Development

Disk Partition Editing with GNU Parted and GParted

Modification of functional disk partitions is a job that has traditionally been done with various Windows and DOS-based commercial applications. GNU Parted is an open-source, Linux-native application that can resolve that dependency.

GNU Parted supports these disk labels: raw access, MS-DOS, Intel GPT, MIPS, PC98, Sun, BSD and Macintosh. It can understand and modify (with some limitations) the following filesystem types: ext2, ext3, fat16, fat32, linux-swap, HFS, JFS, NTFS, ReiserFS, UFS, and XFS. Lastly, it works with these boot loaders: LILO, GRUB, DOS, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Quik, and Yaboot.

The available commands in GNU Parted include: check, cp, help, mklabel, mkfs, mkpart, move, name, print, quit, rescue, resize, rm, select, and set. These are explained in the online manual (somewhat ancient, dated 2002). GNU Parted will run from a stand-alone Linux boot diskette.

GParted, the Gnome Partition Editor, is a GUI frontend to GNU Parted that works on the GNOME desktop. The project's aim is to fully support all of the GNU Parted functions, that job is in progress. The screenshots page shows GParted in action. GParted goes a long way toward making GNU Parted as easy to use as the traditional commercial applications.

Version 0.6 of GParted was announced this week. It features newly added reiserfs support, faster startup, better GUI feedback, and more.

These two programs are a welcome addition to any system administrator's toolkit, they offer a nice open-source solution to partition management. Of course, any prudent administrator would be advised to make and verify their backups before running any software that modifies disk partitions.

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System Applications

Database Software

Gentle.NET 1.1.2 released! (SourceForge)

Gentle.NET version 1.1.2 is out. "This release fixes a number of minor bugs and inconsistencies. There are also several minor improvements throughout, and the provider libraries have been updated to recent versions. Gentle.NET is an RDBMS independent object persistence framework written in C# for .NET and Mono."

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PostgreSQL Security Release(s) for 7.2, 7.3 and 7.4

New versions of the PostgreSQL database are available. "In order to address a recent security report from iDefence, we have released 3 new "point" releases: 7.2.6, 7.3.8 and 7.4.6 Although rated only a Medium risk, according to their web site: "A vulnerability exists due to the insecure creation of temporary files, which could possibly let a malicious user overwrite arbitrary files."" A data-loss bug is also fixed in this release series.

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Slony-I 1.0.5 released

Version 1.0.5 of Slony-I, a database replication engine, has been released. Numerous bug fixes and other changes are documented in the project's HISTORY document.

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ZODB 3.2.4 (final) released

Version 3.2.4 final of ZODB has been announced. "Note that 3.2.4 incorporates a major change in semantics: it's incorrect to attempt to close a connection when objects from that connection are still in a modified state, and 3.2.4 raises the new ConnectionStateError exception in such cases. 3.2.4 also incorporates a significant ZEO performance fix, and a number of smaller bugfixes."

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Interoperability

Samba 3.0.8pre2 is available

Version 3.0.8pre2 of Samba has been announced. Changes include experimental idmap backend for assigning uids/gids, more printer migration support for XP/2003 platforms, and bug fixes. See the release notes for details.

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Libraries

OpenSSL 0.9.7e released

Version 0.9.7e of OpenSSL has been released. "The OpenSSL project team is pleased to announce the release of version 0.9.7e of our open source toolkit for SSL/TLS. This new OpenSSL version is a bugfix release and incorporates changes and bugfixes to the toolkit".

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urwid 0.8.0 Released

Version 0.8.0 of urwid, a Python language curses-based UI/widget library, is out. This is the first public release of the code.

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Printing

AFPL Ghostscript 8.32 beta release

Beta release 8.32 of AFPL Ghostscript has been announced. "We hope you will find this third beta useful for testing and help us flush out any remaining serious bugs before this branch becomes the stable 8.5x series. We've been in feature freeze since the previous 8.31 release, so the only changes in this release are numerous bug fixes, including additional improvements in the font rendering."

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PyKota 1.20 BETA is out

Version 1.20 beta of PyKota, a Python-based print quota system, has been released. Changes include performance improvements, a new data dumper with support for various output formats, bug fixes, internationalized command line tools, and more.

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Web Site Development

mnoGoSearch 3.2.23 search engine is out

Version 3.2.23 of the mnoGoSearch web site search engine has been released. Changes include new template operators, an improved blob-mode converter, bug fixes, and more. See the history file for more details.

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Reflections on Rails (RubyGarden)

The RubyGarden takes a look at Rails, an open source web-application framework for Ruby. "For me, the biggest obstacle to using Rails — indeed, the only obstacle — was "getting it"; that is, getting my mind around the Model/View/Controller paradigm and how Rails expresses it. And the only reason this took a day or two in my case, rather than minutes, is that it was new to me. But as soon as I "got it", everything started to move very quickly indeed."

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Samizdat 0.5.4, the IMC release

Version 0.5.4 of Samizdat, an RDF-based engine for building collaboration and open publishing web sites, is available. "In this version, front page layout was changed to the more familiar vertial split with the main column featuring focuses and right column running recent updates in the open publishing wire. New moderation facility allows to take over messages, displace their contents completely, and block member accounts."

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RFC: Proposed backward-compatibility policy for Zope

An RFC concerning backward compatibility in Zope has been published. "Backward compatibility needs to be a very high priority. Clean software also needs to be a high priority. Unfortunately, these goals are often at odds. Providing backward compatibility support makes code more complex and, thus, less maintainable."

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Miscellaneous

moodss 19.2 (stable) released (SourceForge)

Stable version 19.2 of moodss, a modular GUI application for monitoring systems, networks, and databases, is out. "This new version includes support for the SQLite database library version 3, and some minor improvements in order to allow inclusion in the Red Hat Fedora Extras packages repository."

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TCCBOOT compiles and boots a Linux kernel in 15 seconds

The TCCBOOT project has been announced. "TCCBOOT is the first boot loader able to compile and boot a Linux kernel directly from its source code. It can compile and start booting a typical Linux kernel in less than 15 seconds on a 2.4 GHz Pentium 4."

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Desktop Applications

Audio Applications

ReZound 0.11.1beta is out

Beta version 0.11.1 of ReZound, a graphical audio file editor, is out with bug fixes. The previous release added a new native ALSA implementation, and a bug.

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Snd-ls V0.9.1.1 and Sono V0.2

Snd-ls V0.9.1.1 and Sono V0.2 are out. "Snd-ls is a distribution of the sound editor Snd. Its target is people that don't know scheme very well, and don't want to spend too much time configuring Snd."

Sono: "This little program takes a soundfile of any length and writes a Postscript file with a 'score', including sonogram and oscillogram."

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SRC support for XMMS OSS output plugin

Jussi Laako has announced a sample rate conversion patch for the XMMS OSS output plugin. "Why? Because there are soundcards which support only single samplerate in hardware (usually 48 kHz). To get best possible sound quality out of these, you'll need high quality samplerate conversion when playing 44.1 kHz files/streams."

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Data Visualization

PyX 0.7 was released

Version 0.7 of PyX, Python package for the creation of encapsulated PostScript graphics figures, is available. The CHANGES include a bunch of new and updated graphics modules.

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Desktop Environments

GARNOME 2.8.1 is out

Version 2.8.1 of GARNOME has been released. "The latest 'somewhat toned down' version of GARNOME distribution for those who want a new version of GNOME for regular day-to-day use, but don't want to wait until your distribution catches up, is now out and about. This release incorporates the GNOME 2.8.1 Desktop & Developer Platform, as well as plenty of new third-party package updates and funkey new features."

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GNOME 2.8.1 Desktop and Developers Platform is released

GNOME 2.8.1 has been announced. "The first point release of the stable 2.8.x series of GNOME has been released. This release includes the latest bugfixes and other improvements such as updated translations and is the first in a series of point releases." Version 2.8.1.1 of gnome-applets was also released, but was not included with GNOME 2.8.1.

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Java-Gnome 2.8.1 is out

Version 2.8.1 of Java-Gnome, the Java bindings for GNOME, is available. "This is a stable release, with plenty of polish, so should be used in general development. We welcome any new java developers to join us writing gnome applications and look forward to hearing about your creations."

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KDE CVS-Digest

The October 22, 2004 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is online, here's the content summary: "khtml fixes include table layout, background-position, min max-height and mangled html fixes. New KControl for Logitech mouse features. Kicker and taskbar optimizations and improvements. Xpdf security fixes. Also coverage of the Subversion discussions on kde-core-devel."

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Electronics

Qucs project release 0.0.4

Version 0.0.4 of Qucs, an integrated circuit simulator, is available. This release features improved documentation, additional examples, finished AC analysis, non-linear transient analysis, and more.

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Games

Cyphesis 0.3.5 released

Version 0.3.5 of Cyphesis, server for WorldForge games, has been announced.. changes include new AI code, bug fixes, and database performance improvements.

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G System 0.4.1 is released

Version 0.4.1 of G System, a framework for virtual world simulations, has been released. "Among minor demo improvements the focus was on improving and revising the documentation of the G System to reflect our current ideas. Particular care was taken to update outdated information and extend the content where necessary."

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Graphics

DiaCanvas2 0.14.0 announced

Version 0.14.0 of DiaCanvas2, an MVC based diagraming widget, has been released. Changes include a new undo manager, extensions to the DiaCancasEditable interface, bug fixes, and more. DiaCanvas2 0.14.1 was released later, it fixes a problem that shows up when compiling with GCC 3.4.

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GUI Packages

gob2 2.0.11 released

Version 2.0.11 of gob2, the GTK+ object generator, is out with one compilation fix.

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Interoperability

Wine Traffic

The October 22, 2004 edition of Wine Traffic is online. Threads covered include: Porting C++ With Winelib and Loader Issues, Start Menu Brokenness, When Optimizations Aren't, Windows Catch-22, and Winedbg: Broken Watchpoints.

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Medical Applications

FreeMED 0.7.1 released (LinuxMedNews)

Version 0.7.1 of FreeMED, a medical record system, has been announced. A new billing package called REMITT is included with this version.

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Office Suites

KOffice 1.3.4 Released (KDE.News)

KDE.News has an announcement for version 1.3.4 of KOffice. "The main goals of this release are to fix the integer overflows in KWord's PDF import filter and to be able to compile KOffice again on KDE 3.1.5 and Qt 3.1.2."

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RSS Software

Imendio Blam 1.6.0 announced

Version 1.6.0 of Imendio Blam, an RSS reader for GNOME, has been released. "This release features a major change in that the HTML widget has been replaced with Mozilla. This makes the rendering a lot quicker and more accurate, it also solves a number of issues people where having with lockups during image fetching."

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Web Browsers

Alpha Version of Gtk+ port of KHTML (KDE.News)

KDE.News reports on an alpha release of WebCore/KHTML, an HTML rendering engine and reference browser. This release adds GTK+ support. "Released components include KJS javascript interpreter, KHTML rendering engine, Qt porting layer, WebKit API for embedding and a reference browser for demonstrating the functionality of the other components."

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Miscellaneous

Chandler 0.4 is out

Version 0.4 of the Chandler Personal Information Management (PIM) system has been released. "The high-level goal of the 0.4 release is to be "experimentally usable" for a few key end-user tasks."

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Devhelp 0.9.3 announced

Version 0.9.3 of Devhelp, a developer tool for browsing API documentation in GNOME, has been announced. "This release mainly features mozilla compatibility issues. It adds support to build against firefox which is fixed by Christian Persch. He also fixed so that we no longer needs a shell script to set a bunch of Mozilla variables."

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Languages and Tools

Objective C

ObjectiveLib version 0.8 released (SourceForge)

Initial version 0.8 of ObjectiveLib has been announced. "ObjectiveLib is a library of containers and generic algorithms for Objective-C meant to provide the same benefits to Objective-C developers that the Standard Template Library provides for C++ developers."

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Java

Woodpecker 0.1.0 released. (SourceForge)

Version 0.1.0 of Woodpecker has been announced. "Woodpecker is a Java ResourceBundle property file editor. It provides friendly and platform native UI, Java access class generator and other exciting features. The release 0.1.0 isn't complete in features, in fact, users can't even read, write of edit the .properties files."

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An Introduction to Aspect-Oriented Programming with the Spring Framework, Part 2 (O'ReillyNet)

Part two of an O'Reilly series on Aspect-Oriented Programming is available. "Russ Miles continues his introduction to Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) in Spring by delving into the around advice, which allows you to not just add to an existing method implementation, but to completely replace it."

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Create and Read J2SE 5.0 Annotations with the ASM Bytecode Toolkit (O'ReillyNet)

Eugene Kuleshov discusses the ASM bytecode-manipulation toolkit on O'Reilly. "Continuing his examination of the ASM bytecode-manipulation toolkit, Eugene Kuleshov shows how ASM can be used to access J2SE 5.0 attributes, even from earlier JVM versions that don't support attributes."

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Advanced Synchronization in Java Threads, Part 1 (O'ReillyNet)

Scott Oaks and Henry Wong discuss Java threads on O'Reilly. "J2SE 5.0 introduces sophisticated new options for coordinating multiple threads. In this excerpt from Java Threads, 3rd Edition, Scott Oaks and Henry Wong look at new scheduling strategies represented by the java.util.concurrent package."

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Lisp

Maxima 5.9.1 released

Version 5.9.1 of Maxima, a computer algebra system written in Common Lisp, is available. "It adds a command-line version of the program for Windows, support for external interfaces, improved builds and installs, command-line editing abilities, test suite improvements, enhanced plotting, Quadpack routines, improvements to tensors and differential equations, and more."

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SBCL 0.8.16 released

Version 0.8.16 of Steel Bank Common Lisp has been announced. "This version makes possible on more of the supported platforms to save cores with foreign code loaded, adds performance improvements and fixes several bugs."

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Perl

Perl Code Kata: Testing Taint (O'Reilly)

chromatic discusses Perl code katas on O'Reilly. "How do you find new ideas? One way is through code katas, short pieces of code that start your learning. This article is the first in a series of code kata for Perl programmers. All of these exercises take place in the context of writing tests for Perl programs."

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Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The October 25, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with the latest Python language articles.

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Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

The October 25, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with the week's Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

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XML

XML in localisation: Use XLIFF to translate documents (IBM developerWorks)

Rodolfo M. Raya covers XML localization issues on IBM developerWorks. "The first article in this series briefly explained the most relevant XML standards used in the localisation industry. This second part focuses on XML Localisation Interchange File Format (XLIFF) and explains with practical examples how to use it for translating different kinds of documents. This article presents a step-by-step guide to translating multilingual documents using XLIFF as an intermediary file format, and provides useful resources for localizing Java applications."

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Speech Synthesis Markup Language: An Introduction (O'Reilly)

Peter Mikhalenko introduces SSML, the Speech Synthesis Markup Language, in an O'Reilly article. "Speech Synthesis Markup Language Specification (SSML 1.0), introduced in September 2004, is one of the standards enabling access to the Web using spoken interaction. It's designed to provide a rich, XML-based markup language for assisting the generation of synthetic speech in web and other applications. The essential role of SSML is to provide authors of synthesizable content a standard way to control aspects of speech such as pronunciation, volume, pitch, rate, etc., across different synthesis-capable platforms."

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Editors

Conglomerate 0.7.15 released

Version 0.7.15 of Conglomerate, an XML editor, has been released. "This is still an unstable release; there are still some known repeatable crash bugs. Please download it and test that no new bugs have been introduced!"

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