Development

The MediaWiki Collaborative Editing Software

MediaWiki is a web wiki package that is being developed by the Wikimedia Foundation.

The code is based on PHP; it has been released under version 2 of the GNU General Public License. MediaWiki is derived from the older Wikipedia project, the project history gives the details. The future development plans for MediaWiki are spelled out in the project roadmap page.

Numerous web sites use MediaWiki including Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia, and Wikiquote, a quote archive. For some amusement, search for Linus Torvalds on Wikiquote.

MediaWiki has a rather lengthy Feature List, some of the highlights include:

• A web-based user interface.
• Optional MySQL database support.
• A multi-level permission system.
• Caching functionality.
• Article cross-linking capabilities.
• Support for article revisions.
• Multi-lingual support.
• Multimedia extensions.
• Support for RSS syndication.
• Search and query support.
• Support for user-edited and user-uploaded data.
• Support for LaTeX mathematical functions.
• Generation of printable articles.
• Talk pages for user messaging.
• Watch list support for tracking changes.

Two new versions of MediaWiki were released this week. version 1.3.0 came out with this note: "After an annoyingly long series of beta releases, say hello to MediaWiki 1.3.0! Everyone running the beta releases is _strongly_ recommended to upgrade to the current code." An important security fix was included in this release.

Version 1.3.1 was also announced with this note: "1.3.1 fixes some remaining issues from 1.3.0."

The Wikipedia site speaks volumes about the usefulness and maturity the software, visitors may even be inspired to contribute some content.

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System Applications

Audio Projects

ALSA 1.0.6 released

Version 1.0.6 of the Alsa sound driver has been released with a long list of changes. "The 1.0.6a driver package fixes the /proc problem with loading of the sequencer client modules."

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Esound 0.2.35 is out

Version 0.2.35 of Esound is out with bug fixes, code cleanup, and more. "EsounD (the Enlightened Sound Daemon) is a server process that allows multiple applications to share a single sound card."

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Database Software

JPOX 1.0.2 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.0.2 of JPOX, a Java Data Objects implementation, is available with bug fixes.

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libgda/libgnomedb 1.1.6 released

Version 1.1.6 of libgda/libgnomedb, a database development framework, 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."

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Mergeant 0.52 released

Version 0.52 of Mergeant, a database user and administration tool based on GNOME-DB, is out. "This is a development release, the first one after the splitting of Mergeant into libmergeant and the GUI frontend, resulting in a much better architecture."

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PostgreSQL Weekly News

The August 16, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is out. "While the initial response to PostgreSQL 8.0 beta has been very positive, that wasn't the biggest news of this past weeks development. What really shook things up was the discovery of a long standing bug in PostgreSQL's XLOG COMMIT code. Even though there have never been any known reports of this bug on any released version of PostgreSQL, the nature of the bug is one where, given the right amount of bad luck, it is possible to incur some data loss".

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The Slony team has released version 1.0.2

Version 1.0.2 of Slony, a replication engine for the PostgreSQL database, has been announced. "With this version, the Slony-I replication system allows you to use its advanced node switching features to make version upgrades to PostgreSQL 8.0 in minutes, regardless of database size. Version 1.0.2 also fixes minor bugs, and is a drop-in replacement for existing Slony-I 1.0.0 or 1.0.1 installations."

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Embedded Systems

BusyBox 1.0.0-rc3 released

Version 1.0.0-rc3 of BusyBox, a condensed collection of command line utilities for embedded systems, has been released. See the Change Log for details.

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Interoperability

Samba 2.2.11 Available for Download

Stable release 2.2.11 of Samba has been announced. "Please note that the Samba 2.2 code tree will reach its End-Of-Life on October 1, 2004. Administrators of existing Samba 2.2 installations are encouraged to upgrade to the latest Samba 3.0.x release prior to that date."

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Security

Metasploit Framework v2.2

Version 2.2 of the Metasploit Framework, an exploit development platform, is out. Those working in the field of computer security would be advised to take a look. "The 2.2 release includes three user interfaces, 30 exploits and 40 payloads. Additionally, this is the first public release to contain the new in-memory DLL-injection system and the VNC (remote desktop) payload."

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Web Site Development

phpwsBB 0.9.7 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.9.7 of phpwsBB, a native bulletin board module for the phpWebSite CMS, has been released. This version fixes a critical build problem.

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Zope X3 3.0.0 beta 3 released

The third - and possibly final - Zope X3 beta has been released. Zope X3 is a completely rewritten product with no backward compatibility, but with the benefit of years of experience; more information can be found on ZopeX3 web page.

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ZopeMag Weekly News

The July 29 - August 13 edition of the ZopeMag Weekly News is online with Zope information and a Weekly dose of useful Plone tips.

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Desktop Applications

Accessibility

gnopernicus 0.9.9 released

Version 0.9.9 of gnopernicus, the GNOME desktop screen reader for the visually impaired, is out. Changes include translation work, group context change notification, and more.

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Audio Applications

Audacity 1.2.2-pre1 released

Version 1.2.2-pre1 of Audacity, an audio file editor, has been released. "Audacity 1.2.2-pre1 is a public test version of Audacity. Help us test the new features and bug fixes that will appear in our next stable version of Audacity later this month, including VU meters and multi-file export!"

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Mammut V0.17 released

Version 0.17 of Mammut, an audio FFT tool, is out with improved Jack initialization and other changes.

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Desktop Environments

Metacity 2.8.3 released

Version 2.8.3 of the Metacity window manager for GNOME is out with a number of bug fixes and some translation updates.

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KDE-CVS-Digest (KDE.News)

The August 13, 2004 edition of the KDE CVS-Digest is online, here's the content summary: "Mostly bugfixes this week, including fixes for the 3.3 release. Digikam implements EXIF based rotation in image editor. Krita adds gradient support. KOffice can now save styles to OASIS. Security fixes in khtml."

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Waldo Bastian on Kiosk and the Linux desktop (KDE.News)

KDE.News interviews Waldo Bastian. "There are of course cost saving aspects but I think the most important reason for companies to go with KDE is that it puts the company back in control over their corporate desktops. With KDE your IT department gets new opportunities to help make your desktop workers more productive instead of spending all day fighting to prevent things from falling apart."

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Electronics

New Open Collector releases

The Open Collector site features a number of new electronic tool releases this week. Here's what has been released: The ADMS 1.2.10 code generator, the MMTL 1.2.1 Multilayer Multiconductor Transmission Line 2-D and 2.5-D electromagnetic modeling tool suite, the Eclipse Verilog Editor version 0.2.0, the Alliance 5.0 VLSI CAD framework, and the FXTurns-n-Layers 1.1.4 graphical transformer and induction coil design aid. There is also an update from the Ronja Tetrapolis project, which involves a point-to-point visible light transmission link made with automotive LED tail light assemblies.

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Financial Applications

BIE 6.0.3 (STABLE) released

Stable version 6.0.3 of BIE, the Business Integration Engine, has been released. BIE is a Java-based data integration system for exchanging internal and external data.

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Games

gnome-games 2.7.7 is out

Version 2.7.7 of gnome-games, a collection of games for the GNOME desktop, is available. "A lot of the themes have been split into a separate package called gnome-games-extra-data. The core package now contains only a minimum amount of graphics, it is still functional, but your favourite themes may not be there."

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gnome-games-extra-data 2.7.0

The initial release of gnome-games-extra-data (verson 2.7.0) is out. "Most of the graphics you will find here were formerly in the gnome-games package. There are two additional tilesets for Mahjongg from Richard Hoelscher based on the old GNOME 1.4 graphics."

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Stella release 1.4.1 (SourceForge)

Version 1.4.1 of Stella, an Atari 2600 VCS emulator, has been released. It features numerous bug fixes.

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GUI Packages

GLib 2.4.6 released

Version 2.4.6 of GLib is out with bug fixes and updated translations.

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GTK+ 2.4.7 released

Version 2.4.7 of GTK+, a graphical user interface toolkit, is out. "This is an emergency bug fix release to fix two serious problems with GtkFileChooser in GTK+ 2.4.6."

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Gtk2-Perl 2.7.91 announced

Version 2.7.91 of Gtk2-Perl, the Perl bindings to GTK+, is out with documentation fixes and improvements.

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Interoperability

Wine 20040813 released

Version 20040813 of Wine has been announced. Changes include a new msiexec application, support for alpha blending, sound support improvements, code cleanups, and bug fixes.

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Multimedia

GStreamer 0.8.5 "Stuttgart" released

Version 0.8.5 of GStreamer, a streaming media framework, is available with lots of bug fixes and a few new features. "The 0.8.x series is a stable series aimed at end users. It is not API or ABI compatible with the stable 0.6.x series. It is, however, parallel installable with the 0.6.x series."

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News Readers

Liferea 0.5.3 Announced

Version 0.5.3 of Liferea, the Linux Feed Reader, is out with lots of changes and some bug fixes.

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Web Browsers

Epiphany 1.2.8 released

Stable version 1.2.8 of the Epiphany browser has been released. Changes include support for the latest Mozilla API, confirm before file overwriting, and lots of bug fixes.

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Epiphany 1.3.5 released

Development version 1.3.5 of the Epiphany browser is out. Changes include removal of the startup script, adaptation to the latest Mozilla API, bug fixes, translation work, and more.

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Epiphany Extensions 1.1.3

Version 1.1.3 of Epiphany Extensions, the collection of extensions for the Epiphany browser, is out. "Epiphany Extensions 1.1.3 is a development release for use with the 1.3.x development series of Epiphany."

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Netscape 7.2 Released (MozillaZine)

MozillaZine reports that America Online has released Netscape 7.2. "Based on Mozilla 1.7, this latest version features better popup blocking, vCard support, an improved junk mail algorithm, better standards support, performance enhancements and several hundred other bug fixes. It also includes patches for recent security vulnerabilities."

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Word Processors

AWN #EOF Released

Eric Zen, editor of the AbiWord Weekly News, has declared the end of the road for the publication. "In fact, I don't really think there should be an AWN. It's not that AbiWord doesn't develop at a newsworthy pace, but so many other projects do." RIP AWN.

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AbiWord v2.0.10 Released

Stable version 2.0.10 of AbiWord has been released. "This release is a bugfix release only."

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Miscellaneous

gLabels 2.0.1 released

Version 2.0.1 of gLabels, a label printing application, is available for download. This release features several bug fixes and has an updated Japanese translation.

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gnome-applets 2.7.2 released

Version 2.7.2 of GNOME Applets are out, changes are mostly in the gweather component. "GNOME Applets are the little programs you run in your panel. Just about everyone uses a GNOME Applet or two, the package includes applets like the battery applet, CPU load applet, weather applet and mixer applet."

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Gnome OSD 0.3.0 announced

Version 0.3.0 of Gnome OSD, an On Screen Display notification system for the Gnome desktop, is out. The change overview says: "New control center preferences dialog, allowing configuration of font and message position/alignment."

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HylaFAX 4.2.0 released

Version 4.2.0 of HylaFAX, a Fax modem package, has been announced. "This release includes nearly a year's worth of truly exceptional contributions from HylaFAX developers and users alike, and everyone should consider migrating to a HylaFAX-4.2.x release as soon as possible."

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OpenWFE 1.4.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.4.1 of OpenWFE has been announced. "OpenWFE is an open source java workflow engine. It is a complete Business Process Management suite, with 4 components : an engine, a worklist, a webclient and a reactor (host for automatic agents). It can also be used behind the scene. OpenWFE 1.4.1 is a bug fix release. One important concept was introduced for stores : the order in which they are instantiated in the worklist configuration file is now the order in which they are asked if they accept a workitem for a given participant name."

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Languages and Tools

C

The GCC Newsletter

The August 18, 2004 edition of the GCC Newsletter is online. Read about a tentative gcc 3.5 release schedule, performance benchmarking, C constant expressions proposals, and more.

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Caml

Caml Weekly News

The August 17, 2004 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with this week's Caml language news.

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Java

SwingSet 0.8.0-beta Released

Version 0.8.0-beta of SwingSet has been announced. "We are pleased to announce the 0.8.0-beta release of SwingSet, an open source Java toolkit that allows the standard Java Swing components to be made database aware. For the latest, version all components have been made into Java Beans which will allow for better integration with Java IDEs."

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Creating Custom Desktop Components (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly is running an article on Swing widgets. "Swing includes a vast collection of GUI components, but sometimes you need something that's unique to your application. Andrei Cioroianu returns with an installment on how to code your own Swing widget."

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Extend JavaSound to play MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and more (O'ReillyNet)

O'Reilly is running an article on extending JavaSound. "The JavaSound API adds audio capabilities to the Java platform. It's been part of J2SE since version 1.3 and it supports the WAV, AU, and AIFF audio formats, and provides MIDI support. It doesn't support some other audio formats, such as MP3, but it provides a flexible plugin architecture allowing any third-party vendor to add custom audio format support through the JavaSound Service Provider Interfaces (SPIs). This article deals with this plugin architecture and API, how to write and use a custom SPI implementation, how metadata such as title, artist, and copyright are exposed, and how multiple SPI implementations could be integrated in an application such as player or a game."

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PHP

Two new releases of PHP

Two new releases of PHP have been announced.
Here is the announcement for version 5.0.1: "This is a maintenance release that in addition to many non-critical bug fixes also includes new UNIX and Windows installation docs which are now auto-generated from the PHP Manual."
And the version 4.3.9RC1 announcement says: "This is the first release candidate and should have a very low number of problems and/or bugs. Nevertheless, please download and test it as much as possible on real-life applications to uncover any remaining issues."
Lastly, the online PHP manual's Installation and Configuration section has been reworked.

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PHP Debugging Basics (O'ReillyNet)

David Sklar shows some techniques for debugging PHP on O'Reilly. "David Sklar, author of Learning PHP 5, provides some basic techniques for finding and fixing the problems in your programs. In particular, he covers how to set up error reporting as you like it, how to find parse errors, and how to inspect program data."

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Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!

The August 18, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out with the latest Python language article links.

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Ruby

Ruby-GNOME2 0.10.1

Version 0.10.1 of Ruby-GNOME2, the Ruby language bindings to GNOME 2, is out. "This release fixes some serious bugs in Ruby-GNOME2-0.10.0 discovered just after the release".

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Exploring E4X with Ruby (O'ReillyNet)

Jack Herrington works with E4X and Ruby in an O'Reilly article. "XML processing with SAX can be tricky, and is painful in the DOM. The new E4X approach can make processing XML much easier. Jack Herrington explores E4X and demonstrates a simple port to the Ruby programming language."

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XML

Practical SAX Notes (O'Reilly)

Uche Ogbuji discusses SAX issues on O'Reilly. "In this article I discuss issues related to recent articles in this column, including some practical problems using XML facilities -- SAX in particular -- across Python versions and installed software configurations. I also revisit ElementTree's support for XML namespaces and discuss some other Python tools' support for breaking large documents into chunks."

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Editors

gedit 2.7.91 released

Version 2.7.91 of gedit, the GNOME text editor, is out with work on the translations and several bug fixes.

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Test Suites

Marathon 0.82 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.82 of Marathon has been announced. "This is a minor feature update and bug fix release. Marathon should work better on Linux now. Marathon runs gui based acceptance tests against swing applications. It is composed of a runner, and recorder, and an editor. Tests scripts are expressed as python code."

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