Development
Turn-Key Linux Audio
The Eastman Computer Music Center has released their Turn-Key Linux Audio installation package.
"Turn-Key Linux Audio is a scripted installation package for the core set of linux audio applications used at the Eastman Computer Music Center (ECMC). It contains among its many tools over a decade's-worth of powerful shell scripts, smart aliases, tutorials, documentation, shell level environment variables for multi-media linux/unix workstations, and a library of powerful templates and macros (Csound, Score11, SMS, PVC, Rt, Vspace, etc) created by composer, teacher, and ECMC director Allan Schindler.
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Turn-Key Linux Audio is designed to install on the Mandrake 9.0 distribution. The Installation instructions appear to be fairly straightforward, involving the download of a tar file, and execution of an install.sh script from a root account. The installation script is designed to streamline the process of adding a big collection of audio software to the system, it handles the time consuming and sometimes difficult task of managing package dependencies.
Turn-Key Linux Audio provides a wide variety of popular open-source software tools. The software categories include Sythnesis/Composition, Players/Recorders, Mixing, Utilities/Other, and a large number of scripts that address common audio processing needs.
Some popular packages that don't show up in the software list include: The Festival Speech Synthesis System, compression utilities like Ogg Vorbis and mp3, and drum machines such as Robert Muth's Trommler. However, with the incredible list of available software, a few omissions are understandable.
The Turn-Key documentation includes a typical set of package documents as well as a list of useful links to the many audio components that are part of the system.
The Turn-Key FAQ is still fairly short at this point in time. One important question that doesn't appear to be answered is: "how much disk space does a full Turn-Key installation require?".
Participation in the Turn-Key project is being encouraged, audio software writers may find it to be a useful way to get their wares into wider use.
System Applications
Audio Projects
GStreamer 0.5.0 released
Version 0.5 of the GStreamer streaming-media framework is out. "This release has mainly focused on code clean-up and rounding out of the features. Large chunks of GStreamer are API stable at this point."
libsndfile 1.0.3 released
Version 1.0.3 of the libsndfile audio library is out with a few minor bug fixes.swh-plugins 0.3.3 announced
Version 0.3.3 of the swh-plugins audio effects software is out. This version features a newly improved Bode shifter and an AM pitch shifter.Audiality 0.1.0 released
Version 0.1.0 of Audality has been released. "Audiality is an audio engine originally designed for playing music and sound effects in games. It is designed from the ground up with real time operation in mind, which means that it can take advantage of real time scheduling on operating systems that support it, for fast response and reliable output. That means that with a suitable operating system, you can play Audiality like a MIDI synth, with no more latency than a well designed hardware synth." The main news is the creation of an Audality web page.
Ogg Traffic
The December 8, 2002 edition of Ogg Traffic is out with Ogg Vorbis development news. Topics include: A Message from Emmett Plant, Status Updates, Very Low Bitrate Encoding, YATT (Yet Another Transcoding Thread), Ogg Vorbis in Games, and (A kind of) Hardware Ogg Vorbis player.
Electronics
gEDA development news
The latest new software from the gEDA (GPL Electronic Design Automation) project includes version 0.7 of the Icarus Verilog electronic simulation language compiler.
Networking Tools
gFTP 2.0.14 has been released
Version 2.0.14 of the gFTP FTP client is out. Changes include key bindings for edit dialogs, changed SSH behavior for bookmarks, fixes for "ext=" lines in the config file, and updated translations for French, German, Polish, and Chinese.Top Five Open Source Packages for System Administrators (O'Reilly)
Æleen Frisch covers Nagios (formerly called Netsaint) in part four of her series on open source packages for systems administration. "The second place in my top five tools list goes to Nagios, written by Ethan Galstad. Nagios is a feature-rich network monitoring package. Its displays provide current information about system or resource status across an entire network. In addition, it can also be configured to send alerts and perform other actions when problems are detected. This week, we'll look at the sort of monitoring that Nagios provides and also briefly discuss configuring the package."
Printing
LPRng-3.8.19 released
Version 3.8.19 of the LPRng print system is available and features a bug fix. Version 3.8.18 was also released recently and has a new fifo option. See the CHANGES document for more details.LinuxPrinting.org news
The latest news on LinuxPrinting.org includes a fix for a foomatic-gswrapper bug, web site improvements, and the release of version 2.9.0 of the Foomatic printer support database.
Web Site Development
Zope Members News
The most recent headlines on the Zope Members News include: ZWiki 0.13.1 released, RenderPM 0.4 released, Ordered List reaches develpment version 2.1, CMFCollectorNG 0.10 released, and Fle3 version 1.4.0beta released.Zope Newbies
Zope Newbies has the following article topics: Itamar on Zope3, Security Alerts, Top Five Open Source Packages for System Administrators, Manage Metadata with MusicBrainz, and Zope 2.6 and gzip.ZODB3 3.1.1b1 released
A new version of ZODB and ZEO are available. "We have made a beta release of ZODB 3.1.1 and ZEO 2.0.1. The primary change is a fix that allows transactions with multiple databases to run without deadlock. These release will correspond exactly to Zope 2.6.1b1, which will also be released today."
AdaptableStorage status update
A status update is available for the Zope AdaptableStorage project. "AdaptableStorage lets you store ZODB objects in your own database and in your format, *without* using special content classes. You can use a filesystem directory, a relational database, or whatever kind of database you might have as a ZODB."
Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 5 (O'Reilly)
Stas Bekman continues his series on optimizing mod_perl performance with part five. "As we have learned in the previous article, sharing memory helps us save memory with mod_perl, giving us a huge speed increase; but we pay the price with a big memory footprint. I presented a few techniques to save memory by trying to share more of it. In this article, we will see other techniques allowing you to save even more memory."
Miscellaneous
mdadm: A New Tool For Linux Software RAID Management (O'Reilly)
Derek Vadala explains the use of mdadm for managing raid disk arrays under Linux.
Desktop Applications
Audio Applications
Sweep 0.5.12 available
Version 0.5.12 of Sweep, an "audio editor and live playback tool", is available. This version features an updated Italian translation, new sample rate conversion capabilities, the capability to preview a cut wav file, preroll to curser for playing sound before the cursor, and lots more.
Desktop Environments
KDE 3.1 release delayed
KDE.News reports that the KDE 3.1 release has been delayed into January. It seems that a partially-complete security audit turned up enough stuff that the developers need a bit more time to clean things up. It is obviously the right decision; thanks are due to the KDE team for taking the best interests of its users into account.KDE-CVS-Digest
The December 6, 2002 KDE-CVS-Digest is out with the latest KDE development news. Topics include: Patience is a Virtue, New Release Manager, Bug Fixes, and Security. New features are listed for KMail, Konqueror plugins, Konsole, Kate, and KWord.FootNotes
Headlines on the GNOME desktop FootNotes site include: Gtk# 0.6 and Mono 0.17 released, Galeon 1.3.1 (unstable) Released!, GARNOME 0.19.3: ''Smack's up!'', Pan 0.13.2.91 released, Fontilus 0.1 released, LPT Desktop 1.0.32.2 for Red Hat released, and Dropline GNOME 1.3.0 for Slackware Released, and more.
Games
Pygame updates
The most recent Pygame project updates include Pyplatform 0.0.9, Jestur veryalpha, and Outerspace .5.13.WorldForge Game Updates
New game software from the WorldForge Project includes King's Feast 0.0.2 and Sear 0.4.4.
Interoperability
Wine Weekly News
Issue #147 of the Wine Weekly News is out for December 6, 2002. Topics include: News: German Wine Site, iPod + Linux + Wine, Screenshots Preview, Updated To Do List, Janitorial Projects, IWebBrowser Status, Conformance Tests Need Help, Preserving DLL Separation, Moving Wine Headers, Wine + Cygwin Update, Self-Registering DLL's, Configuring Wine, Direct3D Test Programs, and Case of Guiness Offered for Working App.
Office Applications
Early Developer Release of OpenOffice Scripting Framework
An Early Developer Release of the OpenOffice Scripting Framework is available. "We provide a NetBeans module and a JEdit plugin to support OOo script development and deployment. You have full access to the current OOo document from your script and can use any of the Java Uno API's to manipulate it."
AbiWord Weekly News
Edition #119 of the AbiWord Weekly News is out with the latest AbiWord word processor development news.
Web Browsers
mozillaZine
The latest mozillaZine topics include: Updating O'Reilly's 'Creating Applications with Mozilla', Netscape 7.01 Released with Pop-up Blocker, Mozilla Developer Day at FOSDEM 2003, Phoenix 0.5 Released, Mozilla 1.3 Alpha Just Around the Corner, XUL Version of Most Frequently Reported Bugs Page Available, and Delivering Rich Web-based Applications with Mozilla.Also, Mozilla.org looks at Phoenix 0.5, Mozilla 1.2.1, and Chimera 0.6.
Galeon 1.3.1 tarball updated
An updated tarball of Galeon 1.3.1 has been announced. "The original galeon 1.3.1 tarball accidentally didn't include the nautilus-view files, so we've uploaded an updated tarball. Sorry for the confusion."
Languages and Tools
C++
[C++ PATCH]: Covariant returns
Nathan Sidwell has contributed a patch for GCC that implements covariant return thunks. "Covariant thunks are represented much like ordinary thunks, except that they themselves can be thunked to. A this-pointer adjusting covarient thunk looks like a this-thunk to a covariant-thunk to a base function. I tidied up the naming of the thunk adjustment accessors to use fixed_offset and virtual_offset appropriately (rather than delta and vcall_offset)."
Caml
Caml Weekly News
The Caml Weekly News for December 3 to 10, 2002 is out with lots of useful Caml articles.The Caml Hump
This week, the new software on The Caml Hump includes ocaml2, ocamlgsl, and ara, "A utility for doing boolean regexp queries on the the Debian package database".
Java
JavaCC, parse trees, and the XQuery grammar (IBM developerWorks)
Howard Katz introduces JavaCC in part 1 of a 2 part series on IBM's developerWorks. "After a brief discussion of grammars, parsers, and BNF, this article introduces JavaCC, a popular parser generator tool. You'll develop sample code that uses JavaCC to build a custom parser, starting from a BNF description of the grammar."
Programming Jakarta Struts: Using Tiles, Part 4 (O'Reilly)
Chuck Cavaness concludes his series on Jakarta Struts with part 4. "The tiles shown so far add value to an application because they organize the layout of a page in a single resource, the layout JSP page. This can save development time and, more importantly, the time it takes to change the layout for an application. However, there is a problem with the approach used in the Storefront application shown earlier. In each of the non-layout tiles, there is redundant code that specifies what content to use for the header, menubar, and copyright content--the same attributes are being passed in every page. This may not always be the case, but in general, these values will be constant throughout an application. For instance, the same copyright is typically shown on every page."
Lisp
LISA 2.0.1 released
Version 2.0.1 of LISA (Lisp-based Intelligent Software Agents), a Lisp platform, is available.CL-SDL 0.1.0 released
The first public release of the new development tree of CL-DSK is available. "CL-SDL provides Common Lisp bindings for the SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) and OpenGL multimedia libraries. It is available for all the Lisp implementations supported by UFFI."
CLUnit 1.3 released
CLUnit version 1.3 is available. "This version changes test objects to structures and makes sure that the system is both compilable and loadable. CLUnit is a unit test framework for Common Lisp similar to the ones used with the eXtreme Programming methodology. It runs under ACL, GNU CLISP, CMU CL, Corman Lisp and LispWorks."
Perl
ActiveState Releases ActivePerl 5.8.0 Beta 1 (use Perl)
Use Perl has an announcement for ActivePerl 5.8.0 Beta 1. "ActiveState has ActivePerl 5.8.0 Beta 1 available for download. Choice of Windows, Solaris, Linux binaries, as either Tar/Zip or native Installer (pkgadd, RPM, DEB)."
This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)
The December 2-9, 2002 edition of This Week on Perl5-Porters is out. Topics include: Alisiasing magic variables (in English.pm), Mathematics, getservbyport, $ENV{TERM} and taint checks, More UTF8 locale bugs, ExtUtils::ParseXS, and more.Gtk+ 2.x wrapper released (use Perl)
Use Perl mentions the release of Gtk+ 2.x wrapper. "To replace the stalled Gtk/Gnome wrappers for the old 1.x libraries, used by Gnome and lots of other applications, a pan-european team has been hacking furiously."
PHP
PHP Weekly Summary
Topics on this week's PHP Weekly Summary include: Zend Fast Cache, FastCgi Sapi, Imagick 0.9.0.1, Handling fatal errors, ext/java, Reduce Codebase, More Iconv Functions, OpenSSL, and more.Generating One-Time URLs with PHP (O'Reilly)
Daniel Solin shows how to generate one-time URLs in PHP on O'Reilly's ONLamp site. "Imagine that you're selling a digital product online. Maybe you've written an article or a book and want to sell it on your site as a PDF. There are many ways one could do this, but one of the more convenient is to provide the user with a unique URL that only will work a limited number of times. This URL could, for example, be presented to the user (your client) on the last page of an orderflow, after payment has been made. We will look at code to generate a unique URL that will work a single time."
Python
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! (December 10)
Here is the Python-URL with weekly Python news and links for December 10, 2002. This week: Andrew Kuchling describes "What's new in 2.3"; Terry Reedy and others show how to think about generators Pythonically; and much more.The Daily Python-URL
This week's Daily Python-URL article topics include: The Daily Chump Bot, PyRapi version 0.2 has been released!, PyDBDesigner 0.1pre1, PyWiew 0.4, BitTorrent, and Python and Parrot.
Ruby
The Ruby Garden
New topics on the Ruby Garden include: Provide a common ancestor for GetoptLong error classes, and require default index.rb.
Tcl/Tk
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! for December 5
The Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is out for December 5, 2002 with the latest Tcl development news.Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! for December 10
The December 10, 2002 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is also available this week with even more Tcl information.
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