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DevelopmentOSAF Releases Chandler 0.5 PIMThe Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) has announced the release of Chandler 0.5, a GPL-licensed Personal Information Management application (PIM) with an emphasis on shared use. Several years ago, LWN covered the initial release of the project, Chandler 0.1.
A major lesson learnt from the last two years, is that we took on too much, and had too high an ambition level for the near-term. This "great leap forward" strategy didn't pan out. Instead, we have primarily switched to a "dog food" strategy to quickly develop a first release that is minimally usable, on a day-to-day basis, for us within OSAF and for our info-intensive, techno-savvy early adopters.
The version 0.5 README document details the changes in the current release. Work was mainly focused on calendar software and reliability. The version 0.6 planning (cleaning and polishing) and 0.7 planning (polish email system and add new features) documents show where the next two releases are headed. After version 0.7, Chandler should be stable enough for daily use by early adopters. One fundamental change in the project has been to move from a peer-to-peer mode of sharing data to the use of Web enabled Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) servers. Email connectivity has been added to Chandler through the Twisted networking framework. Chandler 0.5 is fairly easy to get running, all one has to do is download the code, unpack it, and run the provided binary. The documentation warns that version 0.5 may only work on machines with the Fedora Core 2 distribution, your author had no trouble running it on Fedora Core 3. The new release is still experimental, the initial startup screen warns users that the product is under development and should not be trusted to keep user data safe. Nonetheless, Chandler appears to be on-track in the goal of producing a working utility, we look forward to the group's upcoming releases.
System Applications Database Software PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe March 28, 2005 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out with the week's coverage of PostgreSQL database development.
Interoperability Samba 3.0.13 Available for DownloadStable version 3.0.13 of Samba, a Windows-compatible network file and print server, is out with several bug fixes.
Mail Software Sendmail 8.13.4 releasedVersion 8.13.4 of Sendmail, a mail transfer agent, has been announced. "Sendmail, Inc., and the Sendmail Consortium announce the availability of sendmail 8.13.4. It fixes several bugs and omissions and adds some additional checks to deal with situations that should not occur."
Networking Tools Twisted version 2.0 announcedVersion 2.0 of Twisted, a Python-based event-driven networking framework, has been announced. "Twisted 2.0 was released late at night on the twenty-second of March, 2005, from Christopher Armstrong's secret underground stronghold in Australia. The Earth indeed shook not only in response to the millions rioting in the streets after the release, but also from the testing of the new functionality in 2.0, including the (patented) Subatomic Resonator, capable of harnessing the power of any form of matter to produce world-destroying explosions." See the release notes for more details.
Desktop Applications Desktop Environments GNOME Power Manager project gets underway (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop looks at the current state of power management software under GNOME. "GNOME Power Manager listens for HAL events and responds with user-configurable reactions. Currently it supports UPS's, laptop batteries and AC adaptors. Its goal is to be architecture neutral and free of polling and other hacks. Linux power management on laptops sucks. Project Utopia is all about making things "Just Work" and that's how power-management should be."
GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
KDE CVS-Digest (KDE.News)The March 25, 2005 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is available. Here's the content summary: "dnssd adds invitation support. KChart adds png export. KPDF adds annotation support. Speedups in khtml, KPDF, Kmail, and Plastik. Plus, getting ready for Subversion. The move from CVS to Subversion seems imminent. Everyone who accesses the KDE repository will want to make preparations for the change."
KDE Software AnnouncementsThe following new KDE software has been announced this week:
XFree86 4.5.0 is outVersion 4.5.0 of XFree86 has been announced. It features a number of new capabilities, see the release notes for details.
Electronics gEDA/gaf 20050313 snapshotA new snapshot of gaf, an electronic schematic capture application and associated utilities, is out. The change summary says: "Lots and lots and lots of code cleanup, refactoring, and bug fixing by Patrick Bernaud, Stuart Brorson, Carlos Nieves Onega, Werner Hoch, and Dan McMahill. This applies to all parts of gEDA/gaf. The amount of cleanup is quite staggering, so please look at the various ChangeLogs for more info. Many thanks to all who lent a hand in this rather difficult task!" See the release notes for details.
XCircuit 3.3.12 is outVersion 3.3.12 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing package, has been released. Changes include modification of the netlist connectivity highlight display, bug fixes, and more.
GUI Packages FLTK NewsNew released from the FLTK (Fast, Light ToolKit) project include a new FLTK weekly snapshot and new versions of Tux ToDo List Manager, the Flmm Widget Set, and SPTK. An new article on resizing is also available.
Music Applications kluppe 0.4 releasedVersion 0.4 of kluppe, a jack-enabled loop player for linux, is out. New features include an adjustable metric grid, CV sync support, and bug fixes.
PSindustrializer 0.24 announcedVersion 0.24 of PSindustrializer, a tool for the physical modeling of sound, is out. "This version features gtk2 port (please use --disable-openGL, if you are compiling it with gtk+-2.6.4) and several fixes."
Miscellaneous Evolution 2.2.0The Evolution Team has announced the release of Evolution 2.2.0. "Evolution 2.2 is the stable series of the 2.1 development series. It will upgrade your existing 1.4 install, and will perform one minor update on an existing 2.0 install to support weather calendars."
GSview 4.7 releaseVersion 4.7 of GSview, a PostScript viewer application, has been announced. It features bug fixes and other enhancements.
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe March 22-29, 2005 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with the latest collection of Caml language articles.
Java Using Aspects to autonomic-enable legacy applications (IBM developerWorks)Brian Temple covers Java Aspects on IBM developerWorks. "Learn how to use Aspects to generate Common Base Events in any legacy Java application, without modifying the original application source. This article shows you how and also provides an example framework that can be used with your applications today."
Flexible Event Delivery with Executors (O'ReillyNet)Andrew Thompson covers the use of J2SE events on O'Reilly. "Event-handling is critical to any GUI application, and many developers know the hazards of making a method call to unknown or poorly behaved code from the event-dispatch thread. J2SE 5.0's concurrency utilities offer more fine-grained control over how code executes. Andrew Thompson applies that to offer better ways to handle events."
Java Component Development: A Conceptual Framework (O'ReillyNet)Palash Ghosh uses components under Java on O'Reilly. "Component-based design and development is not a new topic at all to professionals who are following Object-oriented analysis and design (OOAD) methodology. The goal of this article is to arrive at a common conceptual framework to develop a Java component step by step, following Java best design practices, and starting from scratch."
JSP Create internationalized JSP applications (IBM developerWorks)Sing Li writes about JSP internationalization on IBM developerWorks. "Designing Java Server Pages (JSP) applications for an international audience is more of an art than a science, involving much more than meets the eye. The key to success is to understand the unique server-side problems associated with internationalization. Java developer Sing Li clarifies the key problem and presents two solutions based on tried-and-true techniques."
Lisp OpenMCL 0.14.3 releasedVersion 0.14.3 of OpenMCL, an implementation of Lisp for the PowerPC platform, is out. "This version adds many documentation strings, some support for allocating Lisp vectors in foreign memory, partial support for funcallable class instances, and new examples."
SBCL 0.8.21 releasedVersion 0.8.21 of SBCL (Steel Bank Common Lisp) has been released. "Mainly new in this version are some incompatible changes (to threads, the REPL, and initialization files loading), and a more robust x86-64 disassembler."
Perl This Fortnight in Perl 6 (O'Reilly)The March 7-21, 2005 edition of This Fortnight in Perl 6 is online with the latest Perl 6 news.
Python Python 2.4.1 releasedPython 2.4.1, a bugfix-only release, is available; click below for details and download information.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The March 24, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with the latest Python articles.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The March 30, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with another weekly collection of Python language articles.
Ruby Ruby Weekly NewsThe March 27th, 2005 edition of the Ruby Weekly News has been posted. It summarizes the latest news and discussion from the ruby-talk mailing list.
Scheme Schemer's GazetteIssue #5 of the Schemer's Gazette is online with more Scheme language articles and information.
Shells fish 1.5 releasedVersion 1.5 of fish, a user friendly shell intended mostly for interactive use, is available. "Among new features are the 'open' command for launching the default handler for a file and tab completion and syntax highlighting inside of subshells. Version 1.5 also includes several important bugfixes."
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The March 24, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with the latest Tcl/Tk news and information.
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The March 30. 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is out with the week's Tcl/Tk news and resources.
XML Getting Started with XQuery, Part 2 (O'Reilly)Bob DuCharme continues his O'Reilly introductory series on XQuery with Part Two. "This week, we'll learn more about how a query can manipulate the XML that it pulls out of a collection, and how user-defined functions can provide even greater flexibility in the sorting and arrangement of that data."
Use XSLT to prepare XML for import into OpenOffice Calc (IBM developerWorks)Uche Ogbuji works with OpenOffice.org spreadsheet data on IBM developerWorks. "The popular open source office suite OpenOffice.org is XML-savvy at its core. It uses XML in its file formats and offers several XML-processing plug-ins, so you might expect it to have nice tools built in for importing XML data. Unfortunately, things are not so simple, and a bit of work is required to manipulate general XML into delimited text format in order to import the data into its spreadsheet component, Calc. This article offers a quick XSLT tool for this purpose and demonstrates the Calc import of records-oriented XML. In addition to learning a practical trick for working with Calc, you might also learn a few handy XSLT techniques for using dynamic criteria to transform XML."
What Are Microformats? (O'Reilly)Micah Dubinko discusses Microformats on O'Reilly. "Like any ecosystem, XML world is subject to Darwinian natural selection and periodic adjustments. The best ideas tend to stick around. The idea of microformats is particularly being explored of late. Previously, XML-Deviant discussed several microformats in the context of Google's good example of utilizing new technologies. But what exactly is a microformat?"
Profilers Valgrind 2.4.0 is availableVersion 2.4.0 of Valgrind, an open-source tool suite for debugging and profiling x86-Linux programs, is out. "2.4.0 brings many significant changes and bug fixes. The most significant user-visible change is that we no longer supply our own pthread implementation. Instead, Valgrind is finally capable of running the native thread library, either LinuxThreads or NPTL. This means our libpthread has gone, along with the bugs associated with it. Valgrind now supports the kernel's threading syscalls, and lets you use your standard system libpthread."
Version Control CVSGrab 2.2.1 released. (SourceForge)Version 2.2.1 of CVSGrab is out with bug fixes and other improvements. "CVSGrab is a simple CVS client that bypass any firewall blocking port 2401 used by cvs. It relies on the ViewCVS web interface to the repository to work, and supports other types of web interfaces (CvsWeb, SourceCast...)"
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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![[OSAF]](/images/ns/osaf.jpg){kind=small}
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