Development

MusE, the MIDI/Audio Sequencer

After many months of continuous development work, version 0.7.0 of MusE, a GPL licensed multi-track virtual studio has been released.

"This release has been in development for over half a year and the list of changes is huge. This milestone release has internal as well as external redesigns resulting in much improved stability. MusE 0.7 has also improved usability as well as plenty new and improved features."

Some of the MusE features include:

• Real-time and step-mode MIDI recording.
• Audio recording, playback, and sequencing capabilities.
• Synchronization with the internal real time clock, external MIDI Time Code, MIDI clock, and JACK.
• Master and slave synchronization capabilities.
• Support for an unlimited number of inputs, outputs, auxilliary devices, and tracks.
• Integrated support for software synthesizers.
• Support for pre and post-fader LADSPA audio effects.
• Support for the Jack Audio Connection Kit (JACK) for audio routing.
• Support for the ALSA sound and MIDI drivers.
• A Midi and audio automation architecture.
• An integrated audio mixer console.
• Real-time editors for piano rolls, musical scores, drums, controllers, lists, shortcuts, and master tracks.
• Unlimited undo/redo.
• A MIDI mixer, transformator, device configurator, sync configurator, and input filter.
• XML formatted project and configuration files.
• Midi instrument definition files.

The online documentation has more information on installation and use of the software.

MusE has a certain eye-candy appeal, take a look at the various Screen Shots to see it in action. The software is available for download here.

The build prerequsites for MusE are quite lengthy, and are probably well beyond the grasp of most casual Linux users. They include Qt 3.2, gcc 2.95.2, glibc 2.1, the 2.4 kernel with low latency patches applied or the 2.6 kernel with the realtime-lsm module, kernel /dev/rtc support, ALSA, JACK, and libcap-dev 1.10. MusE currently compiles on both x86 and PPC-based Linux systems. One might save a lot of time getting the software up and running by working with an audio meta-distribution such as Planet CCRMA.

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System Applications

Audio Projects

Planet CCRMA Changes

The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include new releases of the SWH LADSPA Plugins, Ardour, and the CMT LADSPA Plugins.

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Database Software

Kexi 0.1 Beta 4 is available (KDE.News)

Version 0.1 beta 4 of Kexi has been released. "Kexi is an integrated environment for managing data. It helps creating database schemas, inserting, querying and processing data." Changes include improvements to the Form, Query, and Table Designers, bug fixes, and more.

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Pear DB 1.6.5 (stable) released

Stable version 1.6.5 of Pear DB, the Database Abstraction Layer of the PHP Extension and Application Repository (PEAR) is out with bug fixes. See the Changelog for the details.

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PostgreSQL Weekly News

The July 20, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out with the latest PostgreSQL database developments and events.

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Embedded Systems

BusyBox 1.0.0-rc1 released

Release Candidate #1 of BusyBox 1.0.0, an integrated collection of command line utilities for embedded Linux systems, has been announced. "Here goes release candidate 1... This fixes all (most?) of the problems that have turned up since -pre10. In particular, loading and unloading of kernel modules with 2.6.x kernels should be working much better. I really want to get BusyBox 1.0.0 released soon and I see no real reason why the 1.0.0 release shouldn't happen with things pretty much as is. BusyBox is in good shape at the moment, and it works nicely for everything that I'm doing with it." See the Change Log for more information.

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Libraries

GLib 2.5.0 released

Unstable release 2.5.0 of GLib is available. "This is the first development release loading up to GLib-2.6. This release contains new g_debug() macros and a number of bug and portability fixes."

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Pango 1.5.1 released

Unstable version 1.5.1 of Pango, a text layout and rendering library, is available. New features include ellipsization support, custom font decoder support, and more.

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Mail Software

milter-spamc 0.21 released

Version 0.21 of the milter-spamc mail filter has been released. "This update to milter-spamc provide 2, yet significant, bug fixes related to the handling of the null address and the simulated Recieved header prepended to the message given to spamd. Its worth updating."

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Printing

Gimp-Print 4.2.7 released (SourceForge)

Version 4.2.7 of Gimp-Print is out. "This is expected to be the last release in the 4.2 series unless any critical bugs are found or 5.0 is further delayed. Gimp-Print is a suite of printer drivers that may be used with most common UNIX print spooling systems, including CUPS, lpr, LPRng, or others."

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Web Site Development

APLAWS+ 1.0.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.0.1 of APLAWS+, an open-source Content Management System (CMS), is out. "Following considerable work on the code for the London Borough of Camden's implementation of APLAWS+, many bug fixes and improvements made by Red Hat have now been made available into a new release of the APLAWS+ code. This release also includes bug fixes and enhancements from other suppliers and went through a quality assurance process with Camden developers and GoMeta. This work serves as the first release in terms of the development path of APLAWS+ for the next year."

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opensurveypilot v1.2 now available for download

Version 1.2 of opensurveypilot, a web-based polling and voting system, is out. "The package now features multi language support and ships with german and english language files. Beside the improved GUI, most of the time was spend on the new panel modul with build in mailclient and integrated user administration."

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Silva 1.0 released!

Version 1.0 of Silva has been announced. "Silva is an open source content management system with a focus on structured content and its reuse. It is based on the open source web application platform Zope, and the programming language Python." Changes include integration with the Kupu WYSIWYG web editor, complete documentation, support for image thumbnails and cropping, and more.

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ZopeMag Weekly News

The June 26 - July 17, 2004 edition of the ZopeMag Weekly News is online with another collection of Zope and Plone information.

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Desktop Applications

Accessibility

Accessible Software (O'Reilly)

Jouke Visser works with pVoice on O'Reilly's perl.com. "You can use the AAC::Pvoice modules to create GUI applications for people who have difficulty using conventional input devices like a mouse or a keyboard. Instead, those people can use your applications using only one or two keystrokes, mouse buttons, or switches on a wheelchair. You can also enhance the use of a conventional mouse or touch screen by highlighting objects on the screen as the mouse cursor hovers over them. AAC::Pvoice does not only handle the input for you, but it also provides an accessible graphical user interface."

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Audio Applications

EasyTAG 0.31_gtk2.4_pre1 is out

EasyTAG version 0.31_gtk2.4_pre1 has been released. "EasyTAG is an utility for viewing and editing tags for MP3, MP2, FLAC, Ogg Vorbis, MusePack and Monkey's Audio files. Its simple and nice GTK+ interface makes tagging easier under GNU/Linux." This release is a development version that features bug fixes, translation improvements, and more.

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News from the Festival Speech Synthesizer project

After more than a year without any significant news, the Festival speech synthesis project has posted an announcement for a new beta release. "Version 2.0 is coming at the end of July 2004. A beta version of this release labeled 1.95-beta is currently available for testing. This is the most recent version available free for unrestricted use." Changes include a new model based synthesis engine, support for gcc 3.2, 3.3, intel 8.0, and Apple OS X, bug fixes, and more.

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Desktop Environments

Updating .desktop files

Jonathan Blandford has announced upcoming changes to the .desktop file formats. "We'd like to move to use the freedesktop desktop file specification for mapping applications to MIME Types. That will let both GNOME and KDE (and other desktops) share the same database for applications, and provide a clear target for application developers. As preparation for this change, we'll need to modify the desktop files that we're installing to have a MimeType key."

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KDE-CVS-Digest (KDE.News)

The July 16, 2004 KDE CVS-Digest is online, here's the content summary: "Kolourpaint adds Emboss and dithering effects, more levels of undo. Digikam adds RGB balance plugin. KPresenter adds a custom slide show option. Krita improves input tablet support. Kexi continues improvement to query editing. KSpread gets a new formula engine. Kopete sees beginnings of MSN file transfer support. KConfigEditor can edit both Gnome and KDE configurations, and export configurations in KJSEmbed JavaScript."

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Games

gnome-games 2.7.5

Version 2.7.5 of gnome-games, a collection of games for the GNOME platform, is available. "This is the last release before the feature freeze, therefore it is full of new features. Klotski has been put back into the distribution. The network code for iagno has been factored out and there is a new connection dialog. The game server for iagno is now available for local use, it can be found in the libgames-support directory. Finally, gnometris has sounds !"

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Sear 0.5.0 Released

Version 0.5.0 of Sear has been released by the WorldForge game project. "This most important feature of this release is the Mercator integration for server generated terrain."

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Stratagus: Open Source Strategy Games (O'Reilly)

Howard Wen looks at the game Stratagus on O'Reilly. "Still, the main advantage of Stratagus over commercial engines is that players can easily modify games or create their own. Of course, there's both the Linux factor and its cross-platform compatibility, since Stratagus runs on Mac OS X and BSD, too. "One big disadvantage of commercial RTS games is they only provide a Windows version. You will rarely see a commercial RTS game for Linux," points out Nehal, who resides in Vancouver, Canada. He helped to develop the code for the sound and user interface of FreeCraft and contributes to its successor."

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Graphics

Inkscape 0.39 announced

Version 0.39 of Inkscape, a Scalable Vector Graphics Editor, is available. "The most important change in this release is the switch to the Pango library for font handling and Unicode support; a lot of work also went into new SVG features, export/import, UI, and usability."

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GUI Packages

gob2 2.0.9 the "C++ is for girly men" release

Version 2.0.9 of gob2, a GObject generator for GTK+ is out. "Do you enjoy warnings? Well too bad, now gob compiles even with very pedantic warnings set on the gcc command line, even ones as stupid as -Wbad-function-cast."

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GTK+ 2.5.0 released

Unstable release 2.5.0 of GTK+, a multi-platform toolkit for GUI development, is out. "This is the first development release loading up to GTK+-2.6. This release contains several new widgets and capabilities, including a new icon view widget, an about dialog, simple rotation support for GdkPixbufs, new cell renderers for combo boxes and progress bars, new stock icons, performance improvments, and bugfixes."

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Imaging Applications

Eye of Gnome 2.7.0

Version 2.7.0 of Eye of Gnome is available. "The by far biggest change for the default GNOME image viewer is the removal of the bonobo components. It comes now as a monolithic program again and makes use of the new wonderful GtkUIManager API. This change leads to great speed improvements and a much better user interface. On the shadow side the Nautilus "View as Collection" component isn't available anymore. It's planned to provide a new Nautilus extension in the future as a replacement."

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Interoperability

Wine 20040716 is available

Version 20040716 of Wine has been announced. Changes include implementation of the Microsoft Installer dll, inter-process window repaint work, DirectSound improvements, and bug fixes.

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Multimedia

GStreamer 0.8.4 is out

Version 0.8.4 of the GStreamer streaming media framework has been announced. Changes include better internationalization, new translations, bug fixes, and other improvements.

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Music Applications

Ardour 0.9beta18.2 released

Version 0.9 beta 18.2 of Ardour, a multi-track audio recording package, has been announced. "This fixes several bugs found shortly after the release of 18.1 that are deemed important."

Comments (1 posted)

swh-plugins 0.4.7 announced

Version 0.4.7 of the swh-plugins are available. This release includes a build fix, a new fast lookahead limiter plugin, bug fixes, and more.

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News Readers

Straw 0.25.1 is out

Version 0.25.1 of Straw, a desktop news aggregator for GNOME, is available and features one bug fix. This follows version 0.25, which had bug fixes, performance enhancements, and improved translations.

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Office Suites

New snapshot OpenOffice.org 1.9.m47

OpenOffice.org has a new snapshot of the upcoming OpenOffice.org 2.0 ready for download. The 1.9.x series offers a glimpse of many of the new features and bug fixes coming with the 2.0 release. Click below for pointers to the download, release notes and other information.

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PDA Software

Guikachu 1.5.1 released

Stable version 1.5.1 of Guikachu, the GNOME Resource editor for PalmOS projects, is out. The change summary says: "A more sophisticated GNOME 2 port than 1.5.0, this release utilizes the advanced features of GTK+ 2.4, providing a much nicer look and an array of usability improvements".

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Web Browsers

Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 2 Released (MozillaZine)

The alpha 2 release of Mozilla 1.8 has been announced. "In this release, users can open blocked popups and consolidate all their POP3 mail in a global inbox. Initial support for the new Netscape Plugin API extensions has also been implemented. In May, the Foundation switched to a new milestone schedule with a longer alpha period and two alpha releases in each development cycle. The next freeze is scheduled for Wednesday 4th August, with the target for Mozilla 1.8 Beta set at couple of days later."

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Miscellaneous

Blogfish 0.1 initial release

Blogfish version 0.1, the initial release, is out. "Blogfish is a Gnome panel applet, using PyGTK and Gnome-python. It allows users to spread their blog URL, website URL or random thoughts to other users, in piscine form. Good memes survive; bad ones are voted down and go belly up."

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GNOME System Tools 0.90.0 has been released

Version 0.90.0 of the GNOME System Tools configuration utility collection is out. Changes include a complete set of help docs, UI improvements, support for Fedora Core 2 and Slackware 10, bug fixes, and more.

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Languages and Tools

C

gcc newsletter #6

Issue #6 of the gcc newsletter is available. Topics include the release of gcc 3.4.1 and other gcc development issues.

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Caml

Caml Weekly News

The Caml Weekly News for July 13-20, 2004 is online with another collection of Caml language articles.

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Java

gcj news

Some new news from the Gnu Compiler for Java project (GCJ) is available. "AWT and Swing support continues to improve rapidly. Thomas Fitzsimmons of Red Hat added support for the AWT 1.0 event model, still used by many web applets. This means that Slime Volleyball now runs on GCJ and gcjwebplugin."

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An Introduction to Aspect-Oriented Programming with the Spring Framework (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly has published part one in a series on the Spring framework by Russ Miles. "This article, part one of this introduction to Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) with the Spring framework, covers the basics to get you quickly developing using aspect orientation in Spring. Using tracing and logging aspect examples, the HelloWorlds of aspect orientation, this article shows how to declare pointcuts and advice in order to apply aspects using the unique facilities that the Spring framework provides."

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Functional programming in the Java language (IBM developerWorks)

Abhijit Belapurkar writes about functional programming in Java on IBM's developerWorks. "If you work on large-scale development projects, then you're familiar with the advantages of writing modular code. Well-structured, modular code is easier to write, debug, understand, and reuse. The problem for Java developers is that the functional programming paradigm has long been implemented only via specialized languages such as Haskell, Scheme, Erlang, and Lisp. In this article, author Abhijit Belapurkar shows you how to use functional programming constructs such as closures and higher order functions to write well-structured, modular code in the Java language."

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Perl

Perl 5.8.5 Released (use Perl)

Perl version 5.8.5 has been announced. "5.8.5 is a maintenance release for perl 5.8, incorporating various minor bugfixes and optimisations."

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Gtk2-Perl 2.7.4 Released

Version 2.7.4 of Gtk2-Perl, the Perl bindings to GTK+ 2.x, is out. "This is the API-frozen Gtk2-Perl 2.7.4."

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PHP

PHP 5.0.0 Released

Version 5.0.0 of PHP is available. This version adds the new Zend Engine II, reworked XML support, the new SimpleXML extension, a new SOAP extension, a new MySQL extension, SQLite bundling, improved streams, and more. PHP 4.3.8 has also been released.

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Why PHP 5 Rocks! (O'Reilly)

Adam Trachtenberg explores PHP version 5 on O'Reilly. "In this article, I highlight seven of my favorite PHP 5 features. These features allow your PHP 5 code to frequently be shorter, more elegant, and more flexible than ever before."

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PostScript

GGV 2.6.2 is out

Version 2.6.2 of GGV, a PostScript previewer, is out with a number of bug fixes.

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GGV 2.7.0 is out

Version 2.7.0 of the GGV PostScript previewer, the first release in the 2.7 series, is available. Changes include numerous bug fixes, a file chooser filter, Gnome integration, a new print icon on the toolbar, and more.

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Python

PyGTK 2.3.93 (unstable) is available

Unstable release 2.3.93 of PyGTK, the Python bindings to GTK+, has been announced. This release features bug fixes, build fixes, and numerous other changes.

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Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The July 19, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with the week's Python language article links.

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Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! for July 19, 2004 is available with the latest Tcl/Tk article links.

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Build Tools

Ant 1.6.2 is Available

Version 1.6.2 of Ant, a build tool for Java, has been released. Here is the summary of changes: "Nested elements for namespaced tasks and types may belong to the Ant default namespace as well as the task's or type's namespace. All exceptions thrown by tasks are now wrapped in a buildexception giving the location in the buildfile of the task. Ant 1.6.2 fixes a large number of bugs and adds a number of features which were asked for by users on Bugzilla."

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Cross Assemblers

gputils-0.12.2 Released

Version 0.12.0 of gputils, the GNU Pic Utilities, is out. The release blurb says: "Fixed many bugs and added features to gpal."

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Profilers

Valgrind-2.1.2 is available

Version 2.1.2 of Valgrind, a tool suite for debugging and profiling x86 programs under Linux, is out. "2.1.2 contains four months worth of bug fixes and refinements. Although officially a developer release, we believe it to be stable enough for widespread day-to-day use. 2.1.2 contains many improvements relative to the current 2.0.0 stable release, and includes a new tool, Massif, for profiling the heap (space) use of your programs."

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