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DevelopmentInterview with three OpenChange project developers The OpenChange project recently announced the "MAILOOK" release, which provides a library to access Microsoft Exchange servers using native protocols. We recently got a chance to catch up with Julien Kerihuel, Ali Mdidech and Fabien Lementec from the OpenChange project.LWN: Can you tell us about OpenChange and what the current library is capable of?
Julien Kerihuel: The OpenChange MAPI library (libmapi) provides
interoperability with Microsoft Exchange servers, which means being
able to communicate with Exchange in the same way that Outlook
does. Our primary objective in providing the MAILOOK release is to
make our implementation available to beta testers so we can validate
the design, evaluate libmapi code scalability and reliability; and
thus fix possible inconsistencies before we go to much further in the
development process.
This release is a very important step in the project roadmap. It is the first time that we've provided code which can be used in stand-alone applications and which is generic enough to perform most of the messaging operations that final users would deal with, such as:
These features will be included in the next library release, planned for early June 2007. The rest of the interview is available here.
System Applications Database Software MySQL 5.1.18 beta has been released Version 5.1.18 beta of the MySQL DBMS has been announced, it adds new functionality and bug fixes.
MySQL Community Server 5.0.41 has been released Version 5.0.41 of MySQL Community Server has been released, it features bug fixes and some new capabilities.
PostgreSQL Weekly News The May 13, 2007 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.
Interoperability Samba 3.0.25 Available for Download Samba 3.0.25 has been released. "This is the first production release of the Samba 3.0.25 code base and is the version that servers should be run for for all current bug fixes." There are new features and security fixes in this version.
Printing Common UNIX Printing System 1.2.11 announced Version 1.2.11 of CUPS, the Common UNIX Printing System, has been announced. "CUPS 1.2.11 fixes several build system, printing, PPD, and IPP conformance issues. It also fixes a crash bug in the scheduler when printing to files in non-existent directories."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Ardour 2.0.2 released Version 2.0.2 of Ardour, a multi-track digital audio workstation, is out. "There was an error in the source tarball released as 2.0.1. We are therefore releasing 2.0.2 as a fix for this. The OS X DMG of 2.0.1 does NOT have this error in it, there is no reason to upgrade if you have downloaded the DMG of 2.0.1 2.0.2 is identical to 2.0.1 except that it actually includes all all the fixes listed below rather than all but one." See the change log for more information.
LASH 0.5.3 announced Version 0.5.3 of LASH, a session management system for JACK and ALSA audio applications, is out. "This release features automatic auto-launch of the daemon by default, compilation fixes for certain machines, and various bug fixes."
Sonic Visualiser 1.0 released Version 1.0 of Sonic Visualiser has been announced. "Sonic Visualiser contains advanced waveform and spectrogram viewers, as well as editors for many sorts of audio annotations. Besides visualisation, it can make and play selections based on the locations of automatically detected features, seamlessly loop playback of single or multiple noncontiguous regions, synthesise annotations for playback, and slow down playback while retaining display synchronisation."
Business Applications Jitterbit 1.2 released Version 1.2 of Jitterbit has been announced, it adds several new capabilities. "Jitterbit is an open source client and server designed to give end users a quick and easy way to design, configure, test, and deploy integration solutions. Connect your Applications & Data Organizations can use Jitterbit to connect data from ERP and CRM applications, data warehouses, online marketplaces, and much more. Jitterbit supports Web Services, XML Files, HTTP/S, FTP, ODBC, Flat and Hierarchic file structures and file shares."
CAD Thirty-sixth release of PythonCAD announced Release 36 of PythonCAD has been announced. "The thirty-sixth release of PythonCAD is primarily a bug-fix release. A number or bugs relating to saving and loading user preferences that appeared in the thirty-fifth release have been fixed. Also, several number of bugs involving entity redrawing have been corrected, as well as bugs regarding the typing of various commands within the text entry box in the display."
Data Visualization RRDtool 1.2.23 released Version 1.2.23 of RRDtool, a time series data visualization package, is out. RRDtool is: "The industry standard data logging and graphing application. Use it to write your custom monitoring shell scripts or create whole applications using its Perl, Python or PHP bindings." See the CHANGES document for release details.
Desktop Environments GNOME Software Announcements The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
KDE 4.0-alpha1 Released: "Knut" The KDE Community has announced the immediate availability of the first alpha release of the KDE Desktop Environment, version 4.0. "KDE 4.0 Alpha 1 marks the end of the addition of large features to the KDE base libraries and shifts the focus onto integrating these new technologies into applications and the base desktop. The next few months will be spent on bringing the desktop into shape after two years of frenzied development leaving very little untouched."
KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News) The May 13, 2007 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "The KOffice ODF weekend sprint takes place in Berlin. KTuberling, the much-loved "potato man" game, is saved for inclusion in kdegames for KDE 4, with the start of porting to SVG and other general improvements. Rewrite of KPoker replaces the previous implementation. Xinerama improvements in the KWin window manager. Continued work on Konsole. Usability and other improvements in KGPG. More progress in the Music Notation Flake shape Summer of Code project in KOffice. Version 2 of the KDChart library imported into KDE SVN to allow KChart of KOffice 2 to be based upon it. The "systemsettings" set of utilities begins to be ported to KDE 4...."
HIG Hunting Season Now Open (KDE.News) KDE.News has announced the HIG Hunting Season. "The HIG Hunting Season is an experiment to include the community into the search for obvious infringements of the KDE Human Interface Guidelines. As those are not fully finished yet, the HCI working group is currently preparing HIG checklists that help to uncover small potatoes that disturb a seamless use experience, such as inconsistencies among applications, incomplete keyboard access, missing feedback, or overloaded configuration dialogs, toolbars or menus. In short: We are asking the community to report user interface and interaction issues that can be stated like bugs."
Konch 1.0 released Version 1.0 of Konch has been announced. "Konch is a versatile utility that allows you to create system tray* applets using standard scripting languages such as bash, Perl, or Python. You control Konch via command-line parameters, DCOP, or your script's STDOUT." See the release notes for a list of new features and bug fixes in this version.
KDE Software Announcements The following new KDE software has been announced this week:
Xorg Software Announcements The following new Xorg software has been announced this week:
Financial Applications SQL-Ledger 2.8.4 released Version 2.8.4 of SQL-Ledger, a web-based double entry accounting/ERP system, is out. New features include: support for foreign currency GL transactions, the ability to specify foreign exchange rates for every transaction and payment and add/edit/delete default exchange rates.
Interoperability Wine 0.9.37 released Version 0.9.37 of Wine has been announced. Changes include: MSI automation with JScript/VBScript support, Various MSHTML improvements, The usual assortment of Direct3D fixes, Support for a few more exe protection schemes and Lots of bug fixes.
Wine Weekly Newsletter The May 14, 2007 edition of the Wine Weekly Newsletter is online with coverage of the Wine project. Topics include: Wine 0.9.37, No Wine on Dells, Kidney Stones Suck, Direct3D Milestone, Activation Context, USB Support in Wine, Mandriva RPMs, and Improving Debugging Performance.
Music Applications Amuc version 1.4 released Version 1.4 of Amuc, the Amsterdam Music Composer, is out. "Amuc is a light-weight tool for composing and playing music. 'Light-weight' in the sense of not needing graphical or other toolkits, however it's very fast and offers useful features to help the inexperienced composer."
nova 0.00.4 released Version 0.00.4 of nova, a computer music system with a dataflow syntax, is out. "the main improvement over nova-0.00.3 is a working graphical patcher interface, lots of bug fixes to improve the stability and a port to osx ..."
Office Applications HylaFAX 4.3.4 released Version 4.3.4 of HylaFAX, a fax modem control application, has been announced. "The 4.3 branch of HylaFAX has been in stable mode since 4.3.3. Any release since then is strictly a bugfix release, and as such, is a recommended upgrade."
Web Browsers My eBay Fox for Firefox (MozillaZine) MozillaZine looks at My eBay Fox, a Firefox extension for working with the eBay auction site. "My eBay Fox is a customized version of Firefox that helps people use eBay more effectively. It includes an eBay Toolbar for Firefox, which gives users easy access to all of the important parts of eBay and a handy set of tools like price comparison, consumer reviews, and shipping information. The coolest part, though, is that when you do a search in eBay, the toolbar will go out and find preview images for all the items that don't have them, so every item in the list of results will have a preview next to it, even if the seller didn't pay for one."
Raising Mozilla on Linux Runtime Requirements Proposed (MozillaZine) MozillaZine takes a look at a weblog post by Mike Connor on Mozilla's runtime requirements. "Historically, Mozilla on Linux has had fairly conservative requirements, employing runtime checks and workarounds to support older libraries or work around known bugs. While this means that Mozilla applications will run on older Linux distributions, it has led to some compromises and ugly hacks in the Mozilla code, making it harder to maintain."
Languages and Tools C GCC 4.2.0 Released GCC 4.2.0 is out. This is a major release with a number of new features including OpenMP support, various new optimization options, a new warning for "suspicious" address usage, and much more; see this page for a full list.
Caml Caml Weekly News The May 15, 2007 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new Caml language articles.
Java The Process Virtual Machine (O'Reilly) Tom Baeyens and Miguel Valdes Faura discuss the Process Virtual Machine on O'Reilly's OnJava.com. "This article will show how both business analysts and developers can benefit from workflow, Business Process Management (BPM), and orchestration. We'll explain the core essence of workflow engines in simple terms, and how this can be leveraged in a Java environment. While every self-respecting developer knows the relational model behind databases, such a model is absent for workflow engines. The Process Virtual Machine will provide that missing piece."
Perl Parrot 0.4.12 released Version 0.4.12 of Parrot has been announced. "On behalf of the Parrot team, I’m proud to announce Parrot 0.4.12 “Of the Caribbean.” Parrot is a virtual machine aimed at running all dynamic languages."
Everyday Perl 6 (O'Reilly) Jonathan Scott Duff looks at changes coming with the long-awaited Perl 6. "Perl 6 will soon be here. How will programming in Perl 6 be different from programming in Perl 5 for your average Perl programmer? The answer is: very different yet very much the same. A Perl 6 program viewed at arm's length will look much like a Perl 5 program viewed at arm's length. Programming in Perl 6 will still feel like programming in Perl. What will change however, is that Perl 6 will enable programmers to be more expressive by giving them more tools to work with (making easy things easy) and allowing them to be more precise in their expressions."
PostScript GPL Ghostscript 8.57 announced Version 8.57 of GPL Ghostscript, a PostScript interpreter, has been announced. "This is a stable release in the 8.5x series. In addition to the usual bug fixes, there are specific performance and quality improvements in the areas of patterns, shading and image filtering. Also new in this release is an implementation of the Well Tempered Screening algorithm in an output device, using Graeme Gill's IMDI library for efficient color mapping."
Python Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links The May 16, 2007 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
Tcl/Tk Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links The May 16, 2007 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
XML XML Parser Benchmarks: Part 1 (O'Reilly) Matthias Farwick and Michael Hafner compare XML parsers in part one of an O'Reilly article series. "Five years after the introduction of SOAP 1.0, XML parsing is still the main bottleneck in web service performance. In search of components for a high performance web service security solution, we have executed benchmarks for various XML parsers in Java and C. These benchmarks cover event-driven parser models like SAX and StAX, object model parsers like DOM, and also new breeds of XML parsers like Apache's AXIOM, which only builds parts of the document tree in the memory."
Bug Trackers Bugzilla 3.0 Released (MozillaZine) MozillaZine covers the release of Bugzilla 3.0. "The Bugzilla 3.0 release announcement lists some of the main new features added to this version, including custom fields, support for the Apache mod_perl module, per-product permissions, an XML-RPC interface and the ability to create and edit bugs by email."
Cross Compilers SDCC 2.7.0 RC1 released Version 2.7.0 RC1 of SDCC, a retargetable, optimizing ANSI - C compiler that targets the Intel 8051, Maxim 80DS390, Zilog Z80 and the Motorola 68HC08 based MCUs, is out. "SDCC 2.7.0 Release Candidate 1 source, doc and binary packages for x86 Linux, 32 bit Windows and ppc Mac OS X are available". See the release schedule document for more information.
Libraries RFIDIOt version 0.1m released Version 0.1m of RFIDIOt, the open source python RFID library, is out with some new capabilities and bug fixes.
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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