work without the dev= SCSI address
	parameters in all cases where only one drive is available in the system

-	Mkisofs now includes support for find(1) style command line arguments
	implemented via "libfind"

-	Mkisofs now includes working support for UTF-8 based locales

-	Mkisofs now includes enhanced UDF support like symlinks, user IDs,
	group IDs and permissions (needed for DVDs and BluRays)
	There is also support for Apple specific extensions (thanks to 
	Helios.de)

-	Mkisofs now supports ISO-9660 with files up to 8 TB (requires 
	-iso-level 3)

-	New cdrecord option -minfo/-media-info to print Media 
	information/status

-	Readcd now implements media quality scanning support code for 
	C1/C2/CU errors with Plextor and NEC/Optiarc drives. Use readcd -cxscan

-	Readcd now implements media quality scan support code for Plextor
	drives. Use readcd -pi8scan or -pifscan



-	All SCSI aware programs from cdrtools now support -scanbus

-	Support for the Plextor GigaRec feature was added

-	Workarounds for many firmware bugs in various drives have been added

-	Cdrecord now defaults to -sao mode instead of -tao

-	Cdrecords CDRWIN CUE sheet parser was enhanced to support all features
	from CDRWIN and cdrecord specific extensions in addition

-	Cdrecord now allows CDRWIN CUE sheet based writing in
	-raw/-raw16/-raw96r to work around Pioneer firmware bugs
	and to allow to write SVCDs on Pioneer drives

-	Cdrecord now supports DVD-RW/DL media (once the related media
	will be made available to the public)

-	Cdda2wav now implements a new option -interactive to support being
	called from GStreamer (to avoid license problems with libcdio)

-	Cdda2wav now supports MD5 sums for audio data

-	Support for "root"-less installation on Solaris using fine grained
	privileges was added

-	Support for DragonFlyBSD was added

-	Support for Zeta (BeOS clone) was added

-	Support for Haiku (BeOS clone) was added

-	Support for Syllable was added

-	Support for ATARI FreeMiNT was added

-	Support for AMIGA-OS was added

-	Support for SunStudio 12 on Linux was added
	Call "make CCOM=suncc"

-	New program "btcflash" to flash firmware on some BTC writers

-	A new Reed Solomon "decoder" (repair) library was added

-	New experimental option -edc-corr in "readcd" was added

-	Mkisofs no longer used GNU getopt_long() but getargs() to avoid various
	bugs from GNU getopt_long()

-	Mkisofs now supports correct inode numbers for hardlinks

-	Mkisofs now implements "UNIX V6 FS style" link counts on directories,
	this is: link count for directories is "2 + number of subdirectories"

-	Mkisofs now implements the new Rock Ridge (rrip) protocol 
	version 1.12 from 1994 that added support for hard linked files

-	Mkisofs now correctly implements deep directory relocation (this is
	for directories nested deeper than 8 nesting levels)

-	New mkisofs options -posix-H/-posix-L/-posix-P implement the -H/-L/-P
	options defined by POSIX.1-2001 for descending commands like 
	ls/chmod/chown/find/pax/...

-	The makefile system now implements support for cdrtools local dynamic
	linking using:

	make LINKMODE=dynamic

-	All projects except "libhfs_iso", "libparanoia" and "schily autoconf"
	have been relicensed to CDDL with permission from all authors. 
	Libparanoia was relicensed from GPL to LGPL with permission from Monty.