Development

gputils, the GNU PIC Utilities

gputils is a set of open-source cross-platform tools for developing code for the Microchip PIC processors. PIC processors are inexpensive stand-alone micro-controller chips that feature a RISC architecture, several data path widths, and a variety of memory and I/O port configurations. Over 250 PIC processor types are supported by gputils. The project was started in 1997 by James Bowman as an effort to build a complete set of open-source replacements for the Microchip utilities. Numerous other developers have contributed to the project.

gputils consists of the following components:

• gpal: An Ada-like high level language compiler.
• gpasm: The PIC assembler.
• gplink: The PIC linker for joining object files.
• gplib: A tool for building and maintaining COFF library archives.
• gpdasm: A dis-assembler for converting hex files into assembly instructions.
• gpvc: A .cod symbol file viewer for analyzing the assembler output.
• gpvo: A COFF object file viewer for analyzing object files.

Several companion projects are available for gputils, including the gpsim PIC software simulator, the xgpasm GUI front end for gpasm, and PiKdev, a PIC IDE. PikDev allows the developer to connect to the PIC processor, via a serial or parallel interface, and download the code.

Building gputils is very straightforward, it involves the standard configure, make, and make install steps. The code is run in the manner of typical UNIX command line utilities. The build worked the first time for your editor.

Version 0.12.3 of gputils was recently released, it adds support for more processors in the ever-expanding line of PICs, it also includes bug fixes. The code is available for download here. The Support section of the gputils site has all of the available documentation.

Apparently gputils does not yet support the new PIC10F chips, these are possibly the smallest micro-controller chips available, featuring a tiny 6 pin SOT-23 package. Hopefully PIC10F support is being considered for future releases of gputils.

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System Applications

Audio Projects

Planet CCRMA Changes

The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include the inclusion of the latest versions of Ardour, MusE, Alsa Modular Synth, Lilypond, Jackmix, and Fltk.

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Speex 1.0.4 Released

Version 1.0.4 of Speex, an open-source speech CODEC, is out. Changes include pseudo-gapless playback, bug fixes, and more.

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Database Software

libgda/libgnomedb 1.1.5 released

Version 1.1.5 of libgda/libgnomedb, a database framework for GNOME, is out. "This is another development release in the road to 1.2, which will be the next stable release, and which shows a preview of the new features getting into the 1.2 final release. It is not intended for production use, but by people wanting to experiment with the new features and to help on the development."

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Embedded Systems

BusyBox 1.0.0-rc2 released

Version 1.0.0-rc2 of BusyBox, a collection of command line utilities for embedded systems, is out. See the Change Log for release details.

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Interoperability

Samba 2.2.10 and 3.0.5 Available

Two new security related releases of Samba, versions 2.2.10 and 3.0.5, are available. Also, a new Samba security page has been created to help track security issues.

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Printing

PyKota 1.19 beta released

Version 1.19 beta of the PyKota printing quota system is available with numerous improvements and bug fixes.

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Web Site Development

MediaWiki 1.3.0beta5 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.3.0 beta 5 of MediaWiki, the collaborative editing software, is out. Here are the changes: "Accumulated bug fixes since the last beta. Hopefully this should resolve most major upgrade and installation issues (missing user_real_name field, PEAR error with bad temp dir)."

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Building Applications with POE (O'Reilly)

Matt Cashner works with POE on O'Reilly. "Earlier, we talked about the fundamental principles of application design with POE. Now it's time to put my money where my mouth is and build some actual working code. To make life a bit easier, let's lay out a very simple problem. Let's say we would like accept and parse data that resembles CGI query strings."

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Desktop Applications

Desktop Environments

GNOME 2.7.4 Development Release

The GNOME 2.7.4 development release is out; click below for the details. The big change this time around is the replacement of the MIME subsystem with the shared FreeDesktop.org version. That will be the last change for a bit; GNOME 2.7 has gone into a feature freeze as of this release.

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Announcing KDE 3.3 Beta 2 'Kollege' (KDE.News)

The beta 2 version of KDE 3.3 has been announced. "As another step towards the aKademy in late August, this release is named Kollege. This beta release shows astonishing stability, so the KDE team asks everyone to try the version and give feedback through the bug tracking system."

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aKademy schedules posted

The schedules for the KDE Community World Summit ("aKademy") have now been posted. The Summit will be a lengthy affair, with separate developer and user conferences, and a week of tutorials in between. It's all happening in Ludwigsburg, Germany, starting August 21.

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Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

KDE.News reports that Trolltech and the KDE Free Qt Foundation have signed an updated agreement. "The revised Agreement continues to honour the original purposes of the Foundation. In particular, should Trolltech ever discontinue making regular releases of the Qt Free Edition for any reason - including a buyout or merger of Trolltech or the liquidation of Trolltech - the Qt Free Edition will be released under the BSD license and optionally under one or more other Open Source Licenses designated by the Board of the Foundation."

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Games

Buttonmasher 0.3 released

Version 0.3 of Buttonmasher has been released on the Pygame site. "Button Masher is a simple tool to help you analyze and improve your execution of fighting game moves, combos, etc. It's similar to the input display in the practice modes of various fighters."

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WorldForge Weekly News

Issue #2 of the WorldForge Weekly News is online with the latest news from the WorldForge game project. "The news of the week has been a steady succession of releases from all over the project culminating in the meta-release of Mason 0.2 on Thursday. First to make it out the door was sear 0.5.0 by Simon Goodall, followed by a succession of library releases comprising wfmath released by Ron Steinke, and Atlas-C++ and Mercator released by myself. A stable release of cyphesis 0.3.1 followed."

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GUI Packages

New FLTK software

The latest new software for FLTK, the Fast, Light ToolKit, includes version 1.0.10 of Fl_PlotXY, version 0.6.1 of vtkFLTK, and more.

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PyGTK 2.3.94 (unstable) announced

Unstable version 2.3.94 of PyGTK, the Python language bindings to GTK, is out with bug fixes and other minor changes.

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Instant Messaging

CWirc 1.8.7 released

Version 1.8.7 of CWirc, an application that transmits Morse code over IRC channels, has been announced. Here are the changes: "A section was added in the README to explain how to use CWirc with the aRts daemon. The DTR line is now explicitely set so that CWirc can read back the state of the Morse key contact(s), even if another program left the serial port in a bad state."

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Interoperability

Wine Traffic

Issue #132 of Wine Traffic is online with the latest Wine project development news. Also, last week's Wine Traffic came out after our publication deadline.

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News Readers

Liferea 0.5.2 announced

Version 0.5.2 of Liferea, the Linux Feed Reader, has been announced. This release adds several new GUI features, bug fixes, and more. "Liferea (Linux Feed Reader) is a fast, easy to use, and easy to install GNOME news aggregator for online news feeds. It supports a number of different feed formats including RSS/RDF, CDF, Atom, OCS, and OPML."

Version 0.5.2b was also announced this week, it features one bug fix.

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Office Applications

Gnumeric 1.3.1 aka Polished Weasel announced

Version 1.3.1 of the Gnumeric spreadsheet has been announced. "Fixes and improvements are everywhere. Some of the most noteworthy are: improved xls graph import, initial support for rich text, better xls evaluation compatibility for operators, and improved accuracy for lots of statistical and financial functions."

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Peer to Peer

Furthur 1.7.4 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.7.4 of Further, a P2P music client, has been announced. "Unlike many P2P's, Furthur specializes in lossless, CD-quality audio and video. Version 1.7.4 adds support for FLAC-encoded filesets at 16 and 24 bits (joining SHN, OGG, MP3, MPEG, DVD, DIVX, VCD, SVCD and other formats), fixes some problems caused by the Apple JRE, polishes up the user interface, and removed some irritating little bugs that no one liked anyway."

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Web Browsers

Firefox 1.0 Update (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine mentions the availability of a new Firefox browser status report by Ben Goodger. "The decision has been made to call the next release "Firefox 1.0 Preview Release" externally, and 0.10 internally. Ben also goes into detail on what extension authors can do to ensure compatibility with this next release."

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Minutes of the mozilla.org Staff Meeting (MozillaZine)

The minutes are available for the July 12, 2004 Mozilla.org staff meeting. "Issues discussed include Mozilla 1.8a2, Firefox 1.0, Thunderbird, modified versions of logos, the localisation trademark policy, Webstats and more."

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Miscellaneous

GNOME CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor 0.2.1

Version 0.2.1 of the GNOME CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor is out with bug fixes and installation improvements.

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Devhelp 0.9.1 announced

Version 0.9.1 of Devhelp, a GNOME API documentation browser, is out. is out. Changes include Mozilla 1.7 support, translation work, and more.

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Languages and Tools

Caml

Caml Weekly News

The July 27, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is available with a number of new Caml language articles.

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Java

Attribute-Oriented Programming with Java 1.5, Part 2 (O'ReillyNet)

Don Schwarz continues his series on Java attribute-oriented programming with part two. "In the previous article in this series, "Peeking Inside the Box, Part 1," I introduced the concepts of Attribute-Oriented Programming, Java 1.5 annotations, and bytecode instrumentation. I used these concepts to provide a JStatusBar GUI component that reports on the progress of an application without any explicit code. In this article I will introduce a completely different implementation of the same JStatusBar that uses thread sampling rather than bytecode instrumentation. I will then combine the two practices to develop a solution that has the best features of each."

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Get started with the AUIML Toolkit (IBM developerWorks)

IBM's developerWorks is running an introduction to the AUIML Toolkit. "The Abstract User Interface Markup Language toolkit is a rapid-development tool to assist developers in writing GUIs to run as either Swing applications or on the Web -- without any changes. Toolkit creators Andy Arhelger, Andy Hanson, and Tony Erwin take you on a tour of their technology, detailing where to get it, how to install it, and how to use it in this step-by-step article."

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Lisp

GCL 2.6.3 released

Version 2.6.3 of GCL (GNU Common Lisp) has been announced. "This version, the latest in the `stable' series, fixes some issues discovered after 2.6.2 was released. Among the highlights of 2.6.2 are a compiler stress test suite, performance improvements to the compiler, native support for FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and MacOSX, support of AMD64, and more."

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SBCL 0.8.13 released

Version 0.8.13 of Steel Bank Common Lisp is out. "This version features package locks, a new way of loading shared libraries, the SB-PROF module working on most non-x86 architectures, some performance optimizations, and more."

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Perl

Ponie snapshot 3 released (use Perl)

Project Ponie is intended to bridge Perl 5 into Perl 6. "The Perl 5 interpreter will be rewritten to run on Parrot, the Perl 6 virtual machine. This will ensure the future of the millions of lines of Perl 5 code at thousands of companies around the world." The third snapshot of Ponie has been announced. "The purpose of this release is to make sure this approach keeps on working with the XS modules available on CPAN and to let people test with their own source code."

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These Weeks on perl5-porters (use Perl)

These Weeks on perl5-porters are available for for July 28, 2004. "This week's summary actually covers two weeks. Anyway, with OSCON, vacations and all that stuff, those are quiet weeks."

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This Week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)

The July 23, 2004 edition of This Week on Perl 6 is available with the latest Perl 6 news.

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PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for July 19, 2004

The PHP Weekly Summary for July 19, 2004 is out. Topics include: Hash table copy, file_get_contents(), alloca() revisited, test roll, threaded bcmath, PHP 5.0.0, PHP 4.3.8, HTTP_AUTH, commit policy for HEAD, load-order dependencies, TRUE, FALSE, NULL, exslt support on win32.

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PHP Weekly Summary for July 26, 2004

The PHP Weekly Summary for July 26, 2004 is out. Topics include: empty_string deleted, memory leak (again), html_entity_decode(), reflection test suite needed, new array functions, PHP-GTK revival, stream functions, realpath() caching, full gif support, and fp guru required.

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Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

This week's Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with another collection of Python language articles.

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Python-dev Summary

The June 16-30, 2004 edition of the Python-dev Summary is available with the latest Python language development news.

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Initial Release of the Durus object database

Initial version 0.1 of the Durus object database has been announced. "I am happy to announce the first public release of the Durus object database. Durus offers an easy way to maintain a consistent persistent collection of Python object instances used by one or more processes."

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Ruby

Ruby/Tk Primer, Part 2 (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly has published part two of an introduction to Ruby. "In part one of this series, Chris Roach introduced you to programming basics in Ruby, and in the process, created the back end for the GUI we're working on. Here, he spends some time with the Tk library." Part three of the series is also available.

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Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

The July 26, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is available with the latest Tcl/Tk article links.

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XML

Vex 1.0.0 released (SourceForge)

Initial version 1.0.0 of Vex, a CSS-styled XML editor based on the Eclipse platform, has been announced. "It provides a word processor-like interface for document-style XML documents such as DocBook and xhtml."

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Introducing o:XML (O'Reilly)

Martin Klang introduces o:XML on O'Reilly. "So what is o:XML? Well, it's a dynamically typed, general-purpose object-oriented programming language. It's got threads, exception handling, regular expressions, namespaces, and all the other things you would expect from a modern language. And it's expressed entirely in XML. Maybe o:XML is a bit like Python crossed with XML."

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XML on the Web Has Failed (O'Reilly)

Mark Pilgrim explores the problems with XML on the web. "The other apparent success of XML is the rise of syndicated feeds, in a range of XML vocabularies like CDF, RSS, and now Atom. There are feed directories; there are feed search engines; there are feed validators. Every major blogging tool -- from freeware like Blogger to commercial software like Movable Type to open source software like WordPress -- every tool publishes at least one of these XML formats. Syndicated feeds are wildly popular, but they're not a success for XML. XML on the Web has failed: miserably, utterly, and completely."

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Designing Extensible, Versionable XML Formats (O'Reilly)

Dare Obasanjo covers XML versioning techniques on O'Reilly. "This article explores some of the points to consider when versioning XML formats as well as some approaches to designing extensible XML formats in a manner compatible with existing XML technologies."

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Improve performance in your XML applications (IBM developerWorks)

Elena Litani and Michael Glavassevich show how to write XML with an emphasis on performance on IBM's developerWorks. "Write your application to get the best possible performance, plus learn which SAX or DOM operations and features affect application performance. In this first of a three-part article, authors Elena Litani and Michael Glavassevich describe best practices for writing XML apps and documents, and for developing applications with the standard SAX and DOM APIs."

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Describe open source projects with XML, Part 4 (IBM developerWorks)

Edd Dumbill wraps up his series on open-source project documentation and XML with part four. "In this installment of XML Watch, Edd Dumbill concludes the development of a vocabulary for describing open source software projects, exploring the documentation, tools, and community that are required for the successful launch of the DOAP vocabulary. The steps taken are drawn from the author's experience with both open source projects and vocabularies such as FOAF and RSS."

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IDEs

DrPython 3.2.4 stable is available

Stable version 3.2.4 of DrPython, a Python language IDE, has been released. The changes include bug fixes, code cleanup, and more. Version 3.2.5 was also released this week, if fixes several bugs.

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