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DevelopmentThe Open POSIX Test SuiteA new project known as the Open Posix Test Suite has been put together by four Intel employees, Geoff Gustafson, Julie Fleischer, Rusty Lynch, and Inaky Perez-Gonzalez.The Announcement states: "The project's current approach to conformance testing is to record assertions from a close reading of the POSIX specifications, and write minimal test cases that prove or disprove these assertions. The test suite will be independent of specific API implementations, and will eventually be easily configurable to work with different implementations. The project aims for OS independence, using only POSIX APIs, the autoconf suite, and simple shell support." The Open Posix Test suite is licensed under the GPL and work is primarily being done on the Linux platform, although support for other Posix compliant platforms should be possible. "The Open POSIX Test Suite is an open source test suite with the goal of performing conformance, functional, and stress testing of the functions described in the IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 System Interfaces specification. Eventual testing of the full specification is desired." One of the project's goals is to achieve ANSI C compliance with the Linux kernel coding standards. Testing has been divided into the conformance, functional, and stress categories, for these POSIX function groups:
make tests[-pretty]
This will locate all the tests and run them; currently it only supports very basic tests [a single .c file that is first compiled to an .o file and then to a .text executable if it declares 'main']. A test is considered to be successful if it PASSes the three phases [build, link and execution]. However, if it does not have a 'main' entry point, then link and execution are omitted [it is intended just as a 'compile' test]. One of the design goals for the test suite is to make the addition of additional tests easy to do, outside contributions are being welcomed.
System Applications Database Software SAP DB version 7.3.00.29 releasedVersion 7.3.00.29 of the SAP DB database is available. The release notes detail the many changes.
Education Linux in Education ReportIssue #82 of the Linux in Education Report is out. Topics include a version of Knoppix, a bootable debian GNU/Linux based cdrom for educators, parents, and students, SchoolNet Namibia on Microsoft policies, the new Freeduc CD-ROM, and a number of new educational applications.
Networking Tools Metawall 0.12 ReleasedVersion 0.12 of Metawall has been released. "Metawall is a perl script that allows you to write firewall rules in a simple metalanguage."
Printing AFPL Ghostscript 7.32 beta releaseVersion 7.32 beta of AFPL Ghostscript has been released. "There are two major new features: Well Tempered Screening now works, even for 0 and 45 angle screens. See News.htm for details. Also, Russell Lang has fixed a longstanding usability problem: Encapsulated PostScript files are now recognized, and a "showpage" is added if missing. This fixes the problem of an EPS file displaying, but not saving as a file."
HPIJS 1.3 is released! (LinuxPrinting)LinuxPrinting.org is carrying an announcement for version 1.3 of HP's HPIJS free software printer drivers. New features include support for the newest HP printers, new photo modes for DeskJet 900 series printers, a new 8.5x15.5-inches paper size for the Deskjet 3425, and some bug fixes.
Web Site Development Zope Members NewsThe most recent headlines on the Zope Members News include: ZPhotoSlides 0.5 Released, PHParser 0.9.0 released, Linux Productivity Magazine Reviews Zope, OrderedObjectManager 1.2 released, NeoBoard 1.1 alpha version released , Second Zope 3 newsletter released to unsuspecting public, External Editor 0.6 - Its everywhere you want to be, ZWiki 0.12.0 released, Ariel Partners Releases XMLTransform 0.9, and ZShellScripts v0.2 is out with Lisp support !.
Midgard Weekly SummaryThe November 6, 2002 Midgard Weekly Summary is out with the latest Midgard news.
Aegir CMS 1.0 beta2 releasedVersion 1.0 beta2 of the Aegir Content Management System has been released.
Standards Developing LSB-certified applications (IBM developerWorks)George Kraft IV covers the process of writing LSB compliant code. "The Linux Standard Base is a big step toward ensuring binary compatibility among Linux applications, and it should greatly reduce the amount of testing and validation required for operation on multiple platforms. In five straightforward steps, George Kraft, chairman of the Linux Standard Base, shows you how to build an LSB-certified application."
Miscellaneous Cryptographic Terminology 101 (O'Reilly)Dru Lavigne covers network data encryption technologies on O'Reilly. "In the next few articles, I'd like to concentrate on securing data as it travels over a network. If you remember the IP packets series (see Capturing TCP Packets), most network traffic is transmitted in clear text and can be decoded by a packet sniffing utility. This can be bad for transmissions containing usernames, passwords, or other sensitive data. Fortunately, other utilities known as cryptosystems can protect your network traffic from prying eyes."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Tkeca 1.0.0 releasedVersion 1.0.0 of Tkeca, a TK gui wrapper for the Ecasound audio tool, has been released. A number of gui changes have been included in this release.
Sweep 0.5.10a releasedVersion 0.5.10a (development) of the Sweep sound editor is available. "New features in this release include vertical zoom with a draggable dB scale and mouse wheel control, and some basic channel operations: Duplicate to stereo/multichannel, Swap left and right, Remove left/right, Mix down to mono, and Add/Remove channels."
Desktop Environments KDE 3.1 RC2: Ready For A HammeringKDE.News has an announcement for version 3.1 RC2 of KDE, the K Desktop Environment. "A good number of showstoppers in RC1 have been fixed, and the new default Crystal-SVG icon set has been polished based on the valuable feedback received. Nevertheless, please give this RC2 another round of thorough testing to make sure all the major wrinkles have been ironed out."
FootNotesHeadlines on the GNOME desktop FootNotes site include: Candidates for Fall 2002 GNOME Foundation Elections, Evolution 1.2 RC1 released, Dropline GNOME 1.2.1 for Slackware Linux, Anjuta 1.0.0 (Diwali) unleashed !, LinuxFocus.org: Developing Applications for Gnome with Python, Gnumeric 1.1.11 Released, Evolution for GNOME 2, This is the story of a gnome-media release, Bits and Pieces, AbiWord Announcement: Weekly Patch Prize, gtkmm 2.0.0 released, and more.
Graphics The Video-Whale ProjectZeeshan Ali Khattak has designed the Video-Whale Project, which assembles a group of Red-Hat Linux boxes into a wall of video. Check it out for some cool images. Thanks to Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller.
Interoperability Kernel Cousin WineIssue #142 of Kernel Cousin Wine is out. Topics include SuSE and CrossOver Office, Releasing WineSetupTk, FAQ Maintainer Needed, Conversion to -DSTRICT, Wine/Windows Security Concerns, Detecting Wine vs. Windows, and IDL Generated obj_* Headers.
Multimedia GStreamer 0.4.2 releasedVersion 0.4.2 of the GStreamer streaming-media framework has been released. "This release has mainly focused on code clean-up and rounding out of the features. Large chunks of GStreamer are API stable at this point."
Office Applications OpenOffice User SurveyA new User Survey has been put together for the OpenOffice community. OpenOffice users are encouraged to take a few minutes to fill it out.
Kernel Cousin GNUeIssue #53 of Kernel Cousin GNUe is out. Popular topics include Volunteers for General Ledger, Performance and Overhead issues with AppServer, Designer usability and architecture, Sales Tax in the USA, Mailing list for DCL tickets, and much more.
AbiWord Weekly NewsIssue #116 of the AbiWord Weekly News is out with the latest AbiWord word processor development news. This edition features a Release HackDown, which is a list of things that need fixing prior to the release of version 1.0.4.
Gnumeric 1.1.11 releasedVersion 1.1.11 of the Gnumeric spreadsheet program has been released. This is a quickie release that fixes some bugs that were introduced in Version 1.1.10, which features a longer list of changes.
Web Browsers mozillaZineThe latest mozillaZine topics include: Newsgroup Filtering Coming to a Mozilla Near You, Tree Branches for 1.2, 101 Things Mozilla Can Do That IE Can't, Independent Status Reports, Mozilla Riddled with Fixed Security Holes, Chimera 0.6 Released, New Forums Now Open!, and Mozilla Becoming More Popular at University of Houston.
Miscellaneous GnuPG 1.2.1 releasedThe latest version of the GNU Privacy Guard, GnuPG 1.2.1, is now available.
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe October 29 - November 5, 2002 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out. Topics include The 'morpion solitaire' game, ocamlnet-0.94, module namespace, PXP 1.1.93, lablglut-1.2.2, Ensemble 1.39, and the OS X distribution.
The Caml HumpThis week, the new software on The Caml Hump includes an APM driver interface, the OCamlSDL interface to the Simple DirectMedia Layer library, the 'morpion solitaire' game, a group communication toolkit called Ensemble, lablglut A GLUT 3.7 binding, the Polymorphic XML parser PXP, OCamlnet: A collection of modules for the Objective Caml language which focus on application-level Internet protocols and conventions, and GlSurf for plotting surfaces.
COBOL TinyCOBOL 0.59 releasedVersion 0.59 of TinyCOBOL has been released. Release information is in the source code.
Java Jakarta Struts: Seven Lessons from the Trenches (O'Reilly)Chuck Cavaness points out seven techniques that are useful for working with Java Struts. "After his Internet company decided to adopt the Struts framework, Chuck Cavaness spent months trying to figure out how to use it in order to build a company application. If you're a Java programmer charged with developing Web applications with servlets and JSPs, you'll find a lot of insight and valuable information in the lessons Chuck had to learn the hard way. He describes some of them here."
For Tomcat Developers, Aspire Comes in a JAR (O'Reilly)Satya Komatineni introduces Aspire on O'Reilly. "Aspire.jar is a free, open source, .jar file that can be used for declarative data access, configuration, logging, and factory services needs. For Java developers who are continuing to adopt Tomcat as their primary development platform, this .jar file could save lot of time, while providing a highly flexible data architecture."
Lisp Lisp Conference Material OnlineConference material from the recent International Lisp Conference has been made available online.
Perl The Perl Review 0.6 Published (use Perl)The November issue of The Perl Review is out. Articles include Simple RSS with Perl, by Brian d Foy, Delightful Languages: Ruby, by Mike Stok, and Who's Doing What? Analyzing Ethernet LAN Traffic, by Paul Barry.
TPJ November is Out (use Perl)Use Perl mentions that the November issue of The Perl Journal is out. The journal is available in PDF format.
This Week on Perl 5-PortersThe 28, October - 3, November 2002 edition of This Week on Perl 5-Porters is out. Topics include Problems with RedHat 8, AUTOLOAD subroutines from undefined stashes, goto considered harmful in __DIE__ handlers, B::* adjustments, Tied hashes in boolean context, and more.
PAR: A cross between JAR and Perl2exe/PerlApp (use Perl)use Perl covers the release of version 0.21 of PAR. "The Perl Archive (PAR) toolkit, like Java's JAR, is a way to pack modules and scripts into easily-deployable zip files; programs can use modules inside PAR files transparently."
On Topic (O'Reilly)Allison Randal delves into the Perl "topics" on O'Reilly. "A few concepts in Perl 6 are strange at first sight. They seem hard to understand, but it's only because they're new and different. They aren't deep mystical concepts known only to Tibetan lamas. Anyone can understand them, but it helps to start with a common-sense explanation. This article looks at the concepts of "topic" and "topicalizer". The words aren't quotes from a particularly nasty bit of Vogon poetry. They're actually common terms from the field of linguistics ... which some might say is even worse. Still, the best way to understand topic in Perl is to understand its source."
Tagmemics talk online (use Perl)Use Perl points to an online Quicktime version of Allison Randal's Tagmemics talk.
PHP PHP Weekly SummaryTopics on this week's PHP Weekly Summary include Snapshots take a short holiday, Standards friendly phpinfo(), Regular expression conversion, a new Test suite, HTML errors, A new Manual for Windows, the second 4.3.0 beta release, a Hebrew patch for Jewish calendar, and Apache 2 documentation.
Python Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!The November 4, 2002 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with a ton of useful Python projects and links.
The Daily Python-URLThis week's Daily Python-URL looks at articles on ctypes, David Beazley's Python Slides, PyMood, www.python.org wants YOU!, Psyche, ZPT basics (part 4), PyNassi, a Mini-symposium on scientific simulation in Python, Vista: a prototype for OSAF's Networked Personal Information Manager, an interview with Bram Moolenaar of VIM fame on his new project A-A-P, Grinder 3, Pl/Python and cursors in Pl/Pgsql for PostgreSQL, Dealing with user input in Python, and Apache log analysis using Python.
Ruby The Ruby Weekly NewsTopics on this week's Ruby Weekly News include A good link to read while we discuss RAA.succ, [rubyconf] want to meet Microsoft .NET guy?, and Thoughts on Ruby. New Ruby software includes Sys/Host 0.3.0, Text::Format 0.52.2, MIME::Types 1.004, RTidy/CityDesk, MUES 0.02, rpkg (test release), MiniRubyWiki, and DbTalk 0.71.
Scheme Scheme Weekly NewsThe Scheme Weekly News for November 4, 2002 is out. Topics include Metro-Schemers SIG's November meeting, SISC 1.6.3-rc, and GNU TeXmacs 1.0.0.20.
XML XML and Web Sites (O'Reilly)John E. Simpson writes about the use of XML for the building of web sites. "This is what I want to know: how to build a site using open-source (i.e. free) software that allows me to provide dynamic content. This dynamic content would include trivial things such as reporting the weather for a zip code I specify to not-so-trivial things such as allowing a user to change the associated stylesheet so that they could specify font, font-size, background color, and other properties through an interface form and these attributes would be remembered the next time the user visits the site."
Plan to use XML namespaces, Part 1 (IBM developerWorks)David Marston writes about XML namespaces on IBM's developerWorks. "This article introduces XML namespaces, explores their practical benefits, and shows you how they are used in the standard XML formats and tools defined by the W3C. Several W3C specifications are mentioned, notably XML Schema and XSLT, which offer useful ideas for using namespaces to your advantage. Best practices range from terminology usage up through system-wide design."
Make Your XML RDF-Friendly (O'Reilly)Bob DuCharme and John Cowan discuss XML-RDF issues on O'Reilly. "Suppose you're designing an XML application or maybe just writing a DTD or schema. You've followed various best practices about element and attribute names, when to use elements versus attributes, and other design issues, because you want your XML to be useful in the widest variety of situations. As RDF interest and application development grows, there's an increasing payoff in keeping RDF concerns in mind along with the other best practices as you design document types. Your documents store information, and small tweaks to their structure can allow an RDF processor to see that information as subject-predicate-object triples, which it can make good use of."
Profilers OProfile 0.4 releasedVersion 0.4 of the OProfile code profiler is available. "Featured are Pentium 4 support, and support for the new 2.5 kernel support. There are also a significant number of important bug fixes. Users are encouraged to upgrade."
Miscellaneous Single-User Subversion (O'Reilly)Rafael Garcia-Suarez writes about the Subversion revision control system on O'Reilly. "Subversion is an open source revision control system, similar in purpose to the well-known, widely deployed, and aging CVS. It is designed to provide state-of-the-art versioning, built from modern technologies. Subversion is still in development and has not reached version 1.0 yet. However, it's pretty stable and you can use it right now. In this article, we'll cover the basics of Subversion, how to install it, and how to use Subversion for personal projects."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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