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DevelopmentThe release of GNU Privacy Guard version 2.0.0 GNU Privacy Guard (GnuPG) is an open-source encryption utility that was started in 1997 as a replacement for the commercial application PGP. GnuPG runs on a wide variety of operating system platforms.
GnuPG is the GNU project's complete and free implementation of the OpenPGP standard as defined by RFC2440. GnuPG allows to encrypt and sign your data and communication, features a versatile key manag[e]ment system as well as access modules for all kind of public key directories. GnuPG, also known as GPG, is a command line tool with features for easy integration with other applications. A wealth of frontend applications and libraries are available.
GnuPG-2 has a different architecture than GnuPG-1 (e.g. 1.4.5) in that
it splits up functionality into several modules. However, both
versions may be installed alongside without any conflict. In fact,
the gpg version from GnuPG-1 is able to make use of the gpg-agent as
included in GnuPG-2 and allows for seamless passphrase caching. The
advantage of GnuPG-1 is its smaller size and the lack of dependency on
other modules at run and build time. We will keep maintaining GnuPG-1
versions because they are very useful for small systems and for server
based applications requiring only OpenPGP support.
New features in GnuPG version 2 include:
The GnuPG project has succeeded in filling an important space in the open-source tool collection. The release of version 2 shows that the project is moving forward with the addition of a lot of new functionality.
System Applications Database Software Firebird 2.0 released Version 2.0 of the Firebird relational DBMS has been announced. "This new version offers many new enhancements: support for 64 bit Linux (64 bit support for other platforms to follow shortly), table sizes above 30Gb, enhanced Unicode support, improved optimizer, improved security, execution of dynamic SQL inside stored procedures, greater index key length, and a new incremental backup facility."
PostgreSQL 8.2 beta 3 is ready for testing Version 8.2 beta 3 of the PostgreSQL DBMS has been announced. "This beta includes a substantial fix to a WAL issue, so users are urged to test Beta3 using PITR and to try power-failure tests."
Interoperability Samba 3.0.23d released Version 3.0.23d of Samba has been announced, it adds stability fixes for winbindd and portability fixes for the FreeBSD and Solaris platforms. "This is the latest stable release of Samba. This is the version that production Samba servers should be running for all current bug-fixes."
Libraries Cairo 1.2.6 released Version 1.2.6 of Cairo, a 2D graphics library with support for multiple output devices, is available. The change log states: "This is the third bug fix release in the 1.2 series, coming less than two months after the 1.2.4 release made on August 18. The 1.2.4 release turned out to be a pretty solid one, except for a crasher bug when forwarding an X connection where the client and the server have varying byte orders, eg. from a PPC to an i686. Other than that, various other small bugs have been fixed."
Mail Software SIEVE Language for Mail Filtering Quick Guide Alina Popescu has released a quick guide on SIEVE, a mail filtering language. "SIEVE is a language created and used for mail filtering that broadens the filtering options generally provided by mail servers or Antispam/Antivirus applications. They work basically by comparing different keys using different comparators and comparison methods, against headers of a mail message. Based on the result of the comparison, you can apply different actions to the corresponding mail message, i.e. reject, discard, redirect, etc."
Networking Tools Bigboos 1.3 released Version 1.3 of Bigboos is out. "BigBoos is one of the fully open source network monitoring System from YinuxPRO (SuYash LinuxPROjects).It uses standard unix ping command to check the status of hosts as well as the snmp if the ping returns 100% loss."
Web Site Development mnoGoSearch 3.2.40 released Version 3.2.40 of mnoGoSearch, a web site search engine, is out with numerous bug fixes. See the changelog for more information.
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Ardour 2.0 beta 8 released Version 2.0 beta 8 of Ardour, a multi-track audio workstation package, is out: "Another solid week of bug fixing leads us to 2.0 beta 8." See the release announcement for more details.
Snd-ls V0.9.7.12 and jack_capture V0.3.9 released Version 0.9.7.7 of the sound editor Snd-ls, and version 0.3.9 of the JACK recording application jack_capture, have been announced.
Desktop Environments GNOME 2.17.2 released Version 2.17.2 of the GNOME desktop environment is available. "This is our second development release on our road towards GNOME 2.18.0, which will be released in March 2007. New features are coming in at a nice rate, and that's great. A lot of bug fixes too. And some crashers are appearing here and there: that's the fun of unstable releases!"
GARNOME 2.17.2 released Version 2.17.2 of GARNOME, the bleeding edge GNOME distribution, is out. "This release includes all of GNOME 2.17.2 plus a whole bunch of updates that were released after the GNOME freeze date. This is the second release in the unstable cycle, with more features, more fixes and yet more madness added."
GNOME Software Announcements The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
D-Bus 1.0 'Blue Bird' Released (KDE.News) KDE.News takes a look at D-Bus version 1.0. "D-Bus 1.0 ("Blue Bird"), the Freedesktop.org inter-process messaging system has just been released. A collaborative effort between industry and open source developers, D-Bus was created to allow arbitrary applications to easily communicate with each other and exchange data. An additional system daemon allows for communication with system services. D-Bus is known to work on all Unix platforms and has also been ported to Mac OS X, while a Windows port is in progress. This makes D-Bus the ideal messaging system for KDE 4."
KDE Software Announcements The following new KDE software has been announced this week:
KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News) The November 12, 2006 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "KViewShell is renamed Ligature. Okular gets support for Text and Line annotations. KSame and Konquest start their conversion to SVG graphics. Marble gets enhanced support for presenting and displaying geographical data interactively, and showing national flags. Mailody, the alternative email client, continues to develop at a rapid pace. Telepathy support in Kopete starts to emerge from experiment towards a usable implementation. Kile gets scripting support, with improvements to scripting across KOffice. KPresenter receives export to text document (OpenDocument) functionality. Improvements in the Magnatune music store facility in Amarok."
Xfce 4.4 Release Candidate 2 (4.3.99.2) released Release Candidate 2 of Xfce 4.4, a light weight desktop environment, is out. "The second and hopefully last release candidate of the Xfce 4.4 desktop is now available for download. This release focuses primarily on bug fixes and optimizations. Please refer to the changelog for a list of fixes and changes. Please help us making Xfce 4.4 the best Xfce release ever, download it, try it, help us fixing it!"
Electronics Covered 0.4.8 released Stable version 0.4.8 of Covered, a Verilog code coverage analysis tool, is out "This is a bug fix release only."
gSpiceUI 0.8.90 announced Version 0.8.90 of gSpiceUI, a GUI for two electronic circuit simulation engines, has been announced. It adds several new features and fixes some bugs.
OpenTech CDROM 1.6.1 released Version 1.6.1 of the OpenTech CDROM project is available. "OpenTech 1.6.1. is ready with 10 CDs full of new designs, tools and even some books and tutorials in topics like, wireless, VLSI, VHDL, and basic electronics." The CDROM set costs 77 Euros.
Games Welcome Castlegard (WorldForge) The WorldForge virtual world project has added a new castle. "Kai finally got around to place jayr’s fantastic castle on the mason map. Now people can start exploring the castle, and we can get started adding some gameplay. Castle defence anyone?"
GUI Packages wxWidgets 2.8.0 RC 1 released Version 2.8.0 RC 1 of wxWidgets, a cross-platform GUI toolkit, is out, the announcement states: "A few minor bugs have been fixed since 2.7.2; we will release 2.8.0 in a couple of weeks, and as ever, testing of this release candidate will be appreciated. "
wxPython 2.7.2.0 is out Version 2.7.2.0 of wxPython, a blending of the wxWidgets C++ class library with the Python programming language, has been announced. "This is expected to be the last stepping stone in the path to the next stable release series, 2.8.x. We're driving full speed ahead in order to get 2.8.0 included with OSX 10.5, and so far we are very close to being on schedule. This release has some house-keeping style changes, as well as some user-contributed patches and also the usual crop of bug fixes."
xorg-server 1.1.99.902 announced Version 1.1.99.902 of xorg-server is out with a long list of bug fixes and new features.
Interoperability Wine 0.9.25 released Version 0.9.25 of Wine has been announced. Changes include: Many more fixes for installer support, many MSHTML improvements, support for NTLMv2, RPC over TCP improvements and lots of bug fixes.
Mail Clients Claws Mail 2.6.0 released Claws Mail, the mail client formerly known as Sylpheed-claws, has released version 2.6.0. There's a number of new features, as well as the new name, which, according to the web site, is "...mainly due to different goals and the fact that syncing both codebases doesn't happen anymore." So it seems that the separation from Sylpheed is complete.
Medical Applications Release of OpenClinica 2.0 (LinuxMedNews) LinuxMedNews has an announcement for OpenClinica 2.0, an open-source clinical research software platform. "OpenClinica is an open source web-based software platform that enables sponsors and investigators to manage clinical research data in multi-site studies. It facilitates protocol configuration, design of case report forms, electronic data capture, and study/data management. OpenClinica supports HIPAA and 21 CFR Part 11 guidelines and is designed as a strictly standards-based, extensible, and modular platform."
Office Suites New OpenOffice.org charting features Some new OpenOffice.org charting capabilities have been announced, new features include: a new chart wizard, flexible source ranges, easier settings for 3D charts, enhanced logarithmic scales, pie segment offset for 3D charts, enhanced automatic scaling, improved automatic axis label layout, improved selection handling, regression curves are available for 2D line charts, 2D bar and column charts and 2D area charts, and several new sub chart types.
Video Applications Announcing KungFu 0.1.0 KungFu 0.1.0 has been announced. "KungFu is a GStreamer-based DVD ripper written in Python. It transcodes DVD tiles to Theora/Vorbis. It is more or less complete, but still lacks audio track language selection, subtitle support, and meta data writing. The GUI is done with GTK."
Web Browsers Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 released (MozillaZine) Version 1.5.0.8 of both the Mozilla Firefox browser and Mozilla Thunderbird email client have been announced. "Security and Stability updates for Mozilla products based on the Gecko 1.8 branch have been released. Firefox 1.5.0.x will be maintained with security and stability updates until April 2007. All users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to Firefox 2."
SeaMonkey 1.0.6 and SeaMonkey 1.1 Beta Released (MozillaZine) Two new versions of Seamonkey have been announced. "Seamonkey 1.0.6, a security and stability update for the all-in-one Internet Suite has been released. The Seamonkey 1.0.6 Release Notes have more information. SeaMonkey 1.1 Beta, a version aimed at developers and testers has also been released. New features include tab previews, spell check, an e-mail tagging system, an improved Linux startup script, better new mail notifications and an updated Chatzilla IRC client."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly News The November 14, 2006 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new Caml language articles.
Haskell Haskell Weekly News The November 14, 2006 edition of the Haskell Weekly News is online. This week we see the announcement of a Haskell to Javascript compiler project, and the overhaul of GHC's typeclass machinery is complete.
Perl Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary (O'Reilly) The November 5-11, 2006 edition of the Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary is out with coverage of the latest Perl 6 discussions.
Python Python FAQ heading toward 1.0 release A call for review has gone out for the semi-official Python FAQ, questions and answers are being reviewed in preparation for the upcoming 1.0 release.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! The November 13, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! The November 14, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
XML Cracks in the Foundation (XML.com) Micah Dubinko reports on some controversy surrounding XML namespaces. "The last week in October wasn't the smoothest for the W3C HTML Working Group. First, a notable blog entry criticized their handling of XML namespaces, leading to a formal objection. On top of that, Tim Berners-Lee blogged that new and separate HTML and forms Working Groups would be chartered to "incrementally" update HTML, in contrast with the groups' present approach. More on that later. As has always been the case, XML Annoyances aims to stimulate discussion on XML topics by challenging entrenched views. This article digs beneath the surface issues and encourages others to do the same."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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