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DevelopmentThe GNU Compiler Collection Version 3.3.3 Version 3.3.3 of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, was recently released. "This release was actually completed on February 14, but technical issues with the transition to new security measures for protecting FSF servers required a delay in the announcement."The Changes, New Features, and Fixes document details the new features in the larger GCC 3.3.X release. The changes for version 3.3.3 include a ton of bug fixes and some performance optimizations. A few minor features have been added, including a new --with-sysroot flag, automatic detection of executable stacks, support for SSE3 instructions, and support for thread local storage debugging on the S390 architecture. The project build status page lists the many operating systems and Linux distributions that this version of GCC has been tested on. Congratulations to the many contributors for helping to move this huge project forward.
System Applications Audio Projects ALSA 1.0.3 released Version 1.0.3 of the ALSA sound driver is available. The comments say: "added driver for ATI IXP 150/200/250 chips and HDSP MADI driver".
Ogg Traffic The February 25, 2004 edition of Ogg Traffic is out with the latest Ogg Vorbis audio compression software news. The search is on for a new Ogg Traffic editor.
Planet CCRMA Changes The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include the addition of XMMS LADSPA, Caps LADSPA Plugins, and Open Music for Linux, and new versions of LADCCA, Fluidsynth, Vkeybd, and the TAP LADSPA Plugins.
Clusters and Grids MyGrid: version 0.1.4 (Jobs Visualizer) (SourceForge) Version 0.1.4 of MyGrid, a cross-platform grid computing management system, is available. "Version 0.1.4 adds many structure enhancements to the project. Java 'foundry' of MyGrid now contains 3 projects: visualizer, engine and shell job processor. More to come!"
Database Software Getting Reacquainted with dbXML 2.0 (O'Reilly) Tom Bradford writes about dbXML 2.0 on O'Reilly. " dbXML is a native XML database written in in Java. Native XML databases (NXDs) are databases that store XML using an internalized format for faster overall processing, and representational flexibility. NXDs also provide support for indexing XML for improved query performance. The dbXML project has quite a bit of history behind it. Some have likened it to something of a soap opera. Though there has been quite a bit of flux in the project, at its core the focus has remained the same, which is to provide an easy to use native XML database implementation, with both good performance and stability."
Configuring JBoss 4.0 JDBC Connectivity (O'ReillyNet) Deepak Vohra shows how to use non-default databases with JBoss. "JBoss 4.0, developer edition, is an open source application server configured to use HypersonicDB by default. However, some Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) developers would like to use databases other than HypersonicDB to develop and deploy applications. In this tutorial, we'll look at how to configure JBoss to use other databases."
PostgreSQL 7.3.6 Now Available Version 7.3.6 of the PostgreSQL database is available with several bug fixes. "After several fixes were backpatches to the 7_3_STABLE branch, we have now released a 7.3.6."
PostgreSQL Weekly News The March 1, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out. Take a look for PostgreSQL database development news.
phpMyAdmin 2.5.6 is released (SourceForge) Version 2.5.6 of phpMyAdmin, a web-based database administration tool, has been released. "Welcome to this new version, aimed at stabilization of the 2.5 branch."
Filesystem Utilities ntfsprogs 1.8.5 released (SourceForge) Version 1.8.5 of ntfsprogs, a set of NT filesystem utilities, is available. "This is basically a spring cleaning of the build process with lots of cleanups and a few bug fixes thrown in for good measure. Upgrade is not essential."
Mail Software Cooking with sendmail (O'Reilly) Craig Hunt works with sendmail and LDAP in an O'Reilly book excerpt. "Sendmail Cookbook offers hundreds of step-by-step solutions to configuration problems just like the one in today's excerpt, on routing mail with LDAP. If you're an administrator, you know you can't spend hours tracking down the answer to every problem; the solutions and configuration code included with each recipe in the book can be implemented immediately."
Networking Tools JavaGroups version 2.2.1 released (SourceForge) JavaGroups version 2.2.1 is available. "JavaGroups provides reliable group communication based on IP multicast and configurable protocol stack. This release includes a number of bug fixes and enhancements."
Twisted 1.2.0 released Version 1.2.0 of the Twisted networking framework is out with lots of new capabilities.
Printing LPRng 3.8.26 released Version 3.8.26 of the LPRng print system is available. Change information is in the source code.
Security Nmap Security Scanner 3.50 Released Version 3.50 of the Nmap Security Scanner is out. "Nmap has undergone many substantial changes since 3.00 and we recommend that all current users upgrade. Improvements from 41 intermediate releases have gone into 3.50."
Telecom reSIProcate 0.4 available (SourceForge) Version 0.4 of reSIProcate, an RFC 3261 compliant SIP stack that is used for Voice over IP applications, is out. "A new tarball containing many major improvements is now available. General stability, performance and many bugs have all been fixed or improved."
Web Site Development MediaWiki 1.2.0rc1 released (SourceForge) Version 1.2.0rc1 of MediaWiki is out. "This release includes improved inline image and thumbnailing support, smoother account management, and a number of interface tweaks as well as numerous bug fixes and backend features (squid cache purging, authenticated SMTP, tighter upload security, better PHP compatibility). Also fixes an incompatibility with MySQL 3.2.x in the default install that cropped up in 1.1."
Mod_python's PSP: Python Server Pages (O'ReillyNet) Gregory Trubetskoy explains Python Server Pages on O'Reilly. "For simple web sites, inlining code in the pages themselves s shockingly effective. For more complex sites, it can even work with good MVC design. Fear not, Pythonistas, mod_python's PSP brings the power and clarity of Python to web programming."
PyGoogle 0.6 released Version 0.6 of PyGoogle, a Python wrapper for Google's web API, is out. "This release adds support for the current SOAPpy module from the Python Web Services project. It also contains significant internal refactorings and API documentation updates."
Desktop Applications Audio Applications Audacity 1.2.0 released Stable version 1.2.0 of the Audacity sound editor is available. "This release features major improvements over version 1.0, including new effects, improved audio quality, and an updated user interface." See the release notes for the full change description.
Boss Ogg 0.13.4 released (SourceForge) Version 0.13.4 of Boss Ogg, a server-based music player for ogg, mp3, and flac files, has been released. "The 0.13.4 release features a new import script, preliminary genre support and tons of stability and bug fixes."
Tkeca-4.0.2 released! Version 4.0.2 of Tkeca, a GUI front-end to the Ecasound audio utility, has been announced. This version features a bug fix for the mixdown properties window.
Desktop Environments GNOME CPUFreq Applet 0.1.1 released (GnomeDesktop) Version 0.1.1 of the GNOME CPUFreq Applet is available. "GNOME CPUFreq Applet is a CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor for GNOME Panel. This specific release adds support for userspace governor."
KDE-CVS-Digest The February 28, 2004 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest has been published. The topic summary says: "Kolourpaint adds transparent selections. Some preliminary work on a new control center. KMail adds IMAP folder expiry. KDevelop adds Opie code templates. Plus bugfixes in Quanta and Kopete."
KDE Traffic (KDE.News) KDE.News summarizes the contents of KDE Traffic #75. "KDE Traffic #75 is out with news regarding KDE's future, KDE Edu, HTML message composition for KMail and more. In case you missed the previous edition, which wasn't announced on the dot due to personal problems, follow the link to KDE Traffic #74."
Connect KDE applications using DCOP Martyn Honeyford illustrates the use of KDE's Desktop COmmunication Protocol (DCOP) on IBM's developerWorks. "Hidden deep within the KDE desktop lies a powerful set of scripting technologies that can allow the power user to automate many tasks. In this article, Martyn Honeyford introduces us to these technologies and explains how they can be used to the fullest."
XFree86 Release 4.4.0 Version 4.4.0 of XFree86 has been announced. Changes include updated video and input drivers, IPv6 support, X Server updates, client and library updates, I18N and font updates, and more. See the release notes for more information.
Electronics XCircuit 3.2.12 released Version 3.2.12 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing package, is out. Change information is in the source code.
Games Pydance 1.0 released The PyGame site mentions the release of version 1.0 of Pydance, an arcade-style dancing game.
WorldForge Weekly News The WorldForge Weekly News for February 27, 2004 is out with the latest WorldForge game project news. Also from WorldForge, version 0.1.1 of Sage, an OpenGL extensions library, is out.
Imaging Applications KolourPaint 1.0 'Seagull' Released (KDE.News) Version 1.0 of KolourPaint has been announced. "KolourPaint is an easy-to-use paint program for KDE that makes user-friendly painting and image editing a reality for the desktop user. If you're sick of those broken KDE paint programs that can't undo or handle images the size of a screenshot, then KolourPaint is for you."
Interoperability Wine Traffic Issue #212 of Wine Traffic is available with the latest Wine project news.
Music Applications amSynth 1.0.0 released Version 1.0.0 of amSynth, the Analogue Modeling SYNTHesizer, has been released. Changes include build fixes for alsa version 1 and efficiency improvements.
PDA Software Mozilla Firefox on Sharp Zaurus PDA (MozillaZine) MozillaZine reports on a port of the Mozilla Firefox browser to the Sharp Zaurus PDA. "Laze writes: "The pdaXrom team, found at www.pdaXrom.org, has been successful in making Mozilla Firefox run on the Sharp Zaurus series PDA (at the moment only the C7X0 series), which means that users now can use this wonderful browser for 'pocket browsing'."
Video Applications dvd-slideshow 0.5.4 released (SourceForge) Version 0.5.4 of dvd-slideshow is available. "dvd-slideshow makes a DVD slideshow video with menus from a text file listing of pictures, effects, and audio tracks. You can add some nice effects like fades, crops, scrolls, or Ken Burns effects. The updates are slowing down now since the program does mostly what I want it to do. This update adds some features in the audio system: two audio tracks are possible now, and it is possible to re-define the background image anywhere in the slideshow."
Web Browsers mozilla.org Status Update #224 (MozillaZine) The March 1, 2004 mozilla.org Status Update is available. The MozillaZine summary says: "It includes news on Mozilla 1.7 Alpha, Minimo 0.1, the string code, layout, large downloads, support for Sun keyboards and more."
Independent Status Reports (MozillaZine) The Mozilla Independent Status Reports for February 29, 2004 have been published. "The latest set of status reports includes updates from Feed Parser, JRex, Mycroft, HONcode, Forumzilla, IE View, Compact Menu, QuickNote, MozManual, MessageID-Finder and Launchy."
Mozilla Links Newsletter The Mozilla Links Newsletter for March 2, 2004 has been published. Take a look for articles on the Mozilla browser and related topics.
Miscellaneous Bidwatcher 1.3.13 released Version 1.3.13 of Bidwatcher is available. "Bidwatcher is a free auction tool for eBay users, available for Linux and (soon?) Microsoft Windows." See the project news page for recent change information.
GnomeMeeting 1.00 released (GnomeDesktop) GnomeMeeting version 1.00, a videoconferencing and VOIP/IP-Telephony application, has been announced. " Major new features include a redesigned configuration assistant, a redesigned preferences window, new status support, audio and video devices plugins with native ALSA support, a new manual, ..."
gkrellsun 0.10.5 released (SourceForge) Version 0.10.5 of gkrellsun, a sun and moon monitor, is available. "This release combines gkrellsun and gkrellmoon. The user can click on the Sun/Moon image to toggle between them."
OSAF Announces the Release of Chandler 0.3 Version 0.3 of the Chandler personal information manager (PIM) is out. "We are pleased to announce Chandler 0.3! Our architecture is finally stable enough to start developing end-user features. Release 0.3 targets developers who want an early preview into our architecture as we are developing it."
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly News The March 2, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with links and news about the Caml language.
Java Aspect-oriented changes with Javassist (IBM developerWorks) IBM's developerWorks has published part six in a series on the Javassist framework. "Java consultant Dennis Sosnoski saves the best for last in his three-part coverage of the Javassist framework. This time he shows how the Javassist search-and-replace support makes editing Java bytecode practically as easy as a text editor's Replace All command. Want to report all writes to a particular field or patch in a change to a parameter passed in a method call? Javassist makes it easy, and Dennis shows you how."
JPOX 1.0.0 Beta 2 released (SourceForge) The Beta 2 release of JPOX 1.0.0 has been announced. "JPOX is a Java Data Objects (JDO) API full compliant implementation. The Java Data Objects (JDO) API is a standard interface-based Java model abstraction of persistence. JPOX is free and released under an Open Source license, and so the source code is available for download along with the JDO implementation. In the Beta 2 release we reach an important milestone, the JDO compliance verified by the JDO TCK tests."
Taming Tiger: Loading Properties from XML (IBM developerWorks) John Zukowski works with Java and XML configuration files on IBM's developerWorks. "The Properties class is an old favorite, around since the beginning of Java programming time with very few changes. The Tiger release of J2SE enhances this class, which allows you not only to use it to specify key-value pairs on a single line separated by an equal sign, but also to use XML files to load and save those key-value pairs. In this installment of Taming Tiger, John Zukowski demonstrates how to use this updated work horse."
JSP Cooking with Java Servlets & JSP (O'Reilly) O'Reilly has published an excerpt from The Java Servlet & JSP Cookbook by Bruce W. Perry. "In these samples, learn how to use the Java Plug-in HTML Converter tool to generate the tags for embedding an applet, how to configure a javax.sql.DataSource for use in a servlet with the Tomcat web container, and how to use the JSTL's XML and XSLT-related tags."
Lisp Lisp Resource Kit A new bootable Lisp Resource Kit CD is available. "The Lisp Resource Kit is "a dedicated development/learning environment on a self-booting CD. It is designed to be an easy to use single resource for those who are interested in exploring Common Lisp, regardless of their experience or domain of expertise". The self booting CD, which is based on Knoppix Linux, includes Common Lisp books, documentation and development environments."
Vanilla Lisp Shell: first public release Version 1.2 of VLS, the Vanilla Lisp Shell, has been announced. "VLS is "an Emacs facility that allows many different kinds of commands for running Lisp Shells (also referred to as an inferior Lisp process)". It provides commands for starting Common Lisp and Scheme sessions and interacting with them via expression evaluation, information, package, debugging and other commands."
Dynamically changing running Lisp code Paolo Amoroso sends along some links to a set of articles called Dynamically changing running Lisp code, by Bill Clementson.
ML MLton 20040227 released Version 20040227 of MLton, a Standard ML compiler, is out. See the change log for details. Thanks to Stephen Weeks.
Perl Perl 5.005_04 Released (use Perl) Perl 5.005 release 4 is out. "This release updates Perl 5.005 to enable building with current compiler/operating system configurations."
Parrot 0.1.0 Released (use Perl) Version 0.1.0 of Parrot, a virtual machine for Perl 6 (and more) has been announced. "The Parrot team proudly presents the Parrot 0.1.0 leap release. It provides some milestones like objects and multi-threading and supports many more platforms."
Exegesis 7 (O'Reilly) Damian Conway has written the Perl Exegesis 7, which delves into formats in Perl 6. "Unlike Perl 5, Perl 6 doesn't have a format keyword. Or the associated built-in formatting mechanism. Instead it has a Form.pm module. And a form function."
This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl) The February 29, 2004 edition of This Week on perl5-porters has been published. "This week's summary, a bit late, will tell about the approaching development release, the new bugs discovered and fixed, and the side-effects of the new warnings."
This week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly) The February 22, 2004 edition of This week on Perl 6 is out with the latest Perl 6 developments.
PHP PHP Weekly Summary for March 2, 2004 The PHP Weekly Summary for March 2, 2004 is out. Topics include: Migration Appendix, Method signature check on inheritance, SimpleXML and elements and attributes as strings, Fixing get_browser().
Python Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! The March 3, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with another roundup of Python language articles.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! The March 1, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk article links.
TclXML, TclDOM and TclXSLT v3.0b2 released (SourceForge) Version 3.0 of TclXML, TclDOM and TclXSLT are available. "The TclXML family of packages provide XML support for the Tcl scripting language. There are several subprojects: TclXML (the parser), TclDOM, TclXSLT and xmlgen."
XML A survey of XML standards: Part 4 (IBM developerWorks) Uche Ogbuji has assembled a cross-reference of XML standards. "The world of XML is vast and growing, with a huge variety of standards and technologies that interact in complex ways. It can be difficult for beginners to navigate the most important aspects of XML, and for users to keep track of new entries and changes in the space. XML is a basic syntax upon which you develop local and global vocabularies. Uche Ogbuji has presented the most important standards relating to XML in three in-depth articles. In this fourth article, he provides a detailed cross-reference of all the covered standards."
Community Developments (O'Reilly) Kendall Grant Clark writes about two XML projects, RDDL 2.0 and genx. "RDDL provides a kind of XML document suitable to put at the end of an XML namespace URI, a document which describes, by means of typed links, a bundle -- schemas, transformations, even bits and bobs of code -- of related resources in both human and machine readable ways.""The second, interesting bit of work on XML-DEV in the past few months is the C library, genx, for generating XML."
Cross Compilers GDC Pre-Release 2.91 Pre-Release 2.91 of GDC, the GNU Development Chain for 68HC11 & 68HC12, is available. "Pre-Release 2.91 of the GNU Development Chain for 68HC11/68HC12 is available. It is based on Binutils 2.14, Gcc 3.3.3, Gdb 6.0 and Newlib 1.11.0."
Small Device C Compiler 2.4.0 released (SourceForge) Version 2.4.0 of the Small Device C Compiler is available. "A new release of SDCC, the portable optimising compiler for 8051, DS390, and Z80 microprocessors is now available. Included is preliminary support for the HC08, Pic 14, and Pic 16 series."
Editors Jext developer quits Romain GUY, the lead developer of the Jext programmer's editor has called it quits. "I've created Jext exactly five years ago and had very good time maintaining it. But it is time for me to quit. I'd like to warmly thank all the people who helped me all along (and particularily Paolo Giarusso, who did incredible job those last months, and Slava Pestov, who'll know why) as well as every single person who took the time to download Jext. But let's be honnest, I'm not any more motivated by this project."
Version Control Arch 1.2 (stable) released Stable version 1.2 of Arch, a version control system, is available. See the release notes for details.
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