System Applications
Audio Projects
Version 1.0.1 of Libsndfile, a library for reading and writing
different audio formats,
has been released.
"
The main new feature in this release is the ability to read and
write a subset of the binary files used in GNU Octave as well as a couple of
Octave script files for loading, saving and playing these files from
within Octave. Details of using libsndfile with Octave can be found
here."
Thanks to Erik de Castro Lopo.
Comments (none posted)
Mail Software
Version 0.26 of the
spasm anti-spam milter
has been released.
"
Changes include a couple bugfixes, a change in the HELO filter, a new curses-based application for modifying settings (replacing spasmbl and spasmwl), and a contrib directory with a skeletal CGI and friends to demonstrate a web interface for modifying spasm settings."
Comments (none posted)
Glenn Graham
introduces SpamShield on O'Reilly.
"
The science of spam (if you can call it that) has taught us one thing: spam leaves a definite "calling card" in the system logs. This calling card is generally repetitive enough that the process of tracking spam may be automated. Based on this theory, a brilliant programmer by the name of Kai Schlichting wrote a Perl-based program called SpamShield."
Comments (none posted)
Brian Goetz
explains how to use SpamAssassin on IBM's DeveloperWorks.
"
This article takes a look at the evolution of the spam cycle (for as Sun Tzu and every general who ever came after him said, "Know thine enemy and victory will be forthcoming"). It also takes a look at SpamAssassin, the latest in a long and venerable line of weapons in the fight against spam, as well as a look ahead."
Comments (none posted)
Science
The release of version 5.0.0 of the GRASS geographical information system
has been
announced.
"
This new version is the first major change in GRASS functionality
since GRASS 4 was released several years ago. Notable improvements include
support for floating point and null values. Users can opt to use a new
windowing interface based on Tcl/Tk on those platforms supporting X
Window."
Comments (none posted)
Web Site Development
Midgard 1.4.3 is now available for Debian Stable
and Unstable distributions.
Full Story (comments: none)
The code for Mod_Python has been donated to the Apache Software Foundation.
Click below for the full announcement.
Full Story (comments: none)
This week's entries on the
Zope Members News
include CMF/Plone training in Europe, TextIndexNG 1.05 Beta 1, and
Plone 1.0 beta.
Comments (none posted)
Cameron Laird
writes about server-side PDF file generation on IBM's developerWorks.
"
PDF is the recognized standard for several categories of top-quality displayable output. While most programmers regard it as a "desktop" technology, a format that a content specialist chooses through a SaveAs operation, you can make your document management processes more powerful through server-side automation of PDF creation. This month, Cameron introduces the ReportLab library for PDF management and programming."
Comments (none posted)
Desktop Applications
Audio Applications
Version 0.99.72 of the
AlsaPlayer
audio file playing utility has been released. This version
features bug fixes and preparatory code for the switch to
glib 2.0.
Comments (none posted)
Desktop Environments
GNOME 2.0.2 has been released. "
The GNOME 2.0.x Desktop and Developer Platform releases are devoted to
bugfixes, translations, user interface consistency, and general polish of
our major 2.0 release. In GNOME 2.0.2, you'll see the results of continued
performance and stability work, plus plenty of bug fixes..."
Full Story (comments: none)
The GNOME Summary for September 12th through September 16th is now available,
covering GNOME 2.0.2, AbiWord, Red Hat 8 (and their GNOME alterations), and
more.
Full Story (comments: none)
KDE.News
reports on
KDE's switch to the Bugzilla bug tracking system.
"
Unlike the old system, Bugzilla is based on MySQL and
thus enables advanced search functions and offers many other features
such as email notification and voting."
Comments (none posted)
Graphics
Version 4.2.2 of Gimp-Print has been released.
A number of bugs have been fixed for the Epson Stylus printers.
This is a stable release for The Gimp version 1.2.
Full Story (comments: none)
GUI Packages
Version 4.2.1 of the XFree86 window system
has been announced. Version
"
4.2.1 is a minor revision of the full 4.2.0 release which must be installed first. This release is a security patch which fixes a security vulnerabilty and is strongly recommended to be applied."
Comments (none posted)
KDE.News
covers
the first public release of PerlQt 3, a full-featured object-oriented Perl interface to the Qt3 toolkit.
"
Key features include support for nearly all Qt classes through SMOKE, a language-neutral binding
library brought to you by Ashley Winters and David Faure (and Richard Dale's
kalyptus), unlimited slots and signals, virtual function overloading, and
Rapid Application Development (RAD) through puic, a Qt Designer compatible
user interface compiler. Here is a screenshot of some PerlQt applications.
There is also a tutorial available to help you get started. Enjoy!"
Comments (none posted)
Interoperability
The
Roadmap to Samba 3.0
has been published. Check it out to see the progress that is being made
toward the release of Samba 3.0.
Comments (none posted)
Issue #135 of
Kernel Cousin Wine
is out.
Threads include Patch Submission Tips, Direct3D 8 Support,
Wine DLLs under Visual C, Menu Handling Problems, and
a New Header: winternl.h.
Comments (none posted)
Office Applications
The
AbiWord Weekly News #109 is now available.
Comments (none posted)
Issue #46 of
Kernel Cousin GNUe is out with the latest GNU enterprise
development news.
Comments (none posted)
Web Browsers
The latest Galeon is available. "
The binary packages there are against mozilla 1.1, but you can recompile against any 1.0 or greater version of galeon and it will build - with one caveat..."
Full Story (comments: none)
Mozilla.org has an announcement
for the 1.2 Alpha release of Mozilla.
"
This release has better keyboard navigation including Type Ahead Find which lets you quickly navigate to links, and browse the web without a mouse." See the
release notes
for all of the details.
Comments (none posted)
The latest articles on
MozillaZine
include an Overview of Mozilla-based Browsers, a Mozilla Privacy Bug,
Mozilla Calendar 0.8, and Mozilla 1.2 Alpha.
Comments (none posted)
Languages and Tools
Objective C
Linux Journal has
an introduction to "
Objective-C for programmers familiar with C++ or any other OOP language.
Comments (none posted)
Caml
The latest additions to
The Caml Hump
include Unlambda, Various functional interpreters, Galax,
OCamlSpread, Link, C-, PLAN, and the Oxford Oberon-2 Compiler.
Comments (none posted)
Java
Hans Bergsten covers JSTL 1.0 in
part 2 of a series on O'Reilly.
"
Part 1 of this series gave you an overview of JSTL -- the new specification of commonly-needed JSP tag libraries -- and showed you how to use the core JSTL actions. In this article, I'll dig a bit deeper and discuss how JSTL can help you with internationalization and database access. The bulk of the article does not require any Java programming knowledge, but the sections that deal with how servlets and other Java classes interact with the JSTL actions do."
Comments (none posted)
Marc Loy
explains the SpringLayout manager on O'Reilly.
"
With SDK 1.4, a new -- but not really new -- layout manager was added. The SpringLayout manager uses the notion of springs and struts to keep everything in place."
Comments (none posted)
Ian Parkinson
writes about JSSE on IBM's developerWorks.
"
JSSE brings secure communications to Java applications, by using SSL to encrypt and protect data as it travels across a network. In this advanced look at the technology, Java middleware developer Ian Parkinson delves into the lesser-known aspects of the JSSE API, showing you how to program your way around some of the restrictions of SSL. Learn how to dynamically select the KeyStore and TrustStore, relax JSSE's password-matching requirements, and build your own customized KeyManager implementation."
Comments (none posted)
Lisp
Version 2.30 of GNU CLISP has been released.
"
This version includes
several new features such as a new module for interfacing to the Oracle
ODBMS, improved file name and pathname management, improved output of some
debugging/introspection tools, new socket functions and functionality, more
POSIX functions, UCS-4 character strings, and additional options for image
dumping."
Full Story (comments: none)
Perl
The September 9-15, 2002 edition of
This Week on perl5-porters is out.
Topics include printf format documentation, Data::Dumper and tied objects,
-DLEAKTEST problems, Testing for magic,
Syntax incompatibility with the // operator, and more.
Comments (none posted)
Michael Schilli
explains
the Log::Log4perl Perl logging package on O'Reilly.
"
You've rolled out an application and it produces mysterious, sporadic errors? That's pretty common, even if fairly well-tested applications are exposed to real-world data. How can you track down when and where exactly your problem occurs? What kind of user data is it caused by? A debugger won't help you there.
And you don't want to keep track of only bad cases. It's helpful to log all types of meaningful incidents while your system is running in production, in order to extract statistical data from your logs later."
Comments (none posted)
PHP
Issue #103 of the
PHP Weekly Summary
is out. The content summary includes:
"
License location, type1 fonts with GD, PCRE update, COM extension still broken, NET-SNMP support, strto[upper|lower] and UTF-8PHP scripts as .INI files, ext/ecasound, ext/xmms".
Comments (none posted)
The September 15, 2002 edition of the
Pear Weekly News
is out. "
While the mailing list was slightly quieter, if only because everybody was busy packaging and releasing. This week saw 6 stable, 2 beta and 1 development release, MDB's first stable release, Some discussions on how to use PEAR if you are in a hosted enviroment and some exciting new packages proposed like Christian Stocker Webdav Server Class."
Comments (none posted)
Python
Topics on this week's
Daily Python-URL
include Automatic Run-time Interface Building for Aggregated Objects,
Thinking in Tkinter, Pyepix, pymqi, SemanText 0.72.1, and more.
Comments (none posted)
Ruby
This week, the
Ruby Weekly News looks at RubyInline 1.0.4, RubyCocoa 0.3.0,
RubyAEOSA 0.2.1, DbTalk 0.7,
Programming Ruby translated to Norwegian, Multi-methods and overloading,
and an explanation of the various open-source licenses.
Comments (none posted)
Tcl/Tk
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for September 17 is out, with the latest from the
Tcl/Tk development community.
Full Story (comments: none)
XML
Lars Marius Garshol
introduces topic maps for organizing XML encoded information.
"
When XML is introduced into an organization it is usually used for one of two purposes: either to structure the organization's documents or to make that organization's applications talk to other applications. These are both useful ways of using XML, but they will not help anyone find the information they are looking for. What changes with the introduction of XML is that the document processes become more controllable and can be automated to a greater degree than before, while applications can now communicate internally and externally. But the big picture, something that collects the key concepts in the organization's information and ties it all together, is nowhere to be found. This is where topic maps come in."
Comments (none posted)
Antoine Quint
writes about
text under SVG 1.0 on O'Reilly.
"
SVG 1.0 includes support for manipulating and representing text. There's an entire chapter devoted to text in the specification. Text in SVG is real text; to write Hello World! in an SVG document, you have to write something like Hello World!. This comes in handy with regard to accessibility as it means that SVG text is searchable and indexable."
Comments (none posted)
Cameron Laird
continues his series on speeding up the parsing of XML.
"
XML-oriented applications vary enormously in performance. This article, the second in a series on XML persistence, presents basic information you should know about XML parsing, including several principles for measuring XML parsing performance that are important for any XML developer who wants more speed."
Comments (none posted)
Miscellaneous
Release candidates for the omniORB 4.0.0 and omniORBpy 2.0
CORBA ORBs for C++ and Python
are available.
The omniORB project has also been moved from
AT&T Laboratories Cambridge to SourceForge.
Comments (none posted)
The Perl Review has published its
Suckatude Index,
a graphical comparison of how various languages "Rock" or "Suck".
The index is guaranteed to offend Visual Basic, C++, and Java proponents.
Comments (1 posted)
Kendall Grant Clark
studies the W3C's "Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web"
document on O'Reilly.
"
In the APW's view, the Web is a "universe of resources". So far, so good. But what is a resource? The APW adopts the definition of resource from RFC 2396, a definition which has always made me uneasy, though probably because I'm still more inclined to think of these things like a philosopher than like a programmer or software system architect."
Comments (none posted)
Page editor: Forrest Cook
Next page: Linux in Business>>