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DevelopmentCreate and Manage Gantt Charts with GanttProjectGanttProject is an open-source cross-platform Java application that can be used to generate Gantt charts for the management of projects. Different components of GanttProject have been released under the GPL and Apache licenses. The project is described:
GanttProject is a free and easy to use Gantt chart based project scheduling and management tool. Our major features include:
Task hierarchy and dependencies, Gantt chart, Resource load chart,
Generation of PERT chart, PDF and HTML reports,
MS Project import/export, WebDAV based groupwork.
The learn about document explains more of the project's features and some screen shots show some examples of what an older version of GanttProject looks like. Version 2.0.8 of GanttProject was recently announced:
The major improvement in GanttProject 2.0.8 is that task web links now appear in PDF and HTML exports. Besides, those who use filesystem paths as web links, now can specify relative path to a file from .gan file location. GanttProject 2.0.8 also includes a few bugfixes and localization improvements for Croatian, Japanese and Colombian users.
![[GanttProject]](/images/ns/GanttProjectLogo.png)
Installation of GanttProject 2.0.8 on an Ubuntu 8.04 system was fairly straightforward. The software was downloaded and unzipped. The prerequisite Sun Java Runtime Environment was downloaded and installed. The ganttproject.sh startup file was given execute status and run, the application started up as expected. GanttProject is easy to figure out. There are top-level tabs for creating charts and resources (people). Tasks can be added, assigned date ranges and a variety of other attributes. Tasks can be tied to other prececessor tasks and assigned to people. It only took a few minutes of poking around the software to create a new project, produce a simple Gantt chart and output a PostScript file that was suitable for printing. GanttProject is not alone in its ability to generate Gantt charts under Linux. Planner is a project management tool for the GNOME desktop environment and TaskJuggler is yet another project management tool. Both of these applications have a broader project management scope. If your needs only require generating Gantt charts, GanttProject is a straightforward application that can be used to easily produce professional looking results.
System Applications Database Software MySQL 6.0.8 Alpha has been releasedVersion 6.0.8 Alpha of the MySQL DBMS has been announced. "MySQL 6.0 includes two new storage engines: the transactional Falcon engine, and the crash-safe Maria engine."
PostgreSQL Weekly NewsThe December 7, 2008 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.
SQLObject 0.9.9 announcedVersion 0.9.9 of SQLObject, an object-relational mapper, has been announced. "I'm pleased to announce version 0.9.10, a minor bugfix release of 0.9 branch of SQLObject."
SQLObject 0.10.4 announcedVersion 0.10.4 of SQLObject, an object-relational mapper, has been announced. "I'm pleased to announce version 0.10.4, a minor bugfix release of 0.10 branch of SQLObject."
Talk: Josh Berkus on MySQL and PostgreSQLFossbazaar has posted slides and audio (MP3) from a talk by Josh Berkus comparing MySQL and PostgreSQL. Josh, of course, is a PostgreSQL hacker, and that shows through, but it seems like a good talk regardless.
Interoperability Samba 3.3.0rc1 is availableVersion 3.3.0rc1 of Samba has been announced. "This is the first release candidate of Samba 3.3.0. This is *not* intended for production environments and is designed for testing purposes only."
Security Nebula: 0.2.3 released (SourceForge)Version 0.2.3 of Nebula has been announced. "Nebula automatically generates intrusion signatures from attack traces. It runs as a daemon accepting attack submissions from honeypots. This release of the nebula intrusion signature generator introduces several bugfixes and improvements."
Miscellaneous Octopussy Perl/XML Logs: 0.9.8.8 released (SourceForge)Version 0.9.8.8 of Octopussy has been announced. "Logs Analyzer, Alerter & Reporter with a Web Interface * Major bugfix on octo_dispatcher ! (Bug ID: 2343806) * Bugfix the apache2 restart bug (Bug ID: 2304276) * You can now limit the number of minutes to search for restricted users * Minor WebUI improvements".
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Amarok 2.0 releasedVersion 2.0 of the Amarok music manager has been released. "We thought about how to best design a program that would allow us to stay at the cutting edge of digital music management. We also sought to distinguish Amarok in an increasingly saturated market of music players. To achieve this we took the best ideas from the 1.x series, and brainstormed what else we could do to help our users 'rediscover music'. And then we started developing." There's a lot of new features and a completely redesigned user interface; see the announcement for details and screenshots.
Ardour 2.7.1 releasedVersion 2.7.1 of Ardour, a multi-track audio editor, has been announced. "Its been a busy two weeks since 2.7 was released. Not only has there finally been a working new release of JACK, but Ardour has also seen several major bug fixes, a useful collection of new features, and many smaller fixes that correct annoying behaviour."
JACK 0.116.1 + D-Bus announcedVersion 0.116.1 of the JACK Audio Connection Kit patched with D-Bus support has been announced. "D-Bus modifications add optional autodetected support for the D-Bus based server control system. D-Bus is object model that provides IPC mechanism. D-Bus supports autoactivation of objects, thus making it simple and reliable to code a "single instance" application or daemon, and to launch applications and daemons on demand when their services are needed."
QjackCtl 0.3.4 releasedVersion 0.3.4 of QjackCtl, a GUI control panel for the JACK Audio Connection Kit, has been announced. "At last, after years of retarded procrastination, the old infamous patchbay snapshot feature has been the subject of a almost complete rewrite and it does try to give a way better mapping of all actual and current running client/port connections, both JACK (audio, MIDI) and ALSA MIDI, of course ;)..."
Desktop Environments GNOME Software AnnouncementsThe following new GNOME software has been announced this week:
KDE Software AnnouncementsThe following new KDE software has been announced this week:
Xorg Software AnnouncementsThe following new Xorg software has been announced this week:
Educational Software TCExam: 7.0.007 was released (SourceForge)Version 7.0.007 of TCExam has been announced. "TCExam is a CBA (Computer-Based Assessment) system (e-exam, CBT - Computer Based Testing) for universities, schools and companies, that enables educators and trainers to author, schedule, deliver, and report on surveys, quizzes, tests and exams."
Games Ember 0.5.5 released (WorldForge)The WorldForge game project has announced the availability of Ember 0.5.5. "Ember is a 3d client for the WorldForge project. It uses the Ogre 3d graphics library for presentation and CEGUI for its GUI system. This release introduces a new combined minimap and compass widget, many improvements to the entity creator and an upgrade to the cutting edge Ogre 1.6 3d library."
Interoperability Wine 1.1.10 announcedVersion 1.1.10 of Wine has been announced. "What's new in this release (see below for details): - Support for virtual memory write watches. - Workarounds for the WINAPI compiler bug on Mac OS. - Several fixes for the 64-bit build. - Some more GdiPlus functions. - Various bug fixes."
Mail Clients SquirrelMail 1.4.17 releasedVersion 1.4.17 of SquirrelMail, a standards-based webmail package written in PHP, has been announced. "The SquirrelMail team is happy to announce the release of version 1.4.17. The most notable change is a security fix that prevents certain specially-crafted hyperlinks within messages from executing cross-site scripting attacks. For other details, see the ReleaseNotes file included in this release. We advise all users of SquirrelMail software to upgrade."
Multimedia Elisa Media Center 0.5.21 releasedVersion 0.5.21 of Elisa Media Center has been announced. "New features include: - A new mechanism to update the media database so as to reflect gstreamer's improvements at media detection and typefinding - Ability to publish unstable plugins in the plugin repository and offer them for testing to advanced users As usual, a bunch of bugs were fixed".
GPAC: 0.4.5 is out (SourceForge)Version 0.4.5 of GPAC has been announced. "Multimedia Framework for MPEG-4, VRML, X3D, SVG, LASeR ... New version of GPAC is out with many improvements and fixes - try it out!"
Music Applications Strasheela 0.9.8 releasedVersion 0.9.8 of Strasheela has been announced, it features bug fixes and an improved tutorial. "Strasheela is a highly expressive constraint-based music composition system. Users declaratively state a music theory and the computer generates music which complies with this theory. A theory is formulated as a constraint satisfaction problem (CSP) by a set of rules (constraints) applied to a music representation in which some aspects are expressed by variables (unknowns)."
Office Suites Group-Office groupware: 3.0 released (SourceForge)Version 3.0 of Group-Office has been announced. "Take your office online with Group-Office groupware. Share projects, calendars, files and e-mail online with co-workers and clients. Easy to use and fully customizable, Group-Office takes online collaboration to the next level. After more then one and a half year of development time and testing it's finally there! We are proud to present Group-Office 3.0, Group-Office needed to be modernised. New web techniques have been developed and are ready to use in a professional platform such as Group-Office. We completely rewrote the interface of Group-Office. It feels much more like a desktop application now with drag and drop features, flexible information panels and much more!"
Web Browsers Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is now availableVersion 3.1 Beta 2 of the Firefox web browser has been announced. "Firefox 3.1 Beta 2 is now available for download. This milestone is focused on testing the core functionality provided by many new features and changes to the platform scheduled for Firefox 3.1." See the MozillaZine announcement for more information.
Languages and Tools C GCC 4.4.0 Status ReportThe November 27, 2008 edition of the GCC 4.4.0 Status Report has been published. "The trunk remains Stage 4, so only fixes for regressions (and changes to documentation) are allowed. As stated previously, the GCC 4.4 branch will be created when there are no open P1s and the total number of P1, P2, and P3 regressions is under 100. We're close -- there are 5 P1s, and 105 total regressions."
Caml Caml Weekly NewsThe December 9, 2008 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new articles about the Caml language.
Java Project Jigsaw (Mark Reinhold’s Blog)Java developer Mark Reinhold blogs about the idea of modularizing JDK and other Java components. "The JDK is big—and hence it ought to be modularized. Doing so would enable significant improvements to the key performance metrics of download size, startup time, and memory footprint. Java libraries and applications can also benefit from modularization. Truly modular Java components could leverage the performance-improvement techniques applicable to the JDK and also be easy to publish in the form of familiar native packages for many operating systems. Finally, in order to realize the full potential of a modularized JDK and of modularized applications the Java Platform itself should also be modularized." (Thanks to Nicolas Mailhot).
JSP ZK: 3.5.2 released (SourceForge)Version 3.5.2 of ZK has been announced. "ZK is Ajax Java framework without JavaScript. With direct RIA, 200+ Ajax components and markup languages, developing Ajax/RIA as simple as desktop apps and HTML/XUL pages. Support JSF/JSP/JavaEE/Hibernate/.., and Ajax script in Java/Ruby/Groovy/Python/.. Over 10 new features and 36 bugs fixed. It enables better integration between MVC pattern and data-binding, template page supported. Moreover, ZK Demo is much enhanced, more test cases, easier way of searching, and usability."
Perl Perl 5.8.9 RC2 released (use Perl)Version 5.8.9 RC2 of Perl has been announced. "This is a maintenance release for perl 5.8.x, providing bug fixes and integrating module updates from CPAN."
PHP PHP 5.2.8 releasedVersion 5.2.8 of PHP has been announced. "The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 5.2.8. This release addresses a regression introduced by 5.2.7 inregard to the magic_quotes functionality, that was broken by an incorrect fix to the filter extension. All users who have upgraded to 5.2.7 are encouraged to upgrade to this release, alternatively you can apply a work-around for the bug by changing "filter.default_flags=0" in php.ini."
Python Python 3.0 releasedPython 3.0 is out. "Python 3.0 (a.k.a. 'Python 3000' or 'Py3k') represents a major milestone in Python's history, and was nearly three years in the making. This is a new version of the language that is incompatible with the 2.x line of releases, while remaining true to BDFL Guido van Rossum's vision." See Guido's what's new in 3.0 document for an overview of the major changes.
Let's talk about Python 3.0For those who are questioning the value of Python 3.0: James Bennett has posted an interesting discussion on why it is worthwhile. "It's rare that any large/established software project manages to overcome this inertia and actually take stock, figure out whether 'the way we've always done it' is still a good way to do it, and then make changes in response. This week Python 3.0 was released, and it represents one of those rare instances: Python 3.0 was designed to clear up a lot of now-inertial legacy issues with the Python language and figure out good ways to do things now instead of unquestioningly sticking with what seemed like good ways (or, more often, the least painful ways) to do things five or ten years ago."
Python 2.6.1 releasedVersion 2.6.1 of Python has been announced. "Hot on the heals of Python 3.0 comes the Python 2.6.1 bug-fix release. This is the latest production-ready version in the Python 2.6 family. Dozens of issues have fixed since Python 2.6 final was released in October."
Python-URL! - weekly Python news and linksThe December 8, 2008 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.
PyBindGen 0.10 releasedVersion 0.10 of PyBindGen has been announced, it adds new capabilities and bug fixes. "PyBindGen is a Python module that is geared to generating C/C++ code that binds a C/C++ library for Python. It does so without extensive use of either C++ templates or C pre-processor macros. It has modular handling of C/C++ types, and can be easily extended with Python plugins. The generated code is almost as clean as what a human programmer would write."
Shed Skin 0.0.30 announcedVersion 0.0.30 of Shed Skin has been announced. "I have just released version 0.0.30 of Shed Skin, an experimental (restricted) Python-to-C++ compiler. Most importantly, this release adds (efficient) support for user-defined classes in generated extension modules, which should make it much easier to integrate compiled code within larger projects. More specifically, compiled classes can now be instantiated on the CPython side, and instances can be passed freely between CPython and Shed Skin without any conversion taking place."
Test Suites STAF: V3.3.2 and STAX V3.3.5 are now available (SourceForge)New versions of STAF and STAX have been announced. "The Software Testing Automation Framework (STAF) is a framework designed to improve the level of reuse and automation in test cases and test environments. The goal of STAF is to provide a complete end-to-end automation solution for testers."
Version Control Bazaar 1.10 releasedVersion 1.10 of the Bazaar distributed version control system has been announced. "Bazaar 1.10 has several performance improvements for copying revisions (especially for small updates to large projects). There has also been a significant amount of effort in polishing stacked branches. The commands ``shelve`` and ``unshelve`` have become core commands, with an improved implementation."
GIT 1.6.0.5 releasedVersion 1.6.0.5 of the GIT distributed version control system has been announced. "Although we are into 1.6.1-rc cycle, we have accumulated enough fixes to warrant a new maintenance release, so here it is."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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