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DevelopmentThe DSpace Digital Repository SystemDSpace is a jointly developed project from the MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard with project guidance provided by the DSpace Federation.The project is described as:
A groundbreaking digital repository system, DSpace captures, stores, indexes, preserves and redistributes an organization's research material in digital formats.
Research institutions worldwide use DSpace for a variety of digital archiving needs -- from institutional repositories (IRs) to learning object repositories or electronic records management, and more.
Here are a few project details: the DSpace software is written in Java, it has been released under the BSD License. DSpace is cross-platform software, with support for Unix and Windows. Both command line and web-based user interfaces are provided. The End User FAQ has more general information on the project. One interesting feature of DSpace is the use of the Handle System as a method of identifying data. "The developers chose to use handles instead of persistent URLs to support citations to items in DSpace over very long time spans longer than we believe the HTTP protocol will last. Handles in DSpace are currently implemented as URLs, but can also be modified to work with future protocols." The DSpace System Documentation and architecture documents describe the underlying system in more detail. Version 1.2.2 beta 2 of DSpace was announced this week: "This release contains bugfixes and some minor new features from 1.2.2 beta 1. This includes postgres 8.0 compatibility, and community/collection strength display". DSpace is available for download here.
System Applications Audio Projects Planet CCRMA ChangesThe latest change from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project includes an update to the Snd sound editor.
Database Software Gentle.NET 1.2.2 released! (SourceForge)Version 1.2.2 of Gentle.NET, a database independent object persistence framework, is available. "This release fixes a bug introduced in 1.2.1 affecting reserved word handling. A bug affecting concurrency handling when using unnamed parameters was fixed."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe April 1, 2005 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the week's PostgreSQL database development news. "A new language translation set of .po files for into 1337. w3lc0m3 t0 t|-|3 n3\/\/ /\/\3/\/\|3rz 0f teh c0mm|_|n1t'/!!1!!"
Networking Tools Hobbit Monitor Version 4Version 4 of Hobbit Monitor, a systems and network monitoring system, has been announced. "Hobbit lets you monitor network services - e.g. Web-, mail-, LDAP- and DNS-servers - by sending them full requests and checking if the response is as expected. Clients can be installed on the monitored hosts to collect performance metrics, e.g. cpu-, disk- and memory-utilisation."
Printing pkpgcounter 1.00 releasedVersion 1.00 of pkgcounter is available for the CUPS print system. "pkpgcounter is a generic Page Description Language parser which main feature is to count the number of pages in files ready to be printed. pkpgcounter is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL. pkpgcounter is included in our PyKota print quota and accounting solution since 2003, but this is the first release made available independantly of PyKota."
VPN Software SSL-Explorer v0.1.9 released! (SourceForge)Version 0.1.9 of SSL-Explorer, an open-source SSL VPN solution, has been announced. "This release is mainly focused upon stability and includes many bugfixes and usability enhancements to the interface."
Web Site Development ACollab 1.2 Released (SourceForge)Version 1.2 of ACollab, a multi-group, Web-based collaborative work environment, is out. "This release includes a variety of feature enhancements and a few bug fixes. Current users may wish to upgrade to take advantage of the added functionality."
DocBookWiki version 0.7.1 released (SourceForge)Version 0.7.1 of DocBookWiki, a web application for editing DocBook formatted documents, has been announced. Changes include improved documentation, generation of downloadable files, and installation work.
mnoGoSearch 3.2.32 releasedVersion 3.2.32 of mnoGoSearch, a web site search utility, is available. See the change history document for details.
Securing Web Forms with PEAR's Text_CAPTCHA (O'ReillyNet)Marcus Whitney uses CAPTCHA with PEAR in an O'Reilly article. "You have probably seen the CAPTCHA project in action at some of your Web destinations. Its principal tool is a randomly created image that contains a phrase unmentioned in computer-readable text on the rendered page. The form asks the user to provide the phrase. If the form post does not contain the correct phrase, you can safely assume either the human made a user error, or it wasn't a human at all."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Glame 2.0.1 releasedVersion 2.0.1 of Glame, a sound editor application, is out. Changes include improved GNOME 2.0 integration, bettwer wave drawing, and better XRUN handling.
CAD BRL-CAD 7.2.2 Released (SourceForge)Version 7.2.2 of BRL-CAD has been announced. "BRL-CAD is a powerful constructive solid geometry solid modeling system that includes an interactive geometry editor, ray tracing support for rendering and geometric analysis, network distributed framebuffer support, image and signal-processing tools." This version includes bug fixes and feature enhancements.
Data Visualization PLplot Development Release 5.5.0Development Release 5.5.0 of PLplot, a Scientific Plotting Library, has been announced. "This is a routine development release of PLplot, and represents the ongoing efforts of the community to improve the PLplot plotting package. The next full release will be 5.6.0."
Desktop Environments GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
KDE CVS-Digest (KDE.News)The April 1, 2005 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is available, here's the content summary: "ksvg2 can now do animations. Kexi gains read/write form support. Digikam adds a photo restoration plugin. New releases of Kile, amaroK and Kubuntu. Get ready for the move to Subversion!"
Xfce Weekly NewsThe Xfce Weekly News for March 14-31, 2005 is out. Here's the summary: "In this edition we see the first entry in what we hope to be a continuing series of short articles on the major new features and technologies in the coming 4.4 release of Xfce. This week, the mysterious and powerful panel widget"."
Electronics New gEDA Suite CDROM ISO ReleasedA new CDROM ISO image of the gEDA Suite, a collection of electronics applications, is available. See the README document for content information.
Open Collector ReleasesThe latest new electronics applications on Open Collector include Teal 0.93, microdev 0G1, MGEN/PARIS 1.5, nlc 0.9, MVSIS 1.0, EDIF Parser 0.2, and E.Smith.
Financial Applications SQL-Ledger version 2.4.11 releasedVersion 2.4.11 of SQL-Ledger, a web-based accounting system, is available with bug fixes and other improvements.
Games Cyphesis 0.3.9 ReleasedVersion 0.3.9 of Cyphesis, a server for WorldForge games, has been announced. Changes include a number of bug fixes and support for building a relocatable binary package.
GUI Packages FLTK NewsThe latest new software for FLTK, the Fast, Light ToolKit, includes two new snapshot releases of FLTK, Gmsh 1.60, and Monica 2.6, a monitor calibration utility.
Interoperability Wine TrafficThe April 1, 2005 edition of Wine Traffic is available with the week's Wine project news.
Medical Applications ClearHealth initial release (LinuxMedNews)LinuxMedNews has the announcement for the initial release of ClearHealth. "ClearHealth is a next generation practice management system and EMR. This php based system takes DNA from the FreeMED and OpenEMR projects. It is based on the smarty templating engine. ClearHealth uses the FreeB2 medical billing engine."
Music Applications KGuitar 0.5 releasedVersion 0.5 of KGuitar, a KDE utility for working on guitar tablature and chording, is out with lots of new capabilities.
KMetronome 0.3 releasedVersion 0.3 of KMetronome, a MIDI-based metronome that works with the ALSA sequencer, is out. "This is the first public release."
Office Suites OpenOffice.org NewsletterThe March 2005 edition of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter is online, read about OpenOffice.org 2.0 and more.
Peer to Peer Furthur v.1.7.5 Released (SourceForge)Version 1.7.5 of Furthur, a java-based P2P client with an emphasis on use for trading CD-quality audio and video, is available. "Version 1.7.5 is primarily a user-interface upgrade, improving the client's help and setup features, and enhancing the built-in chat engine. It also improves search results and download priority for users with faster Intenet connections, and updates the code for use with JRE v. 1.5."
Web Browsers Gecko 1.8, Mozilla Firefox 1.1 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.1 Release Plans (MozillaZine)The release plans for new versions of Gecko, Mozilla Firefox, and Mozilla Thunderbird have been announced. "We were scheduled to freeze for 1.8 Beta 2 on March 15th at midnight but that clearly didn't happen. There is more work, front-end and back-end (cleaning up regressions from new features, completing the heavy lifting of the Thunderbird localization re-organization, fixing key bugs, analyzing and fixing topcrashers, getting XULRunner further along, etc.) that needs to happen before we're in a position to ship the Firefox and Thunderbird 1.1 alphas."
Improved Popup Blocker Available for Testing (MozillaZine)The Mozilla Foundation is testing a patch for Mozilla Firefox that improves popup blocking. "This isn't the first time that the popup blocker has been modified in response to the evil tricks of webmasters. When the feature first debuted, it simply blocked all popups triggered by page loads, page unloads and timeouts. Since then, it has been enhanced to block popups triggered by a wide variety of events and also limit the number of simultaneous popups allowed."
Minutes of the mozilla.org Staff Meeting (MozillaZine)The minutes from the March 21, 2005 mozilla.org staff meeting are online. "Issues discussed include releases, developer.mozilla.org, Camino and people."
Word Processors AbiWord v2.2.6 Released! (GnomeDesktop)Footnotes reports the release of AbiWord v2.2.6. "This releases includes a massive list of changes and bugfixes all over the map, ranging from the MS Word importer to the MacOSX port to a nice bunch of fixed crasher bugs. We hope we didn't break something in the process." Here is the change log.
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe March 29 - April 5, 2005 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new Caml language articles and resources.
Haskell Pugs, an implementation of Perl6 in HaskellPugs is an implementation of Perl6 in the Haskell language. "The Pugs project is led by Autrijus Tang".
Java JCA 1.5, Part 1: Optimizations and life-cycle management (IBM developerWorks)David Currie presents part one of an IBM developerWorks series on the J2EE Connector Architecture. "In the first of a three-part series, Java developer David Currie introduces some Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) Connector Architecture (JCA) 1.5 optimizations that should make your existing or new outbound resource adapters go faster. He also takes a look at some additions that let resource adapters take on a new life of their own."
Perl Perl 5.9.2 released (use Perl)Version 5.9.2 of Perl 5 has been announced. "The Perl 5 developer team is pleased to announce the release of perl 5.9.2, the third development release of perl 5.9, incorporating developments towards the next major stable version of perl, perl 5.10."
More Lightning Articles (O'Reilly)A new set of four Perl lightning articles have been published on O'Reilly. Topics include: Customizing Emacs with Perl, Debug Your Programs with Devel::LineTrace, Using Test::MockDBI, and Unnecessary Unbuffering.
PHP PHP 5.0.4 and 4.3.11 ReleasedTwo new versions of PHP have been announced. "The PHP Development Team would like to announce the immediate release of PHP 5.0.4 and 4.3.11. These are maintenance releases that in addition to non-critical bug fixes address several security issues. All Users of PHP are strongly encouraged to upgrade to one of these releases as soon as possible."
Python python-dev SummaryThe March 16-31, 2005 edition of the python-dev Summary is out with coverage from the python-dev mailing list. "So, after nearly 2.5 years, this is my final python-dev Summary. Steve Bethard, Tim Lesher, and Tony Meyer will be taking over for me starting with the April 1 - April 15 summary (and no, this is not an elaborate April Fool's)."
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The April 4, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with another week's collection of Python language articles.
Basic Threading in Python (Dev Shed)Peyton McCullough illustrates Python threads in a Dev Shed article. "If you want your application to perform several tasks at once, you can use threads. Python can handle threads, but many developers find thread programming to be very tricky. Among other points, Peyton McCullough covers how to spawn and kill threads in this popular language."
Ruby Ruby Weekly NewsThe April 3rd, 2005 edition of the Ruby Weekly News has been posted. It summarizes the latest news and discussion from the ruby-talk mailing list.
Exploring Ruby on Rails (Linux Journal)Ara Howard and Doug Fales discuss the Rails framework for Ruby on Linux Journal. "It seemed that every blog I read either was proclaiming Rails as the new juggernaut of Web frameworks or was damning it as the scourge of developers everywhere. Now, I generally assume anything that's simultaneously causing so much adoration, protest and reflection must have something going for it, and rumors that Dave Thomas was putting together a book on RoR only fueled my motivation to find out all that I could as fast as I could. So I installed Rails, raced through a few tutorials, started reading the source and called Doug to get the lowdown straight from the horse's mouth."
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The April 4, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is out with the week's Tcl/Tk news and resources.
XML Tip: Twisting XML with XSLT 2.0 (IBM developerWorks)Jack Herrington works with XSLT 2.0 on IBM developerWorks. "The XML story has two sides: data creators and data consumers. XSL typically falls on the consumer side of the equation, and all too often the format of the data is fixed well before a template gets to it. Take a list of books, for example. You might have an XML file with a list sorted by title, but what if you want the list to be sorted by author, or you just want to display the distinct author names? Can XSL do that?"
Getting Started with XQuery (O'Reilly)Bob DuCharme presents an introductory article on XQuery. "Although the W3C's XQuery language for querying XML data sources is still in Working Draft status, the recent XML 2004 conference showed that there's already plenty of interest and many implementations. While the Saxon implementation may not scale up as much as the disk-based versions that use persistent indexes and other traditional database features, you can download the free version of Saxon, install it, and use XQuery so quickly that it's a great way to start playing with the language in order to learn about what this new standard can offer you."
Understanding the Basic B2B Profile (IBM developerWorks)Christopher Ferris introduces the Basic B2B Profile on IBM developerWorks. "The Basic Business-to-Business (B2B) Profile 1.0 is a profile that, in the fashion of the WS-I profiles, enables basic B2B integration scenarios using Web services technologies. In this paper, author Chris Ferris explain the profile's purpose and technical content."
IDEs Eclipse Plugins Exposed, Part 2: Simple GUI Elements (O'ReillyNet)Emmanuel Proulx continues his O'Reilly series on Eclipse plugins with part two. "Eclipse is largely composed of plugins, but you can't just write any arbitrary code and have Eclipse magically incorporate it. In part two of his series on Eclipse, Emmanuel Proulx introduces Eclipse's "extension points" by showing how to create toolbar buttons, menu items, and dialogs."
Miscellaneous Making Packager-Friendly Software (O'Reilly)Julio M. Merino Vidal discusses software packaging issues on O'Reilly. "A package maintainer, or packager, is a person who creates packages for software projects. He eventually finds common problems in these projects, resulting in a complex packaging process and a final package that is a nightmare to maintain. These little flaws exist because in most cases the original developers are not packagers, so they are not aware of them. In other words, if you do not know something is wrong, you cannot fix it. This article describes some of these common problems and possible solutions."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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![[DSpace]](/images/ns/dspace.png)
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