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DevelopmentThe OSAF's Chandler PIMLast week, the Open Source Applications Foundation (OSAF) released version 0.1 of Chandler, an open-source Personal Information Management (PIM) system. The![[OSAF]](/images/ns/osaf.jpg){kind=small}
Product Roadmap shows the long-term release plan.
As Chandler matures, it will be aimed at increasingly larger audiences.
The release levels are aimed at five classes of users:
developers, early adopters, higher ed users,
mainstream users, and conservatives.
The first release opens the project up for general consumption by
developers:
While we are still very early in the design and
implementation process, we intend for this 0.1 release to make us a more
fully open project. We have made the release available for download,
opened up our bug tracking database, and opened our source code
repository.
Chandler is written in the Python language and uses the wxPython GUI toolkit. The Chandler Application Architecture Overview gives a pictorial view of the various components that make up of the application. The Chandler Current Vision document describes the aim of the project.
Chandler is intended to be an open source personal information manager for
email, calendars, contacts, tasks, and general information management, as
well as a platform for developing information management applications. It
is currently under development and will run on Windows, Mac, and
Linux-based PC's.
Chandler differs from conventional PIM solutions in the following way:
With Chandler, users will be able to organize diverse
kinds of information for their own convenience -- not the computer's
convenience. Chandler will have a rich ability not only to associate and
interconnect items, but also to gather and collect related items in a
single place creating a context sensitive "view" of many types of data,
mixing-and-matching email, mailing lists, instant messages, appointments,
contacts, tasks, free-form notes, blogs, web pages, documents,
spreadsheets, slide shows, bookmarks, photos, MP3's, and so on (and
on). Data in Chandler is stored on repositories on the user's local
machine, on others' machines, and on shared resources such as servers.
This is a very different approach from that of today's common PIMs. For example, users can usually only view a given email message in one specific folder, grouped only with other email messages. In the user-centric world of Chandler, the basis of the relatedness of items is completely at the users discretion and is merely facilitated, rather than imposed by the software. For more information, see the Chandler README document. Chandler has been licensed under Version 2 of the GPL.
System Applications Clusters and Grids NSF Middleware Initiative third releaseThe (US) National Science Foundation has announced the third release of its Middleware Initiative software tool collection. These tools are aimed at the creation of national research grids, and thus address a number of access and "single signon" tasks that are also of interest elsewhere. There are also improved versions of tools like MPI. More information can be found on the NSF Middleware Initative site.
Database Software PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe PostgreSQL Weekly News for April 23, 2003 looks at the possiblility of a version 7.3.3 release in the next few weeks; a revised Front-End/Back-End protocol is in the works; plus miscellaneous fixes, new documentation, and much more.
knoda 0.6 releasedVersion 0.6 of Knoda, a KDE database frontend for various databases, has been released. Numerous bugs have been fixed.
Electronics Icarus Verilog 20030427 availableRelease 20030427 of the Icarus Verilog electronic simulation language compiler has been released. The changes are documented in the release notes.
Hamlib 1.1.4 releasedVersion 1.1.4 of Hamlib has been announced. "Hamlib provides a unified environment for the development of radio and rotator control applications. Release 1.1.4 includes improved rotator support, important build fixes for gcc-3.x, *BSD, Mac OS X and Cygwin(win32) platforms. Besides improvements and bug fixes, some experimental work has been started on SDR, stay tuned."
Mail Software bogofilter 0.12.1 - new current releaseA new release of bogofilter, an email spam filter, is available. "The bogofilter package implements a fast Bayesian spam filter along the lines suggested by Paul Graham in his article 'A Plan For Spam' . It is written in C."
Mailman 2.1.2 has been releasedVersion 2.1.2 of Mailman, the GNU Mailing List Manager, has been released. Version 2.1.2 is a bug fix release, including language updates and two new languages, Portuguese/Portugal and Polish. It is recommend that all Mailman 2.1.x sites upgrade to version 2.1.2.
Peer to Peer Furthur 1.7.2 has been releasedVersion 1.7.2 of Furthur has been released. "Furthur is a peer-to-peer music sharing tool that allows fully enforcable legal sharing, instant downloads with no waiting lists, in-depth cataloging functionality, and detailed attribute searches. Upgrading to this version is recommended for all existing users."
Printing CUPS 1.1.19rc3 availableVersion 1.1.19rc3 of the Cups print system has been released. A number of bug fixes and enhancements are included. See the release notes for the full description of the changes.
LinuxPrinting.org newsThe latest news from LinuxPrinting.org includes the release of the Foomatic 3.0.0rc2 printer database, and improved Adobe complance for the Foomatic PPD files.
LPRng-3.8.21 releasedVersion 3.8.21 of the LPRng print system has been released. Change information is in the source code.
Science An SVG Case Study: Integrated, Dynamic Avalanche Forecasting (O'Reilly)Chris Cochella and Tyler Cruickshank piece together Perl, MySQL, and SVG to keep track of high country snow conditions. "A wise backcountry skier is always aware of the specific local and regional weather conditions in the mountains that contribute to avalanche danger. For winter backcountry enthusiasts like us, the problem is that all of the weather data available (i.e., National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association's National Weather Service) from remote mountain stations and ski areas is scattered throughout the Web -- in various formats, of varying frequency, contained in difficult to read text files, and differing in measured parameters. Cobbling this information together at 6AM prior to skiing is not our idea of fun. Thus, our goal is to collect all of this data in one place and then graphically display related parameters in a Web information appliance. We call this appliance the Avalanche Meteorology Toolkit (AMT)."
Web Site Development Quixote 0.6 final releasedVersion 0.6 of the Quixote web development framework has been released. This release includes a new template syntax, automatic HTML escaping, a new lazy module importing mechanism, better support for multi-threaded applications, support for running under Twisted, and several other improvements.
Aeger CMS Japanese translationA Japanese language translation is now available for the Aeger Content Management System.
Bricolage 1.6.0 Busts Loose (use Perl)Use Perl has an announcement for a new version of the Perl-based content management system, Bricolage. "The Bricolage team is pleased to announce the release of Bricolage 1.6.0. This is the first new stable release of Bricolage since the release of version 1.4.6 in January, and the first major release since 1.4.0 in September, 2002. The result of contributions from Bricolage community members from around the world, version 1.6.0 is the most full-featured, best performing, most stable version of Bricolage yet."
ht://Check 1.2.1 is outVersion 1.2.1 of ht://Check is out. "ht://Check is more than a link checker. It's a console application written for GNU/Linux systems in C++ and derived from the best search engine available on the Internet for free: ht://Dig. It is very useful for Webmasters who want to control and monitor their Websites, in order to discover unexpected broken links, but also interesting information from the data they have in the form of HyperText documents."
moregroupware 0.6.7 released (SourceForge)Version 0.6.7 of moregroupware has been announced. "moregroupware is a web-based groupware package, written in PHP4. moregroupware includes modules like webmail, notes, todo, contacts, project management, calendar and others. The most important improvements to the 0.6.7 release are those made to the files module and the new setup, logging and messaging code."
CMF 1.4beta1 Released (ZopeMembers)Version 1.4 beta 1 of the Zope Content Management Framework (CMF) has been announced. See the CHANGES file for details.
TownPortal 0.3 releasedVersion 0.3 of TownPortal is available. "The TownPortal developer team has released the first beta release of TownPortal, a free portal system for villages and local communities. The beta release is mostly feature-complete, but lots of tuning will still be needed for installation and user interfaces. Midgard experience is recommended for installing and using the package."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications ecasound 2.2.3 releasedA new version of ecasound, a multi-track audio processing utility, has been released. Here is the change summary: "User-friendliness of 'jack_auto' and 'resample' audio objects has been improved. Compile-time support added for both JACK -0.50 and 0.60-. Python-only implementation of ECI is now selected by default. Work-around included for a bug in ALSA -0.9.1 that broke xrun handling for record and playback. Lots of small bugs have been fixed in the build process. The SIGFPE bug that occured on FreeBSD systems is now fixed, as is the non-aligned access problem on Alphas."
gAlan 0.3.0-test3 releasedVersion 0.3.0-test3 of gAlan has been released. "gAlan is an audio-processing tool (both on-line and off-line) for X windows and Win32. It allows you to build synthesisers, effects chains, mixers, sequencers, drum-machines etc. etc. in a modular fashion by linking together icons representing primitive audio-processing components."
Rosegarden 4-0.9 releasedVersion 4-0.9 of Rosegarden, a MIDI and audio sequencer and notation editor, has been released. "This release shows a signifi[c]ant step towards our final 1.0 release goals and includes much improved performance notation support, improved device/instrument management, improved audio capabilities (including fully working LADSPA plugins, stereo audio recording and mixing), more studio features (improved bank editing and device information import and sharing), much improved lilypond export, a variety of translations (Russian, Spanish, and German), MIDI synchronisation infrastructure and much more."
SoundFontCombi v0.012 releasedVersion 0.012 of SoundFontCombi is available. SoundFontCombi is a router of ALSA based sequencer clients that has a graphical user interface.
Sweep 0.8.2 releasedVersion 0.8.2 of Sweep, an audio file editor, is available. Changes include support for the ALSA 0.9 sound drivers, Internationalization (i18n) improvements, and more.
Tekno Composer 0.4A new version of Tekno Composer has been announced. "Tekno Composer takes the ideas of real-time music composition for drum and bass. It features a synthesizer, a drum machine, and a sample player. It allows you to play and record loops in real-time using pattern based sequencing. It is an ALSA midi sequencer app, and will use ALSA and has support for Jack Audio."
Desktop Environments Proposed Modules List Update (GnomeDesktop)GNOME Desktop has published a long list of proposed modules that are to be included in the next major GNOME release. Included are several web browsers, a calculator, a video conferencing utility, system tools, a PDF viewer, a CD burner, and more.
Kernel Cousin KDE Reborn, #47 is UpIssue #47 of Kernel Cousin KDE has been announced. "Russell Miller recently took over as maintainer and editor for KC KDE (from a long line of predecessors) and has lost no time in releasing issue #47! This week he covers everything from KImageEdit MMX optimizations to KDE hacker Ellis Whitehead's joyful step up in life."
KDE Traffic #48The April 26, 2003 edition of KDE Traffic is out. Topics include: Moving aKtion to kdeblackhole, KMail SSH Tunneling HOWTO, and KAutoConfigDialog Howto.
KDE-CVS-Digest for April 25, 2003The April 25, 2003 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest is available. "KHTML gets table layout fixes. Many KScreensavers bugs have been fixed. KDevelop adds database programming support. Dia, UML and engineering stencils have been added to Kivio. And more..."
Mono one step closer to GNOME integration (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop points to a new release of cilc. "cilc is a CIL-to-C binding generator. It can be used to expose any CIL library to the C (and C++) world using the GObject object model and coding style. This should be of particular interest to GNOME developers who wish to make use of libraries developed in C#, perhaps Gtk# widgets, within their own C applications."
XRandR integration (GnomeDesktop)GnomeDesktop looks at a new patch for supporting XRandR, the X Resize and Rotate Extension, on GNOME. "XRandR is an extension to XFree86 which allows resizing, rotating, reflecting, and changing the refresh rate of each screen of a X-window display on the fly. The extension is part of XFree86 4.3."
Games WorldForge Gaming System updatesSeveral new packages are available from the WorldForge Gaming System. Version 0.6.0 of varconf, the WorldForge config library, skstream 0.2.5, a socket library, and wfmath 0.2.11, the WorldForge maths library have been released.
PyGame updatesThis week's new software on the PyGame site includes Pyddr version 0.6.2 and Jestur version 0.1.
Interoperability Wine Weekly NewsletterIssue #167 of the Wine Weekly Newsletter is out. Topics include: CrossOver Office 2.0, MS Threatens Developer, Winelib CoolPlayer Port, Wintab Status and Development, Another List of Working Apps, Improving Wine's Debugger, Accessing ODBC Databases, and WineHQ Outage.
Multimedia Freevo version 1.3.2-pre4 releasedVersion 1.3.2-pre4 of Freevo, an application for running a TV capture card, has been announced. "This development release includes GUI improvements, the ability to play music in the background, CD playing (with CDDB support), a new plugin interface, a Web recording interface, and many bugfixes. The binary runtime was updated, and MPlayer 0.90 is now used."
Office Applications AbiWord Weekly NewsIssue #141 of the AbiWord Weekly News is out, with the latest AbiWord word processor development news. "I hope you like staring at pictures this week because there's a good and plenty lot of them. Not only has the Support AbiWord button changed, but some mighty fun niftiness has also kicked up. We've got a visual lock on the first reported appearance of Abiword on AIX."
KOffice 1.3 Beta 1 ReleasedVersion 1.3 Beta 1 of KOffice has been announced. "It comes with many new features and improvements, new filters, hyphenation and the new database client Kexi."
Web Browsers More on the Firebird nameJonathan Walther has posted an interview with an unnamed Mozilla developer which discusses browser naming. "Think of our current project. How many people call it 'Seamonkey'? How many? That's its name. The real name is Seamonkey. But how many people call it that? Everyone calls it 'Mozilla'. When it goes away and is replaced by the new standalone browser, people will call *that* Mozilla."
Independent Status Reports (MozillaZine)The most recent Mozilla Independent Status Reports have been posted. "The latest set of status reports includes updates from the Tinderstatus, SmoothWheel, Mozile, Electrix, Demiurge, JSLib, DownloadStatusbar, SecClab, Gnusto, Diggler, NeedleSearch and Checky."
Miscellaneous Red Carpet 2.0 preview 2 releaseA preview release of Red Carpet 2.0, a graphical software management tool for RPM and dpkg systems, has been announced. "Since the first preview release we've fixed several bugs that have been found and based on your feedback have addressed a number of user interface issues, including a tabbed UI and reworked strings."
gmodconfig 0.3 released (GnomeDesktop)Version 0.3 of gmodconfig has been announced on the GnomeDesktop site. "gmodconfig aims to provide a simple way for end-users to download, install, configure and update Linux kernel modules, in the language of their choosing, through an easy-to-use graphic interface. The backend consists of XML files that contain the modules informations and translations. Release 0.3 features an assistant druid to help module authors generate those XML files."
Languages and Tools C GCC 3.2.3 availableVersion 3.2.3 of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, is available. The changes are mostly bug fixes. Thanks to Dan Kegel.
Objective C Objective-C: Dynamite! (O'ReillyNet)Andrew M. Duncan writes about Objective-C on O'Reilly. "Objective-C is also (like Smalltalk) a dynamic language. Briefly, this means that Objective-C defers, until runtime, decisions more static languages (such as C++) would perform at compile time. This lets you do a number of interesting things that would be awkward or simply impossible in a less dynamic language."
Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe April 15-22, 2003 edition of the Caml Weekly News is available with lots of Caml language news and discussion.
FORTRAN g95 FORTRAN developmentsDevelopment work continues on the g95 FORTRAN compiler project. "Work on the front end has slowed down considerably lately although efforts continue to get that last 0.001% of the test suite to be correctly accepted. The back end and libraries are now up for general testing, at least on x86 linux boxes. The tarball is updated as the web page is, give it a try!"
Java Java programming dynamics, Part 1: Classes and class loading (IBM developerWorks)Dennis M. Sosnoski discusses the Java binary class on IBM's developerWorks. "Take a look at what goes on behind the scenes of executing your Java application in this new series on the dynamic aspects of Java programming. Enterprise Java expert Dennis Sosnoski gives the scoop on the Java binary class format and what happens to classes inside the JVM. Along the way, he covers class loading issues ranging from the number of classes required for running a simple Java application to the class loader conflicts that can cause problems in J2EE and similar complex architectures. "
Enums in Java (One More Time) (O'Reilly)John I. Moore, Jr. writes about enumerated types in Java. "Unlike most modern languages, Java does not support the concept of user-defined enumerated types--enums. This article revisits the topic one more time, briefly defining what it means for a programming language to support enums and reviewing the strengths and weaknesses of two alternative approaches for Java. It then presents a mini-language for defining enums compactly. A small "compiler" that translates this mini-language into Java source code is provided as a resource accompanying this article."
Perl This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)The April 21-27, 2003 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is out. "This week's summary presents a nice variety of language issues. Read about some new errors, documentation patches, bug closing and configuration."
This week on Perl 6The April 20, 2003 edition of This week on Perl 6 is out. Topics include: Building Parrot on Win32, PMC documentation, Is PMC size fixed?, Dan Does Design Decisions, Short-lived memory allocation, How deep is clone?, Shared memory, A New GC approach?, IMC and variable number of arguments, Currying questions, Are all list constructors iterators?, and more.
POOL (O'Reilly)Simon Cozens discusses POOL on O'Reilly. "In this article, we're going to look at POOL, a handy "little language" I recently created for templating object-oriented modules. Now you may not write many object-oriented modules, so this may not sound too interesting to you. Don't worry; I also plan to discuss, among other things, Ruby, how to use the Template Toolkit, profiling, computational linguistic trie structures, Ruby again, and the oil paintings of the Great Masters. Hopefully, something in here will be enough to keep your interest."
PHP PHP 4.3.2RC2 ReleasedPHP version 4.3.2RC2 has been released. "This is the second release candidate and should have no critical problems/bugs. Nevertheless, please download and test it as much as possible on real-life applications to uncover any remaining issues."
Simple linear regression with PHP, Part 2 (IBM developerWorks)Paul Meagher plots statistical graphics using PHP on IBM's developerWorks. "In this article, the author, Paul Meagher, addresses these shortcomings with PHP-based probability functions; demonstrates how to integrate output methods into the SimpleLinearRegression class; and creates graphical output. He then tackles these issues by building a data-exploration tool, designed to plumb the depths of information contained in small- to medium-sized datasets." You may want to start off with part one.
Python Python 2.3b1 releasedGuido van Rossum has announced version 2.3b1 of Python, which includes lots of changes.
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for April 29, 2003Here is this week's Python URL, with pointers to techniques for making *small* stand-alone versions of Python programs; two real-life uses for metaclasses; common uses of C++ references; and much more.
Ruby Ruby Weekly NewsThe April 28, 2003 edition of the Ruby Weekly News is out with the latest Ruby language news and software releases.
Scheme Scheme Weekly NewsThe April 29, 2003 edition of the Scheme Weekly News has been published, take a look for the latest Scheme language news.
Tcl/Tk This week's Tcl-URLDr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for April 30 is out with the usual collection of News from the Tcl/Tk development community.
Miscellaneous Bugzilla 2.16.3 and 2.17.4 Released (MozillaZine)The Bugzilla Team has released Bugzilla 2.16.3, the latest stable release, and Bugzilla 2.17.4, the latest development snapshot (not recommended for use in production environments). Both updates fix several security bugs so all users are advised to upgrade.
Using the Subversion Client API, Part 1 (O'ReillyNet)Garrett Rooney writes about subversion, a next-generation reversion control system. "Subversion, as you probably already know, is a version control system written from scratch to replace CVS, the most popular open source version control system. While there are many reasons to choose Subversion, one of the most interesting is that Subversion has been designed and implemented as a collection of reusable libraries, written in C. This allows your programs to use the same functionality found in the command line Subversion client without having to call out to the command line client, to execute commands, or parsing output. This article briefly reviews the Subversion libraries, explains some of their data structures, and demonstrates the use of the Subversion client APIs in other programs."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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