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DevelopmentXPP: The X Printing PanelWith last week's article on the The HP Linux Imaging and Printing System, December is turning into printer utility month on the LWN developer page. XPP, the X Printing Panel is a GUI printer control utility that is connected with the CUPS print spooler project. Its primary author is Till Kamppeter and the project dates back to the summer of year 2000. The XPP project is covered by the GNU General Public License (GPL). In true Unix/Linux fashion, XPP supports a full set of command line control capabilities along with its GUI features. The project is aimed at filling a long needed niche in Unix printing:
Did you envy the people working under Windows or MacOS choosing their printers
and doing the nicest stuff on them with a few mouse clicks? And you as Unix user
have to enter cryptic command lines or to start scripts written by a system
administrator or yourself to do things as double sided printing, taking paper from
the lower tray, adjusting colours, and so on? Or were these features of your printers
even not available for you?
XPP differs from similar printing utilities in that it aims to be a lightweight program:
Currently there are KDE Print, GtkLP, and others, but they are based on big,
memory-consuming desktop systems and GUI libraries. XPP uses the lightweight
library FLTK and therefore does not need a lot of resources and can be easily
installed on machines without the big desktops.
A few of the primary XPP features include:
Version 1.5 of XPP was released this week. The Change Log has details on what's new in this version. XPP looks to be a convenient way to easily access the many features available in a modern printer, it is exactly the kind of application that is needed by Linux for gaining dominance in the desktop world.
System Applications Backup Software Preliminary EA/ACL support in dump/restoreAccess control list support has been added to the dump/restore utilities. "Support of ACLs is a feature requested by many for a long time and I finally got the time to implement it. Since on Linux ACLs are only a particular case of EAs (Extended Attributes), I implemented full EA support, meaning that even security labels set (for example) by SELinux will be backuped."
Database Software Sleepycat Software Releases Berkeley DB XML 2.0Sleepycat Software has announced the availability of Berkeley DB XML 2.0. "The major new release includes support for XQuery 1.0, the emerging standard for XML data access, as well as significant performance and usability enhancements." The release lacks a download pointer; the software is available over here.
Firebird 1.5.2 RC 5 is hereVersion 1.5.2 RC 5 of the Firebird database has been released. See the release notes for details.
MySQL releases graphical database utilitiesMySQL has announced the availability of a pair of graphical query browsing and database administration utilities which have been released under the GPL.
New stable releases of Knoda and hk_classesNew stable releases of Knoda (Version 0.7.2) and hk_classes are available. Changes include SQLite3 support, view support, improvements, and bug fixes.
phpPgAdmin 3.5.1 releasedVersion 3.5.1 of phpPgAdmin, a web-based database administration tool, has been announced. It features several critical bug fixes.
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe December 7, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is available with the week's PostgreSQL database development news and events.
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe December 14, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out with a new collection of PostgreSQL database articles and events.
Automating PostgreSQL Tasks (O'ReillyNet)Manni Wood shows how to automate PostgreSQL tasks in an O'Reilly article. "Databases aren't just create-once, ignore forever sinkholes for data. You'll likely spend time maintaining them, if not generating reports. Save your tender wrists and automate some of those routine tasks. Manni Wood demonstrates how to combine Perl, the shell, and the psql command-line utility to do repetitive jobs for you."
Libraries libxklavier 1.13 announcedDevelopment version 1.13 of the libxklavier keyboard handling library has been released. "It contains mostly bugfixes (related to the build process - the previous release was broken for people having X headers in /usr/include/X11). Also, it is possible to see now which backends are activated (at the end of the configure script) - and if none, the script fails. xmodmap support is on by default, from now."
Networking Tools Firestarter 1.0.1 announcedVersion 1.0.1 of Firestarter, a visual firewall tool for GNOME, is out with lots of changes and bug fixes.
TwistedSNMP version 0.2.12 releasedVersion 0.2.12 of TwistedSNMP, a set of SNMP protocol implementations for Python's Twisted Matrix networking framework, is out with numerous bug fixes.
Peer to Peer Ed Felten's tinyp2pEd Felten has released tinyp2p, a peer-to-peer system which requires all of 15 lines of code (it looks like an entry for an obfuscated Python contest). "I wrote TinyP2P to illustrate the difficulty of regulating peer-to-peer applications. Peer-to-peer apps can be very simple, and any moderately skilled programmer can write one, so attempts to ban their creation would be fruitless."
Web Site Development MediaWiki 1.4beta2 released (SourceForge)Version 1.4 beta 2 of MediaWiki, an open source wiki engine, is out. "MediaWiki 1.4beta2 is an experimental release, to help flush out remaining major problems in the code prior to a final public 1.4.0 release. It is not recommended to use this beta on a public site unless you're familiar with MediaWiki innards and are willing and able to help diagnose and fix problems that come up. All beta1 users should upgrade as soon as possible."
mnoGoSearch 3.2.27 announcedVersion 3.2.27 of mnoGoSearch, a web site search engine, has been released with a security fix. See the Change History document for details.
Quixote 2.0a3 releasedVersion 2.0a3 of Quixote, a web development platform, is available. Changes include updated documentation, static directory representation as html, work on the demos, and bug fixes.
Desktop Applications Audio Applications amaroK 1.2-beta2 releasedVersion 1.2-beta2 of the amaroK audio player is available with lots of new features. Changes include an improved DCOP interface, a new cross-fade capability, improvements to the PlaylistLoader, CSS support for the ContextBrowser, bug fixes, and more. "amaroK is a soundsystem-independent audio-player for *nix. Its interface uses a powerful "browser" metaphor that allows you to reate playlists that make the most of your music collection."
Business Applications Achievo 1.1.RC3 is outDevelopment version 1.1.RC3 of Achievo, a web-based free project management tool for small to medium businesses, has been announced. "Reported issues from the previous release candidate have been fixed."
Data Visualization Python Computer Graphics Kit v2.0.0alpha1The first alpha release of the Python Computer Graphics Kit version 2.0.0 is out. "The Python Computer Graphics Kit is a generic 3D package written in C++ and Python that can be used for a variety of domains such as scientific visualization, photorealistic rendering, Virtual Reality or even games. The package contains a number of generic modules that can be useful for any application that processes 3D data. This includes new types such as vectors, matrices and quaternions."
Desktop Environments GNOME Desktop and Developer platform 2.8.2Version 2.8.2 of the GNOME Desktop and Developer platform is out. This is a maintenance release; click below for the details. An updated version of the GARNOME distribution is available as well.
GARNOME 2.8.2 is outStable version 2.8.2 of GARNOME is available. "This release incorporates the GNOME 2.8.2 Desktop & Developer Platform, as well as plenty of new third-party package updates and funkey new features."
GARNOME 2.9.2.1 is availableDevelopment version 2.9.2.1 of GARNOME, the leading-edge GNOME distribution, is out with a number of build fixes that showed up in version 2.9.2.
KDE CVS-Digest (KDE.News)The December 10, 2004 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is online with the following content summary: "mDNSResponder libraries moved to kdelibs. Krdc and Krbc now use DNS-SD. khtml improves CSS compliance. KNewStuff support for wallpapers."
KDE 3.4 Release Cycle Starts with KDE 3.4 Alpha 1 (KDE.News)KDE.News covers the progress of KDE 3.4. "For those who can't live without a bleeding edge KDE, but don't dare to run CVS, we have packaged KDE 3.4 Alpha 1. As you can read on the KDE 3.4 release schedule, this is only the start of the fun, so please hammer on it over the end of year holidays and add your contributions. We welcome code patches, translations, documentation, great icons, detailed bug reports - any kind of help."
Xfce 4.2 Release Candidate 2 releasedRelease candidate 2 of the Xfce lightweight desktop environment is out. "The second Release Candidate, which provides several bugfixes over the first Release Candidate, is a lightweight desktop environment with several features not found in the Xfce 4.0 series, including a brand new session manager, keyboard shortcut and desktop menu graphical editors, multihead support, "kiosk mode" support, a desktop menu plugin for the panel, CUPS and BSD-LPR printing support, and a new icon theme."
Electronics Covered 20041210 releasedVersion 20041210 of Covered, a Verilog code coverage utility, has been released. Here is the change summary: "Lots of GUI improvements as well as support in the GUI for toggle and combinational logic coverage information (summary and detailed). GUI Help manual, scoring optimizations, bug fixes included."
gEDA NewsThe latest releases from the gEDA project include new versions of the Spice GUI frontend gspiceui and the InFormal FNF and PSL verification processor.
XCircuit 3.3.4 releasedVersion 3.3.3 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing application, is out with several bug fixes.
Financial Applications GnuCash stable version 1.8.10 releasedAfter a relatively long development period, GnuCash 1.8.10 is out. This release contains a fair number of small improvements, but little that is truly earth shaking; click below for the details.
Graphics KolourPaint 1.2.2 ReleasedVersion 1.2.2 of KolourPaint, a paint program for KDE, is out. "KolourPaint 1.2.2 fixes several longstanding bugs, improves performance and for the first time in history, includes translations to 32 languages."
GUI Packages New FLTK Reference DocumentationRevision 15 of the FLTK 2.0.0 reference documenatation has been announced on FLTK.net: "www.FLTK.net now has better FLTK reference documentation with built-in search engine, graphs that show dependencies between header files, new style sheet etc."
Mail Clients Evolution 2.1.1 is outUnstable release 2.1.1 of the Evolution mail client is available with a few new features and some bugs that need tracking down.
Gyrus 0.3.0 announcedVersion 0.3.0 of Gyrus, an IMAP/Cyrus client for GNOME, is available. Changes include new mailbox creation/deletion modules, GUI improvements, and more.
Medical Applications FreeMED 0.7.2 Released (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews has an announcement for version 0.7.2 of FreeMED, an Electronic Medical Record and Practice Management system. "It is recommended that all users of previous versions upgrade. This is the last major release before version 0.8.0. More information and download links are available in the main story. This new release contains many bug fixes and new features."
Multimedia GnomeMeeting 1.2 releasedGnomeMeeting 1.2 is out, see the announcement for details. "GnomeMeeting 1.2 has many new features, including the ability to share your contacts between GnomeMeeting and Novell Evolution 2.00. Another big new feature is the possibility to do PC-To-Phone calls at interesting rates using only your soundcard, no extra hardware is required."
Orkid Media Engine: call for developersA call for developers has gone out for the Orkid Media Engine, a cross-platform framework for building multimedia applications. According to the author: "My primary development platform is windows (just because msvc .net is the easiest development environment for me to use, since I use it at my day job). That said, there are visual slickedit for linux nd Xcode for OSX projects also included. So I'm targeting cross platform - and I want feature parity on all platforms. So I need a linux developer or two to help keep the linux build going, because I cant support 4 platforms by myself (win32/linux/osx/ps2dev)."
RSS Software Tip: Use Universal Feed Parser to tame RSS (IBM developerWorks)Uche Ogbuji works with the Universal Feed Parser on IBM developerWorks. "RSS is supposed to be based on XML (or XML/RDF) standards. Unfortunately, the famous wild west community behind RSS has many renegade elements producing feeds that are not even well-formed XML. Mark Pilgrim's excellent Universal Feed Parser is a great tool for parsing even ill-formed feeds, and this tip demonstrates how to use it to extract feed data from RSS."
Streaming Media MediaFrame for Mpeg-4, public preview released (SourceForge)The first public preview of MediaFrame has been announced. "MediaFrame is an Open Source streaming media platform in Java which provides a fast, easy to implement and extremely small applet that enables over 97% of web users to view audio/video content without having to rely on external player applications or bulky plug-ins. MediaFrame does not require special servers, software or programming knowledge."
Miscellaneous Bakery 2.3.10 announcedVersion 2.3.10 of Bakery, a C++ Framework for creating document-based GNOME applications, has been released. "App_WithDoc::on_document_load() now returns a bool so that the application (as well as the document class) also has a chance to say whether the loaded document is OK."
Gnome Screen Ruler 0.5 ReleasedVersion 0.5 of Gnome Screen Ruler, a customizable screen ruler for Gnome is out. "This release simplifies the preference dialog by removing the ruler size options. Now, the ruler can be resized by dragging the ruler window border. The second (vertical) ruler has been removed, and the single ruler can be toggled between horizontal/vertical."
Gourmet Recipe Manager 0.6.7 Released (SourceForge)Version 0.6.7 of Gourmet Recipe Manager, a gtk-based recipe manager application, has been released. "Version 0.6.7 brings improvements in the handling of encodings of mealmaster files and works around buggy, slow behavior for some pygtk2.5 users."
KTTS 0.2.0 releasedThe first public release (version 0.2.0) of KTTS the KDE Text-to-Speech System, is available. "KTTS is a subsystem within the KDE desktop for conversion of text to audible speech. KTTS is currently under development and aims to become the standard subsystem for all KDE applications to provide speech output."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe December 7-14, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is online, take a look for some new Caml language discussion.
Groovy Ant scripting with Groovy (IBM developerWorks)Andrew Glover uses Ant and Groovy for code building on IBM DeveloperWorks. "Both Ant and Maven rule the world of build processing, but XML is occasionally a less-than-expressive configuration format. In this second installment in his new series on the practical applications of Groovy, Andrew Glover introduces Groovy's builder utility, which makes it especially easy to combine Groovy with Ant and Maven for more expressive and controllable builds."
Java Distributed Enterprise Messaging with MantaRay (O'Reilly)Amir Shevat introduces MantaRay on O'Reilly. "This article describes a unique distributed messaging solution and a JMS provider called MantaRay, and how it transformed a traditionally centralized and broker-based concept like JMS to a fully distributed system. It also shows what happens behind the scenes in a distributed system when performing JMS operations."
URLs and URIs, Proxies and Passwords (O'Reilly)O'Reilly has published an excerpt from the book Java Network Programming by Elliotte Rusty Harold. "One of the challenges faced by the designers of the Web was dealing with the differences between operating systems. These differences can cause problems with URLs: for example, some operating systems allow spaces in filenames; some don't. Most operating systems won't complain about a # sign in a filename; but in a URL, a # sign indicates that the filename has ended, and a fragment identifier follows. Other special characters, nonalphanumeric characters, and so on, all of which may have a special meaning inside a URL or on another operating system, present similar problems."
Perl This Fortnight in Perl 6The December 1-6, 2004 edition of This Fortnight in Perl 6 is online. "When someone says "I want a programming language in which I need only say what I wish done," give him a lollipop. -- Alan J. Perlis"
PHP PHP 5.0.3 RC2 releasedVersion 5.0.3 RC2 of PHP has been released. "This is the second release candidate and should have a very low number of problems and/or bugs. Nevertheless, please download and test it as much as possible on real-life applications to uncover any remaining issues.
Three-Tier Development with PHP 5 (O'ReillyNet)Luis Yordano Cruz demonstrates the separation of data storage, manipulation, and display in PHP 5 applications, in an O'Reilly article. "This article will demonstrate the power of three-tier development in PHP 5, using PEAR::DB_DataObject for the business logic and Smarty for display logic. I assume that you have some familiarity with HTML, Smarty, PEAR::DB_DataObject, MySQL, and PHP 5."
PostScript AFPL Ghostscript 8.50Version 8.50 of AFPL Ghostscript, a PostScript renderer, has been announced. "Artifex Software, Inc. and artofcode LLC are pleased to annouce a new major release of Ghostscript, the first in the 8.5x stable series. More than a year in the making, this is our most comprehensive version to date. We recommend upgrading for all our users. In addition to numerous bug fixes, the release has several major new features, in particular improved font handling and rasterization, and support for new PDF 1.5 features, including JPEG 2000 images."
Python Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The December 10, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is available with the week's collection of Python articles and resources.
PSF Licensing FAQ announcedThe Python Software Foundation has announced a new licensing FAQ. "The Python Software Foundation (PSF) board recently wrote up a licensing FAQ that we hope will help to clear up some of the confusion that has surrounded the PSF License. There are quite a few projects out there (on Source Forge and otherwise) that misuse this license in ways potentially detrimental to those projects."
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The December 10, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with lots of Tcl/Tk article links and resources.
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The December 13, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is out with a second set of Tcl/Tk articles for this week.
XML Full XML Indexes with Gnosis (O'Reilly)Uche Ogbuji further explores the Gnosis Utilities on O'Reilly. "I covered the data binding feature of David Mertz's Gnosis Utilities in my earlier article, "XML Data Bindings in Python, Part 2". As I mentioned, Gnosis Utilities is a Python package with a variety of utility classes for data management and especially for XML processing. Another useful module in Gnosis is the indexer, which creates full-text XPath indices of XML documents."
On Folly (O'Reilly)Edd Dumbill discusses XML-Aware programming languages on O'Reilly. "In this week's column, I'd like to indulge in some gentle fun at the expense of pundits and pronouncers. While XML is as rich a field as any for crackpots and timewasters, we must be careful not to pour cold water on experimentation and innovation. The topics of XML-oriented programming languages and the Semantic Web have been targets of mockery in their time, so this week I'm asking whether the true believers might be right."
What's new in JAXP 1.3? Part 2 (IBM developerWorks)Neil Graham and Elena Litani continue their IBM developerWorks series on JAXP 1.3. "In this article, the authors follow up on their overview of JAXP 1.3 in Part 1. They touch on utilities that add support for concepts defined in the Namespaces in XML specification, and describe changes to the javax.xml.transform package. They also discuss the new Java types defined and how these allow for the completion of native Java language support for W3C XML Schema datatypes. They conclude by giving details on JAXP's data model- and vendor-neutral XPath API."
IDEs DrPython 3.7.5 releasedVersion 3.7.5 of DrPython, a cross-platform Python IDE that has been implemented in wxPython, is available. See the Change Log for a description of the new features and fixed bugs.
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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