Development

The Speex RC3 Speech Codec

Version RC3 of Speex, an open-source speech codec, has been released. A codec, short for coder/decoder, is a system for digitizing and compressing audio speech data. Codecs can be implemented in both hardware and software. Historically, codecs have their roots in telephony systems.

The goals of the Speex project are as as follows:

"The Speex project aims to build a patent-free, Open Source/Free Software voice codec. Unlike other codecs like MP3 and Ogg Vorbis, Speex is designed to compress voice at bitrates in the 2-45kbps range. Possible applications include VoIP, internet audio streaming, archiving of speech data (e.g. voice mail), and audio books. In some sense, it is meant to be complementary to the Ogg Vorbis codec."

The Speex FAQ clarifies the different goals of Speex and Ogg Vorbis: "Ogg is a ``container format'' for holding multimedia data. Vorbis is an audio codec that uses Ogg to store its bit-streams as files, hence the name Ogg Vorbis. Speex also uses the Ogg format to store its bit-streams as files, so technically they would be ``Ogg Speex'' files (I prefer to call them just Speex files). One difference with Vorbis however, is that Speex is less tied with Ogg."

The Speex site lists the following features:

• Designed for speech compression.
• Optimized for Voice over IP (VoIP) instead of cell phones.
• Free of patents and royalties.
• Licensed under the Xiph.org variant of the BSD license.
• A part of the GNU project.
• Wide and narrow band compression capabilities.
• Supports multiple bitrates, from 2-45 kbps.
• Uses a CELP-based encoding technique.
• Supports Intensity stereo encoding.
• Supports variable bitrate operaton.
• Voice activity detection.
• Discontinuous transmission.
• Works best with hardware floating point support.

The Speex online manual explains the various parts of the project. The Command-line encoder/decoder utilities speexenc and speexdec allow conversion from .wav or raw PCM files to and from speex format files.

Programmers who want to add Speex capabilities to their applications may want to have a look at the Programming with Speex (the libspeex API) section of the documentation, as well as the Speex API Documentation.

The newly released RC3 version is leading up to version 1.0: "Just some more bugfixes and tuning are in this release; If no bugs are found, this may be rebranded Speex 1.0."

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System Applications

Audio Projects

Ogg Traffic

The March 4, 2003 edition of Ogg Traffic is available with the latest Ogg Vorbis audio compression software news. Discussion topics include: Status Updates, Goals and non-Goals of Vorbis Comments, and Speex RC3.

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ALSA 0.9.0rc8 released

Version 0.9.0rc8 of the ALSA sound driver is available. "It is probably [the] last release before 0.9.0 final. You will find in the alsa-lib package the dmix plugin which allows mixing of multiple PCM streams together without the client/server mechanism."

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Database Software

OpenLink Releases Open Source ODBC and JDBC Driver Benchmark Utilities

OpenLink Software, Inc. has announced the release of their OpenLink ODBC Bench and OpenLink JDBC Bench under the GPL. "These cross platform, Open Source benchmarking utilities enable users to produce their own local empirical data for objective comparison and analysis of the performance and scalability of ODBC and JDBC Drivers, underlying database engines, and host operating systems."

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Manage Perl persistence with Pixie (IBM developerWorks)

James A. Duncan introduces Pixie on IBM's developerWorks. "The Pixie module takes a different approach to interfacing your Perl project with a relational database. Throwing away the schema, it allows more flexibility. Sure, there can be some downside to that, but for a large number of projects, you'll find it fits the bill just fine."

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Electronics

gEDA/gaf 20030223 development snapshot

A new version of gaf (gschem and friends) is available from the gEDA project. Numerous changes have been made to the gaf components, see the release notes for details.

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Embedded Systems

Qtopia 1.6 released

Trolltech has announced the release of Qtopia 1.6, the latest version of its embedded Linux application platform. New features include Outlook synchronization, a new plugin framework, a voice recorder, an improved desktop, and more. The company claims that over 1,000 third-party applications are available for Qtopia.

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Printing

LinuxPrinting.org news

The latest news from LinuxPrinting.org includes new drivers for the Epson laser winprinters, the HP OfficeJet 5110, and the Kyocera KM-1810. A few bugs have been fixed in the pnm2ppa driver, and the Kyocera entries in the Foomatic printer support database have been updated.

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Web Site Development

Aegir CMS 1.0 RC 2 released

Version 1.0 RC 2 of the Aegir CMS Open Source Content Management System has been released. Changes include new translations, new file synchronization, deletion confirmation, better FHS compatibility, an improved Mozilla 1.3 editor, and bug fixes.

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Zope Members News

The most recent headlines on the Zope Members News include: fcForum 0.0.13b Released to the Community, TTWType - a through-the-web content type for Plone, ZWiki 0.16.0 released, RenderableCharts 0.5 is out - with MySQL Demo, COMRack 1.0 released (an alternative ZPatterns Rack implementation), mxODBC Zope DA 1.0.0 released, New 0.8 version of bislTrayIcon, and Free Silva Hosting.

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Miscellaneous

The LSB published PPC64 and S390X specifications for public review

The LSB has published the archLSB-PPC64 and archLSB-S390X for public review. The LSB's Specification Authority will be accepting comments until Friday March 28th, 2003.

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Desktop Applications

Desktop Environments

FootNotes

Headlines on the GNOME desktop FootNotes site include: GNOME Fifth Toe 2.1.99, 2002 LinuxQuestions.org Members Choice Award Winners, Gaim 0.60 Screenshots, Dropline GNOME 2.2.1 - Not just for Slackware 8.1 Anymore!, First release of gmodconfig, The Creative Penguin: The GNOME Art Duo Speak, and more.

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KDE-CVS-Digest

The February 28, 2003 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest is out, here's the content summary: "Large merges from safari. KOffice developers improve the filters and add useful templates. The development tools, Kdevelop and Quanta receive new templates and bug fixes."

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Games

PYTAXX 0.51

Version 0.51 of PYTAXX is available from the PyGame site. "Pytaxx is a clone of the arcade game Ataxx. Like gataxx from Gnome, but with a wicked recursive AI and cool pygame-powered graphics. It also features downloadable themes."

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Graphics

Crystal Space 0.96r003 available

Version 0.96r003 of the Crystal Space Open Source, Multi-Platform 3D Engine is available. "This release fixes a few problems and issues present in the 0.96r002 release."

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GUI Packages

FLTK Developments

The latest new software for FLTK, the Fast, Light ToolKit includes: fl_connect 1.1, and flcdsim 1.1.

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Interoperability

Wine Traffic

Issue #159 of Wine Traffic is out. Topics include: Compiling with MS VC++, CodeWeavers & Taratella, MS Paint, Threading Work, Commandline MSVC, X11Drv / NTDll Separation, Libwine Portability, Using Clientside Fonts, Finding Missing Locks with Smatch, and Making Config Tools.

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Samba 2.2.8pre2 available

Version 2.2.8pre2 of Samba has been released. "This is the second non-production preview release of the upcoming Samba 2.2.8 codebase. It is being provided for testing purposes." The code and release notes are available for download here.

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Office Applications

OSAF Status Update

The February 26, 2003 OSAF Status Update has been published with news from the Open Source Application Foundation, with news of the Chandler PIM project. "OSAF staff has been focusing on defining our initial release of code, which we've named the 0.1 release. We've been working to figure out what the 0.1 release ought include, what code is required to make this happen, what APIs ought to be described, which areas will not be addressed in this release (such as security), and the steps we need to take to make this release happen."

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Web Browsers

mozillaZine

The latest mozillaZine topics include: A Blogger's Guide to Mozilla, Chimera Renamed to Camino, Tinderbox Traffic Light Widget for Konfabulator, French Translation of ChatZilla 0.8.23 Available, and AppMac Announces Three New Gecko-Based Browsers for OS X.

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Mozilla Status Update

The March 4, 2003 Mozilla Status Update is out. Topics include the approaching Mozilla 1.3 final release, OS/2 work, Calendar presentations, the Rhino JavaScript implementation, and Staff Meeting Minutes.

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Languages and Tools

Caml

Caml Weekly News

The February 25 - March 4, 2003 Caml Weekly News is out with the latest Caml language news.

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The Caml Light / OCaml Hump

This week, the new software on The Caml Light / OCaml Hump includes: Katmake, OCaml-Lirc, and FFTW-GEL.

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Java

EJB Free and Open Source Tools Summary (O'Reilly)

Emmanuel Proulx covers the topic of tools for EJB on O'Reilly. " People often ask me "What's the best platform for J2EE development?" There's no clear answer for this question. First, the vendors each provide contradictory facts to prove that their product is the best. Second, each has its zealots who will tell you all of the good things about one server and bad things about the others. Third, there are dozens of products available out there."

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A stepped approach to J2EE testing with SDAO (IBM developerWorks)

Kyle Brown writes about SDAO on IBM's developerWorks. "The Data Access Object pattern has become a standard part of the J2EE developer's arsenal. What most developers don't know is that one of its variations allows for much easier testing. Simulated data access objects bring together the best of DAO, mock objects, and layered testing, letting you simultaneously improve both your testing results and your overall development method. Enterprise Java developer (and resident SDAO guru) Kyle Brown uses code samples and discussion to guide you through the concepts and everyday use of SDAO."

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Lisp

SBCL 0.7.13 released

Version 0.7.13 of Steel Bank Common Lisp is available. "This version adds a contributed modules system (some contributed modules are also included), changes the REQUIRE/PROVIDE behavior to support the contribution system, changes the placement of some system files, makes the compiler more consistent in its error-checking treatment in certain cases, provides speed and stability improvements, and fixes several bugs."

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PHP

PHP Weekly Summary

Topics on this week's PHP Weekly Summary include: Tutorials for C++ extensions, PHP server upgrades, PHP parsers, 4.3.2 release plan, Performance degrading study, Manual translations, bindlib for Win32, and strip_tags().

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SAX-like apps in PHP (IBM developerWorks)

Nicholas Chase writes about streaming XML data in PHP on IBM's developerWorks. "While there is no official implementation of the Simple API for XML (SAX) in PHP, PHP does provide a SAX-like method for working with both local and remote XML files. In this article, author Nicholas Chase shows you how to work with XML files in PHP by building and setting handler functions and creating a parser. He demonstrates SAX in PHP with a page-building exercise in which he crafts a page based on the result of an Amazon Web Services query."

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Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for March 3, 2003

The latest Dr. Dobb's Python-URL is available, with weekly news and links for the Python community.

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The Daily Python-URL

This week's Daily Python-URL article topics include: Create declarative mini-languages, Inside the RSS validator, Plone, and SimPy: Simulating systems in Python.

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Ruby

The Ruby Weekly News

Topics on this week's Ruby Weekly News include: Happy Birthday Ruby, RubyConf(2003), European Ruby Conference, ThisThread::Encompassed::LateFebruary, and Embedded Documentation, et al, and lots of new Ruby software releases.

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XML

An Introduction to Streaming Transformations for XML (O'Reilly)

O'Reilly has an article on Streaming Transformations for XML. "This article introduces Streaming Transformations for XML (STX), a template-based XML transformation language that operates on streams of SAX events. STX resembles XSLT 1.0, the tree-driven transformation language for XML, but STX offers unique features and advantages for some applications."

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Special Characters, Database Mappings (O'Reilly)

John E. Simpson discusses how to deal with ampersands and databases in XML. "Is there anything I can do in my stylesheet or elsewhere to ensure that my XSLT will work even if the source data contains an ampersand or apostrophe?"

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Profilers

OProfile 0.5.1 released

Version 0.5.1 of the OProfile code profiler has been released. "X86-64 on 2.4 support has been added. Kernel profiles can be separated per-application. A new C++ demangler has been added, which is still experimental. An important daemon crash fix and a number of other bugs have been fixed."

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Miscellaneous

Jext 3.2pre3 available

Version 3.2pre3 of the Jext source code editor is available. "You can use it to discover the new Decalco plugin which allow to put any picture in Jext background. This release also ships SQL Console 1.7, Gooey (for Winamp 2.x), FunnyBrackets, the new PHP plugin, the new PHP highlighting feature, the Jump plugin and ProjectMaster."

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Don't Live with Broken Windows (artima.com)

Bill Venners talks to Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas on keeping code maintenance under control. "In the realm of psychology, this actually works. If you do something to keep on top of the small problems, they don't grow and become big problems. They don't inflict collateral damage. Bad code can cause a tremendous amount of collateral damage unrelated to its own function. It will start hurting other things in the system, if you're not on top of it. So you don't want to allow broken windows on your project."

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Use the Best Tool for the Job (artima.com)

Bill Venners talks about the need for programmers to master both a statically typed, and dynamically typed language. "Here's how I would summarize this argument: Python tries hard to get out of your way while you're coding, so you can quickly complete the functionality and start testing the program. Java, by contrast, actually tries to slow you down a bit while you're coding—for your own good—so that when you reach the system-testing phase, you already have a more robust system."

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