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DevelopmentMajor release 1.1.3 of FLACFLAC, the Free Lossless Audio CODEC, is an audio coder/decoder application. The FLAC features document has this description:
FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec. Grossly oversimplified, FLAC is similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality. This is similar to how Zip works, except with FLAC you will get much better compression because it is designed specifically for audio, and you can play back compressed FLAC files in your favorite player (or your car or home stereo, see
supported devices) just like you would an MP3 file.
FLAC formatted audio files are supported by a long list of
software applications on many operating system platforms.
FLAC is also supported by
Rockbox, an open-source
firmware replacement for portable music players.
FLAC can be used to compress common .wav files by a 2:1 ratio. Your author has used FLAC to work on an audio archiving project, as described in this article. Version 1.1.3 of FLAC was recently announced:
Almost 2 years in the making, FLAC 1.1.3 is a major release with improved compression, improved cover art and multichannel support, better recovery for corrupted files, many new features and options in the command-line tools, and several bug fixes. For developers, the decoder and encoder APIs have also been simplified and there is a new porting guide.
The changelog lists the latest improvements, including:
System Applications Audio Projects Rivendell v0.9.77 releasedVersion 0.9.77 of Rivendell, a radio station automation system, is out. "Issues addressed include the following: Broken PLAY Transitions -- Fixes random hangs and log stopdowns between events with PLAY transition type. Audio Importation Issues -- Fixes various issues with autotrimming and level normalization. RDLogManager Timed-Start Attributes -- Fixes a problem where an event would fail receive a Hard Time 'Start Immediately' attribute if the Pre-Import Carts list was empty."
CORBA omniORB 4.1.0 and omniORBpy 3.0 releasedomniORB 4.1.0 and omniORBpy 3.0 have been announced, both are stable versions and include some new features. "I am pleased to announce that omniORB 4.1.0 and omniORBpy 3.0 are now available. omniORB is a robust, high performance CORBA implementation for C++; omniORBpy is a version for Python."
Database Software PostgreSQL 8.2 releasedPostgreSQL 8.2 has been released. There's a fair amount of new stuff in this release, including significantly improved performance, SQL aggregates, advisory locks, and more. Click below for details and download information.
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe December 3, 2006 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.
Printing PyKota 1.25 releasedVersion 1.25 of PyKota, a printer quota and accounting system, has been announced. "After more than six months of work, PyKota v1.25 Official is finally out. The most important new feature is support for the accounting of ink usage, although most of the work took place in the several releases of pkpgcounter published since this past summer."
Security Sussen 0.33 releasedVersion 0.33 of Sussen, a vulnerability and configuration issue checker, is out with bug fixes and other improvements.
Telecom 1bizCom 0.8.0.0 beta released (SourceForge)Version 0.8.0.0 beta of 1bizCom has been announced. "1bizCom is next generation web-based, multi-tenant, distributed, mulit-lingual, inbound, outbound Video enabled VoIP & VVoIP call/ contact center solution for Asterisk with Built-in phone, IVR, CRM, Predictive dialer, ACD, Chat, Mail, Fax, Video and other features. 1bC 0.8.0.0 beta is now available that includes major outbound call center software features."
Web Site Development Samizdat 0.6.0 releasedVersion 0.6.0 of Samizdat, an RDF-based engine for building collaboration and open publishing web sites, is out. "The version increase attributes to the gradual changes in 0.5.x series and incorporates almost two years worth of real-world deployment. Now that Samizdat has finally become a mature open publishing system, the road is cleared for more intrusive changes and major new features, such as free exchange and calendaring. In the way of major features, this version introduces ubiquitous message translations and RSS syndication. Many old tools are now more flexible and easier to use".
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Ardour 2.0 beta 9 releasedVersion 2.0 beta 9 of Ardour, a multi-track audio editor, has been announced. "The changelog is persnickety but fulsome".
HOgg 0.2.0 releasedVersion 0.2.0 of HOgg has been announced. "The HOgg package provides a commandline tool for manipulating Ogg files, and a corresponding Haskell library. This is the initial public release. The focus is on correctness of Ogg parsing and production. The capabilities of the hogg commandline tool are roughly on par with those of the oggz* tools[0], although hogg does not yet provide an equivalent to oggz-validate."
pyalsa - python midi wrappers and useful MIDI <-> alsa mixerPhil Frost has announced the pyalsa project. "PyAlsa is a set of wrappers for some parts of the ALSA library. Currently wrapped are some parts of the sequencer and mixer interfaces. Included with PyAlsa is midimix.py, an ALSA mixer controllable by MIDI. It has no GUI (by design) and can send feedback to move motorized faders and such when the mixer changes state in another application."
Desktop Environments GNOME 2.17.3 releasedVersion 2.17.3 of GNOME has been announced. "This is our third development release on the road towards GNOME 2.18.0, which will be released in March 2007. You all know what you have to do now. Go download it. Go compile it. Go test it. And go hack on it, document it, translate it, fix it."
GARNOME 2.17.3 announcedVersion 2.17.3 of GARNOME, the bleeding edge GNOME distribution, is out. "This release includes all of GNOME 2.17.3 plus a whole bunch of further updates. This is the third release in the unstable cycle, with more features, more fixes and yet more madness added."
GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
KDE Software AnnouncementsThe following new KDE software has been announced this week:
KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News)The December 3, 2006 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "Substantial work and improvement in the font installation KControl module. Support for OpenDocument annotations in Okular. New Interface ideas and consistency work in Amarok. KTabEdit gets better support for the 'Guitar Pro' file format. Iceland map added to KGeography. Work starts on a new keyboard rendering engine in KTouch, and on a model/view interface implementation for KVocTrain. Early work on a Phonon backend for KsCD. Speed optimisations in Strigi, with experimental probing for the feasibility of leveraging the inotify daemon. Experimental code sees Akonadi become searchable through Strigi. Kross, the multi-language application scripting framework, loses its dependency on KOffice and moves into kdelibs as the cornerstone of scripting in KDE 4."
Xorg Software AnnouncementsThe following new Xorg software has been announced this week:
Electronics gnucap 2006-12-04 releasedDevelopment snapshot 2006-12-04 of gnucap, a circuit analysis package, has been announced. "This snapshot keeps the new way devices and models are dispatched, and adds two user commands "attach" and "detach". These commands allow the user to add and remove plugins at run time. The 2006-11-snapshot added the capability to add something just by linking it, with no other changes required. This version adds the ability to do it manually at run time. Work on Verilog-AMS is going well."
Financial Applications SQL-Ledger 2.6.21 releasedVersion 2.6.21 of SQL-Ledger, a web-based accounting package, is out with a new whitelist script variable. See the What's New document for change the project history.
Multimedia XMMS2 0.2 releasedVersion 0.2 of XMMS2, the descendent of the popular XMMS music player, is out. "This release is minor features addition and we wanted to get it out before merging collections and waf migration. This (I know) has been stated before, but this time we might even do it."
Music Applications New MMA feature: melody creationExperimental auto-generation of melodies has been added to MMA. "A few discussions with one enthusiastic user and some false starts later, I've come up with the idea of having a new track I've called an ARIA. Using pattern definitions, much like those used in other MMA tracks, you set a framework for MMA to generate a melody over a given set of chord changes."
Office Applications HylaFAX 4.3.1 releasedVersion 4.3.1 of HylaFAX, a utility that can send and receive FAXes, has been released. "This release introduces a powerful new email templating system that offers an unprecedented level of control over the branding of the email messages HylaFAX sends, and so we encourage you to check it out. No release would be complete without bugfixes of course, and this one has plenty. As always, our sincerest thanks go to all who participate in the development and testing process."
Office Suites OpenOffice.org 2.1.0rc2 (OOE680_m6) is outRelease candidate 2 of OpenOffice.org 2.1.0 has been announced. See the release notes for a long list of new features.
OpenOffice.org NewsletterThe November, 2006 edition of the OpenOffice.org Newsletter is out with the latest OO.o office suite articles and events.
Video Applications xjadeo 0.4.0-rc1 announcedVersion 0.4.0-rc1 of xjadeo is available. "Xjadeo is a simple movie player that synchronizes video to an external time source such as jack transport. It is intended to aid sound composition to a video clip. This is a rewrite of the previous 0.1 release and a conclusion of the ongoing development during the last year."
Miscellaneous OmegaT 1.6.1 Update 1 releasedVersion 1.6.1 Update 1 of OmegaT is out with bug fixes. "OmegaT is a free and open source multiplatform Computer Assisted Translation tool with fuzzy matching, translation memory, keyword search, glossaries, and translation leveraging into updated projects."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe December 5, 2006 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new Caml language articles.
Haskell Haskell Communities and Activities ReportThe Eleventh edition of the Haskell Communities and Activities Report is online. "Welcome to the eleventh edition of the Haskell Communities and Activities Report a collection of entries about everything that is going on and related to Haskell in some way that appears twice a year."
Haskell Weekly NewsThe December 5, 2006 edition of the Haskell Weekly News is online. This week we see the 11th Haskell Communities and Activities Report released, Visual Haskell 0.2 is available, and a suite of new libraries and applications are announced.
Java Java Generics and Collections: Evolution, Not Revolution, Part 2 (O'ReillyNet)O'Reilly presents part two of an excerpt series by by Maurice Naftalin and Philip Wadler. "In the second part of an excerpt from Java Generics and Collections, authors Maurice Naftalin and Philip Wadler continue their study of how to adopt Java 5.0 generics in a measured, sustainable fashion. Having shown how to genericize a library while leaving the library in legacy mode, they now present three approaches to the opposite scenario: genericizing a client that uses a non-genericized library."
Perl This week on the Perl 6 mailing lists (O'Reilly)The December 3, 2006 edition of the Weekly Perl 6 mailing list summary is out with coverage of the latest Perl 6 developments.
Python Python-URL!The December 4, 2006 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!The December 6, 2006 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
XML XSLT as Pretty Printer (XML.com)Hew Wolff uses XSLT for print formatting on O'Reilly's XML.com. "Recently I was wading through some hard-to-read XML files. Art & Logic, the company I work for, was helping a client to build an Ajax-style Web interface that used XML to talk to the backend and client-side XSLT to produce the HTML. I found myself reformatting the XML by hand to make things easier and finally wondering as I hit the spacebar yet again: couldn't an XSLT style sheet do this formatting for me? I had done something similar before, so I decided to try writing that style sheet, using a test-driven approach. Some hours later I had a handy utility, and a new appreciation for some of the wrinkles of XML. Here's a cleaned-up account of what I did."
IDEs Discover the Ajax Toolkit Framework for Eclipse (IBM developerWorks)Tim McIntire introduces the Ajax Toolkit Framework for Eclipse in an IBM developerWorks article. "The Ajax Toolkit Framework (ATF) is a core piece of the new Open Ajax initiative, which aims to increase accessibility to the powerful Web programming technique through the Eclipse Foundation. The ATF extends the Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) by adding an Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) development environment for a variety of open source Ajax tool kits, including Dojo, Zimbra, and Rico. This article includes a HelloWorld example in which you install and configure the ATF, then use Eclipse and Dojo to create a basic Web application."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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![[FLAC]](/images/ns/flac.png)