Development

BusyBox 1.0.0-pre1 released

Version 1.0.0-pre1 of BusyBox, an integrated collection of Unix-like command line utilities for embedded systems, has been released. The project has been fairly quiet this year, the previous release, version 0.60.5, was issued in October, 2002.

This version has been submitted for testing, the real version 1.0.0 release should happen sometime near the end of July, 2003 if all goes according to the plan. The Changelog file has lots of gory details concerning what has changed.

For embedded systems and minimalist Linux distributions, BusyBox is able to replace a large number of command line utilities as well as some common shells with a single binary that has a modest memory footprint. Developers who wish to further minimize the size of the binary can selectively compile in only the parts that are desired for the particular system. BusyBox can be built on most platforms that support GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection.

The project has a number of well known contributors including original author Bruce Perens of Debian fame, Linus Torvalds, and many other notable individuals. The current project maintainer is Erik Andersen.

For a list of the command line utilities that BusyBox mimics, as well as a full explanation of the utility, take a look at the online man page and README documents.

BusyBox has been released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

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System Applications

Audio Projects

ALSA 0.9.5 available

Version 0.9.5 of the ALSA sound driver is available. Change information is in the source code.

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Ogg Traffic

The July 15, 2003 edition of Ogg Traffic is out with Ogg Vorbis audio compression software news. "It's time for a new Ogg Traffic, and this issue has lots of things to shout about! Brendan has released version 2.0 of libshout, and many other exciting events are happening."

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Clusters and Grids

OpenSSI 0.9.8 (SourceForge)

Version 0.9.8 of OpenSSI, a Single System Image for clustering environments, has been announced. "The source code has been completely reorganized. There are new instructions for installation. This release features improvements to the OpenSSI-enhanced /dev filesystem and LVS. Furthermore, it can now migrate processes linked to libpthread, including Perl processes."

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Database Software

Firebird 1.5 Release Candidate 4 available

Version 1.5 Release Candidate 4 of the Firebird database is available. "The development of Firebird 1.5 release is in final development stage ! The Release Candidate means that we're "almost there", and we turned our focus to remaining known issues and rough edges, final testing and bug squashing. We made a lot of progress with it thanks to your feedback."

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Electronics

XCircuit 3.1.17 released

Version 3.1.17 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing utility, is available. Change information is in the source code.

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Mail Software

milter-sender/0.29 beta available

Version 0.29 beta of milter-sender, a real-time sender address verification utility for Sendmail 8.12, is available. This release includes two important bug fixes, see the Change Log file for more information.

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Medical Software

Kidwai Clinical Management Laboratory System 2.0 (LinuxMedNews)

LinuxMedNews has an announcement for version 2.0 of the Kidwai Clinical Management Laboratory System. "Kidwai is a system to automate a critical component of a cancer hospital's existing (non-computerized) management system. It automates the entire process of managing Individual Patients Laboratory Requisition details, from the registration of a patient for a specific test (on site), to a doctor viewing the patient's tests results from a terminal."

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Web Site Development

Eddie 1.5.3 announced

Version 1.5.3 of Eddie, a WAN and LAN clustering tool for web servers, has been released. "This version is a maintenance release that make Eddie run on Erlang/OTP R9B-1 (latest version)."

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fcForum 1.1.4 Released to the Community (ZopeMembers)

Version 1.1.4 of fcForum is available for Zope. "fcForum is an open source, XHTML 1.0, CSS 2.0 standards compatible, ZClass-based Message Board Product, intended to be ready for use out-of-the-box with almost no configuration required at all, and with a clean and neat user interface." Version 1.1.4 now provides three forum types, admin-only, member-only, and public.

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GroupUserFolder reaches v1.2 ! (ZopeMembers)

Zope Members News has an announcement for version 1.2 of GRUF, a tool for managing groups of users from within Zope.

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mnoGoSearch 3.2.13 released

Version 3.2.13 of the mnoGoSearch web site search engine is available. New features and bug fixes are documented in the Change Log file.

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osCommerce 2.2 Milestone 2 (SourceForge)

SourceForge has an announcement for version 2.2 of osCommerce, an open-source e-commerce system. "The Milestone 2 release contains numerous updates to strengthen the security on both client and server side of operations. osCommerce, formerly titled The Exchange Project, is a feature packed out-of-the-box online shop ecommerce solution for both PHP3 and PHP4 web servers. Maintenance is made easy with a friendly GUI thats given to the Administration Tool."

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Quixote 0.6.1 released

Version 0.6.1 of Quixote, a Python-based Web Application Framework, has been released. See the announcement for details.

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Tiki 1.7 RC1 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.7 of Tiki, a CMS Groupware application, has been released. "Tiki 1.7 includes a lot of new features, including multi-server capability, workflow engine (galaxia), WYSIWYG editor, WML&PDA extensions (HawHaw), an events and groups calendar, many new plugins, several feature enhancements, and more."

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How to Avoid Writing Code (O'Reilly)

Kake Pugh writes about mining databases with Perl on O'Reilly. "One of the most boring programming tasks in the world has to be pulling data out of a database and displaying it on a web site. Yet it's also one of the most ubiquitous. Perl programmers being lazy, there are tools to help make boring programming tasks less painful, and two of these tools, Class::DBI and the Template Toolkit, create a whole which is far more drudgery-destroying than its parts."

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Integrating mod_perl with Apache 2.1 Authentication (O'Reilly)

Geoffrey Young covers issues on Apache authentication with Perl. "Furthermore, even though the standard Apache distribution came with modules to support both Basic and Digest authentication, Apache (and thus mod_perl) only offered an API for interacting with Basic authentication. If you wanted to use Digest authentication, flat files were the only password storage medium available. With both of these restrictions, it seemed impractical to deploy Digest authentication in all but the most limited circumstances."

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Privoxy default.action 1.7 released (SourceForge)

A new action file for Privoxy, a web proxy with filtering capabilities, has been released. "This actions file fixes a number of configuration issues with the 3.0.2 release. Everyone is encouraged to upgrade."

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Miscellaneous

New Project Formed: OpenGroupware.org

The OpenGroupware.org ('OGo') project announced its formation and the release of its groupware server software. The OGo software is based initially on the contribution of the code of SKYRiX 4.1 Groupware Server.

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Desktop Applications

Audio Applications

Three new releases of gmorgan

It's been a busy week for gmorgan developer Josep Holborn. Three new versions of the organ synthesizer with auto-accompaniment and rhythm station have been released. Version 0.02 adds a drum velocity mixer and a batch song player/editor. Version 0.03 adds a drum pattern editor, demo patterns and songs, and bug fixes. Version 0.04 adds a new song file format, batch play additions, and the ability to export MIDI files.

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lcdplugin 0.6.3 alpha released

Lcdplugin, an extension to winamp that connects to an external LCD display, has been updated. Version 0.6.3 alpha adds custom character map for each LCD, dynamic menus, configurable text for system state changes, and bug fixes.

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Desktop Environments

GNOME 2.2.2 released (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org has the announcement for version 2.2.2 of the GNOME Desktop and Developer Platform. "The 2.2.x series is devoted to bugfixes, translations, and general polish of our major 2.2 stable release. We strongly recommend upgrading to 2.2.2 in particular, as it contains an amazing amount of improvements since the last release."

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GARNOME 0.25.0 is out (GnomeDesktop)

Version 0.25.0 of GARNOME, the GNOME distribution for testers and tweakers, has been announced. Most of the changes involve updated package versions.

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KDE-CVS-Digest

KDE.News summarizes the contents of the July 11, 2003 KDE-CVS-Digest: "In this week's digest: The KDE Kolab client nears release. Klaviatura, a simple proof-of-concept on-screen keyboard is added to kdenonbeta demonstrating the possibilities of QAccessible and DCOP. The KDevelop CVS service is improved."

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KDE Traffic #58

Issue #58 of KDE Traffic is out. Topics include Artsbuilder/Kdenonbeta, IDE?, Knopdex, introducing brockenboring, and cute kittens.

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KDE Gains Support for International Domain Names

According to KDE.News, the Konqueror browser and KDE base libraries now support domain names written in non-ASCII character sets. "Konqueror and the KDE base libraries in CVS now support domain names written with names outside the usual strict 7-bit ASCII letters. This means that one can now register and access domain names written in proper letters for almost all languages in the planet, not just English. Konqueror is among the first browsers to support this new technology, developed in cooperation with VeriSign which has also been cooperating with the Safari and Mozilla teams (Mozilla IDN announcement and explanation)."

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XFce4 RC1 released

Version 4-RC1 of the XFce desktop environment is available. "RC 1 is the third public development release of the next generation of the XFce desktop environment and the first release candidate. If no large problems are found this is intended to become 4.0. XFce 4 is a complete rewrite from XFce 3."

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Games

Gaudi 0.1.4 released

Version 0.1.4 of Gaudi, a graphical blueprint editor that is part of the WorldForge game project, has been released. This version features a number of bug fixes, the screen shots are impressive.

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Pygame developments

The Pygame site lists new versions of the games Pyrunner, Chat, and Pathological.

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Graphics

JFreeChart 0.9.9 released (SourceForge)

An announcement has been placed on SourceForge for JFreeChart version 0.9.9. "JFreeChart is a class library, written in Java, for generating charts. Utilising the Java2D APIs, it currently supports bar charts, pie charts, line charts, XY-plots and time series plots."

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GUI Packages

SPTK 2.0 alpha 5 released

SPTK version 2.0 alpha 5, a widget toolkit for FLTK, has been released and includes a number of bug fixes.

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Interoperability

wine20030709 released

Version 20030709 of Wine has been announced. Changes include: more Direct3D and DirectSound improvements, inter-process clipboard support, improved locale handling, progress on the kernel/ntdll separation, and bug fixes.

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Wine Traffic

The July 11, 2003 edition of Wine Traffic is out. Topics include: Wine-20030709, AutoCAD Tips, Linux Refresher Course, Viva la Kernel Module Idea, RPC Via Windows Messages and Other OLE Fun, and Structured Exception Handling Support for GCC.

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Mail Clients

SquirrelMail 1.4.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.4.1 of SquirrelMail, a PHP4-based Web email client, has been released. "This is the second release of the stable 1.4.x series. This release added no new user features, focusing strictly on bugfixes and performance enhancements."

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Office Applications

AbiWord Weekly News

Issue #152 of the AbiWord Weekly News is out. "1.99.2 tarballs on Source Forge and Savannah, the official statement on the TextMaker advertisement, printing bugs fix backported to stable, MailMerge (or is it now DataSources) successfully functions with GnomeDB, Math editing in AbiWord and how you can help the Open Text Summariser in your language. All that and wise-cracks to the FootNotes users, plus two screenshots depicting the evolution of DataSources."

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AbiWord 1.99.2 (AbiWord 2.0 Beta 2) released (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org has an announcement for version 1.99.2 of the AbiWord word processor. "The AbiWord team continue to steam ahead for a world-rocking 2.0 release. Thanks very much to bug reporters. We've now made many, many fixes to our first beta and thanks to Tomas Frydrych and his helpers we now have ligature support for fontsets that support them."

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AbiWord gets GDA/Gnome-DB support! (GnomeDesktop)

AbiWord now has support for GDA/Gnome-DB. "Just before AbiWord 2.0 gets out the door, some developers couldn't resist adding the feature you all really want to see: an integrated GNOME Office Suite! To be more precise: AbiWord gets GDA/Gnome-DB support! With the GDA plugin, you can import data directly into your AbiWord documents from all data sources GDA supports!"

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Evolution 1.4.3 released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 1.4.3 of the GNOME Evolution groupware suite has been released. "This release fixes some several problems, including some crashers, some memory leaks and an issue with certain buggy POP servers that caused mail download to not work properly. 1.4.0 users are strongly encouraged to upgrade."

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Evolution 2.0 UI proposal (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org looks at possible UI changes to Evolution. "Here at Ximian we have been brainstorming a bit about what happens next in the Evolution world. One of the ideas that has come up is a substantial overhaul of Evolution's UI."

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OpenOffice.org 1.1 RC is available

The release candidate for OpenOffice.org version 1.1 is available. "OpenOffice.org1.1 RC is expected to be feature complete with no more features added before the final OpenOffice.org 1.1 release. This release addresses user feedback and is ready for everyday use by everyone."

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Scribus 1.0 released

Scribus 1.0 ("the first open source desktop publishing application capable of generating professional 'press-ready' results") has been released. It is a Qt-based application which runs on almost anything; there is a long list of features aimed at the creation of high-quality output, and Scribus can be scripted in Python. We hope to have a closer look at this release shortly; in the mean time, click below for the 1.0 announcement.

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Video Applications

Xawdecode 1.7.0 is out (SourceForge)

Version 1.7.0 of Xawdecode is available. "X11 TV application based on xawtv 2.x series which adds many enhancements like Xvideo rendering support, deinterlacing, real time divx recording, integrated alevt teletext browser and provides a plugin API to add any functionnality one might think of."

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Web Browsers

ChatZilla for Mozilla Firebird (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine reports that the Firebird browser now supports the ChatZilla IRC client. "ChatZilla has been available for Firebird for a while now but many people still assume that it only works with the Mozilla Application Suite."

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Epiphany 0.8.0 ''Girlish Edition'' Released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 0.8.0 of Epiphany, the GNOME web browser, has been released.

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Trunk Frozen for Mozilla 1.5 Alpha (MozillaZine)

According to MozillaZine, the Mozilla 1.5 trunk has been frozen. "While the tree is frozen, all checkins to the trunk require approval from drivers@mozilla.org or they will not be allowed to land. The freeze is expected to last for a few days and the trunk will be reopened when Mozilla 1.5 Alpha is released."

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Miscellaneous

Terminal Server Client 0.120 Released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 0.120 of Terminal Server Client has been announced. "A new release of Terminal Server Client, a frontend for rdesktop and other remote desktop tools, has been unleashed. Version 0.120 now supports RDP (using rdesktop), VNC (using *vncviewer), XDMCP (using Xnest), and ICA (using wfica). Along with continued HIGification and usability improvements, support was added for the Citrix ICA client. Banner problems have been adjusted and translations updated."

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Languages and Tools

Caml

Caml Weekly News

The Caml Weekly News for July 8-15, 2003 is out. Topics include: heap profiling, adding data persistency in Ocaml, Seeking feedback on a project, new calendar library, and First alpha release of the FoC library.

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Java

Jython Needs Developers

Jython, an implementation of the Python language in Java, needs developer help. ..."But the thing is that there has always been a bit of a shortage of core Jython developers, and lately things have been even worse. Apparently Finn Bock hasn't been active for a while, and Samuele Pedroni et al. don't have time for everything. I don't know the details of the whole story, but Guido mentioned about this in his EuroPython keynote, and the message was that there aren't enough core developers right now for Jython. "

Comments (2 posted)

Java programming dynamics, Part 3: Applied reflection (IBM developerWorks)

Dennis M. Sosnoski writes about Java command line argument processing on IBM's developerWorks. "Command line argument processing is one of those nasty chores that seems to keep coming around no matter how many times you've dealt with it in the past. Rather than writing variations of the same code over and over, why not use reflection to simplify the job of argument processing? Java consultant Dennis Sosnoski shows you how. In this article, Dennis outlines an open source library that makes command line arguments practically handle themselves."

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Lisp

HTML-TEMPLATE initial release

The initial release of HTML-TEMPLATE, a Common Lisp library that is used for filling HTML templates, has been released.

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XMLS 0.4 released

XMLS 0.4 is available. "Xmls is a small, simple, non-validating xml parser for Common Lisp. It's designed to be a self-contained, easily embedded parser that recognizes a useful subset of the XML spec. It provides a simple mapping from xml to lisp s-expressions and back."

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ML

MLton 20030711 available

Version 20030711 of MLton, the standard ML compiler, is available. "Improvements include support for Sparc/SunOS, completion of the basis library implementation, support for calling SML from C, and libraries for weak pointers and finalization."

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Pascal

Free Pascal version 1.0.10 released

Version 1.0.10 of Free Pascal is available. "This is a bugfix release mostly. However, to support the Lazarus IDE, and several other projects, some enhancements are included anyway".

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Perl

Perl 5.8.1 Release Candidate One (use Perl)

UsePerl has an announcement for Perl 5.8.1 release candidate 1. "Please text extensively, especially if you had problems with Perl 5.8.0."

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Perl 5.8.1 RC2 is Out (use Perl)

UsePerl has announced the availability of Perl 5.8.1-RC2. "jhi writes "The RC1 had one embarassing build failure (in AIX), one new feature (the hash randomisation) made optional instead of default (we are still weighing our options), and the v-strings deprecation message was added."

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This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)

The July 7-13, 2003 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is out. "In a two-release-candidate-week, there are plenty of things to summarize. Learn what happened behind the scenes : random seeding of hashing, deprecation of vstrings, signals, floats, and the other things."

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This week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)

The July 13, 2003 edition of This week on Perl 6 has been published. Topics include: Targeting Parrot from GCC, Timely destruction and TRACE_SYSTEM_AREAS, Parrot is not feature frozen, Perl* Abstraction, Fun with ParrotIO, Jako groks basic PMCs, I want a Ponie!, Exceptions!, Perl 6 Rules at OSCON, and more.

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PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for July 14, 2003

The PHP Weekly Summary for July 14, 2003 is out. Topics include: Technical questions? MD5, SHA1 calculations, API version number, OCI8 with 4.3.2, Manual translation, PHP 5 for Netware, Reflection API, strip_tags() updated.

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phpDocumentor 1.2.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.2.1 of phpDocumentor, a PHP documentation solution, has been released. "The phpDocumentor team is pleased to announce the release of phpDocumentor 1.2.1. This is a bug fix release, all users who had problems with 1.2.0 should upgrade."

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Common Style Mistakes, Part 2 (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly's OnLamp.com site has an article on PHP coding tips. "In the second of a series on PHP Paranoia, John Coggeshall gives three tips to write code that's easier to understand."

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Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for July 14, 2003 is out with news and links for the Python community.

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python-dev Summary

The latest Python-dev Summary is out. "This is a summary of traffic on the python-dev mailing list from June 1, 2003 through June 30, 2003. It is intended to inform the wider Python community of on-going developments on the list and to have an archived summary of each thread started on the list."

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LDAP Programming in Python (Linux Journal)

Linux Journal has published a HOWTO article on using python-ldap to access LDAP services from Python. "You've heard about the next generation directory protocol called LDAP (lightweight directory access protocol), and you're wondering if it's possible to write programs that can interact with it. Maybe you've even set up an LDAP server of your own, and now you want to write programs for it. To these ends, this article gets you ready to write your own programs to automate the querying process of LDAP servers."

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Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

The July 14, 2003 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is out with the weeks' Tcl/Tk news.

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XML

Serialize XML data (IBM developerWorks)

Tinny Ng covers XML data serialization on IBM's developerWorks. "IBM developer Tinny Ng shows you how to serialize XML data to a DOMString with different encodings. You'll also find examples that demonstrate how to use the MemBufFormatTarget, StdOutFormatTarget, and LocalFileFormatTarget output streams in XML4C/Xerces-C++."

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A Survey of APIs and Techniques for Processing XML (O'Reilly)

Dare Obasanjo writes about XML processing tools on O'Reilly. "This article provides an overview of the current landscape of techniques for processing XML and runs the gamut from discussing old mainstays, such as push model APIs and tree model APIs as exemplified by SAX and DOM, to newer participants in the XML world such as cursor APIs and pull model parsers as exemplified by the .NET Framework's XPathNavigator and the XmlPull API respectively."

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Transclusion with XSLT 2.0 (O'Reilly)

Bob DuCharme writes about transclusion and XSLT on O'Reilly. "Transclusion is a hypertext concept that began in the work of Ted Nelson, who coined the term "hypertext". Roughly speaking, transclusion is the inclusion of a resource, or part of a resource, potentially from anywhere in the world, within a new one. For example, the HTML img element is a form of transclusion. Nelson envisioned dynamic compound documents consisting entirely of pointers to pieces of other documents, with the compound ones automatically reflecting updates to the transcluded pieces."

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Editors

Leo 3.12 beta 2 released (SourceForge)

Version 3.12 beta 2 of Leo, a scriptable programmer's editor and browsing tool, is available. "This version fixes many bugs and adds a few new features. There are no known serious bugs in this version of Leo."

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PyPE 1.1 announced

Version 1.1 of PyPE, the Python Programmer's Editor, is available. "PyPE (Python Programmers Editor) was written in order to offer a lightweight but powerful editor for those of you who think emacs is too much and idle is too little. Syntax highlighting is included out of the box, as is multiple open documents via tabs."

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Miscellaneous

Create Debian Linux packages (IBM developerWorks)

Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier shows how to build Debian packages on IBM's developerWorks. "Learn the basics of creating Debian packages for distributing programs and source code. This article shows all the necessary components of a package and how to put them together to end up with a final product."

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