Development

PostgreSQL Version 8.0.0

Version 8.0.0 of the PostgreSQL database was announced this week.

The primary new features of this release include:

• Savepoints for saving partially entered transaction data.
• Point-In-Time Recovery supported by continuous server data backups.
• Tablespaces for allowing fine-grained control of storage over multiple filesystems.
• An Improved Buffer Management Strategy for improved server performance.
• New support for changing column types using ALTER TABLE.
• A new Perl Server-Side Language version with enhanced features.
• COPY support for Comma-Separated-Value (csv) files.
• Native Win32 Support, faster server operation without emulators.

Furthermore: "In addition to the many features bundled with the release, PostgreSQL has been enhanced by accelerated development of add-ons and optional components over the last year. The Slony-I replication tool and the pgPool connection pooling/brokering utility are both already being used for high-availability server pools. Several stored procedure languages have been added or greatly expanded, including PL/Java, PL/J, PL/PHP and PL/Perl, while the Npgsql and PGsqlClient .NET data providers have been enhanced to support the many new Windows users."

PostgreSQL continues to hold a position among the forefront of open-source development projects, its rapid evolution proves that the development model works well for large-scale projects. The native Win32 support is likely to cause more widespread usage of PostgreSQL, it may also bring new development talent to the project.

We expect to have a more detailed look at the 8.0 release next week.

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System Applications

Audio Projects

JACK Applications List Updated

The list of applications using jack, the Jack Audio Connection Kit, has been updated with a number of interesting audio applications.

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Planet CCRMA Changes

The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include test packages for the ALSA 1.0.8 audio driver, and a new version of Hyperspec.

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Interoperability

Possibilities for Samba 3.0 / Samba4 Integration

The Samba news site mentions the availability of a new paper on integration of Samba 3 and 4. "The paper explores past attempts at merges between the current production Samba 3.0 release and the Samba4 development branch. The paper moves through an overview of existing interfaces in Samba 3.0 and Samba4 and examines the possibilities for future integration between the two code bases and their vastly different interface designs."

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Mail Software

Sendmail 8.13.3 is available

Version 8.13.3 of the Sendmail mail transfer agent has been released. "It contains fixes for a regression that was introduced in 8.13.2. Moreover, sendmail now keeps proper track of closed connections and will not reuse them erroneously."

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Web Site Development

AOLserver 4.0.10 released (SourceForge)

Version 4.0.10 of AOLserver, a multithreaded web server for large web sites, has been announced. "This release adds two enhancements and one API change. The major enhancement is the adding of configurable transparent gzip compression of HTTP responses from ADP pages."

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Zope 2.7.4 final is out

Version 2.7.4 of the Zope web development platform has been released with several bug fixes.

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Web Services

Freeze the Core (O'Reilly)

Rich Salz discusses the state of secure web services standards on O'Reilly. "I've recently spent a bit more time than usual talking to analysts and reporters. Almost all of these discussions end up circling around this question: what standards do we need for secure web services, and are they ready? The answer is yes, they basically are, and we'll review them below. But more importantly, I'll show that, for the most part, the web services community should stop working on new versions of fundamental standards."

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Miscellaneous

DCE to be released under the LGPL

Once upon a time, the distributed computing environment (DCE) was going to be the future of enterprise computing. DCE is back in the news: The Open Group has just announced that DCE is being released under the LGPL, click below for the details. It appears that there is not, yet, a release available for downloading.

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Desktop Applications

CAD

Twenty-first release of PythonCAD now available

Development release 21 of PythonCAD is available. "The twenty-first release of PythonCAD adds the ability to save the visibility and locked status of entities when saving a drawing. This release also includes improved code for handling the undo/redo operations by simplifying various routines as well as making similiar routines in various modules consistent. Like all previous releases, numerous bug fixes and code improvements have been applied."

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Desktop Environments

Xfce 4.2.0 released

Version 4.2.0 of Xfce, a lightweight desktop environment, is available. "The new Xfce desktop, while still being lightweight and easy to install, offers several new and awaited features in comparison with its previous 4.0 stable release like a brand new session manager, keyboard shortcuts, a graphical desktop menu editor, multihead support (Xinerama and Multi-Screen mode), Kiosk Mode support (to lock down Xfce in cooporative environments), optional support for icons in the desktop menu, a desktop menu plugin for the panel, CUPS and BSD-LPR printing support, a new icon theme, and various other small enhancements."

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Around the Planet (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop has published another Around the Planet article, take a look for pointers to a wide variety of recent GNOME developments.

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GNOME 2.9.4 Development Release (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop has an announcement for development release 2.9.4 of GNOME. The change log has more information. "This release is a snapshot of development code. Although it is buildable and usable, it is primarily intended for testing and hacking purposes."

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GNOME Software Announcements

The following new GNOME software has been announced in the last week:

• Evolution 2.1.3 (new features and bug fixes)
• gcalctool 4.4.22 (bug fixes)
• GNOME-Applets 2.9.4.1 (bug fixes and translation work)
• Liferea 0.9.0 (bug fixes and other improvements)
• GARNOME 2.9.4 (tracking GNOME 2.9.4)
• Gazpacho 0.3.2 (bug fixes and code cleanup)
• Nautilus-Sendto 0.3 (new features)
• GNOME 2.8 for AIX 5 (Version 2.8.1)
• GnomePython 2.9.3 (unstable testing release)
• GnomePython 2.9.4 (unstable testing release)

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Sneak preview of Gnome 2.10 (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop reports that Davyd Madeley has created a sneak preview of GNOME 2.10, with a look at new features, new programs and screenshots.

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KDE CVS-Digest (KDE.News)

The January 14, 2005 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is online with the latest KDE news. Here's the content summary: "KDevelop implements KScript interface. KStars adds more device support, scripting and Observing lists. Digikam adds Superimpose Template. KDM adds sessreg support. KDE PIM adds support for custom pages in the incidence editors. KNotes implements search. Kontact adds ability to select default startup part. Kexi adds database forms with record navigation."

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KDE 3.4 goes into Beta Phase (KDE.News)

KDE.News has the announcement for the first beta release of KDE 3.4. "A lot of development has happened since KDE 3.4 Alpha, so we are now happy to publish KDE 3.4 Beta 1 code named Krokodile."

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KDE Software Announcements

The following new KDE software has been announced in the last week:

• KDar 1.3.2 (bug fixes)

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Financial Applications

Quasar Accounting under the GPL

Linux Canada has announced that it is releasing its Quasar accounting package under the GPL; it can be downloaded from the Linux Canada web site. From a brief look, Quasar appears to be a reasonably capable accounting package with a KDE interface. The company's retail and point of sale applications remain proprietary.

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Games

BZFlag 2.0.0 is Released! (SourceForge)

Version 2.0.0 of the game BZFlag has been announced. "BZFlag 2 introduces a slew of major new features making this probably the "biggest" release in BZFlag's history in terms of development time put into it and features being added since the last publicly released version. Major new features include support for vastly more complex worlds, physics drivers, graphics improvements, weather (rain, snow, frogs), tank treads and tracks, animations, record and playback, new flags, new commands, optimizations and much more."

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Interoperability

Wine 20050111 is out

Version 20050111 of Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) has been announced. Changes include OLE bug fixes, MSI dll work, support for update regions, initial typelib generation support, code cleanup, and bug fixes.

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Multimedia

Streaming QuickTime with Java (O'ReillyNet)

Chris Adamson works with QuickTime streaming media in an O'Reilly article. "Realtime multicast streaming came to QuickTime in version 5, but now, years later, it's not widely realized that it can be called from QuickTime for Java. Chris Adamson, author of QuickTime for Java: A Developer's Notebook, shows how it works."

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Music Applications

MusE 0.7.1 is here

Version 0.7.1 of MusE, an audio and MIDI sequencer application, is out. "This release is mainly a bugfix release, though a number of new features have been added. All users are encouraged to upgrade."

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Office Applications

HylaFAX 4.2.1 released

Version 4.2.0 of HylaFAX, a Fax modem package, has been announced. Changes include a security fix, support for GCC 3.3, support for fax batching, and more.

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Office Suites

The Importance of KOffice

KDE.News takes a look at KOffice. "The functionality KOffice has already reached in its short life is significant. And still, KOffice has good performance and is fully usable on low-end hardware, which makes it suited for organizations and individuals. This could even save costs when upgrading or migrating the office software and old hardware can be reused."

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Video Applications

Avidemux 2.0.36 released

Version 2.0.36 of Avidemux, a graphical video editing tool, is out with bug fixes and lots of new features.

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Web Browsers

Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 6 Released (MozillaZine)

Version 1.8 Alpha 6 of the Mozilla browser has been announced. "This latest alpha version of the Mozilla Application Suite features around 450 bug fixes." See the Release Notes for more information.

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Mozilla Foundation Testing Hendrix Feedback System (MozillaZine)

A new web-based Mozilla.org feedback mechanism has been announced. "Gervase Markham has introduced a new feedback webtool for mozilla.org. Dubbed Hendrix, the new tool is a simple Web form for people who want to leave feedback but cannot be bothered to wrestle with Bugzilla. Comments submitted using Hendrix are posted to a newsgroup, where they can be accessed by Mozilla contributors."

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Bugzilla 2.18, 2.16.8 and 2.19.2 Released (MozillaZine)

Three new versions of the Bugzilla bug tracking software have been announced. "Bugzilla 2.18 features more improvements than we could possibly mention. See the Bugzilla 2.18 Release Notes for more information. The team have also released two other Bugzilla versions. Bugzilla 2.16.8 fixes security and other bugs in version 2.16.7 and is aimed at those who want or need to stick with the 2.16 codebase. More details in the Bugzilla 2.16.8 Release Notes and security advisory (the security issues also affect versions 2.18rc3 and 2.19.1). Finally, Bugzilla 2.19.2, the latest development snapshot, has been released."

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Word Processors

AbiWord v2.2.3 Released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 2.2.3 of the AbiWord word processor has been announced. "This release contains a great amount of bug fixes and improvements over the previous release. This is especially true for the MacOSX platform".

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Miscellaneous

JChassis TermUI v. 0.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.1 of JChassis TermUI has been announced. "JChassis TermUI v. 0.1 has just been released and is available for download. TermUI is an API for simple GUI-like user interfaces on ANSI/VT100-compliant terminals and terminal emulators, such as Linux virtual terminals, Gnome Terminal and KDE Konsole. The intent is simlar to that of the ncurses library, but done in pure Java. Several commonly used widgets are available."

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Nvu 0.70 released (MozillaZine)

Version 0.70 of the Nvu web authoring system has been announced. "Apart from usual enhancements and bug fixes (the changelog is also on my blog), this is major milestone since it's the first one to be based on Firefox 1.0's code. So the extensions and themes managers are now fully functional and the first extensions are already here!"

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Track+ 3.0.0 released (SourceForge)

Version 3.0.0 of Track+, a Java-based artifact tracking system, has been announced. "Release 3.0.0 adds many new features like overview diagrams, Gantt charts, Unicode attachment file names, a report query language, extended access control and much more."

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Languages and Tools

C

GCC Newsletter

The January 17, 2005 edition of the GCC Newsletter is online, the main contributor has exited, volunteers are needed. "I thank Mr. Lacage for beginning GCCNews and for his excellent work on it. It is to be hoped he will have time to contribute to it occasionally, as I try to build on his efforts. I don't think I'll be able to match Mathieu's fine quality thus far, but I will try my best. I would welcome any help."

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Caml

Caml Weekly News

The January 18, 2005 edition of the Caml Weekly News is online with the week's Caml language articles and discussions.

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Java

Mock Objects in Unit Tests (O'ReillyNet)

Lu Jian works with EasyMock to assist in the unit testing of Java. "Unit testing your code against a service or process that's either too expensive (commercial databases) or just not done yet is something you can deal with by simulating the other piece with a mock object. EasyMock can suffice in some cases, but it can only create mock objects for interfaces. Mocquer, based on the Dunamis project, can create mocks for classes, too."

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Perl

This Week in Perl 6 (O'Reilly)

The January 3-11, 2005 edition of This Week in Perl 6 is available with the latest Perl 6 language discussions.

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Python

Programming Tools: Code Complexity Metrics (Linux Journal)

Reg. Charney writes about Code Complexity Metrics under Python in a LinuxJournal article. "For the rest of us, I decided to write an open-source program to produce metrics that end users can compute and modify. The program is written in Python and currently is limited to analyzing Python--thus the name PyMetrics--but the principles can be extended to any language. By writing the code in Python, you should be able to understand the program better than if I had written it in almost any other language."

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Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The January 15, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with the week's Python language articles.

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Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

The January 15, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with the latest Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

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XML

Python-Powered Templates with Cheetah (O'ReillyNet)

Andrew Glover introduces Cheetah in an O'Reilly article. "It's true; XSLT isn't the be-all, end-all of templating and transformation systems. If you use Python, consider instead Cheetah, a template engine based on Python. Andrew Glover demonstrates its simplicity and power for producing text in all kinds of formats."

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Parsing an XML Document with XPath (O'ReillyNet)

Deepak Vohra shows how to parse XML documents with XPath on O'Reilly. "Pulling just a single node value or attribute from an XML document can be inefficient if you have to parse over a whole list of nodes you don't want, just to get to one you do. XPath can be much more efficient, by letting you specify the path to the desired node up front. J2SE adds XPath support, and the JDOM API also offers support through an XPath class."

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XQEngine 0.66 (SourceForge)

Version 0.66 of XQEngine has been announced. "XQEngine is a Java component for searching collections of XML documents that uses an XQuery front end. This release fixes several bugs, including a namespace-related bug reported by Danny Ayers, adds a dozen new junit tests, and implements XQuery if-then-else functionality, among others."

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Editors

Bluefish 1.0 released! (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop covers the release of Bluefish 1.0, a GUI-based HTML editor. "Bluefish 1.0 has a new, very extended manual, has better gnome and kde integration, much improved bookmarks functionality, many performance improvements, many new and improved highlighting patterns (if you are upgrading: reset them to the new defaults in the preferences panel), better encoding detection, and many minor bugfixes."

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