Development

Groovy, a Java-like Scripting Language

Groovy is a relatively new scripting language that resembles Java, it is built on top of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). The main developers are James Strachan and Bob McWhirter.

One of the main features of Groovy is that it is very easy for Java programmers to learn. The Groovy FAQ explains: "One of the main design goals of Groovy is to be a scripting language for Java developers to use. So we wanted to reuse both Java's semantics and the whole set of J2SE APIs rather than introduce a port of a different language with different semantics and APIs to learn and implement/maintain."

Some of the basic features of Groovy include:

• It is a JRE-compliant scripting language.
• It is an agile development language.
• The core syntax is based on Java.
• It supports existing Java objects and libraries.
• Groovy is interpreted, compilation is performed at run time.
• It supports command line operation.
• Variables are dynamically typed.
• Tuples, lists, maps, and closures are part of the basic syntax.
• Closures are used for passing blocks of executable code.
• Regular expressions are supported with ~"..." expressions.
• Groovy provides operator overloading capabilities.

Some of Groovy's built-in components include:

• GroovyMarkup for native support of XML, HTML, SAX and other markup languages.
• The GPath path expression language.
• Support for writing Java servlets (Groovlets).
• GroovySql for working with SQL databases.
• GroovyBeans, a simplified interface to Java Beans.
• The Groovy Template Engines provide a templating framework.
• Groovy supports scripting in Ant.

Groovy is available under a BSD / Apache style license. The most recent release of Groovy is version 1.0-beta-5, it was released on May 12, 2004. The code is available for download here. Dependencies include Java 1.4, the Groovy jar, and the ASM library.

If you are interested in learning more about Groovy, take a look at Andrew Glover's introductory article on IBM's developerWorks entitled Feeling Groovy.

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System Applications

Audio Projects

Speex 1.1.6 Released

Development version 1.1.6 of Speex, a voice codec, is out. Changes include a fixed jitter buffer, denoiser tuning, a better echo canceler, gapless playback, run-time identification of speex versions, and more.

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Database Software

IBM contributes 'Cloudscape' database

IBM has announced that it will be contributing a version of its "Cloudscape" Java relational database to the Apache Software Foundation, under the name "Derby." "Derby is a Java-based relational database with a two megabyte footprint that is fully embeddable and requires zero administration support. The software is ideal for developers, enabling them to easily build and deploy applications and workloads that do not require an enterprise-class database system." The code will be available "over the next few weeks."

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PostgreSQL Weekly News

The August 1, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with OSCon coverage and other PostgreSQL database information.

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Libraries

Pango-1.4.1 released

Version 1.4.1 of Pango, a library for layout and rendering of text, is out. "Pango-1.4.1 contains numerous bug fixes as compared to Pango-1.4.0, in particular for rendering of Indic languages. It also contains OpenType support for the Thai shaper."

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Mail Software

Bogofilter 0.92.4 is out

Version 0.92.4 of Bogofilter, a spam mail filter, is out. "Bogofilter-0.92.4 has been been promoted from "current" status to "stable" status. Since the last stable release there have been documentation updates and minor enhancements and bug fixes."

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Sendmail 8.13.1 is available

Version 8.13.1 of Sendmail has been announced. "It contains fixes for problems that have been found after release of 8.13.0 as well as some portability enhancements."

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Security

Secure programming with the OpenSSL API (IBM developerWorks)

Kenneth Ballard works with OpenSSL on IBM's developerWorks. "Learning how to use the API for OpenSSL -- the best-known open library for secure communication -- can be intimidating, because the documentation is incomplete. Fill in the gaps, and tame the API, with the tips in this article. After setting up a basic connection, see how to use OpenSSL's BIO library to set up both a secured and unsecured connection. And learn a bit about error detection as well."

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Web Site Development

ZopeMag Weekly News

The July 18-28, 2004 edition of the ZopeMag Weekly News is online with lots of Zope and Plone related articles.

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Desktop Applications

Accessibility

gnopernicus 0.9.7 is out

Version 0.9.7 of gnopernicus, a GNOME desktop screen reader for the visually impaired, is available with several new user interface features and capabilities.

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Desktop Environments

A GNOME 2.8 preview

Davyd Madeley has put up a "What's new in GNOME 2.8?" page with lots of pictures of new widgets which will appear in the next major GNOME release.

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gnome-applets 2.7.1 released

GNOME-Applets version 2.7.1 is available. Changes include several battery applet changes, translation work, and more.

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KDE-CVS-Digest (KDE.News)

The July 30, 2004 issue of the KDE-CVS-Digest is online with the following content summary: "New KDE system sounds. Digikam has a histogram viewer, new camera kioslave, image editor, HSL balance correction plugin. Kexi adds two run modes; final mode and design mode. New icons for Juk, Kommander, new splash screen for KDE. Plus many bug fixes in preparation for the release."

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Electronics

Gnetman – A GNU Netlist Manipulation Library

A new release of Gnetman, dated July 30, 2004, has been released. "The gnetman project has one simple goal: Enabling interoperability between open-source EDA tools."

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Financial Applications

SQL-Ledger 2.4.1 released

Version 2.4.1 of SQL-Ledger, a web-based accounting system, has been announced. Changes include a new date selection menu for reports, bug fixes, and more.

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Games

gnome-games 2.7.6 is available

Version of 2.7.6 of gnome-games, a collection of games for the GNOME desktop, has been released. Here are the changes: "Only one new item that should grab your attention: David Bellot's pure SVG card theme. Be warned that this theme is complex and is liable to expose speed issue and rendering bugs."

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Mapacman 1.0 is out

Version 1.0 of Mapacman has been released on the PyGame site. "Mapacman is a multiplayer online pacman game. It requires pygame and the pyarianne packages. Arianne is a multiplayer online network engine designed for turn based and real time games."

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Creating Games with Pygame (Linux Journal)

Patrick Rutledge works with PyGame in a Linux Journal article. "Python is an excellent language for rapid application development and prototyping. With Pygame, a wrapper built around SDL, the same can be true for games. In addition, because its built on top of Python and SDL, Pygame is highly portable. The only downside is it can be too slow for some computationally intensive types of games. If your game is too slow, the particular sub-routine(s) bringing down your execution speed can be rewritten in C/C++. This article is intended to be a short introduction and by no means covers all there is to know about Pygame. Using a simple Space Invaders-type game, I present what I feel are the fundamentals of Pygame."

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GUI Packages

Gazpacho 0.3.0 announced

Version 0.3.0 of Gazpacho, a GUI builder for GTK+, is out. Changes include UI manager editor support, support for run without install, bug fixes, and more.

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GLib 2.4.5 released

Version 2.4.5 of GLib is available. "This is a bug fix release and is source and binary compatible with 2.4.0. The main reason for this release is a bug in the routines converting between filenames and URIs, which can cause problems when used with filenames which are not encoded in UTF-8."

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Gtk2-Perl 2.7.90 released

Version 2.7.90 of Gtk2-Perl, the Perl bindings for GTK+, is available.

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Interoperability

Wine Traffic

The July 30, 2004 edition of Wine Traffic is out with the latest Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) news.

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Multimedia

GStreamer Plugins 0.8.3 released

Version 0.8.3 "Water" of the GStreamer Plugins are out with lots of bug fixes and improved translations.

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Music Applications

Rosegarden-4 0.9.9 released - now officially in beta!

Beta release 0.9.9 of Rosegarden-4, an audio/MIDI sequencer, is out. "This release is feature complete for 1.0 and marks the start of official beta testing."

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News Readers

Liferea 0.5.2c announced

Version 0.5.2c of Liferea, the Linux Feed Reader, is out with bug fixes and an updated Czech translation.

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Office Applications

gcalctool v4.4.16 released

Stable version 4.4.16 of gcalctool, the default GNOME desktop calculator, is out. This is the third in a series of bug-fix releases this week.

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Office Suites

OpenOffice.org Newsletter

The July, 2004 OpenOffice.org Newsletter is out with lots of new information on the OpenOffice.org office suite.

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RSS Software

BLAM! 1.2.1 released

Version 1.2.1 of BLAM!, an RSS reader, is available. "Some people reported having problems with finding the default values in GConf which caused BLAM! to not start properly. This release should fix that".

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Web Browsers

Firefox, Thunderbird, and Mozilla releases

MozillaZine reports that Firefox 0.9.3, Thunderbird 0.7.3, and Mozilla 1.7.2 have been released. In each case, the new release contains fixes for a set of recently discovered security issues.

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New Epiphany Releases

It's been a busy week for the Epiphany developers. Epiphany 1.2.7 (stable) and Epiphany 1.3.4 (development) are available.

Also, Epiphany Extensions 1.0 (stable) and Epiphany Extensions 1.1.2 (development) have been released.

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Independent Status Reports (MozillaZine)

The August 2, 2004 Mozilla Independent Status Reports are online. "This latest set of reports includes updates from cuneAform, Flipper, MAF, JRex, MAB, Mozilla Enterprise, MozManual, and more."

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Mozilla Security Bugs Bounty Program Launched (MozillaZine)

The Mozilla Foundation has announced a Security Bug Bounty Program. "Under the new scheme, any user who reports a critical security vulnerability in end-user Mozilla software will receive a US$500 reward. The program is being funded by Linux distributor Linspire (formerly Lindows.com) and Internet entrepreneur and space tourist Mark Shuttleworth"

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Third Alpha Milestone Added to Mozilla 1.8 Cycle (MozillaZine)

A third alpha milestone is now being planned for Mozilla 1.8. "This change is intended to prevent the final 1.8 release from clashing with the launches of Mozilla Firefox 1.0 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0. The updated Mozilla Development Roadmap targets Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 3 for a Friday 13th August release."

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Miscellaneous

Blogfish 0.2 "Hard Core Prawn" is out

Version 0.2 of Blogfish is out with some new features. "Blogfish is a Gnome panel applet. It allows you to spread your blog URL, website URL or random thoughts to other users, with the help of tiny, internet-enabled fish. Good memes survive; bad ones are voted down and go belly up."

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Languages and Tools

C

GCC Newsletter

The July 29, 2004 edition of the GCC Newsletter is out with the latest discussions on the Gnu Compiler Collection.

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Caml

Caml Weekly News

The Caml Weekly News for July 27 - August 3, 2004 is available with the latest Caml language developments.

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Java

Keeping Up with the Java Joneses (O'ReillyNet)

Ian F. Darwin looks at Java 1.5 on O'Reilly. "Ian Darwin covers a variety of new Java 1.5 features, including J2SE 1.5 threading, the return of printf, and the IDEs NetBeans and Eclipse. Ian wraps up this article with resources to help you keep up with the rest of the Java Joneses."

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Perl

This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)

The July 26 - August 1, 2004 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is online with the latest Perl 5 development news.

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PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for August 2, 2004

The PHP Weekly Summary for August 2, 2004 is out. Topics include: 5.0.1 ahead, segfault reports, PHP 5 installer, sort() behaviour, Java extension, splitting the atom, and fstat caching.

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Python

python-dev Summary

The python-dev Summary for July 1-15, 2004 is available with news of the latest Python language developments.

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Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for August 2, 2004 is available. Take a look for dozens of Python language articles and resources.

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A look at DParser for Python (IBM developerWorks)

David Mertz investigates DParser on IBM's developerWorks. "Get an introduction to DParser, a simple but powerful tool for parsing, written by J. Plevyak. Then learn about DParser for Python, which gives Python programmers a seamless interface to DParser, and see how it compares to other parsers covered in previous installments. In a manner similar to Spark or PLY, grammar rules are input to DParser using Python function documentation strings."

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Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!

The August 2, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is online with the week's Tcl/Tk article links.

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XML

Decomposition, Process, Recomposition (O'Reilly)

Uche Ogbuji comments on ways to deal with potential XML problems. "The most common effect of this lack of attentiveness often leads people to very dangerous practices such as acting as if XML is an ASCII or even byte-oriented format. I have warned sharply about the ugly effects of such confusion in a few previous articles in this column. Another common effect I've seen is the tendency to create multi-megabyte or even gigabyte monolithic XML files. XML is so flexible for data representation because of its nature as an annotated hierarchy. But this very nature also makes efficient processing quite difficult, especially with regards to scaling according to number of nodes."

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XML-Java Data Binding Using XMLBeans (O'ReillyNet)

Hetal C. Shah explores XMLBeans on O'Reilly. "XMLBeans, currently in the Apache incubation process, is a promising framework for providing XML/Java data binding unmarshalling well-formed XML into Java objects, and marshalling Java objects into XML files."

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Improve performance in your XML applications, Part 2 (IBM developerWorks)

Elena Litani and Michael Glavassevich continue their IBM developerWorks series on XML performance with part two. "In this installment of a three-part series describing best practices for writing XML applications, authors Elena Litani and Michael Glavassevich explain how to improve your SAX and DOM applications' performance by using the Xerces2 implementation. They also include code samples to show you how to improve your application's performance by reusing parser instances."

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Caveat Incumbent (O'Reilly)

Edd Dumbill writes about XHTML and ebXML on O'Reilly's XML.com. "In this week's XML-Deviant, we take a look at two conversations on the XML-DEV mailing list that highlight XML's disruptive aspect -- more specifically, the disturbance XML can cause to the dominant incumbent in a technology area in which XML is being introduced."

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Editors

gedit 2.7.90 released

Version 2.7.90 of gedit, the GNOME text editor, has been released. Changes include bug fixes, improved translations and a new encoding selection command line option.

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IDEs

YaPIDE 0.1 released

Initial release 0.1 of YaPIDE (Yet Another PIC IDE) is out. "YaPIDE aims to be a fully featured Microchip PIC simulator for Linux (and probably other UNIXes). YaPIDE is a GUI only application. If you need a commandline based PIC simulator there is the excellent GPSIM. The simulator kernel currently supports the PIC 16F628." Add this to the collection of PIC tools covered in last week's development page.

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Cooking with Eclipse, Part 2 (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly has published part two in a book excerpt series by Steve Holzner. "In this second batch of recipes from O'Reilly's Eclipse Cookbook, find out how to connect Eclipse to a CVS repository and how to use Swing and AWT inside of SWT for Eclipse 3.0."

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