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DevelopmentStable Version 2.2.0 of the GIMP is out Just in time for the holidays, stable version 2.2.0 of the GIMP (the GNU Image Manipulation Program) has been announced.
About nine months after version 2.0 hit the road, another development
cycle has been completed and a new stable GIMP is coming to your desktop.
On the documentation front, a new Help snapshot (version 2-0.6) has been made available for download. The GIMP 2.2 Release Notes gives some upgrade information and hints about what's to come:
You can expect updated versions of gimp-gap, gimp-freetype, gimp-plugin-template and hopefully also gimp-perl to appear over the next weeks. The GIMP source tree will soon be branched so that development can continue towards GIMP 2.4. We haven't yet made up a detailed roadmap, but we will try to publish one soon.
Congratulations to the GIMP developers for their continuing efforts to improve this fine application.
System Applications Database Software MySQL 4.0.23 has been released Version 4.0.23 of the MySQL database has been released. "This is a bug fix release for the previous production series. Future 4.0.x releases will occur very seldom. We encourage users to upgrade to the current production MySQL 4.1.x series."
PostgreSQL 8.0.0 Release Candidate 2 Release Candidate 2 of PostgreSQL 8.0.0 has been announced. ".. with this RC looking to be the last one before release, we encourage anyone that is running a platform not listed to please report on any success or failures with Release Candidate 2."
PostgreSQL Weekly News The December 21, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out with the latest PostgreSQL database development information.
Rekall 2.2.3 announced Stable version 2.2.3 of Rekall, a database frontend, is available. "This is mostly a maintenance release with a few odd things added as requested by users. The biggest change is that the build files have been brought up to date."
Building and Configuring Slony (O'ReillyNet) O'Reilly is running an article on Slony configuration. "Slony is the intended replication project for the PostgreSQL database. Now that you know what it is, how do you use it? A. Elein Mustain demonstrates how to build, install, and configure Slony."
Embedded Systems PowerPC development from the bargain basement (IBM developerWorks) Peter Seebach works with the inexpensive Kuro Box platform on IBM developerWorks. "The Kuro Box promises something fairly interesting: a usable single-board PowerPC computer, for only US$160 -- when other PowerPC development boards often cost ten times as much. Peter Seebach guides you through setup and install in this developerWorks hardware howto."
Filesystem Utilities GParted 0.0.8 (GnomeDesktop) Version 0.0.8 of GParted, the GNOME partition editor, has been announced. "GParted-0.0.8 includes support for three new filesystems (xfs, jfs, hfs). Besides that a couple of bugs got fixed and some extra checking is done while performing an operation."
Interoperability Samba 3.0.10 Available for Download Version 3.0.10 of Samba is out with 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."
Libraries Pango 1.8.0 released Version 1.8.0 of Pango, a library for layout and rendering of text, has been released. "This is a stable release providing new functionality as compared to Pango-1.6, while maintaining source and binary compatibility."
Mail Software Sendmail 8.13.2 is out Version 8.13.2 of the Sendmail mail transfer agent has been announced. "It contains fixes for problems that have been found since the release of 8.13.1 as well as some portability enhancements."
Printing CUPS 1.1.23rc1 is out Version 1.1.23rc1 of CUPS, the Common UNIX Printing System, has been announced. "CUPS 1.1.23 is a bug fix release which fixes two security vulnerabilities reported by Daniel J. Bernstein (djb@cr.yp.to). The new release also contains other minor bug and documentation fixes that are not security related."
Security Sussen 0.10 Released Version 0.10 of Sussen, a security scanner, is out. This version has been completely rewritten in C# and is considered the initial public release. "Sussen is a tool for testing the security posture of computers and other network devices. It is in an early stage of development and should be considered experimental. Sussen is improving rapidly on many fronts, but it is not yet stable enough for full-time, everyday use."
Web Site Development Analog 6.0 released After many months of beta testing, version 6.0 of Analog, a web server log file analyzer, is out. The changes include the addition of Palm OS and Symbian OS to reports, support for ISO 8601 extended dates, and a new stylesheet.
mnoGoSearch 3.2.28 announced Version 3.2.28 of the mnoGoSearch web site search engine is available. Changes include numerous bug fixes.
XML Namespace Processing in Apache (O'Reilly) Nick Kew uses Apache to process XML in an O'Reilly article. "The Apache 2 filter architecture serves to transform Apache from a mere web server into a powerful application platform. Applications that previously required a dedicated backend, typically Java-based, can now easily be implemented within the web server itself, with very substantial improvements in system performance."
Use continuations to develop complex Web applications (IBM developerWorks) Abhijit Belapurkar explores the use of continuations in web applications on IBM developerWorks. "If you've ever developed a non-trivial Web application, you know that development complexity is increased by the fact that Web browsers allow users to follow arbitrary navigation paths through the application. No matter where the user navigates, the onus is on you, the developer, to keep track of the possible interactions and ensure that your application works correctly. While the traditional MVC approach does allow you to handle these cases, there are other options available to help resolve application complexity. Developer and frequent developerWorks contributor Abhijit Belapurkar walks you through a continuations-based alternative that could simplify your Web application development efforts."
Web Services Telnet and REST Web Services? (O'Reilly) Bob DuCharme uses telnet to access web services in an O'Reilly article. "Fans of the REST style of web services often point out that the four HTTP commands PUT, GET, POST, and DELETE let you perform the most important operations on a collection of data: Create new data, Read existing data, Update data, and Delete data—giving us the lovely acronym CRUD."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Ardour 0.9beta22 released Version 0.9beta22 of Ardour, a multi-track audio recorder, has been announced. "The last 0.9beta release to include functionality changes unrelated to bug fixes." See the Ardour News page for more information.
flrec 0.9 is out Version 0.9 of flrec, the Fast Light Recorder, has been announced with the following changes: "Now has a sox effects panel and copy and conversion capabilities Window are now resizable."
CAD Twentieth release of PythonCAD now available Release 20 of PythonCAD, a CAD package written in Python, is out. "The twentieth release of PythonCAD improves the undo/redo abilities of the program by making layer creation and deletion actions that can be undone or redone. Also, the addition and removal of chamfers and fillets is now an undoable and redoable action. The code for managing undo/redo operations has been improved, and various bug fixes for these actions have been applied."
Calendar Software pcal 4.8.0 announced Version 4.8.0 of pcal, a calendar generation utility which outputs in PostScript and HTML formats, is available with lots of changes. Thanks to Bill Marr.
Data Visualization PyX 0.7.1 released Version 0.7.1 of PyX, a Python package for the creation of encapsulated PostScript figures, has been released. "This release fixes some bugs in the graph system, the canvas module and the kpsewhich support. The tipa package is no longer required to build the FAQ. The index files to sort the examples are now included in the distribution. Two new examples complete this maintenance release."
Desktop Environments GNOME software announcements The following new GNOME software has been announced this week: GLib 2.6.0, GTK+ 2.6.0, gtkmm 2.5.3 + glibmm 2.5.2, Metacity 2.9.2, GNOME-Applets 2.9.3, gnome-panel 2.9.3, gnome-utils 2.9.3, gcalctool v5.5.21, gedit 2.9.3, GNOME Nettool 1.0.0, gtk-engines 2.6.0, SLgtk v0.5.11, gnubiff 2.1.0, and Previews Reader 0.40.
KDE 3.4 Will Talk to You (KDE.News) KDE.News covers new speech synthesis capabilities in KDE 3.4. "The KDE Accessibility team is in the process of integrating speech synthesis into KDE. Not only does this mean better support for visually-impaired and speech-impaired users, but the new features should also prove for a fun desktop experience overall. An important milestone has been reached with the recent release of the KDE Text-to-Speech System (ktts)."
KDE CVS-Digest (KDE.News) The December 17, 2004 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is available, here's the content summary: "Kdevelop implements profile and language plugins. Digikam adds a ratio-crop tool. Kpdf now does full screen mode. New media kioslave backend for cd insertion detection. KMozilla part committed to kdenonbeta. Konversation adds dynamic theme switching."
digiKam 0.7.1-beta2 and libkexif 0.2.1 announced New versions of digiKam and libkexif have been announced as KDE quickie releases.
Electronics Open Collector Releases The latest new electronics applications on Open Collector include KTechlab 0.1, a development and simulation environment for microcontrollers and electronic circuits and Covered 20041210, a Verilog code coverage utility.
XCircuit 3.3.5 released Version 3.3.5 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing package, is out. Here are the changes: "Corrected a fatal error in library copies if no valid object is selected. Corrected a compile error (C++-like syntax fails on many compilers). Added option to print or not to print the ".end" statement at the end of a SPICE deck."
Games Cyphesis 0.3.7 Released Version 0.3.7 of Cyphesis, a server for WorldForge games, has been announced. "This release is intended for server administrators wishing to run a Mason server or anyone wishing to work on serverside game development." Numerous changes have been added.
GUI Packages Qt 4.0 Beta 1 Released (KDE.News) Qt 4.0 Beta 1 has been announced. "There are five new technologies that are new to Qt, written specifically for Qt 4:
Multimedia MediaLibrary unstable 0.7.9 (0.8pre) released (SourceForge) Unstable version 0.7.9 of MediaLibrary is out. "MediaLibrary is a standalone, multiplatform media (CD, DVD & HD) catalog management software. It allows the user to browse, sort, search and organize them once indexed. The "unstable" 0.7.9 (0.8pre) release is actually more of a 0.8rc1. Henceforth it fully previews the next big stable release of MediaLibrary, and features major improvements (refactored GUI around a pluggable 'Desk' concept, search in comments, filtered search and statistics) and numerous bug fixes (including the 'FFFFFFFF..' undead bug)."
First release of Pitivi (GnomeDesktop) GnomeDesktop.org looks at the initial release of PiTiVi. "Another piece of the puzzle that the GStreamer community hope to solve is in place now with the first public beta release of PiTiVi, a GStreamer based non-linear audio/video editing software for GNU/Linux. Being built on top of GStreamer it will get a lot of development work and bugfixes done for free as it directly benefit from the development work being done for such applications as Totem,Rhythmbox,Flumotion and Cupid. And of course all these applications and many others get to take advantage of the development and bugfixes done for PiTiVi."
Music Applications BEAST/BSE v0.6.4 announced Version 0.6.4 of BEAST/BSE, the BEdevilled Audio SysTem and the Bedevilled Sound Engine, has been released. "Outstanding new features include support for skins, many sample file formats, MIDI file import abilities, an improved piano roll widget, the track editor which allows for easy selection of synthesisers or samples as track sources, loop support in songs, mixer support, unlimited Undo/Redo capabilities and MIDI automation."
midi.osc project announced The midi.osc project has been announced. "midi.osc publishes MIDI packets on the local host MIDI system as OSC packets over a UDP connection. midi.osc allows any environment that supports OSC to act as a MIDI client, sending and receiving MIDI data, and monitoring and initiating changes to the host MIDI system."
jack.osc announced The jack.clock project has been renamed jack.osc. "jack.osc publishes the transport state of the local JACK server as OSC packets over a UDP connection. jack.osc allows any OSC enabled application to act as a JACK transport client, receiving sample accurate pulse stream timing data, and monitoring and initiating transport state change."
Rosegarden 1.0pre1 released Version 1.0 pre 1 of Rosegarden, an audio and MIDI sequencer with musical notation support, is out. "This release is the continuation of beta testing, prior to the nearing 1.0 release."
Office Applications Gnumeric 1.4 is Here! (GnomeDesktop) Version 1.4.1 of the Gnumeric spreadsheet has been announced. "The Gnumeric Team is pleased to announce the availability of Gnumeric version 1.4.1. This is the first publicly announced version of the new stable 1.4 series, part of GNOME Office 1.2. We have worked hard at producing the best available spreadsheet for a wide range of applications from simple numerical scratch pad, financial analytical tool, to scientific number cruncher."
Office Suites OpenOffice.org 1.1.4 released OpenOffice 1.1.4 is out; this is a bugfix-only release with no new features. It is "one of the last stages" before the 2.0 release, scheduled for March, 2005.
RSS Software RSSOwl 1.0 is out (SourceForge) Version 1.0 of RSSOwl has been announced. "RSSOwl is a RSS / RDF / Atom Newsreader written in Java using SWT as fast graphic library. Read News in a tabfolder, save favorites in categories, Export to PDF / RTF / HTML / OPML, Import Feeds from OPML, perform fulltext-search, use internal browser. We are very happy to announce that RSSOwl 1.0 is now available. Thanks to the community for giving us feedback on some bugs in the release candidate that was released two weeks ago. Those are now fixed. In addition, all translations are completed and some where corrected."
Streaming Media MuSE 0.9.1 announced Version 0.9.1 of MuSE has been released. "MuSE is an application for mixing, encoding, and network streaming of sound: it can transmit an audio signal by mixing together sound taken from files or also network, recursively remixing more MuSE streams." Stability and operability fixes are included in this version.
Web Browsers Lots of Epiphany releases The Epiphany browser developers have been busy this week. They have released Epiphany 1.4.7 and Epiphany Extensions 1.4.4 from the stable version, and Epiphany 1.5.3 and Epiphany Extensions 1.5.4 from the development version.
Mozilla 1.7.5 Released (MozillaZine) Version 1.7.5 of the Mozilla browser has been announced. "This latest update from the long-lived 1.7 branch contains a version of Gecko virtually identical to the one in Mozilla Firefox 1.0. New features not found in Mozilla 1.7.3 include the NPRuntime extensions to the Netscape Plugin API and undetectable document.all support."
Independent Status Reports (MozillaZine) The December 20, 2004 edition of the Mozilla Independent Status Reports have been announced. "Brian King writes in with the latest set of status reports covering projects including HTTP serverpost, Add N Edit Cookie, HONcode Status, Launchy, Calendar Help, Habari Xenu, MAF, jsLib, purgecontrol, cuneAform, View Background Plus, ThunderFilter, Mnenhy, QuoteCollapse and AboutConfig."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly News The December 14-21, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with coverage of developments in the Caml language world.
Java Dynamic compilation and performance measurement (IBM developerWorks) Brian Goetz measures dynamically compiled Java performance on IBM developerWorks. "Writing and interpreting performance benchmarks for dynamically compiled languages, such as Java, is far more difficult than for statically compiled languages like C or C++. In this installment of Java theory and practice, Brian Goetz explores a few of the many ways in which dynamic compilation can complicate performance testing."
Quartz 1.4.3 released (SourceForge) Version 1.4.3 of Quartz has been released. "Quartz is an enterprise-class Job Scheduler for use in stand-alone and full-blown J2EE Applications. Quartz is very light-weight, highy scalable, and extremely easy to use within your own applications. This is release contains bug fixes as well as some minor feature improvements. This is release contains bug fixes as well as some minor feature improvements."
Lisp Continuation-based web applications Paolo Amoroso mentions an interesting Lisp discussion: "Marco Baringer has posted the transcript of an email discussion between Dave Roberts and him about the UnCommon Web continuation-passing web application framework, and Roy Fielding's REST architectural style."
Perl Help Regenerate the Phalanx 100 (use Perl) Use Perl has a request for help with the Phalanx 100 project. "Andy Lester writes "The Phalanx 100 is a list of the 'top 100' modules on CPAN, and by extension, those that should have the most attention paid to them by the Phalanx project. The first time I generated the P100 was over a year ago, and things are old and stale. Distributions have changed names (CGI::Kwiki is now Kwiki, for example). Some distros have come and some have gone. It's time to be updated."
Perl Code Kata: Testing Imports (O'Reilly) chromatic discusses Perl 5 module importing on O'Reilly. "Perl 5 added the ideas of namespaces and modules, making code reusable and easier to maintain. To allow convenience, it also added an importing mechanism to put code from a module into the current namespace."
PHP PHP Weekly Summary for December 6, 2004 The PHP Weekly Summary for December 6, 2004 is out. Topics include: Internals newbies, Memory leak in apache2filter, PHP 5 and file locking, EXPERIMENTAL tags, 5.0.3 RC 1, apache_reset_timeout, Extended class properties, and Suicidal processes.
PHP Weekly Summary for December 13, 2004 The PHP Weekly Summary for December 13, 2004 is out. Topics include: mbstring changes, 4.3.10 and 5.0.3 RC2s, isset?, allow_url_include, Memory and arrays, User-specified default umask, iconv compilation, ./configure, PHP, SuSE and the AMD64 revisited, __sleep and hidden variables, session_start, and One out, three in, one floating.
PHP Weekly Summary for December 20, 2004 The PHP Weekly Summary for December 20, 2004 is out. Topics include: Call for Papers: International PHP Conference 2005 Spring Edition PHP 4.3.10 and 5.0.3, Downloads cleanup, foreach() in PHP 4.3.10, session.serialize_handler, and Don't forget --prefer-non-pic!.
Python Urwid 0.8.5 released Version 0.8.5 of Urwid, the curses-based UI library for Python, is out. New features include a new tutorial, a new Filler widget class, new ListBox functions, Debian packages, and more.
python-dev Summary The latest python-dev Summary is out with coverage of the python-dev mailing list from October 16-31, 2004.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! The December 15, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with the week's Python articles.
Scheme Guile 1.6.7 has been released Version 1.6.7 of Guile, the next maintenance release for the 1.6 stable series, is out. "Guile is Project GNU's extension language library, an interpreter for Scheme, packaged as a library that you can link into your applications to give them their own scripting language. Guile should eventually support other languages as well, giving users of Guile-based applications a choice of languages." Thanks to Steve Tell.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! The December 20, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with another weekly collection of Tcl/Tk articles.
XML The Cost of XML (O'Reilly) Edd Dumbill examines the cost of XML on O'Reilly. "In this week's column, I cover two debates that consider the cost of XML. In the first discussion, the cost is that of file size and processing overhead. In the second, it's actual dollars charged for access to a web service. Also, watch out for the special twilight zone moment as we find ourselves considering CSV files as a serious option."
IDEs SPE 0.7.0.A released Version 0.7.0.A of SPE (Stani's Python Editor) has been released. "As a christmas present SPE offers you a built-in Python UML viewer. An Uml diagram is hierarchal 2d map of your classes."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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![[the GIMP]](/images/ns/gimp.jpg)
The list of changes is numerous, the