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DevelopmentThe Audacity Audio Editor Audacity is a GUI-based audio editor. It is a cross-platform project with versions for Linux/Unix, Mac OS-X, and Windows. It has been built with the wxWidgets GUI framework, and is written with a combination of C and C++ code. Audacity has been released under the Gnu GPL.
The
project description
gives a brief description of Audacity's capabilities:
You can record sounds, play sounds, import and export WAV, AIFF, Ogg Vorbis, and MP3 files, and more. Use it to edit your sounds using Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited Undo), mix tracks together, or apply effects to your recordings. It also has a built-in amplitude envelope editor, a customizable spectrogram mode and a frequency analysis window for audio analysis applications. Built-in effects include Echo, Change Tempo, and Noise Removal, and it also supports VST and LADSPA
plug-in effects.
The Audacity Screenshots page shows the program in action, it is fairly easy to figure out, with standard tape recorder buttons and an oscilloscope-style sound file display. Version 1.2.2 of Audacity was released this week.
Audacity 1.2.2 is a new stable version of the free Audacity sound editor. This release includes new features such as level meters, multi-file export, and lower latency for multi-track recording. It also includes many bug fixes.
The addition of the record/playback level meter is an essential feature for the use of Audacity as a serious recording program. Apparently, it is also possible to record a new track while playing back another, this is a feature that is missing from many audio recording utilities, yet is of critical importance to most musician-users. The Audacity FAQ discusses some of the difficulties involved with multi-tracking. Audacity features several online Tutorials to assist the user in learning its capabilities. Audacity is available for download here. Dependencies include wxWidgets 2.4, and optionally MAD (Mpeg Audio Decoder), Ogg Vorbis, and LAME. Audacity appears to be a fairly active project with a lot of development and a focus on adding useful features. It should be considered for any Linux audio enthusiast's collection of tools.
System Applications Audio Projects Planet CCRMA Changes Version 1.2.2 of The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include new versions of Rosegarden, Seq24, SoundTouch, Rezound, Fox, ZynAddSubFX, Sweep, Audacity, and Galan.
Database Software MySQL 4.1.4 has been released Version 4.1.4 of the MySQL database is out. "This is a new gamma development release, adding new features and fixing recently discovered bugs."
Release of PyGreSQL 3.5 Version 3.5 of PyGreSQL, a Python module for interfacing to PostgreSQL, is available. "This release fixes a few bugs, adds a few minor features and makes a few speedups in the code. It works with Python version 2.3 and PostgreSQL version 7.3 and up."
PostgreSQL Weekly News The August 31, 2004 edition of the PostgreSQL Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL database articles.
Libraries Loudmouth 0.17 announced Version 0.17 of Loudmouth, a C library for writing Jabber clients written using GLib, is available. "This release adds support to connect to a different server than the host part of the JID. Also added API to have Loudmouth send keep-alive packages at regular intervals."
SDIF 3.8.6 released Version 3.8.6 of the Ircam SDIF (Sound Description Interchange Format) library is available. Changes include better thread safety, faster operation, support for reading from pipes, completion of the API, and bug fixes.
Mail Software bogofilter-0.92.6 - New Stable Release Release 0.92.6 of Bogofilter, a mail filter, is available. "Bogofilter-0.92.6 has been promoted to "stable" status."
Networking Tools GNOME Nettool 0.99.3 released Version 0.99.3 of GNOME Nettool is available. "Version 0.99.3 is feature complete, and will be released as 1.0 after some testing period."
Web Site Development Content Management with Bricolage (O'Reilly) David Wheeler introduces Bricolage on O'Reilly. "This article is the first in a series on Perl.com introducing Bricolage, a Perl-powered, open-source, enterprise-class CMS currently in production for some of the most actively updated sites on the Internet today, including MacCentral, ETonline, and the World Health Organization."
Gallery 1.4.4-pl2 is now Available! (SourceForge) Version 1.4.4-pl2 of Gallery, a web-based photo gallery system, has been announced. "Gallery 1.4.4-pl2 is an update to Gallery 1.4.4-pl1 that addresses two issues discovered after the release. Skins will now work properly in all situations and extra long filenames for uploaded files are now handled properly."
ZopeMag Weekly News The August 25 - 31, 2004 edition of the ZopeMag Weekly News is online with the latest Zope and Plone articles.
Desktop Applications Accessibility gnopernicus 0.9.10 is out Version 0.9.10 of gnopernicus, a GNOME desktop screen reader for the visually impaired, is available with incremental improvements.
Audio Applications Marlin 0.6 released Version 0.6 of Marlin, a sample editor for GNOME using GStreamer, is available. "This is the first ever release of Marlin that depends on actually released tarballs of GStreamer. Don't think this'll be happening too regularly, but you never know."
Desktop Environments GNOME 2.8 Release Candidate 1 The first GNOME 2.8 release candidate is out. Now is the time to do some serious testing and catch those final bugs; click below for details and download info.
KDE-CVS-Digest (KDE.News) The August 27, 2004 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest is out. Here's the content summary: "Kopete Groupwise support ready for testing. Digikam adds oil-painting and charcoal drawing effect plugins. Two new kioslaves; kio-trash and kfiledevice for disk size and usage. Kexi now supports subforms. Work started on a common multimedia interface to various backends."
Metacity 2.8.4 released Version 2.8.4 of the Metacity window manager for GNOME 2 has been announced. "This release features a number of bug fixes, and also the disabling of the focus-stealing-prevention code".
Desktop Publishing Scribus 1.2 Released Scribus 1.2 is out; click below for the announcement. Changes in this release include a new PostScript importer (allowing PS and EPS files to be edited as native objects), an improved template mechanism, support for 27 languages, "basic tables," and more.
Electronics GerbMerge 0.7 is out (Open Collector) Open Collector has an announcement for GerbMerge 0.7. "GerbMerge is a panelizer for Gerber RS274X and Excellon files created by the EAGLE CAD program. It can merge multiple, different jobs or copies of the same job. Jobs can also be rotated by 90 degrees. This version adds optional automatic placement of jobs, using either randomized search or exhaustive search. Also, one bug was fixed for tool lists that used different tool names for the same size drill."
XCircuit 3.2.24 released Version 3.2.24 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing package, has been released. The changes include a major fix to the netlist code and improvements to the TCL command-line functions.
Financial Applications uniLETIM version 0.9.1 released (SourceForge) Version 0.9.2 of UniLETIM is available. "UniLETIM is a web-based environment for complementary currency systems such as Local Exchange Trading System (LETS) or TimeBank/TimeDollars. It is written in PHP/MySQL. Release 0.9.1 includes new div-based XHTML/CSS layout theme, many bugfixes and it is able to manage multiple CC groups at one installation."
Games gnome-games 2.7.8 is out Version 2.7.8 of gnome-games, a collection of games for the GNOME desktop, is available. "This release is ready for the code-freeze. It contains only bug-fixes. One more release with documentation updates and any emergency bug-fixes can be expected before 2.8.0."
GUI Packages GTK+ 2.4.9 released Stable version 2.4.9 of GTK+, a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces, is available. "This is a respin of 2.4.8 to fix a mixup with the library versioning."
Gtk2-Perl 2.7.92 announced Version 2.7.92 of Gtk2-Perl, the Perl bindings to GTK+ 2.x is out with documentation generation fixes.
Instant Messaging Gossip 0.7.7 announced Version 0.7.7 of Gossip, an instant messaging client for GNOME, is available. "This release features a nice addition in that you see which contacts has been updated in the contact list. Often you find yourself noticing that something changed but when you look you can't find what actually changed. Martyn was quick to solve this and now the background changes on a contact for 7 seconds after an update. Geert-Jan did some work to make the group chat behave more like a normal chat. And Mikael Hallendal added support for keep-alive packages being sent and HTTP proxy being used if the user has setup a desktop global HTTP proxy."
Interoperability Wine Traffic Issue #237 of Wine Traffic is online with the latest Wine project news.
Multimedia GStreamer Plugins 0.8.4 are available Version 0.8.4 of the GStreamer Plugins have been released. "The FFmpeg-based decoder element has been moved to its own module. If you want support for a lot of popular video formats, you need to install this module along with the GStreamer Core and Plugins. An FFmpeg-based colorspace element has been added to the Plugins however." Numerous bug fixes are also included.
News Readers Liferea 0.5.3c announced Version 0.5.3c of Liferea, the Linux Feed Reader, is available with bug fixes, and an updated Italian translation.
Office Applications Gnumeric 1.3.2 released Version 1.3.2 of the Gnumeric spreadsheet is out. "This release transitions from development to beta and begins the run up to the next release. Emmanuel has been on a tear in the charting engine improving the rendering and adding mapping support to axes. We've also been busy in xls export. Jon Kåre added image export and I've been tweaking bits to improve compatibility with MS formulas. We've finally landed Uwe Steinmann's landed Paradox db importer. Re-enabling the psion importer and ssconvert should put us back on par with 1.2.x."
Planner 0.12.1 announced Version 0.12.1 of Planner, a project management application for GNOME, is out. "This is a maintenance release from the stable branch of Planner. A number of small bugs have been fixed, including a problem with assigning resources and printing problems when using older versions of GNOME. Last but not least, the translations have been updated."
Office Suites ooo-build-1.3.2 released Build 1.3.2 of OpenOffice.org is out. "This is a brown-paper-bag release; a couple of acute build sillies, and a mistake in the release announcement, plus a few nasty bugs nailed."
PDA Software Gnome Pilot and Conduits 2.0.11 released Version 2.0.11 of Gnome Pilot and the accompanying Gnome Pilot Conduits is out. Changes include storage of USB device vendor/product ids, support for a number of new PDA platforms, bug fixes, and more.
Web Browsers Epiphany 1.3.8 is out Beta release 1.3.8 of Epiphany has been released. "Epiphany 1.3.8 is a beta release in the unstable series leading up to GNOME 2.8." Numerous bug fixes are included.
Epiphany Extensions 1.1.4 Epiphany Extensions version 1.1.4 is available. Changes include a new tab grouping extension and translation updates.
Miscellaneous GNOME Configurator 0.7.2 Version 0.7.2 of GNOME Configurator is available with bug fixes and other enhancements.
GNOME Configurator 0.8.0 Version 0.8.0 of GNOME Configurator is out with bug fixes and more.
Gnome OSD 0.5.0 announced Version 0.5.0 of Gnome OSD, the GNOME desktop On Screen Display notification system, is available. Changes include a preference setting for playing sounds on message popup, and bug fixes.
gcalctool v4.4.17 Stable version 4.4.17 of gcalctool, a calculator for GNOME, is available. "Contains updated online help to match the changes made since the version of gcalctool in GNOME 2.6."
gnome-applets 2.7.3 released Version 2.7.3 of gnome-applets is out with bug fixes and translation work. "The package includes applets like the battery applet, CPU load applet, weather applet and mixer applet."
Revelation 0.3.3 released Version 0.3.3 of Revelation, the password manager for GNOME 2, has been announced. "This release includes the long-awaited support for entry launchers. A password generater dialog was also added, along with a search toolbar and an XHTML/CSS exporter. In addition, a couple of bugs were fixed, and the internal data handling was further refined."
Yelp 2.6.2 released Version 2.6.2 of Yelp, the GNOME help browser, is available. "This is a maintenance release for Yelp". Various leaks and crashes have been fixed.
Languages and Tools Caml Caml Weekly News The August 24-31, 2004 Caml Weekly News is available with another roundup of Caml language articles.
Java Aspect-Oriented Annotations (O'ReillyNet) Bill Burke writes about AOP and attributes on O'Reilly. "Aspect-Oriented Programming (AOP) and attributes are two leading-edge programming concepts, each with typical applications. By combining them, using attributes to indicate where AOP code should execute, you can effectively declare new Java syntax."
Perl The State of the Onion (O'Reilly) O'Reilly's Use Perl site has published Larry Wall's State of the Onion speech from the recent Open Source Conference. "One of the things that bubbled up recently was that the subject of this talk had to be screensavers. I didn't know why. Maybe I still don't know why. But be that as it may, that's what this talk is about. Screensavers, and why I have to talk about them today, and why I have to talk about why I have to talk about them today. It's a kind of recursive problem, you see."
These Weeks on perl5-porters (use Perl) A three week version of This Week on Perl-5-Porters is available for August 9-29, 2004. "This is an olympic summary: it jumps over three full weeks!"
PHP PHP 4.3.9RC2 released Version 4.3.9RC2 of PHP is available for testing. "This is the last release candidate before the final release 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."
PHP Form Handling (O'ReillyNet) David Sklar works with forms in PHP on O'Reilly. "If your PHP program is a dynamic web page (and it probably is) and your PHP program is dealing with user input (and it probably is), then you need to work with HTML forms. Here are some tips for simplifying, securing, and organizing your form-handling PHP code."
PHP Weekly Summary for August 16, 2004 The PHP Weekly Summary for August 16, 2004 is out. Topics include: PHP 5 objects passed as reference, time() SAPI fix, PHP-GTK 1.0.1, install notes, SQLite 3, sort() behaviour continued, PHP 4.3.9 RC 1, faster foreach(), PHP 5.0.1, PHP_EOL, and 5_0 branch on snaps box.
PHP Weekly Summary for August 23, 2004 The PHP Weekly Summary for August 23, 2004 is out. Topics include: Namespaces, locale-aware date parsing, cookies and Max-Age, libxml output encoding, flex.skl, ini variables, method reloading, BC and __call definition, and garbage thrown out.
PHP Weekly Summary for September 1, 2004 The PHP Weekly Summary for September 1, 2004 is out. Topics include: SQLite security, stream filters, preg_match() cache, process discussion, implicit clone and ZE1 compatibility, multibyte support, more optimisations, interface_exists(), and Access testers required.
PostScript AFPL Ghostscript 8.31 Beta release Beta version 8.31 of AFPL Ghostscript has been released. New features include topological grid fitting, support for PDF 1.4 encryption, a new shading rendering method, the experimental Rinkj driver for inkjet printers, support for PDF 1.5 files, and beta support for Jpeg2000 compressed images.
Python Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! The August 31, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! has been published. Take a look for numerous Python language articles.
Scheme Schemer's Gazette 3 Issue #3 of the Schemer's Gazette is online with the latest Scheme language articles and events.
Tcl/Tk Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! The August 30, 2004 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is out with this week's Tcl/Tk article links.
UML Gaphor 0.5.1 Released Version 0.5.1 of Gaphor, a Python-based UML modeling environment, is available with one bug fix for an installation problem.
XML Checkmate XML (O'Reilly) John E. Simpson applies XML to chess in an O'Reilly article. "What outsiders may not know about is the devotion of chess insiders to studying games for which the moves have been recorded for posterity. For at least 10 years, the prevailing method for recording the context and actual play of chess games has been in the form of something called Portable Game Notation (PGN), developed by the rec.games.chess newsgroup."
Cross Compilers GNU Development Chain 2.92 pre-release Pre-release of version 2.92 of the GNU Development Chain for 68HC11/68HC12, a C cross-compiler for Motorola 8-bit microprocessors, is available. "It is based on Binutils 2.15, Gcc 3.3.4, Gdb 6.2 and Newlib 1.12.0."
Editors gedit 2.7.92 released Version 2.7.92 of gedit, a lightweight text editor for the GNOME desktop, is available with bug fixes.
Version Control CoMa and HO-CVS released as open source Two new lisp-based software development tools have been released as open-source software. "CoMa is a software configuration management system written in Common Lisp. It is similar to autoconf and is intended to be used in component-based development. HO-CVS (Higher Order CVS), also written in Common Lisp, is a version control system similar to MetaCVS, with support for module versions."
Page editor: Forrest Cook |
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![[Audacity]](/images/ns/audacity.jpg)