LWN Weekly Edition
Front pageSecurity
Kernel development
Distributions
Development
Linux in the news
Announcements
->One big page
This page
Previous weekFollowing week
| |||||||||||||
DevelopmentGNOME 2.8 is releasedVersion 2.8 of the GNOME desktop was announced this week.
Released on schedule, to the day, it is the culmination of six months effort
by GNOME contributors around the world: hackers, documentors, usability and
accessibility specialists, translators, maintainers, sysadmins, companies,
artists, users and testers. Due to their hard work, we have another great
release to be proud of - thanks very much to every contributor!
![[GNOME]](/images/ns/gnome2.jpg)
The Release Notes provide an overview of the current state of the project:
"GNOME runs on a variety of platforms, including GNU/Linux (commonly called Linux), Solaris, HP-UX, BSD and Apple's Darwin. GNOME includes powerful features such as world-class smooth text rendering, a first-class accessibility infrastructure, and a complete internationalization infrastructure that includes support for bi-directional text."
The What's New page details most of the improvements. The GNOME file manager has numerous new capabilities. These include a new standardized file-type system that adds KDE compatibility, default handlers, and support for opening alternate applications. DNS-Based Service Discovery allows network resources to be visible locally. CDs, DVDs, memory sticks, and digital cameras are now automatically mounted. Multi-session CDs are now supported. The GNOME desktop has a new Glider theme which is: "simple, smooth, and aesthetically pleasing". The GNOME control center adds a keyboard layout preview screen that lights up when keys are pressed to show the key interpretations. The GNOME Panel Applets have had several improvements. The panel applet chooser application has been clarified. The calendar now connects to the Evolution email client. The network monitor adds support for wireless interfaces and features a signal strength meter. The battery monitor has improved battery life estimation and more visible warnings. The weather applet has support for more locations. GNOME 2.8 features several updated applications. Version 2.0 of the Evolution integrated Email and Groupware client is included. It adds support for Novell Groupwise and Microsoft Exchange, S/MIME authentication and encryption, calendar improvements, offline IMAP support, Usenet support, spam filtering, and user interface improvements. The Epiphany web browser has numerous bookmark improvements, popup blocking, an offline mode, and online calendar connectivity through Evolution. System Administration improvements in GNOME 2.8 include a new virtual network computing client for remote desktop control. The gnome system tools, network tools, and configuration editor have undergone numerous improvements. Improvements to the GNOME 2.8 Development Platform include an expanded API and official language bindings for Python, C++, Java, and Perl. Internationalization is improving in GNOME 2.8. "GNOME 2.8 offers support for 40 languages (at least 80 percent of strings translated)." For a visual tour of GNOME 2.8, take a look at some of the user submitted screenshots. In all, this looks like an exciting new GNOME release with many usability improvements, and features that should make the average desktop user happy. Congratulations to the GNOME developers!
System Applications Database Software Durus object database version 1.2Version 1.2 of Durus is available. "Durus is a Python object database. It offers an easy way to maintain a consistent persistent collection of Python object instances used by one or more processes." Changes include a new command line tool, a BTree class, and bug fixes.
FlameRobin 0.1.3 releasedVersion 0.1.3 of FlameRobin, a database administration tool for Firebird DBMS, is out. Change information is somewhat sparse, the documentation in the source code refers to a missing changes.txt file.
pgAdmin III v1.2 Beta releasedVersion v1.2 Beta of pgAdmin III has been released. "Hot on the heels of the PostgreSQL 8 betas, the first beta release of pgAdmin III, the popular administration tool for PostgreSQL, has been released for testing." Several bug fixes are included.
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe September 13, 2004 PostgreSQL Weekly News is out with information about the PostgreSQL 8.0 beta release and other database news.
ZODB 3.3 release candidate 1 releasedVersion 3.3c1 of ZODB, the Zope Object DataBase, is available. "3.3c1 incorporates a slew of small fixes, and one major incompatibility: when a transaction commit fails, all previous versions of ZODB aborted the transaction and implicitly began a new transaction. As discussed on the zope-dev and zodb-dev mailing lists, that can be damaging if one in a sequence of subtransaction commits mistakenly suppresses a commit exception."
Interoperability Samba 3.0.7 Available for DownloadStable version 3.0.7 of Samba is out with some important security fixes. "This is the latest stable release of Samba. This is the version that production Samba servers should be running for all current bug-fixes. There have been several important issues fixes since the 3.0.6 release."
Libraries liboggz 0.8.4 ReleasedVersion 0.8.4 of liboggz, a C library for reading and writing Ogg compressed audio files and streams, is out. Changes include expanded --help output, valgrind test support, a single packet network read test, and more.
libogg-1.1.1 releasedVersion 1.1.1 of libogg has been released. "Changes include several platform and build fixes, documentation for multiplexed streams, and other goodies."
libxml++ 2.8.0 releasedVersion 2.8.0 of libxml++,a C++ wrapper for the libxml XML parser library, is out. "This is the first stable release on the 2.8 branch." Changes include code cleanup, bug fixes, and new Validator and DtdValidator functionality.
Networking Tools moodss 19.0 announcedJean-Luc Fontaine has announced version 19.0 of Moodss, a graphical monitoring application with plug-in support for various operating systems, databases, and networking applications. "This new release add the capability to create mathematical formulas f[r]om any module (locally or remotely monitoring), and use the resulting data as any other, in graphical viewers, thresholds, or archiving in database, ..."
Printing Common UNIX Printing System 1.1.21Version 1.1.21 of CUPS, the Common UNIX Printing System, is out. "CUPS 1.1.21 is primarily a bug fix and performance tuning release and includes fixes for the IPP, LPD, parallel, serial, and USB backends, authentication and status processing issues in the CUPS API, and various PostScript and PDF printing issues. The new release also adds support for Zebra label printers and IPP device URI options."
Security chroot_safe 1.2 released (SourceForge)Version 1.2 of chroot_safe, a tool for replacing chroot and friends, is available. "Version 1.2 is an update to increase portability. The software is now verified on Solaris on addition to Linux and FreeBSD and is expected to run on mostly any UNIX like system with LD_PRELOAD support."
Web Site Development ACal 2.2.2 Released (SourceForge)Version 2.2.2 of ACal, a web-based event calendar, is available. "ACal 2.2.2 was released to fix two bugs. First of all a bug when clicking on single digit days in the month view to get into the day view and second, a bug where after installing you can login with a blank username and password."
Bricolage 1.8.2 ReleasedVersion 1.8.2 of Bricolage, a Perl-based web content management system, is out. "This maintenance release addresses quite a large number of issues in Bricolage 1.8.1. The most important changes were to enhance Unicode support in Bricolage. Bricolage now internally handles all text content as UTF-8 strings, thus enabling templates to better control the manipulation of multibyte characters. Other changes include better performance for searches using the ANY() operators and more intelligent transaction handling for distribution jobs."
ZopeMag Weekly NewsThe September 1-10, 2004 edition of the ZopeMag Weekly News is online with the latest Zope and Plone articles.
Documentation Collaborative Document Editing with svk (O'ReillyNet)Chia-liang Kao uses svk to keep documentation in different languages in sync. "If you've ever tried to write a document collaboratively, you know the pain of tracking multiple edits. Programmers face the same difficulties with source code, so why not borrow their version control solutions? Chia-liang Kao demonstrates how to use svk, a distributed version control system, to manage changes to translations and other collaborative documents."
Standards The Open Group & FSG announce LSB 2.0 certificationThe Free Standards Group and The Open Group have announced the readiness of certification efforts for the Linux Standard Base 2.0 Specification (LSB 2.0). Developers can work with The Open Group on certifying their applications to the global standard for Linux.
Miscellaneous GNOME System Tools 1.0 have been releasedVersion 1.0 of GNOME System Tools is available, changes include numerous updated translations.
PIKT 1.17.0 releasedVersion 1.17.0 of PIKT, the Problem Informant/Killer Tool, is out. "PIKT is a cross-categorical, multi-purpose toolkit to monitor and configure computer systems, organize system security, format documents, assist command-line work, and perform other common systems administration tasks." Changes include support for new preprocessor directives, a backup restore option, piktf: a configuration find utility, command-line item macros, and bug fixes.
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Marlin 0.7 has been releasedVersion 0.7 of Marlin, a sample editor, is out. Changes include a new a progress window icon, undo/redo functionality, bug fixes, and more.
Patchage 0.0.4 ReleasedVersion 0.0.4 of Patchage, a modular patch bay for Jack audio with planned alsa sequencer capabilities, is out. Changes include some bug fixes.
qjackctl 0.2.11 releasedVersion 0.2.11 of qjackctl, the Qt GUI Interface to the JACK Audio Connection Kit, is available. Changes include a fix for the Input/Output channels settings and user control of a shiny display effect.
Timemachine 0.2.5 is outVersion 0.2.5 of Timemachine, a JACK application for recording sounds that have just happened, is out. Changes include command line recording format and port selection, a new desktop icon, and more.
Desktop Environments KDE CVS-Digest (KDE.News)The September 10, 2004 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is online with the following content summary: "Speedups in khtml javascript, Kate, Kmail and Kcminit. Macros and headers added to compile Kdelibs on win32. UI Recovery ToolKit (uirtk) improved. Support for building Smoke library on Mac OS X."
Metacity 2.8.5 releasedVersion 2.8.5 of Metacity, a window manager for GNOME, is available. "This is a stable release for Gnome 2.8. Only translations and some new developer documentation were added since the last unstable release. This release boasts improved standards-compliance and a number of bug fixes since the last stable release."
Electronics New Open Collector releasesThe Open Collector site mentions the release of TkGate 1.8.5, an event driven digital circuit simulator with a tcl/tk-based graphical editor, and Alliance 5.0-20040909, a CAD framework for designing VLSI chips.
Financial Applications Compiere Release 2.5.1f (SourceForge)Version 2.5.1f of Compiere, an ERP+CRM business application, is available. "The emphasis of this release was the improved Server infrastructure. You can now monitor the (accounting, request, workflow, alert) processors and their logs from the web."
Games Bygfoot 1.6.1 and 1.7.1 available (SourceForge)New stable and development versions of Bygfoot, a graphical soccer game, are available. "The new releases correct an extremely annoying bug that caused the game to hang. There's also an online update script in the source packages that helps you keep your Bygfoot version up-to-date without downloading new packages manually."
gnome-games 2.8.0 releasedVersion 2.8 of gnome-games, a collection of games for GNOME, is out. "This is the first stable release of the 2.8 series. It should compile happily in a GNOME 2.6 or GNOME 2.8 environment although a recent librsvg is recommended."
gnome-games-extra-data 2.8.0 releasedVersion 2.8.0 of gnome-games-extra-data, the overflow graphics for gnome-games, is out. "The only change since 2.7.0 is the addition of the old gnometris backgrounds."
Takeover 0.96 (Pygame)Version 0.96 of Takeover has been released. "Takeover is a turnbased strategy board game for two players. It could be described as a cross between Chess and Checkers. Each player starts with one "Leader" and six "Unit" pieces, centered around its own base, that has to be protected."
GUI Packages gtkmm 2.5.0 announcedVersion 2.5.0 of gtkmm, a C++ interface to GTK+, is out. "gtkmm 2.5 wraps new API in GTK+ 2.5, and is API/ABI-compatibile with gtkmm 2.4. The new API is unstable, until this become the API/ABI-stable gtkmm 2.6 when GTK+ 2.5 becomes the API-stable GTK+ 2.6."
Gtk2-Perl 2.8.0 announcedVersion 2.8.0 of Gtk2-Perl, the Perl bindings to GTK+, is out. This is the stable release for GNOME 2.8.0.
Instant Messaging IRC Text to Speech with Java (O'ReillyNet)O'Reilly is running an article on converting IRC into synthesized speech. "Paul Mutton creates a multi-platform IRC bot that uses the FreeTTS Java speech synthesizer library to convert IRC messages into audible speech. Why would you want to use an IRC text-to-speech system? By reading out messages as they arrive, you can keep working, diverting your attention to IRC only when necessary." Now, imagine working in a cubicle farm loaded with talking IRC clients.
Interoperability Wine TrafficThe September 10, 2004 edition of Wine Traffic is online. Take a look for happenings in the Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) world.
Mail Clients Thunderbird 0.8 releasedThe Mozilla project has made Thunderbird 0.8 available. New features include better POP support, an RSS reader, a master password for login information, and more; see the release notes for details.
Medical Applications OpenEMR with Advanced Document Management (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews has an announcement for a new version of OpenEMR, an electronic medical records system. Here is the list of improvements: "Advanced document storage capabilities for scanned documents; New user reporting interface - a separate interface from the phpMyAdmin to obtain reports; Improved calendaring; Support for specialty codes for billing; Support for multiple X12 partners - the ability to submit X12 claims to different payers or clearinghouses; and Many display and logic enhancements."
Music Applications Hydrogen v0.9.0 ReleasedVersion 0.9.0 of Hydrogen, a versatile drum sequencer application, is available. Changes include support for multiple layers and patterns, FLAC file support, control of instrument pitch and gain properties, export to standard MIDI files, and other improvements.
jMax-SDIF 0.8 releasedVersion 0.8 of jMax-SDIF, the jMax 4.1 Sound Description Interchange Format package, is out. "I just finished the jMax-SDIF package version 0.8 for jMax 4.1 CVS. You can now import SDIF files into a track of matrices, and export a track to SDIF. There is also an sdifinfo object that reads and outputs information about the contents of an SDIF file."
News Readers Liferea 0.6.0 announcedVersion 0.6.0 of Liferea. the Linux Feed Reader, is out with numerous improvements and bug fixes.
Office Applications criawips 0.0.7 ReleasedVersion 0.0.7 of criawips, a presentation application for GNOME, is out. "After almost 2 months a new version of criawips is released. This version includes several new translations". Also included are bug fixes, resolution independent slide rendering, and a redesigned main window.
PDA Software Guikachu 1.5.3 releasedVersion 1.5.3 of Guikachu, the GNOME Resource editor for PalmOS projects, is out. "This release is part of the 1.5 development branch, so it's all about crazy experimentations and not about providing a polished, well-tested product -- so don't quite replace your 1.4 Guikachu just yet."
Video Applications Dirac 0.4.2 (alpha) releasedAlpha version 0.4.2 of the Dirac general-purpose video codec is available, it features a number of bug fixes.
Web Browsers Epiphany 1.4.0 is outVersion 1.4.0 of Epiphany, the GNOME web browser, is out. "Epiphany 1.4.0 is the first stable release in the GNOME 2.8 series."
Epiphany Extensions 1.4.0 ReleasedVersion 1.4.0 of Epiphany Extensions, the extensions to the Epiphany browser, is out. "Epiphany Extensions 1.4.0 is the first stable release for use with the stable 1.4.x series of Epiphany with GNOME 2.8."
Epiphany 1.2.9 ReleasedVersion 1.2.9 of Epiphany is available. "Epiphany 1.2.9 is the last release in stable the GNOME 2.6 series."
Firefox 1.0 preview releasedThe Firefox 1.0 preview release is now available. The release notes show that a fair number of new features have been added: "live bookmarks" which generate a bookmark folder from an RSS feed, better popup control, incremental find, a "master password" to guard login information, and more.
Mozilla 1.7.3 Released (MozillaZine)Version 1.7.3 of Mozilla has been announced. "mozilla.org today released Mozilla 1.7.3, which patches some minor security holes".
aKademy Hackers Port Mozilla to Qt/KDE (KDE.News)KDE.News reports on yet another outcome from aKademy: a port of the Gecko rendering engine to Qt. "Within four days (and before the end of the marathon) the two had a working port: Gecko running on Qt. They credited the speed of implementation to the maturity of the respective technologies and KDE's component architecture (though the caliber of the hackers certainly didn't hamper the effort). In their implementation, Qt is just another platform for Mozilla, parallel to the drawing and widget layer for Mozilla's other platforms like GTK, Win32, or MacOS X."
Miscellaneous gnome-applets 2.8.0 releasedVersion 2.8.0 of gnome-applets, "the little programs you run in your panel", is out with improved documentation, bug fixes, and compatibility with GNOME 2.8.
gcalctool v4.4.18 stable releasedStable version 4.4.18 of gcalctool, the default GNOME desktop calculator, has been released for GNOME 2.8. It features some localization changes.
Languages and Tools C GCC NewsletterThe September 15, 2004 edition of the GCC Newsletter is available with the latest Gnu Compiler Collection news. Take a look to read about the upcoming GCC 3.5 release.
Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe September 7-14, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with this week's Caml language articles.
Java JDemo: Interactive Testing Refactored (O'ReillyNet)Markus Gebhard demonstrates JDemo on a dice display application. "The nature of GUI development doesn't lend itself to test-oriented methodologies very well. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't test your components! Markus Gebhard has an alternative: JDemo, a tool patterned after JUnit, for displaying and verifying GUI components."
Perl This Week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)The September 9, 2004 edition of This Week on Perl 6 is online with the latest Perl 6 development discussions.
Lightning Articles (O'Reilly)Simon Cozens has assembled several small Perl articles on O'Reilly. "While preparing perl.com one week, I was editing an article on how to give lightning talks by Mark Fowler and at the same time I was dealing with another author who said he was having difficulty stretching out an article -- a very good article, on a topic I wanted to see covered -- to a full 2,500-words-or-so length. I then realized there were probably a load of people out there with interesting things to say about what they're doing with Perl, but who couldn't or didn't want to write a full-sized article."
PHP Gubed PHP Debugger 0.1.1 releasedVersion 0.1.1 of Gubed PHP Debugger, a cross platform program for debugging PHP scripts, has been released. "Improvements are mostly in the areas of session handling, documentation, packaging and windows compatibility."
PostScript GGV 2.8.0 ReleasedVersion 2.8.0 of GGV, GNOME GhostView, is out. "Featuring updates to Welsh (Dafydd) and Turkish (Baris) translations and nothing more."
Python Python Imaging Library 1.1.5 alpha 4Version 1.1.5 alpha 4 of PIL, the Python Imaging Library, has been released. "This release contains a major change to the build procedure; instead of the old configure/make/setup dance, there's now a single setup.py file that does it best to do everything in one operation."
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for September 14, 2004 is available. Take a look for another round of Python language articles.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! for September 14, 2004 is available with the week's Tcl/Tk articles.
XML Inside the XForms validator (IBM developerWorks)Micah Dubinko works with XForms validation on IBM's developerWorks. "Performing validation on mixed-namespace documents can be more art than science. XForms 1.0, which is used as a component inside arbitrary host languages, introduces some new questions about how a validator should process such documents. This article discusses some of the challenges that the author encountered while writing an online XForms validator tool, and techniques for overcoming these problems."
Automated Tree Drawing: XSLT and SVG (O'Reilly)Jirka Kosek draws tree diagrams automatically with XSLT and SVG. "But if you need dozens of trees, you would do well to use a compact text syntax for describing trees that can later be turned into nice pictures. In this article I'll show you how to parse simple text notation by means of XSLT and turn it into SVG graphics."
Wrestling HTML (O'Reilly)Uche Ogbuji uses Python to clean and convert HTML to XML. "Lately I've seen HTML parsing problems everywhere. One project needed a web crawler with specialized features provided through Python code that processed arbitrary HTML. There have also been several threads on mailing lists I frequent (including XML-SIG) featuring discussions of mechanisms for dealing with broken HTML by converting it to decent XHTML."
Editors gedit 2.8.0 releasedStable version 2.8.0 of gedit, the official GNOME text editor, is available. "Among others, it features full UTF-8 support, syntax highlighting and a powerful plugin system." A new plugin allows the case of highlighted text to be changed.
Profilers OProfile 0.8.1 ReleasedVersion 0.8.1 of OProfile, a code profiler, is available. "A new utility, oparchive, has been included. This allows you to save all or part of a profile session, including the profiled binaries; the archive can be processed later via the "archive:" profile specifier. The profile specifiers "sample-file:" and "binary:" have been removed; oparchive is a more flexible solution to the problem. Objective C debug info is now handled."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
|||||||||||||