Development
GCC 3.2.1 released
Version 3.2.1 of GCC, the GNU Compiler Collection, has been announced.The release is mainly intended to fix a number of bugs. The changes include:
- a new header directory search method.
- removal of the "Naming Types" extension.
- improvements to the IA-32 target code.
- improvements to the x86-64 target code.
The final release notes contain a detailed list of bug fixes that are associated with this release.
From the release notes:
"3.2.1 adds a new warning, -Wabi. This option warns when GNU C++ generates
code that is known not to be binary-compatible with the vendor-neutral
ia32/ia64 ABI. Please consult the GCC manual, included in the
distribution, for details.
"
System Applications
Audio Projects
Ogg Traffic
The November 24, 2002 edition of Ogg Traffic is out with the latest Ogg Vorbis audio compression news. Topics include developer status reports, Ogg Vorbis Industry Standard? Ogg Vorbis to MP3 transcoding, Tremor development, Speex joins Xiph.org, Theora Alpha One, and Icecast 2.libsndfile-1.0.2 released
Version 1.0.2 of the libsndfile audio library has been released with a number of bug fixes and new capabilities.
Database Software
knoda 0.5.5 released
Version 0.5.5 of the Knoda database GUI for KDE 3 is out. New features include an ODBC driver, an improved report designer, better configuration capabilities, and bug fixes.
Electronics
New gEDA releases
The latest news from the gEDA (Gnu Electronic Design and Analysis) project include new versions of the Icarus Verilog compiler and Gerber Viewer.
Networking Tools
Managing Bulk DNS Zones with Perl (O'Reilly)
Chris Josephes shows how to use Perl to assist in the management of DNS zones on O'Reilly.
Printing
LinuxPrinting.org news
LinuxPrinting.org mentions that the Foomatic printer database includes new entries for the HP LaserJet 4200 and 4300, the Epson Stylus CX5200 and 3200, and generic printers.
Web Site Development
Midgard framework in action
A case study of using the Midgard Content Management Framework has been published by Martin Langhoff. "A client of CWA New Media has recently made live a site we have developed using Midgard as the underlying framework. The project overall involved 3 companies, responsible for the back-end, front-end and hosting. This three teams, plus a sizable team put together by the client, worked for over a year from prototype to launch date."
Zope Members News
The most recent headlines on the Zope Members News include: RSS 2 Feed for Zope.org, Icube Releases ApplicationWizard for OpenFlow 1.0, Icube Releases OpenFlow 1.0, ContentPackage 0.3 released, Zope on IBM OS/2, Three leading Swiss Zope companies establish the SwissZope Association, PropertyObject & -folder 1.2 released, AbracadabraObject 1.5 released, Strip-o-Gram 1.2 Released!, and New York ZUG - November 21, 2002.Using Tomcat Configuring Tomcat and Apache With JK 1.2 (O'Reilly)
James Goodwill continues his series on Tomcat/Apache integration. "In the simplest terms, the JK modules, or mod_jk, are conduits between a Web server and the Tomcat JSP/servlet container. They replace the previous Web server module, mod_jserv, which had many shortcomings. The new JK modules include support for a wider variety of Web servers, better SSL support, support of the AJP13 protocol, and support for the entire Tomcat series from 3.2.x to 5.x."
Miscellaneous
GNU Free Documentation License v1.2
Version 1.2 of the Gnu Free Documentation License has been published. Thanks to Paul Sladen.Raising the Bar on RSS Feed Quality (O'Reilly)
Timothy Appnel covers RSS syntax, standards compliance issues, and more on O'Reilly. "RSS is an XML-based syntax for facilitating the exchange of information in a lightweight fashion through the distribution (or feeding) of resources. Publishers can use this versatile and increasingly essential format to assist end users in tracking and consuming content. Netscape originally developed the format but lost interest and eventually abandoned work on it. This created an identity crisis that devolved into varying interruptions, with dispute over even the meaning of the RSS acronym, RDF Site Summary or Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. But as divergent efforts work to develop RSS, one result has been a diminished overall quality in RSS feeds."
Desktop Applications
Audio Applications
GLAME 0.6.4 released
Version 0.6.4 of the Glame audio editing package is available, and includes a number of bug fixes.WaveSurfer 1.4.6 released
Version 1.4.6 of the WaveSurfer sound visualization and manipulation tool is out. The changes include a new WaveSurfer native transcription format, support for Snack 2.2, new keyboard shortcuts, two new visualization plugins, and lots of bug fixes.Audacity 1.1.1-3 tarball available
Version 1.1.1-3 of the Audacity multi-platform audio editor is available. "For Unix users, a new source tarball has been released, 1.1.1-3, which fixes problems compiling with wxGTK 2.2.9. We hope to have a version which compiles on RedHat 8 with no modifications soon."
Desktop Environments
FootNotes
Headlines on the GNOME desktop FootNotes site include: Happy holidays from the GNOME Foundation!, Totem ''We're getting almost every night'' 0.12.0 out, GNOME Germany's website updated, Opinions: Abstracting the Linux Desktop from the File-system, Sodipodi 0.28 released, Ruby-GNOME2-0.1 is released!, GNOME 2 Accessibility Guide now available, Evolution 1.2 review, Foundation Happenings, and more.Kernel Cousin KDE
The November 26, 2002 edition of Kernel Cousin KDE is out. Topics include: SMS plugin for Kopete, Debugging JavaScript, Improving tabs in Konqueror, Introducing kexi to KOffice, KSpread speaking better Excel, KOffice 1.3: Usability Aspects, Service for KOffice 1.2, No Money Handling in KOffice, and Dev. Newsflash.
Games
WorldForge Game News
New software from the World Forge game project include Uclient 0.15.1, and Cyphesis 0.2.New Pygame releases
New software from the PyGame project includes Pyzzle 0.8 and Basegolf 1.
GUI Packages
XFree86 4.3.0 Feature Freeze
A feature freeze has been announced for XFree86 4.3.0. The freeze will take place on November 30, 2002. The official release of 4.3.0 is planned for the Linux World Conference & Exposition in January.FLTK 1.1.2 available
Version 1.1.12 of FLTK, the Fast, Light ToolKit has been released. Change information is available in the source code.
Interoperability
Wine release 20021125
Release 20021125 of Wine has been announced. This release features a completed conversion to STRICT compilation mode, revival of WinHelp, support for client-side fonts, regression tests that no longer require Perl, and bug fixes.Kernel Cousin Wine
Issue #145 of Kernel Cousin Wine is out. Topics include: Fun Projects Slashdotted, Screenshots (Send More!), Porting PuTTY With Winelib 3, Building Apps With Different Wine Source/Build Trees, Implementing Import Libraries, wintab.dll: Better Tablet Support, Wineconsole Changes, Passing Commandline Arguments, Terminal Based Apps, Assumptions with autoconf, COM Objects, and Threads and CoInitialize.
Office Applications
OpenOffice developer build 643
Developer build #643C of OpenOffice is available. "This new developer build improves upon 643 and then goes beyond mere improvement. But it is less stable than OpenOffice.org 1.0.1, more prone to crashing than OpenOffice.org 1.0.1, and thus not recommended for the casual user."
Kernel Cousin GNUe
Issue #56 of Kernel Cousin GNUe is out with the latest GNU enterprise development news.
Web Browsers
mozillaZine
The latest mozillaZine topics include: Independent Status Reports, Roadmap Graphic Updated, The Role of XUL in Rich Internet Applications, Macworld Browser Comparison Features Mozilla, Chimera and Netscape, Favourite Phoenix Theme: And the Winner is..., Capital One Now Supports Mozilla, Bugzilla Status Update, and more.
Languages and Tools
Caml
Caml Weekly News
The November 19-26 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with the week's Caml software development news.The Caml Hump
This week, the new software on The Caml Hump includes: Encore un cours de compilation, Initiation au langage OCaml, caml2html, Jabbr, APPSEM'2000, MLGMP, xmllexer, and OCaml-HTTP.
Java
Patterns, Hype, and Snobbery (O'Reilly)
Ted Neward clarifies some issues on Design Patterns. "Specifically, I want to address the huge misunderstanding that emerged through the industry about what design patterns are, what they were intended to do, and why they're still important, all hopefully without any trace of snobbery."
Implementing Templates with Struts (O'Reilly)
Vikram Goyal writes about Java templates on O'Reilly. "Developing portal sites without a framework in place can be a difficult job. Using templates can reduce the pain and help with sites where the content and layout can change in the blink of an eye. Struts can help you develop template-based portal sites, with the Struts Template tags. The article covers some basic templating ideas in relation to portals, explains templating support in Struts, and rounds up with a discussion of Struts Template tags vs. Tiles, another templating mechanism."
Unit testing with mock objects (IBM developerWorks)
Alexander Day Chaffee and William Pietri cover the use of mock objects on IBM developerWorks. "Mock objects are a useful way to write unit tests for objects that act as mediators. Instead of calling the real domain objects, the tested object calls a mock domain object that merely asserts that the correct methods were called, with the expected parameters, in the correct order. However, when the tested object must create the domain object, we are faced with a problem. How does the tested object know to create a mock domain object instead of the true domain object? In this article, software consultants Alexander Day Chaffee and William Pietri present a refactoring technique to create mock objects based on the factory method design pattern."
Perl
This Week on perl5-porters (Use Perl)
The November 18-24, 2002 edition of This Week on Perl 5-Porters is out. Topics include: Carp patch rejected, require $foo versus require Foo, Atomic in-place edit, Called as a subroutine or as a method ?, Parser patch for ? :, New warning proposal, and more.This week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)
O'Reilly's This week on Perl 6 for November 21, 2002 is out. The topics include: Quick Roadmap, Branch Dump, Parrot BASIC 2, scope and functions in languages/scheme, Leo Tötsch is the Patch Monster, Bootstrapping Perl 6, Quick note on JIT bits, Perl 6 test organization, Meanwhile, in perl6-language, Unifying invocant and topic naming syntax, Superpositions and Laziness, FMTWYENTK about :=, Continuations, More Junctions (or, When junctions collapse), Control Structures I, II and III, String concatenation operator, Meanwhile, Over in perl6-documentation, and more.
PHP
PHP Weekly Summary
Topics on this week's PHP Weekly Summary include: bcmath extension, Incorrect HTTP headers, Release Candidate 2, leak() and crash(), Hebrew calendar improvements, License errors, DNS query functions, ZE2 F3P, Ideal error reporting, and $PHP_AUTH_USER or $PHP_AUTH_PW.
Python
The Daily Python-URL
This week's Daily Python-URL article topics include: PyCon 2003 - Call for participation, IndexedCatalog 0.4, csv 1.0, RSS for Python, and The best of two goodies ... Delphi & Python.
Ruby
The Ruby Weekly News
Topics on this week's Ruby Weekly News include WeRDS, the Weekly Ruby-Doc Summary, for 2002-11-17, ruby-dev summary 18711-18810, install.rb/setup.rb question, Unit Testing in Ruby for the (Absolute) Novice, and ruby-dev summary 18811-18923. New Ruby software includes ncurses-ruby 0.6, rbbr-0.1, and Ruby-GNOME 2.01.The Ruby Garden
New topics on the Ruby Garden include: regex search in Array of Strings, New Root for Class Hierachy, Suggest String#to_n to encompass to_i and to_f, uncatchable Deadlock exception, Move "timeout" method into its own class, and more.
XML
W3C XML Schema Design Patterns: Avoiding Complexity (O'Reilly)
Dare Obasanjo covers XML Schema issues on O'Reilly. "Over the course of the past year, during which I've worked closely with W3C XML Schema (WXS), I've observed many schema authors struggle with various aspects of the language. Given the size and relative complexity of the WXS recommendation, it seems that many schema authors would be best served by understanding and utilizing an effective subset instead of attempting to comprehend all of its esoterica."
Miscellaneous
Second Alpha of KDevelop 3.0 is Out (KDE.News)
KDE.News has an announcement for KDevelop version 3.0. "This release fixes many bugs since Alpha 1 was released over a month ago and adds a few minor features to the mix. Users of KDevelop 2.x will notice substantial improvements and are encouraged to begin upgrading so that new bugs can be identified and squashed.Jext 3.2 pre 2 available
Version 3.2 pre 2 of the Jext programmer's editor is available. A new Project Master plugin is also included.CVS Third-Party Tools (O'Reilly)
Jennifer Vesperman summarizes the capability of a bunch of open-source CVS extension tools. "CVS (Concurrent Versioning System) is a popular version control system. It provides many features, and is useful in many situations. It does, however, have its faults. The standard client works from the command line, it doesn't automatically integrate with development environments, and there are useful features it lacks. Not to worry. It's an open source program, and there are a host of third-party utilities that provide features and integration. There are also many graphical clients."
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