Development
Amuc - the Amsterdam Music Composer
Version 1.0 of Amuc, the Amsterdam Music Composer, was released by author Wouter Boeke in time for the 2005 Linux Audio Conference.
Amuc is described as:
"a Linux application for composing and playing music
".
The online
manual and screen shots page explains more about Amuc's capabilities:
Amuc is quite different from other music software. It is especially focused on composing music, which is a very difficult but rewarding endeavor. The tool tries to place as little hurdles as possible on the user's road.
The entering of new tunes is done on a normal 5-bar staff (treble or bass clef) in one of the 2 panels at the left. There are 2 kinds of instruments: sampled instruments for percussive sounds, and sounds that are generated real-time. Fore each kind there is choice between 6 instruments, indicated by a color. The sound of a real-time instrument can be modified via its own control panel, that will appear when the appropriate color is selected.
Amuc uses graphical score entry windows for entry of a series of musical notes. Note pitches are displayed by vertical position on the score and time duration is displayed as line length. Synthesized waveforms include FM synthesis, variable frequency sine waves, random waveforms, pulse waveforms with chorus capabilities, and additive synthesis.
The scores form the basic compositional building blocks, there are capabilities for doing various editing processes to the notes grouped in a score. The scores can be combined to form the big score that represents the entire musical composition.
Scripting capabilities add a high-level control structure over the scores, they can be used to manipulate a variety of score parameters such as pitch, amplitude, and synthesis parameters.
Once a composition has been assembled, it is possible to play it in real-time, or save it as a wave (.wav) or MIDI (.mid) file. The composition itself is saved as a score file (.sco) and a script file (.scr). The tune can be modified as it is played by adjusting various parameters including tempo, volume, and a multitude of synthesizer parameters.
For an idea of how the software functions, see the example screen shot while listening to the matching dance.mp3 musical sample.
System Applications
Audio Projects
Planet CCRMA Changes
The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include new versions of ZynAddSybFX, Ardour, the rtirq startup script, Libcddb, Libcdio, Vcdimager, Libdvdread, Dvdauthor, OpenEXR, LCMS, Cinepaint, and Libjackasyn.
Backup Software
Dump/restore 0.4b40 released.
Version 0.4b40 of Dump/restore, an set of backup and restore tools, is out. "This release features a few bug fixes and support for ext2/ext3 extended attributes (EA)."
Database Software
Daffodil Replicator v1.8 released (SourceForge)
Version 1.8 of Daffodil Replicator, a database replication application, is out with new features. "Daffodil Replicator project team announced the release of Daffodil Replicator v1.8 with new features like Scheduling, Debugging, Special Character handling, and Replication Process Monitoring. Daffodil Replicator is Open Source data synchronization software that ensures high availability of data in environments that make use of heterogeneous databases."
Mail Software
Sendmail X
The Alpha 0 release of Sendmail X, a mail transfer agent, has been announced. "sendmail X is a modularized message transfer system consisting of five (or more) persistent processes, four of which are multi-threaded. A central queue manager controls SMTP servers and SMTP clients to receive and send e-mails, an address resolver provides lookups in various maps including DNS for mail routing, and a main control program starts the others processes and watches over their execution. The queue manager organizes the flow of messages through the system and provides measures to avoid overloading the local or remote systems by implementing a central control instance." The code has been released under the Sendmail Open Source License.
Printing
CUPS tips
The CUPS site (Common Unix Printing System) has published a series of small articles with tips on customizing CUPS. The article topics include: Administrative Privileges From A Remote Location, What Printer Model Is A Printer Using?, Changing The Printing Prioity For A Queued Job, and How To Assign Printing Administration Capabilities To Users.
Security
Two Factor Authentication on Linux / Mac / Windows
Mohit Muthanna has announced a new two-factor authentication system. "If anyone is interested, I am currently testing my new two-factor authentication system and am offering the service for free. It does not use keys, tags or other special hardware since it authenticates a user by calling them on their land / cell phone and requesting a PIN code."
Secure programming with the OpenSSL API, Part 2 (IBM developerWorks)
Kenneth Ballard presents part two of an IBM developerWorks series on secure programming. "Securing the handshake during a Secure Sockets Layer session (SSL) is vital, since almost all of the security involving the connection is set up inside the handshake. Learn how to secure the SSL handshake against a man in the middle (MITM) attack -- in which the intruding party masquerades as another, trusted source. This article also introduces the concept of digital certificates and how the OpenSSL API handles them."
Web Site Development
IssueTrackerProduct 0.6.6 announced
Version 0.6.6 of IssueTrackerProduct, an issue tracker web application for Zope, has been announced. Here are the change notes: "17 new features and 16 bug fixes makes the 0.6.6 one of the most exciting releases since the semi-rewrite 0.6 release. This release is considered a Development release because of the number of new features. Most of the new features are rather minor and none breaks old versions. Many of them are relatively cosmetic. There are some quite important bug fixes that makes it worth upgrading if you feel affected".
The REST of the Web (O'ReillyNet)
Jason R. Briggs writes about REST on O'Reilly. "REST, Representational State Transfer, is a collection of design principles that use simple, stateless HTTP for data transfer, without the method-call-like abstractions of RMI or SOAP. Jason R. Briggs shows how you can use this simple architecture, with Jython and Velocity, to develop nimble, loosely coupled web applications."
A Day in the Life of #Apache (O'Reilly)
Rich Bowen explains Apache's RewriteMap on O'Reilly. "A huge number of the questions on #apache have to do with mod_rewrite. And, fairly frequently, I find myself thinking that the problem being discussed would be so much easier to solve if we could just write a Perl script to deal with it. Of course, you can, using the RewriteMap, but it's moderately hard to come by good examples of using this, either in the documentation, or elsewhere online. As some of you may know, I'm working on the documentation, and, hopefully, it will soon contain some good examples of using RewriteMap. But, until then, this article will serve to provide a simple, as well as a not-so-simple, example."
Wiki 0.2.0 released (SourceForge)
Version 0.2.0 of the Wiki module for phpWebSite has been announced. New features include BBCode support, Extended character support, Image Upload, Page locks, and more.
Miscellaneous
ClamAV Releases Version 0.84
Version 0.84 of ClamAV, an open-source anti-virus suite, is out. "The new version improves detection of JPEG (MS04-028) based exploits, introduces support for TNEF (Winmail.dat) files and new detection mechanisms. Various bugfixes and improvements have also been made."
Desktop Applications
Audio Applications
ReZound 0.12.0 beta is out
Version 0.12.0 beta of ReZound, a graphical audio file editor, is available. "This release adds a few new major features and some overdue bug fixes." See the changes document for more information.
CAD
Twenty-fourth release of PythonCAD now available
Release 24 of PythonCAD, a CAD package, is available. "The twenty-fourth release contains numerous improvements to the code used for constructing the user interface and the entity drawing routines. This release utilizes the GTK Action and ActionGroup classes for building and controlling the menubar and menus. Using these classes greatly simplifies and enhances the ability to manipulate the menu items, and these features are used extensively in this release. Many menu choices are now activated when the functionality they provide can be used, and deactivated when their use is not possible. More enhancements of this nature will be appearing in future releases. Another significant improvement is the refactoring of the entity drawing routines."
Desktop Environments
GNOME Art (GnomeDesktop)
GnomeDesktop.org looks at GNOME Art. "The GNOME Art Collection written in ruby is a collection of tools for managing art from the art.gnome.org website. The first app, GNOME Art is a graphical frontend for art.gnome.org. Backgrounds and all themes can be downloaded and previewed. Backgrounds, icon themes and splash screens can be installed directly. GNOME Splash Screen Manager is an application for managing the splash screens of your GNOME desktop."
GNOME Software Announcements
The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:- evolution-gconf-tools-0.1.1 (code improvements)
- evolution-gconf-tools-0.1.3 (- char support in hostnames)
- Glom 0.8.24 (new features and bug fixes)
- GStreamer 0.8.10 (bug fixes and translation work)
- Muine 0.8.3 (new features and bug fixes)
- Serpentine 0.5 (Gtk+ 2.6 support and and code clean up)
KDE Software Announcements
The following new KDE software has been announced this week:- digiKam 0.7.3-beta2 (new features)
- KMidimon 0.1 & KMetronome 0.5 (new and updated apps)
- KOffice 1.4-beta1 (new features and bug fixes) (read more)
KDE CVS-Digest (KDE.News)
The April 29, 2005 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is online, here's the content summary: "amaroK and Kexi support KNewStuff for database examples, Context Themes and amaroK scripts. amaroK adds support for Helix multimedia backend. Kmail filters now can be applied to messages from IMAP accounts. KWifiManager implements switch network from GUI feature."
GUI Packages
FLTK Weekly Snapshots
The FLTK project has released the FLTK 2.0.x Weekly Snapshot and the FLTK 1.1.x Weekly Snapshot, both are dated April 29, 2005.
Imaging Applications
Blender Development Digest
Issue #5 of the Blender Development Digest is online with the latest news about Blender 3D, a three dimensional content creation and animation suite. Thanks to Tom M.
Medical Applications
Free Open Source ED Patient tracking software (LinuxMedNews)
LinuxMedNews introduces Free Ed, "A free emergency department patient tracking system. This is a tracking system similar to several commercial systems."
Music Applications
Patchage 0.2.0 announced
Version 0.2.0 of Patchage, a modular patch bay for Jack audio and Alsa Midi, is out. "This release adds Alsa Midi patching support, and numerous bugfixes."
wcnt 1.127 released
Release 1.127 of wcnt (Wav Composer Not Toilet), a not-real-time modular audio synthesis, sequencer, and sampler, is out. "This release has removed an enourmous amount of memory leaks, fixed several segmentation faults, and, other bug issues have been fixed. Validation of parameters is now updated, and working. Various re-codings have resulted in a slightly smaller executable."
Office Suites
OpenOffice.org Newsletter
The April, 2005 edition of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter is online with the latest news about the OpenOffice.org office suite.
Digital Photography
KimDaBa 2.1 Released
Version 2.1 of KimDaBa, a photo management application, has been released. Changes include a new data/status bar, thumbnail viewing changes, the ability to attach keyboard tokens to images for grouping purposes, and more.
Web Browsers
Mozilla Links Newsletter
The April 28, 2005 edition of the Mozilla Links Newsletter is online. Read about the latest anti-phishing features that have been added to Firefox and Thunderbird.
Miscellaneous
Krusader v1.60.0 - The Twin-Panel File Manager for Linux
The Krusader Krew has announced the latest stable release of Krusader v1.60.0. Krusader is fully integrated with the KDE Desktop Environment and operates reliably in all Linux graphical environments. "Krusader Version 1.60.0 is immediately available under the GNU General Public License and may be downloaded freely in a "ready to compile" package or in a variety of custom binaries for easy installation on most of the leading Linux distributions." See the Change Log for the complete list of new features, updates, and improvements.
Languages and Tools
C
GCC Newsletter
Issue #16 of the GCC Newsletter was published on May 2, 2005. "After an extensive pause, I will now attempt to hit at least the highest of the high spots of the GCC mailing list for the last few months. My intention is to mention at least briefly the events of each month from November 2004 through April 2005 in retrospect."
Caml
Caml Weekly News
The Caml Weekly News for April 26 - May 3, 2005 is online with the latest Caml language discussions.
Java
GNU Classpath 0.15 released
Version 0.15 of GNU Classpath, a set of essential libraries for java, has been released. Here are the change highlights: "Optimized nio and nio.charset packages plus io streams integration leading to large speedups in character stream performance. To complement this new framework a native iconv based charset provider was added. Better support for free swing metal and pluggable lafs. Some org.omg.CORBA support added. Better java.beans support for the Eclipse Visual Editor Project. Completely lock free ThreadLocal implementation added. More javax.swing.text support for RTF and HTML. More flexible runtime interfaces and build configuration options added."
Generic Types, Part 1 (O'ReillyNet)
O'Reilly has published part one in a book excerpt series. "In part one of this two-part excerpt from Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition author David Flanagan explores the basic use of generics in typesafe collections, and then delves into their more complex uses. In addition, he covers type parameter wildcards and bounded wildcards."
Java theory and practice: Enable initialization atomicity (IBM developerWorks)
Brian Goetz looks at API design issues on IBM developerWorks. "Decisions made during API design can have an effect on the API's usability. In designing an API, you need to put yourself in your user's shoes, imagining how the API might be used, and try and make the common use cases convenient for the user. This month, columnist Brian Goetz discusses an API design technique, the self-return idiom, that can make life easier for users of your API in certain circumstances."
Perl
This Week in Perl 6 (O'Reilly)
The April 20-26, 2005 edition of This Week in Perl 6 is online with new Perl 6 development news.
Python
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!
The May 3, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with the week's Python language articles and resources.
Tcl/Tk
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!
The May 3, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is out with the week's new Tcl/Tk articles.
XML
Not Quite Restful (O'Reilly)
John E. Simpson explores the Google Maps project on O'Reilly. "In this month's XML Tourist column, we'll take a look at a couple of web "services" that aren't quite formally RESTful, but demonstrate REST-like and nonetheless useful behaviors."
Forming Opinions, Part Two (O'Reilly)
Micah Dubinko continues an O'Reilly series on Web Forms 2.0 with part two. "To resume the discussion, we'll continue our look inside WF2 where we left off in section 2. One of my favorite parts of this section consists of all the little tweaks suggested to classic forms as we know them. Anyone who has worked with form-scripting has probably run into one of these limitations."
Principles of XML design: When the order of XML elements matters (IBM developerWorks)
Uche Ogbuji writes about XML element ordering on IBM developerWorks. "When multiple XML elements occur within another element, does element order matter? Whether it's the order in which the parser reports elements to applications, or the question of whether or not to mandate specific order in schema patterns, things are not always as simple as they may seem. In this article, Uche Ogbuji covers design and processing considerations related to the order of XML elements."
Managing XML data: Identify XML documents (IBM developerWorks)
Elliotte Rusty Harold works with XML identification issues on IBM developerWorks. "The name of an XML file does not have to end in .xml. In fact, an XML document doesnt have to be in a file at all. It can be a database record, a piece of a file, a transitory stream of bytes in memory thats never written to disk, or a combination of several different files. However, many XML documents do reside on hard disks and other fixed media. When they do, its useful to be able to identify them quickly. This article summarizes the common file extensions and MIME media types that are used for XML documents."
IDEs
DrPython 3.10.13 Released
Version 3.10.13 of DrPython, an IDE for the Python language, is out. "This release fixes a critical bugfix in the file dialog (which caused the UI to freeze), adds major/critical bugfixes in indentation handling/autoindent, and includes an exact method for prompt sync, fixes in the drscript menu, support for numpad enter treated as enter, plus a few minor fixes and tweaks."
Version Control
Git Traffic #1
Zack Brown has published the first issue of Git Traffic, a (lengthy) summary of discussions on the development of the git source code management system.
Page editor: Forrest Cook
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