Development

(De)Compress Audio Files with FLAC

FLAC, the Free Lossless Audio CODEC, is an audio application that is used for compressing and de-compressing audio files. FLAC is being developed by the Xiph.org Foundation. FLAC is similar in functionality to shorten, another lossless audio compression utility. FLAC contrasts with popular lossy compression schemes such as Vorbis and MP3. The FLAC comparison document contains a lot of useful information on FLAC and other encoder/decoder systems.

The FLAC software includes the flac command line utility, the metaflac command-line metadata editor, a library of reference encoders and decoders, and input plugins for music players.

Some of the FLAC source code has been released under a variant of the BSD license, and the rest is licensed under the GPL. The FLAC format is open, as explained by the FLAC license document: "The FLAC and Ogg FLAC formats themselves, and their specifications, are fully open to the public to be used for any purpose (the FLAC project reserves the right to set the FLAC specification and certify compliance). They are free for commercial or noncommercial use."

The FLAC features include:

• Lossless audio encoding and decoding.
• Support for 1 to 8 channels of audio.
• Support for audio from 4-32 bits/sample and 1-655350 samples/second.
• Designed for fast decoding, encoding is more processor intensive.
• Capable of supporting hardware decoders.
• Data frames are atomic, allowing seeking and editing, and improving operation in the presence of errors.
• Support for forward-compatible metadata definitions.
• Contains CD cue-sheets in the metadata.

The features documentation has an amusing take on FLAC's copy protection: "Another way to look at it is that since copy protection is futile, it really carries no information, so you might say FLAC already losslessly compresses all possible copy protection information down to zero bits!"

Details on the inner workings of FLAC can be found in the project documentation.

FLAC is used by a long list of hardware vendors, organizations and web sites. The software runs on a wide variety of platforms.

The current release of FLAC is version 1.1.2, it was released last February.

If you surf any of the numerous free (not to be confused with pirate) music sites, chances are you will need a copy of FLAC. You can download a copy here.

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MySQL 4.0.26 has been released

Version 4.0.26 of the MySQL database is available, it features bug fixes.

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MySQL 5.0.12-beta has been released

Version 5.0.12-beta of the MySQL database has been announced. "This is the eighth published Beta release in the 5.0 series. All attention will continue to be focused on fixing bugs and stabilizing 5.0 for later production release."

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PostgreSQL Weekly News

The September 11, 2005 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest new PostgreSQL database articles and events.

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SchemaSpy 1.6.0 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.6.0 of SchemaSpy, a database utility written in Java, has been announced. "SchemaSpy analyzes schema metadata, letting you click through the hierarchy of tables' parent/child relationships either graphically or through tables. It works with just about any RDBMS given an appropriate JDBC driver. SchemaSpy also identifies common schema anomalies." Changes include display of graphical relationships using Information Engineering (IE) notation, improved dot execution detection, and dot version information.

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FreeImage 3.8.0 released (SourceForge)

Version 3.8.0 of FreeImage, a library that supports several popular image formats, is available. "Release 3.8.0 brings new unicode functions, better support for 16- and 48-bit conversion, and improved internal code: the library has been updated with the new zlib (1.2.3) and libtiff (3.7.3) libraries. FreeImage is also distributed with a brand new VB6/VBA wrapper. Lastly, many bugs occuring with unusual image types have been fixed. "

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liblo 0.22 announced

Version 0.22 of Liblo, an Open Sound Control protocol library, is out with bug fixes, a new method, and more.

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Lapack++ 2.4.0 released (SourceForge)

Version 2.4.0 of Lapack++, a library for high performance linear algebra computations, is available. "In the current release, several problems with the LaIndex matrix index class have been fixed, including the renaming of ambiguous LaIndex methods. Additionally, the matrix assignments for matrices with non-unit stride has been fixed, and the documentation has been improved."

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The Tor GUI competition

The folks behind the Tor project have announced a contest to see who can design the best graphical interface for Tor. Judges for the contest include Bruce Schneier, Simson Garfinkel, and Edward Tufte. Interested people need to make their initial submission (in the form of sketches, at least) by the end of October. The one thing that is not clear is what the winners will actually get beyond the glory of victory. (LWN looked at Tor last June).

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Campsite 2.3.1 Released

Version 2.3.1 of Campsite, an open-source multilingual content management system, is available with numerous bug fixes and a couple of new features.

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CL-WIKI 0.0.5 released

Version 0.0.5 of CL-WIKI, a Wiki engine for Common Lisp, is out. "This version features locking for CL-EMB, changes to configuration files, a new start script for CMUCL, new Wiki codes, and more."

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Gallery 2.0 Released!

Version 2.0 of Gallery, a web-based photo album application, has been released. "While Gallery 2 is a very feature complete photo management system, it still lacks a few of the features found in Gallery 1. However, Gallery 2's modular design will let us quickly catch up and provide you with everything that you need."

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Magnolia 2.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 2.1 of Magnolia has been released. "Magnolia is a free, open source, Java based, J2EE deployable Enterprise Content-Management System (CMS) supporting the JCR API (JSR-170). It has an easy to use WebBrowser Interface, a clear API and a useful custom tag library for easy templating in JSP and Servlets. Magnolia Organization has released the open source, JSR-170 based Magnolia 2.1, sporting a number of bug fixes and enhancements."

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Midgard 1.7.1 released

Version 1.7.1 of the Midgard Open Source Content Management System is available. "Midgard's 1.7 branch is a major overhaul of the whole Content Management System. Besides the stable and mature Content Management features of first generation Midgard, it also ships a preview version of second generation Midgard capabilities, allowing developers to have a glimpse at the new day of Midgard2. 1.7.1 is a maintenance release and includes bug fixes and some new features."

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Silva 1.3 released

Version 1.3 of Silva, a content management system, has been announced. This release adds a number of new features and some bug fixes.

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Ardour 0.9beta30 released

A new release of Ardour, a multi-track audio editing application, is out. The release status page says: "a metric ton of changes over 0.9beta29".

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ReZound 0.12.1 beta released

Version 0.12.1 beta of ReZound, a graphical audio file editor, has been announced. "This release is mainly meant to address gcc4 issues and fix a few minor bugs."

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Zimbra Collaboration Suite Open Source Project Beta Launch

Zimbra has launched an open-source collaboration suite. "Zimbra is a community for building and maintaining next generation collaboration technology. Currently, this technology is available as a beta version. At Zimbra, our goal is to make e-mail, calendar, contacts and other communications technologies the best they can be. We believe that by opening the technology to the community we will insure that we can maximize innovation, scale and the ability to co-exist with existing messaging systems."

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GNOME Software Announcements

The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:

• GARNOME 2.12.0 (GNOME 2.12.0 update)
• gnome-phone-manager 0.6 (new features and bug fixes)
• GnomePythonExtras 2.12.0 (stable release)
• GShow TV 0.6.0 (new features)
• gtkmm and glibmm 2.8 (new features and bug fixes)
• libxml++ 2.12.0 (new features)
• Shrinking Man 0.1 (initial release)
• vtkmm 1.1.0 (initial release)

You can find more new GNOME software releases at gnomefiles.org.

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KDE Software Announcements

The following new KDE software has been announced this week:

• amaroK 1.3.1 (new features and bug fixes)
• Dvzeec 0.2.1 (bug fixes)
• Fraqtive 0.3.1 (new features and translation work)
• K3b 0.12.4 (bug fixes)
• K3b 0.12.4a (compile fix)
• K3DSurf 0.5.3 (new features)
• kio-locate 0.4.2-tvo0.2 (new features and bug fixes)
• KlamAV-0.30 (new features)
• KlamAV 0.30.1 (security fix)
• ksudoku 0.2 (new features)
• KTranslator 0.3 (new features and translation work)
• Kuroo 0.70.1 (bug fixes)
• Maxemum TV-Guide 5.9.12 (new features and bug fixes)
• Scribus 1.2.3 (new features and bug fixes)
• Tellico 1.0 (new features)

You can find more new KDE software releases at kde-apps.org.

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Quickies: Qt4 Tutorials, KDE 3.5 Alpha Review, Kontact Introduction (KDE.News)

KDE.News presents a Quickies roundup of articles on various KDE applications. "The Qt 4 Resource Centre has tutorials for A Zoomable Picture Viewer and Spying on Signals. This KDE 3.5 Alpha review shows us some new features coming soon. Alternative KDE file manager Krusader found themselves new web hosting. Linux.com introduces us to Kontact. Real-time 3D strategy game Boson made a new release with extra smooth graphics and multiplayer support..."

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Scribus 1.2.3 Released

Version 1.2.3 of Scribus, a desktop publishing application, has been announced. "The 1.2.3 release is focused on minor enhancements, bugfixes and additional documentation."

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wxPdfDocument 0.5 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.5 of wxPdfDocument has been announced. "wxPdfDocument allows wxWidgets applications to generate PDF documents. The code is a port of FPDF - a free PHP class for generating PDF files - to C++ using the wxWidgets library. Several add-on PHP scripts found on the FPDF web site are incorporated into wxPdfDocument. Embedding of PNG, JPEG, GIF and WMF images is supported."

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Open Clip Art Library Release 0.17

Release 0.17 of the Open Clip Art Library, a collection of images, is available. This release passes the 5000 image mark and includes a new Clip Art Browser, among other changes.

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Bygfoot Football Manager 1.9.1 is released (SourceForge)

Version 1.9.1 of Bygfoot Football (Soccer) Manager has been released. "This release fixes a couple of bugs and adds minor feature enhancements, such as Youth Academy, Sponsorship money and Memorable matches."

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MetalMech 0.2.3 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.2.3 of Metal Mech is out with bug fixes. "Metal Mech is a Web-based mass multiplayer game of battle between robots and space exploration. It is a game of strategy, economics, role-playing, and combat. Each player can handle their own war robot and battle against other players to be the Emperor of the Universe. Players battle against each other for resources, energy, money, buildings, and more."

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Crystal Space New Pseudo-Stable Release (SourceForge)

A new Pseudo-Stable Release of Crystal Space has been announced, it features bug fixes. "Crystal Space is a portable Open Source 3D engine which lots of features. It fully supports OpenGL and uses various OpenGL features like stencil shadows, vertex and fragment shaders (shaders through ARB extensions and CG), and others."

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SPTK 3.0 announced

Version 3.0 of SPTK, the Simply Powerful Toolkit, has been announced. "The new version, SPTK 3.0, is quite different from SPTK before 2.4. All the favorite classes CString, CStringList, CStringMap, etc.. are replaced with std::string, std::vector, std::map and relatives. So, if you are going to migrate your old SPTK applications to the new one, it's going to take you a while."

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SwiXAT 0.4.5 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.4.5 of SwiXAT, a Swing-based authoring tool for the quick and easy development of graphical UI Java applications, is available. "This new version adds the support for EventListeners tags for java.awt.event, java.beans and javax.swing.event; the support for JFileChooser's FileFilter was added; the optional TreeCellRenderer tag was added for JTrees. Finally, the user's guide has been updated with the documentation about the new features."

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Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 Beta 1 Released (MozillaZine)

Version 1.5 Beta 1 of Mozilla Thunderbird, an email client, has been announced. "This is the first beta release of the next major Thunderbird update and is aimed at testers, and extension/theme authors. The final release of Thunderbird 1.5, which will be widely promoted to end-users, is scheduled for later this year along with Firefox 1.5. "New features include an improved software update system, spell check as you type, phishing detection, podcasting, deleting attachments, reply and forward actions for mail filters, Kerberos authentication, auto save as draft, and many security enchancements.""

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FreeMED 0.8.0 and REMITT 0.3 announced (LinuxMedNews)

Version 0.8.0 of the FreeMED electronic medical record and practice management system has been announced, along with a new version of REMITT, an electronic billing package. Changes to FreeMed include multiple screen layouts and configurations, a new accounts receivable system, a claims manager for tracking payments from insurance companies, configurable patient notifications featuring compatibility with REMITT 0.3, advanced access control list support, a new fax system, and more.

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multimidicast 1.0 announced

Version 1.0 of multimidicast has been announced. "I have released the first version of yet another MIDI over network/ethernet software. My version uses the Alsa sequencer interface to provide 20 ports for read/write access. Data is sent with UDP multicast datagrams so sending/receiving is subscription and configureless. As a bonus this software interoperates with a windows software called ipMIDI, so you can mix windows/linux MIDI setups."

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swh-plugins 0.4.14 released

Release 0.4.14 of swh-plugins, a set of audio plugin effects, is available. It features gcc4 compatibility and bug fixes.

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OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 released

Version 1.1.5 of the OpenOffice.org office suite is out. "OpenOffice.org 1.1.5 introduces import support for documents, spreadsheets and presentations in OpenDocument format. The OpenDocument format is an XML based international office document standard approved by OASIS, the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. XML based, the OpenDocument format enables the free exchange of data between compliant software packages."

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wxMaxima 0.6.2 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.6.2 of wxMaxima has been announced. "wxMaxima is a cross-platform graphical front-end for the computer algebra system Maxima based on wxWidgets. It provides nice display of mathematical output and easy access to Maxima functions through menus and dialogs."

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Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 1 Released (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine reports that the first Firefox 1.5 beta is out. "New features include an improved software update system, faster Back and Forward navigation, a feature for clearing private browsing data, drag-and-drop reordering of browser tabs, a redesigned Options/Preferences window and better popup blocking. Web standards support is also improved, with support for Scalable Vector Graphics, JavaScript 1.6 and more CSS."

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Developing Firefox Extensions with GNU/Linux (ars technica)

Ryan Paul, Ian Smith-Heisters and Kris Kowal have written a guide on writing Firefox Extensions. "In this edition of Linux.Ars, Kris will teach you how to use command line build tools to construct a complete Firefox extension, I will teach you how to add context menu items to Nautilus using the Nautilus Actions extension, and Ian introduces an LDAP utility called Luma."

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SeaMonkey 1.0 Alpha Release Candidates Available (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine has announced the availability of Alpha release candidates for SeaMonkey, a web browser, e-mail and newsgroup client suite.

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AbiWord-2.3.6 Beta 3 Released (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org has the announcement for AbiWord-2.3.6 Beta 3. "The AbiWord team is happy to announce AbiWord v2.3.6 for your stress-testing pleasure. This release is virtually identical to what will become AbiWord 2.4, but still contains some bugs that we'd like to see squashed over the next few days."

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FRET version 0.0.5 Released (SourceForge)

Version 0.0.5 of FRET, a command line tool for dentifying data structures and patterns in files, has been announced. "FRET, the file format analysis tool, has taken another step forward with the release of version 0.0.5. This bug-fix release has resolved some issues that were identified since the last release."

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Joone 1.2.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.2.1 of Joone, a neural net framework for creating, trainnig and testing artificial neural networks, is out. Changes include support for the Groovy language, a new logarithmic transformation capability, the ability to save data as XML, and bug fixes.

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RoadMap 1.0.11 released

Version 1.0.11 of RoadMap, a car navigation system for Linux and the Pocket PC, is out. "This release includes a lot of bug fixes, and some major new features."

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Caml Weekly News

The September 13, 2005 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with the latest Caml language articles.

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Haskell Weekly News

The September 13, 2005 edition of the Haskell Weekly News is online with the latest Haskell news. Topics covered this week include several new releases, GHC 6.4.1 plans, and discussions about monads and functional programming.

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Building J2EE Projects with Maven (O'ReillyNet)

Vincent Massol works with J2EE applications under Maven on O'Reilly "Using the example of a Petstore app, Massol shows you how to generate J2EE artifacts (EJB JARs, WARs, EARs) with Maven. He is coauthor of Maven: A Developer's Notebook."

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GNU CLISP 2.35 released

Version 2.35 of GNU CLISP has been announced. "Changes in this version are related to socket shutdown, character encoding and case, compiled files, streams and a new translation of user interface messages."

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ContextL 0.1 released

Version 0.1 of ContextL, a Common Lisp CLOS extension for Context-oriented programming, is out. "This version eliminates a restriction on layered functions method naming, adds WITH-INACTIVE-LAYERS, and removes some unnecessary declarations."

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PHP 5.0.5 Released

Version 5.0.5 of PHP has been released. "This version is a maintenance release, that contains numerous bug fixes, including security fixes to vulnerabilities found in the XMLRPC package. All users of PHP 5.0 are encouraged to upgrade to this version." See the Change Log for details.

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Introducing IPython (NewsForge)

Conrad Koziol introduces IPython, an enhanced Interactive Python shell, in a NewsForge article. "Python, an interpretive programming language that combines elegant code with a powerful object-oriented approach and many modules, has been around since the early 1990s. To make Python more productive, Fernando Perez in 2001 began working on IPython, an enhanced interactive Python shell with improvements such as history caching, profiles, object information, and session logging, as a replacement for the default interpreter."

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Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The September 13, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with the latest Python language articles.

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Ruby Weekly News

The September 11th, 2005 edition of the Ruby Weekly News brings you the latest discussions from the ruby-talk mailing list and comp.lang.ruby newsgroup.

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Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

The September 14, 2005 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with the latest Tcl/Tk news and resources.

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Automating Stylesheet Creation (O'Reilly)

Bob DuCharme discusses automatic stylesheet creation on O'Reilly. "Since the early days of XSLT, many have asked whether it was possible to automate the creation of XSLT stylesheets. The general idea of filling out a form or dragging some icons around, then clicking a button and seeing a productive stylesheet generated from your input has always appealed to people. However, the problem of generating working XSLT syntax from the result of someone clicking on pull-down menus and radio buttons has not attracted many takers."

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