Development

PyX: the Python Graphics Package

A new release (version 0.6.2) of PyX, the Python Graphics Package was released this week.

PyX version 0.6.2 features several bug fixes in the graphing module, the details are available in the changes document.

Some of the primary PyX capabilities include:

• Plotting of basic X/Y graphs.
• The ability to overlay graphics.
• Plotting of 2D and 3D grid-based data.
• Provision of an abstracted PostScript functionality.
• Support for the powerful TeX and LaTeX typesetting languages.
• Publication quality output.
• An easy to use Python API.

The online examples show PyX in action, a wide variety of useful graphics are shown.

With the ability to combine many types of data plotting with the scientific typesetting capabilities of TeX/LaTeX, PyX looks like an excellent tool for the creation of mathematical texts, both online/interactive and printed.

See the PyX documentation page for more information.

The PyX source code is available here.

Comments (none posted)

System Applications

Audio Projects

Planet CCRMA Changes

The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include new versions of Noteedit, Lilypond, and SND, and the addition of Qdu, a graphical disk space management tool.

Comments (none posted)

Database Software

Berkeley Database 4.2.52 (stable) released

Version 4.2.52 (stable) of the embedded Berkeley Database is out.

Comments (2 posted)

CLSQL 2.6.4 released

Version 2.6.4 of CLSQL, a Common Lisp interface to SQL databases, is available. "This version adds a CommonSQL compatibility layer, which becomes the default API, and a metaobject protocol compatibility layer."

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PEAR DB 1.6.2 released

Version 1.6.2 of PEAR DB has been announced. "PEAR DB is a database abstraction layer for 13 of PHP's database drivers. The latest version has some fixes in the PostgreSQL driver."

Comments (none posted)

PostgreSQL Weekly News

The PostgreSQL Weekly News for April 12, 2004 has been published, here's the content summary: "A quiet week of development on the main project, but several interesting developments took place in the world at large. Probably one of the more meaningful items was the release of the SQL:2003 spec. Anyone interested in database design should probably keep an eye out as more articles appear discussing some of the changes involved; I've included a link to a synopsis below."

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Embedded Systems

BusyBox 1.0.0-pre10 released

Version 1.0.0-pre9 of BusyBox, a condensed collection of command line utilities for embedded systems, is out. "Here goes the final BusyBox pre-release... This is your last chance for bug fixes. With luck this will be released as BusyBox 1.0.0 later this week. Please do not bother to send in patches adding cool new features at this time. Only bug-fix patches will be accepted. It would also be very helpful if people could help review the BusyBox documentation and submit improvements."

Version 1.1.0-pre10 was released a few days later. "Ok, I lied. It turns out that -pre9 will not be the final BusyBox pre-release. With any luck however -pre10 will be, since I really want to get BusyBox 1.0.0 released this week."

Comments (none posted)

Mail Software

Data Mining Email (O'ReillyNet)

Robert Bernier performs data mining on an email archive using Perl. "Thousands of useful facts lie inaccessible on your hard drive, hidden within email messages and attachments. How much more productive would you be if you could extract, index, and search that information? Robert Bernier demonstrates how to store data from emails into a database, where you can use data-mining techniques to analyze it."

Comments (none posted)

HamCannon 0.1 beta released

Version 0.1 beta of HamCannon is available. "HamCannon is a Zope/Plone Product for managing outbound email marketing. HamCannon is for sending ham, not spam - it has much support for helping users unsubscribe and none for hiding from them. Please don't use HamCannon to send spam."

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New milter software

This week's new mail filtering software on the milter.org site include announcement for the new SPF Milter a call for discussion on Java-based milters, and version 0.17 of milter-spamc.

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Printing

CUPS Driver Development Kit 1.0rc2

Version 1.0 rc 2 of the CUPS Driver Development Kit has been announced. "The CUPS Driver Development Kit (DDK) provides a suite of standard drivers, a PPD file compiler, and other utilities that can be used to develop printer drivers for CUPS and other printing environments. CUPS provides a portable printing layer for UNIX-based operating systems. The CUPS DDK provides the means for mass-producing PPD files and drivers/filters for CUPS-based printer drivers."

Comments (none posted)

Web Site Development

Aiakos 0.2 beta released

The 0.2 beta release of Aiakos is available. "Aiakos is an innovative distributed authentication system, based on Zope and Plone. Much of the heavy lifting is done using the LDAPUserFolder product by Jens Vagelpohl. Aiakos allows you to provide a central sign-on system for a network of websites. All login and registration activity takes place on the central Aiakos server."

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mnoGoSearch 3.2.16 search engine released

Version 3.2.16 of the mnoGoSearch web site search engine has been released. The changes include improved operation on non-English language sites, bug fixes, and performance improvements.

Comments (none posted)

Quixote 1.0b1 is available

Version 1.0 beta 1 of the Quixote web development platform has been announced. See the changes file for details.

Comments (none posted)

Wiring Your Web Application with Open Source Java (O'ReillyNet)

Mark Eagle writes about Java-based web applications on O'Reilly. "This article will discuss how to combine several well-known frameworks to achieve loose coupling, how to structure your architecture, and how to enforce a consistent design across all application layers."

Comments (none posted)

Introduction to JavaServer Faces (O'ReillyNet)

Alexander Prohorenko and Olexiy Prohorenko introduce JavaServer Faces on O'Reilly. "Swing developers enjoy a well-defined set of high-level components for building GUI applications, but what about web applications? JavaServer Faces attempts to bring the same kind of toolkit to the web-app space."

Comments (none posted)

Planning for Disaster Recovery on LAMP Systems (O'ReillyNet)

Robert Jones writes about disaster recovery issues and LAMP systems on O'Reilly. "The beauty of LAMP systems is that you can develop them as formally or informally as you like. Unfortunately, when it comes time to plan for disaster recovery, that informality can work against you. Robert Jones presents several guidelines for development and configuration that can make recovery easier."

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Miscellaneous

RTAI 3.1-test1

Version 3.1-test1 of the Real Time Application Interface (RTAI) is available; this is the first version which supports the 2.6 kernel.

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Desktop Applications

Audio Applications

JACK Bitscope 1.1 and the GL Mixer

A new version of the JACK bitscope diagnosis tool has been released. "As its name might suggest, the bitscope operates at the bare metal of JACK's I/O layer, looking at the 32 binary digits in each individual sample. It's basically functional, and its release and subsequent announcement were delayed most by the need to provide some adequate examples in the documentation."

Also, the GL Mixer, a 3D sound mixing widget for JACK, is out.

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New Linux Sound Applications

Dave Phillips has updated his list of new Linux audio software releases.

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Data Visualization

Aqsis Renderer release 0.9.1 (SourceForge)

Version 0.9.1 of the Aqsis Renderer toolkit is available. "Aqsis is a Renderman(tm) compliant 3D rendering toolkit. Aqsis is based on the Reyes rendering architecture. Features include : Programmable Shading True Displacements NURBS CSG Motion Blur Subdivision Surfaces."

Comments (none posted)

Generating Perl graphs with GD::Graph (OSDN)

Derek Fountain explains how to generate data graphs in Perl with GD::Graph. "Perl's GD::Graph module is a tool that allows a software developer to quickly and easily generate graphical representations of data. Originally written by Martien Verbruggen in 1995, the package has matured into a very flexible and popular tool. It is ideally suited to any situation where a dynamic data set, from a database or elsewhere, needs to be fetched and represented on the fly. It is widely used in corporate intranets, where many a webmaster has used it to generate graphs that show data in exactly the format management likes."

Comments (none posted)

Desktop Environments

Dropline GNOME 2.6 Available (GnomeDesktop)

GnomeDesktop.org has announced dropline GNOME 2.6. "As stated on gnome.org, GNOME 2.6 has arrived! Now Slackware users can enjoy crisp, GNOME 2.6 goodness, including the overhauled GTK+ File Chooser and the new Spatial Nautilus file management system. Other changes include new software such as the Beep Media Player and Screem Website Editor, new artwork, and a new windowing system. With the license change to XFree86 4.4, Dropline GNOME has also joined the revolution and moved to X.Org's X11 server (don't worry, the nVidia and ATI binary drivers still work). Finally, the Dropline Build System has also been revamped, making it easier than ever to build the desktop from source, or contribute enhancements back to the community."

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Gaphor 0.3.0 is out

Version 0.3.0 of Gaphor, a UML modeling tool for GNOME, is available with class diagrams, a new GUI, a UML 2.0 compliant data model, and more.

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GNotify 0.3 released!

Version 0.3 of GNotify, a GTK+ notification service daemon, is available.

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libxklavier 1.01 released

Version 1.01 of libxklavier, a GNOME keyboard application, is out. "The version 1.01 provides build-time compatibility with the latest X.Org X server (which renamed the default xkb rules set from xfree86 to xorg)."

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Send your GNOME Hacks to O'Reilly (GnomeDesktop)

O'Reilly is looking for GNOME hacks for an upcoming book, "Linux Desktop Hacks".

Comments (2 posted)

KDE-CVS-Digest (KDE.News)

The April 9, 2004 KDE-CVS-Digest is available. Here's the content summary: "KJSEmbed adds support for KParts and QComboBox. Beginnings of next generation user guide. More IMAP and icon view optimizations. Kexi now supports forms. KIMProxy, a library to enable IM from any application. CSS emca bindings added in KDOM."

Comments (none posted)

KDE Quality Team Revisited (KDE.News)

KDE.News reports on the progress of the KDE Quality Teams Project. "Remember, in Quality Teams you can do as little or as much as you want. No experience is required, and you can contribute code, documentation, artwork, discuss user interfaces and usability, manage bugs and bug reports, manage the wiki pages, communicate between developers and the wider community, and promote KDE through the media. There's something for everybody :-)"

Comments (none posted)

XFree86 experimental snapshot: 4.4.99.3

The XFree86 project has announced a new experimental snapshot, version 4.4.99.3. "With the 4.4.0 release done, we are now in the experimental (development) phase for the 4.5.0 release."

Comments (none posted)

Electronics

gerber2pdf 1.3 released

Version 1.3 of gerber2pdf is available. The program is a Python script that converts Gerber CAD files into PDF format. This is a bug fix release: "Fixed a problem with Python 2.3 by removing line termination characters from strings supplied to the eval function."

Comments (none posted)

Financial Applications

Release of GnuCash 1.8.9 (GnomeDesktop)

Stable version 1.8.9 of GnuCash, a financial application, has been announced. This version includes a long list of new features and bug fixes.

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Games

Funki 1.0 released

The PyGame site lists the release of version 1.0 of Funki. "Funki is a hot new Pygame Action Puzzle. It is Lemmings meets your standard block pushing game. High quality entertainment."

Comments (none posted)

WorldForge Weekly News

The April 9, 2004 edition of the WorldForge Weekly News is available with the latest development news from the WorldForge game project.

Comments (none posted)

Graphics

Inkscape 0.38(.1) Released

Version 0.38 of Inkscape, a cross-platform SVG-based graphics editor, has been released. "In addition to a slew of new features, we've analyzed and closed over 130 bug reports for this release. Improvements have been made to text, fonts, paths, gradients, usability, and much more." Version 0.38.1 was also announced and features bug fixes and a few new features.

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GUI Packages

gtkmm and glibmm 2.4.0 released

Version 2.4.0 of gtkmm 2.4.0, the C++ interface to GTK+, and a new version of the associated glibmm have been released. Changes include several new widgets and an improved API.

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FLTK 1.1.5rc1 released

Version 1.1.5 rc 1 of FLTK, the Fast, Light ToolKit, has been announced. "The FLTK 1.1.5 release is primarily a bug-fix release including documentation updates, fixes for 64-bit platforms, FLUID, several widgets, and GLUT emulation, and fixes for several platform-specific issues. The new release also adds project files for Visual C++.NET and supports KDE 3.x icons."

Other News from the FLTK project includes an Updated Configuration Management Plan, and the release of the Geert extensions to FLTK.

Comments (none posted)

Custom widgets using PyQt

Roberto Alsina explains PyQt with a tutorial. "Everyone who has programmed applications knows that sometimes you create a gadget that can be reused in other situations, and that code reuse is good. In the specific case of GUI applications, often what you would want to reuse is a widget. For example, you took one of the toolkit's widgets and extended its functionality in a way you think has wide application, and you intend to reuse it on future work. So, what we will try to do is figure out how we can create easy-to-reuse custom widgets using PyQt."

Comments (none posted)

PythonCard 0.7.3.1 is available

Version 0.7.3.1 of PythonCard, a cross-platform GUI construction kit that uses wxPython, has been released.

Comments (none posted)

Imaging Applications

CamlImages 2.12 is out

Version 2.12 of CamlImages, an image processing library for the Objective Caml language, has been released. The Caml Hump listing describes it as: "An image processing library, which provides loading and saving various image formats with an interface for the Caml graphics library. It has also an interface with the freetype library to draw texts using truetype fonts."

Comments (none posted)

Interoperability

Wine 20040408 is out

Development release 20040408 of Wine has been announced. New features include the ability to configure DOS devices through symbolic links, improvements to shell32, a new task manager, the new wineprefixcreate tool, and bug fixes.

Comments (none posted)

Wine Traffic

The April 9, 2004 edition of Wine Traffic has been published.

Comments (none posted)

Multimedia

GIMP Animation Package version 2.0.0 Released

Version 2.0.0 of the GIMP Animation Package, a set of plugins for the purpose of creating animations, has been released. "There are a couple of new features including a new bluebox plug-in, onion skinning and a video preview."

Comments (none posted)

totem 0.99.10 released

Version 0.99.10 of Totem is available. "Totem is movie player for the Gnome desktop based on xine. It features a playlist, a full-screen mode, seek and volume controls, as well as a pretty complete keyboard navigation."

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XMMS LADSPA 1.0 announced

Version 1.0 of XMMS LADSPA, an XMMS effect plugin, has been announced. "This version adds save & restore functionality so that if you use XMMS LADSPA with the same plugins all the time you don't need to laboriously re-start those settings when you restart XMMS, they will be remembered as will all their parameters."

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Music Applications

Announcing ClearScale

A new open-source audio project has been announced. "ClearScale is an open source GPL-based project to bring high quality time stretching and pitch shifting to the Linux platform. The goal is to create an open standard for a commercial grade algorithm that allows changing the pitch and speed of music and sound independently of each other. It should achieve this in an artifact-free, sonically pleasing manner, comparable to commercial algorithms on the MacOS and Windows platform available today."

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sfc 0.016 Released

Version 0.016 of sfc, a MIDI router that emulates a synthesizer, is out with new MIDI capabilities, bug fixes, and efficiency improvements.

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wcnt 1.1z is released

Version 1.1z of wcnt (Wave Composer Not Toilet) is available. Wcnt is a modular synthesizer, sequencer, sampler, and wav file generator. This version features a long list of changes.

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PDA Software

Palm4Python 0.5 is out

Version 0.5 of the Palm4Python project has been released. "The goal of this project is to have a suite of open source python modules to access Palm OS databases. It is intended to provide a full set of robust functionality to manage all aspects of interfacing with Palm OS hardware and software"...

Comments (none posted)

Peer to Peer

BTQueue 0.0.3 has been released (SourceForge)

Version 0.0.3 of BTQueue is out. "According to major problem in BitTornado 0.1.3, BTQueue 0.0.3 is the fixed bug release. The core engine has been upgraded to BitTornado 0.1.4. Some minor bugs are also fixed. BTQueue is a console-based BitTorrent Client with built-in scheduler for handling multiple sessions."

Comments (none posted)

Gnomoradio 0.11 is out

Version 0.11 of Gnomoradio, a peer-to-peer music playing system, has been released. "Version 0.11 improves stability, fixes several minor bugs, and improves the UI. It is recommended that all users upgrade."

Since this announcement came out, Gnomoradio releases 0.11.1 and 0.11.2 have come out to address several bugs.

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Video Applications

Kino 0.7.1 non-linear DV editor released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 0.7.1 of the Kino Digital Video editor has been announced. "Major new features of this updated GNOME2 application include metadata editing, 3 point insert editing, some dvdauthor integration, mouse wheel support, and numerous user interface enhancements."

Comments (none posted)

Web Browsers

Mozilla Looking to Forge Alliances (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine covers a mailing list thread calling for alliances between Mozilla and other open source technologies. "Brendan [Eich] sees Mozilla developing into an open cross-platform alternative to forthcoming Microsoft technologies such as XAML and is looking to collaborate with other open-source projects to make this happen." The GNOME project is mentioned explicity."

Comments (18 posted)

Mozilla Links Newsletter

The Mozilla Links Newsletter for April 8, 2004 is available. "In this special international edition, we pay tribute to our international contributors and developers who make Mozilla one of the most popular software worldwide."

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mozilla.org Status Update #227 (MozillaZine)

The April 14, 2004 Mozilla.org Status Update has been published. "It includes news on the new stable branch, Quality Feedback Agent (Talkback) reports, junk mail controls, the spellchecker, bookmark keywords, Mozilla Thunderbird and more."

Comments (none posted)

Independent Status Reports (MozillaZine)

The April 13, 2004 edition of the Mozilla Independent Status Reports are available. "As part of international month, a special set of international status reports focussing on internationalisation and localisation projects has been published. Updates from L10Nzilla, Mycroft, kairo, l10ntools and Gaeilge are included."

Comments (none posted)

Miscellaneous

Alexandria 0.1.0 released

Version 0.1.0 of Alexandria, a GNOME application for managing book collections, is out. This is the first public release.

Version 0.1.1 of Alexandria was released later in the week, it fixes a bug that is caused by a missing directory.

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Languages and Tools

Caml

Caml Weekly News

The April 6-13, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is online. Take a look for four new Caml language articles.

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Java

gnome-gcj 0.17.0 released

Version 0.17.0 of gnome-gcj, the GCJ bindings to GNOME, is out. "Gnome-GCJ 0.17.0 is the first release that supports Glib/Gdk/GTK+ 2.x. It currenly doesn't deliver lots of wrapped libraries as the main goal for this release was to compile and install cleanly using the GTK libraries 2.2."

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Java and Sound, Part 2 (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly has published part two of an excerpt from Java Examples in a Nutshell. "This second installment in a two-part series of excerpts from Java Examples in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition follows last week's (on playing streaming sounds in both sampled audio and MIDI formats) with examples of how to read a simple musical score and convert it into a MIDI sequence. Author David Flanagan also shows you how to make music by directly controlling a MidiChannel of a Synthesizer."

Comments (none posted)

Object-relation mapping without the container (IBM developerWorks)

Richard Hightower introduces Hibernate and Spring on IBM's developerWorks. "Just when you think you've got your developer tools all sorted out, a fresh crop is sure to emerge. In this article, regular developerWorks contributor Rick Hightower uses a real-world example to introduce you to two of the most exciting new technologies for the enterprise. Hibernate is an object-relation mapping tool and Spring is an AOP framework and IOC container. Follow along as Rick shows you how to combine the two to build a transactional persistence tier for your enterprise applications."

Comments (none posted)

Perl

This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)

The April 5-11, 2004 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is online. "Spring is here, at least in the northern hemisphere, and perl 5.8.4 is approaching. This doesn't stop the Perl 5 porters from pursuing their usual job: proposing exciting new ideas, and fixing bugs. Read on for the details."

Comments (none posted)

This week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)

The April 4, 2004 edition of This week on Perl 6 is available with the latest Perl 6 development news.

Comments (2 posted)

Using Bloom Filters (O'Reilly)

Maciej Ceglowski compares Perl's lookup hash to Bloom filters on O'Reilly. " Many people don't realize that there is an elegant alternative to the lookup hash, in the form of a venerable algorithm called a Bloom filter. Bloom filters allow you to perform membership tests in just a fraction of the memory you'd need to store a full list of keys, so you can avoid the performance hit of having to use a disk or database to do your lookups. As you might suspect, the savings in space comes at a price: you run an adjustable risk of false positives, and you can't remove a key from a filter once you've added it in. But in the many cases where those constraints are acceptable, a Bloom filter can make a useful tool."

Comments (none posted)

PHP

PHP 4.3.6RC3 released

Release Candidate 3 of PHP 4.3.6 has been announced. "This release addresses 2 major bugs introduced in the 4.3.5 release. One of these bugs caused problems when loading dynamic extensions on Windows and thread-safe (ZTS) builds and the other involves incorrect handling of daylight savings time. A few other minor bugs were fixed as well."

Comments (none posted)

Python

Testing frameworks in Python (IBM developerWorks)

David Mertz writes about unit testing in Python on IBM's developerWorks. "In this installment, David looks at Python's two standard modules for unit testing: unittest and doctest. These modules expand on the capability of the built-in assert statement, which is used for validation of pre-conditions and post-conditions within functions. David discusses the best ways to incorporate testing into Python development, weighing the advantages of different styles for different types of projects."

Comments (none posted)

Scheme

Scheme Weekly News

The April 8, 2004 edition of the Scheme Weekly News is online with a new set of Scheme language articles.

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XML

libxml++ 2.6.0 (stable) released

Version 2.6.0 of libxml++ is out. "libxml++ is a C++ wrapper for the libxml XML parser library."

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SVG and Typography

Fabio Arciniegas A. writes about typography under Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) on O'Reilly. "Mixing the worlds of documents, programming, and visual design is a familiar experience for XML developers, especially when dealing with presentation technologies like SVG. Such mixtures can produce exciting new representations of information. They can also become ugly messes if one fails to learn the relevant aesthetic and design principles."

Comments (none posted)

Editors

Bluefish 0.13 editor released (GnomeDesktop)

Version 0.13 of the Bluefish html editor has been announced. "Bluefish 0.13 features a new bookmarks functionality, much improved project management, auto tag closing, better navigation trough opened documents, a much more responsive user interface, again many user interface improvements, many bug fixes and much, much more!"

Comments (none posted)

DrPython 2.4.2 is out

Version 2.4.2 of DrPython is out. "DrPython is a clean and simple yet powerful and highly customizable editor/environment for developing programs written in the Python programming Language. It is written in Python, and uses the wxWidgets GUI Library." The ChangeLog file lists a number of bug features.

Comments (none posted)

IDEs

New stable Anjuta release (GnomeDesktop)

Version 1.2.2 of Anjuta, a C and C++ Integrated Development Environment, has been announced. "Release note: Major bug fixes. Resolved many debugger, build, project, fonts, print and wizard related critical bugs. Also added a new Anjuta advanced tutorial in documentation."

Comments (none posted)

Miscellaneous

regexxer 0.6 released

Version 0.6 of regexxer is out with support for gtkmm 2.4. "Regexxer is a nifty GUI search/replace tool featuring Perl-style regular expressions. If you need project-wide substitution and you're tired of hacking sed command lines together, then you should definitely give it a try."

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