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DevelopmentThe GIMP project releases version 2.4 The GIMP is a popular desktop application that compares favorably with the commercial Adobe Photoshop product:
GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It works on many operating systems, in many languages.
![[GIMP]](/images/ns/gimp2.4.png){kind=small}
Version 2.4 of The GIMP was announced this week, the informative project history page shows that this is the first major release in a long time. Version 2.2 was announced in December, 2004. The initial release of the software dates back to 1995. The GIMP version 2.4 release notes list some of the new capabilities, here is a summary of the main changes:
To sum it all up, version 2.4 of the GIMP adds a lot of usability improvements, simplifies common digital photography editing tasks and improves a lot of power-user capabilities. For further reading, Red Hat Magazine has published a review of a beta release of GIMP 2.4 with lots of screenshots. The GIMP tutorials have a lot of useful information for learning the software. Source code and packages are available for download here.
System Applications Database Software Firebird 2.1 Beta 2 released Version 2.1 Beta 2 of the Firebird DBMS has been announced. "This is the second Beta build of the Firebird version 2.1 series. It is for FIELD TESTING ONLY and should not be put into production systems."
Postgres Weekly News The October 22, 2007 edition of the Postgres Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.
SQLAlchemy 0.4.0 released Version 0.4.0 of SQLAlchemy, the Python SQL Toolkit and Object Relational Mapper, has been announced. "The first production release of 0.4 is now available. After six separate beta releases, the final 0.4 represents the hard work of many contributors with over a hundred new fixes and improvements after the the initial 0.4 beta1 release. 0.4 overall represents the largest overhaul SQLAlchemy has had yet, with its most refined and feature-filled ORM, SQL expression, and transactional APIs ever, all new documentation, a rewritten compiler, massive refactorings and speed refinements to the execution system and ORM, and more support for more databases, including experimental support for Sybase and MS Access."
Networking Tools NagVis: 1.1.1 and 1.2b1 released (SourceForge) Versions 1.1.1 and 1.2b1 of NagVis have been announced. "NagVis is a visualization addon for the well known network managment system Nagios. NagVis can be used to visualize Nagios Data, e.g. to display IT processes like a mail system or a network infrastructure. Today we release two new versions of NagVis. The first is a Bugfix release for the stable 1.1, it has the version number 1.1.1. The second release is the first beta release of our current developement version 1.2, it's version number is 1.2b1." Version 1.2b2 was also announced this week, it features bug fixes and new capabilities.
Web Site Development Two new versions of mnoGoSearch Two new versions of mnoGoSearch, a web site search engine, have been announced. For more details, see the changelog files for version 3.2.43 and version 3.3.5.
Miscellaneous Paragent released as open-source software Paragent, LLC has announced the first open-source release of its Paragent cross-platform desktop management software. "Paragent is a web-based tool for IT administrators that provides a unified service for hardware and software inventory, alerting, remote desktop and help desk. Paragent delivers these tools in an easy-to-use interface, with one-click access, and site-wide built-in advanced search capabilities. Paragent is a combination of applications, including Lisp-based servers collecting data, C++ agents on the client machines, and Java tools for the remote desktop component."
Desktop Applications Animation Software Initial release of the prefuse visualization toolkit (SourceForge) The initial release of the prefuse visualization toolkit has been announced. The software is described as: "A Java-based toolkit for building interactive information visualization applications. Prefuse supports a rich set of features for data modeling, visualization, animation, and interaction. Flare is a new prefuse-based toolkit for ActionScript 3 and the Flash Player, intended for creating visualizations that more seamlessly embed into the web."
Audio Applications Vamp plugin SDK v1.1b now available Version 1.1b of Vamp plugin SDK has been released. "Vamp is a plugin API for audio analysis and feature extraction plugins written in C or C++. Its SDK features an easy-to-use set of C++ classes for plugin and host developers, a reference host implementation, example plugins, and documentation. It is supported across Linux, OS/X and Windows. Version 1.1b is a minor update with a small number of build and bug fixes."
Business Applications Pentaho Open BI Suite 1.6 GA released (SourceForge) Version 1.6 GA of Pentaho Open BI Suite has been announced. Pentaho is: "A complete business intelligence platform that includes reporting, analysis (OLAP), dashboards, data mining and data integration (ETL). Use it as a full suite or as individual components that are accessible via web services. Ranked #1 in open source BI. Pentaho Corp., creator of the world's most popular open source business intelligence (BI) suite, announces delivery of Pentaho Open BI Suite 1.6. The new release provides general availability of major new enhancements including an enterprise BI metadata layer that streamlines use of BI data as well as a thin-client reporting interface enabling business users to create their own ad hoc queries and reports."
Desktop Environments GNOME 2.20.1 released Version 2.20.1 of the GNOME desktop has been released. "This is the first update to GNOME 2.20.0. The update fixes all known and unknown crashers, even for those modules which haven't released a new version (AKA gnome-terminal). The next development release contains all crashers ported from 2.20. The release team wants your tarballs on November 10 23:59 UTC, although you could release your tarball earlier as well."
GARNOME 2.20.1 released Version 2.20.1 of GARNOME, the bleeding edge version of the GNOME desktop, is out. "This is the second release of the current stable GNOME branch, and the first bug-fixing release ironing out yet-more bugs, hopefully adding yet-more stability, and ships with the latest and greatest stable releases. As usual it includes updates and fixes after the official GNOME freeze, together with a host of third-party GNOME packages, Bindings and the Mono(tm) Platform."
GNOME Software Announcements The following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
KDE 4.0 Beta 3 Released The beta 3 release of KDE 4.0 has been announced. "The KDE Community is happy to release the third Beta for KDE 4.0. This Beta is aimed at further polishing of the KDE codebase and also marks the freeze of the KDE Development Platform. We are joined in this release by the KOffice project which releases its 4th alpha release, bringing many improvements in OpenDocument support, a KChart Flake shape and much more to those willing to test. Since the last Beta, most of KDE has been frozen for new features, instead receiving the necessary polish and bugfixing."
KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News) The October 21, 2007 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "Fortune-teller and Keyboard Layout applets for Plasma, KNewsTicker resurrected for KDE 4.0 as a Plasmoid. Rewrite of <canvas> tag support in KHTML. Various new language syntax highlighting in Kate. Internal database storage work in Digikam. More playlist handling work, and support for Magnatune "streaming membership" in Amarok 2. OpenDocument loading of charts in KChart for KOffice 2..."
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:
Electronics GNU Radio 3.1.0 released Stable version 3.1.0 of GNU Radio, an interface to an open software programmable radio system, is out. "While 3.1.0 is based on the current development trunk that many are familiar with, it has been a full year since the last stable branch was cleaved from the trunk. The changes between then and now are many and varied".
pcb 20070912 announced Version 20070912 of PCB, a printed circuit CAD application, has been announced. "This release represents nearly 200 commits and as such this summary clearly is not complete."
Music Applications Q version 7.8 released Version 7.8 of Q, a GPLed, modern-style functional programming language with good library support for multimedia and computer music applications, has been released. "I've just released Q 7.8 which sports some important bugfixes and some nice new features. The most important addition probably is that Q now has a complete Qt interface. You can find the sources and a ready-made RPM for Linux (which contains almost everything surrounding Q, including the interfaces to Faust, MidiShare, Pd and SuperCollider and the multimedia examples) on the Q download page".
Office Suites OxygenOffice Professional 2.3.0 released (SourceForge) Version 2.3.0 of OxygenOffice Professional has been announced. "OxygenOffice Professional (was: OpenOffice.org Premium) is an enhanced version of OpenOffice.org what is a multi-platform office productivity suite. OxygenOffice Professional contains more extras like templates, cliparts, samples, fonts and VBA support. The OxygenOffice Professional Team is proudly anounce the latest and greatest version of OxygenOffice Professional."
Web Browsers Mitchell Baker: Beyond Sustainability Mitchell Baker has posted a sort of annual report on the state of the Mozilla project. Mozilla brought in almost $67 million last year, while spending less than $20 million. "Tens of thousands of people are involved in the Mozilla project. Over 1,000 people contributed code to Firefox 2. Mozilla employed around 50 of those people. In 2006, approximately 10,000 people downloaded nightly builds every day; this number continues to grow. Sixteen thousand people reported bugs or potential issues in our bug-tracking system; something like a thousand comments a day were added to the issue-tracker."
Mozilla Links Newsletter The October 18, 2007 edition of the Mozilla Links Newsletter is online, take a look for the latest news about the Mozilla browser and related projects.
Miscellaneous Introducing Stepic: Python Steganography in Images (domnit.org) domnit.org presents an introduction to Stepic. "Steganography is the hiding of data within other data. Stepic is my new Python module and command line tool for hiding arbitrary data within images by slightly modifying the colors. These modifications are generally imperceptible to humans, but are machine detectable."
Steve.Museum: Tagger 2.0 released (SourceForge) Version 2.0 of Tagger from Steve.Museum has been announced. ""Steve” is a collaborative research project exploring the potential for user-generated descriptions of the subjects of works of art to improve access to museum collections and encourage engagement with cultural content."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly News The October 23, 2007 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new Caml language articles.
JSP JSLoader: Version 1.0.0 released (SourceForge) Version 1.0.0 of JSLoader has been announced. "JSLoader is a dead-simple, non-intrusive "Javascript-on-demand" packaging convention which helps developers and the internet community rapidly develop and prototype applications without the headache of figuring out the witches' brew of files that need to be copied, included, etc."
Python Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links The October 22, 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 October 18, 2007 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links The October 23, 2007 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.
XML XForms Thick Clients (O'Reilly) Jack Cox works with XForms on O'Reilly. "Jack Cox explains an approach to building XForms client applications that work in a disconnected environment."
IDEs Emonic: 0.3 released (SourceForge) Version 0.3 of Emonic has been announced. "Emonic (Eclipse-Mono-Integration) is a Eclipse-Plugin for C#. It provides color-highlighting, outline, word-completion and build mechanism via Ant or Nant. Tested on Linux and Windows with Mono and the Win-.net-framework. With the just published version 0.3 the project reaches beta status. Many new features including quick outline, a improved icon-set, better parsing of the source code and improved build process are implemented. With the new version the license of the plugin changes from cpl to epl."
Version Control Mercurial 0.9.5 released Version 0.9.5 of Mercurial a source control management system, has been announced. This release adds new features and extensions and includes a number of bug fixes.
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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