Development

GiantDisc mp3 / ogg vorbis audio jukebox

GiantDisc is an interesting audio jukebox project that is based on Linux. The basic operation of GiantDisk involves combining a dedicated, headless Linux box, a large disk drive filled with compressed audio files, and a Palm Pilot User Interface to make an audio file player that works as a hi-fi component.

GiantDisk consists of a collection of software tools which includes a set of Linux server scripts for playing and managing compressed audio files, and a Palm Pilot remote control applicaton for controlling the sound server. The GiantDisk software is licensed under the GPL. See the Concept Page for a more detailed overview.

The Palm Pilot is normally connected to the host computer via a serial port, the latest beta version adds tcp/ip capabilities which will allow for USB, IRDA, BlueTooth, W-LAN and GSM operation. Help is needed for testing these latest modes of connection.

A nice capability for the wish-list would be the ability to control GiantDisk from a GUI running on a remote Linux machine, or from a remote web browser. The tcp/ip support should make such applications fairly easy to code.

The GiantDisc Feature List includes:

• The ability to search for tracks and albums.
• The ability to hierachically browse tracks and albums.
• A playlist manager.
• Track recording capabilities.
• Support for hierachically organized genres.
• Network support.
• Support for synchronization between multiple GiantDisk servers.
• Support for streaming media.
• And more...

The GiantDisk Showcase shows a number of possible hardware setups, including home and automobile based computers.

See the ChangeLog file for a detailed project history.

Version 1.30 Beta of GiantDisk was just released.

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Ogg Traffic

The January 5, 2003 edition of Ogg Traffic is out with the latest Ogg Vorbis audio compression software news. Topics include status updates, Icecast 1 vs Icecast 2, new Software with Ogg Vorbis Support, and a DVD Player with Ogg Vorbis Support.

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Ceres, Mammut, and Vstserver updates

Kjetil S. Matheussen has announced new versions of Ceres, Mammut, and Vstserver. Ceres is used for displaying sonograms, adding sound effects, and editing in the frequency domain. Mammut is an audio FFT package, and Vstserver works with vstlib for playing Windows vst audio plugins.

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GNU libc project status

Ulrich Drepper has sent out a project status report for GNU libc development. Included is a summary of progress that was made during 2002. Apparently, the support for libc has fallen to the wayside for some of the non-X86 platform ports. Help is needed in bringing the Mips, PPC, and Arm ports up to date. (Thanks to Andrew Morton.)

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Mail::Box needs feedback (use Perl)

Use Perl mentions the release of Mail::Box, an email handling module for Perl. "Mail::Box is designed as modern alternative to MailTools, MIME::Entity, Mail::Folder, and many more CPAN modules." Contributions and feature suggestions are being accepted.

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Synchronizing Networks with NTP (O'Reilly)

Glenn Graham illustrates the use of NTP, the Network Time Protocol, which is used for synchronizing system time to reference time servers. "If your server doesn't keep accurate time, your log files are useless in the event of an incident that requires log-dependent information, including security breaches. E-mail servers and other clients depend on accurate time to relay, send, and receive data. What good is the date stamp contained in an e-mail if the server that passed that information is inaccurate?"

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Zope Members News

The most recent headlines on the Zope Members News include: Strip-o-Gram 1.4 Released!, PropertyObject & PropertyFolder 1.3 released, Zope 3 reStructuredText Document 0.1, HTMLWidgets 3.00 Released, Get Paid to Write about Zope!, NeoBoard 1.1 beta 2 has been released, and PlacelessTranslationService.

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mnoGoSearch-php-3.2.0.rc2 released

Version 3.2.0rc2 of the mnoGoSearch web site search engine PHP frontend software is available. See the ChangeLog file for change information.

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Improving mod_perl Sites' Performance: Part 5 (O'Reilly)

Stas Bekman writes about forking issues under mod_perl on O'Reilly. "It's desirable to avoid forking under mod_perl, as when you do, you are forking the entire Apache server -- lock, stock and barrel. Not only is your Perl code and Perl interpreter being duplicated, but so is mod_ssl, mod_rewrite, mod_log, mod_proxy, mod_speling (it's not a typo!) or whatever modules you have used in your server, all the core routines."

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The UNO Web service proxy component

Jan Tietjens has published a paper that describes the UNO Web service proxy component. Uno brings web services to OpenOffice. "Web services are more and more emerging. Some examples are Google and Amazon which are providing a Web service interface for their traditional services, like searching the Web or querying the online bookstore. These interfaces could now be reached by UNO and StarBasic over the UNO Web service proxy. The access with StarBasic is very convenient because of special features of the StarBasic-UNO language binding, as you can see in the given examples."

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Explore the Web Services Bus, Part 2 (IBM developerWorks)

Greg Flurry continues his series on the Web Services Bus with Part 2. "What does the Web Services Bus offer when compared to other Web services frameworks? Well, for one thing, its Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF) heritage means that it always operates on a canonical form of data, not a SOAP-specific form." You may want to start with Part 1 first.

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Koha 1.3.3 released

Version 1.3.3 of the Koha (book) library and collection management system is available. "This release features many bug fixes, improvements to MARC handling, and French, Spanish, and Polish translations (not yet complete but hey, this *is* a development release.)"

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GNUsound 0.5.1 released

Version 0.5.1 of the GNUsound sound editor has been released. "GNUsound 0.5.1 adds an amplitude treshold module, fixes a cuepoint drawing bug, fixes the behavior of the fast-forward/fast-rewind buttons, fixes a potential crash in the LADSPA dialog, and fixes a GCC 2.95 compilation problem."

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Ardour news

The latest changes to the Ardour multi-track audio recorder program include sample rate conversions for export, export GUI improvements, a reimplemented scrub mode, zoom focus options, a GUI for Sends, working port inserts, general UI improvements, bug fixes, and more.

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ALSA Patch Bay 0.4.1 released

Version 0.4.1 of ALSA Patch Bay is out with a number of bug fixes.

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SpiralSynthModular 0.2.0 released

Version 0.2.0 of SpiralSynthModular is available. "SSM is a object orientated modular softsynth / sequencer / sampler." Significant changes have been included with this release.

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GNOME Summary for January 3, 2003

Here is the latest GNOME Summary, with lots of news for the GNOME communtity.

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FootNotes

Headlines on the GNOME desktop FootNotes site include: LPT Desktop for Yellow Dog Linux 2.3, LinuxQuestions.org - Members Choice Nominations, GnuCash 1.7.7 RC2 released, Gnumeric 1.0.12 released, FOSDEM Weekly Interviews, Gnumeric 1.1.15 released, Pan 0.13.3 released, and more.

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KDE 3.1rc6: The Final Candidate?

KDEDot reports that KDE 3.1rc6 will most likely be the final KDE 3.1 release candidate. It is available for download and it incorporates all of the security fixes from the security audit that delayed the release of KDE 3.1.

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A New Document Management System (KDE.News)

KDE.News has an announcement for newdocms, which promises to be a new way to manage documents in KDE. "It is a move away from the now over 30-year-old hierarchical file system towards a meta-data-based document retrieval system. A 0.1 preview has now been released along with a description and screenshots."

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KDE-CVS-Digest for January 3, 2003

The January 3, 2003 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest is out. "This week read about some new KDE optimizations, Konstruct, Atlantik (screenshot) and Kalzium updates, as well as many bugfixes and various new features."

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Pygame updates

The latest new games entries from the Pygame project include Pyplatform 0.1.7pre, a full featured platform game engine, and Naptus, a follow the blinking lights game. Also, Pygame 1.5.5 was recently released, see the WhatsNew document for details.

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Falcon's Eye: The Making-Over of Nethack (O'Reilly)

Howard Wen looks at Falcon's Eye, a modern version of the venerable Nethack game. "Falcon's Eye aims for a much more sophisticated transformation, visually and otherwise. It overlays the ASCII characters with detailed graphics presented in an isometric 3D perspective -- accompanied with animation, sound effects, and music -- for the dungeons, player characters, creatures, and items. This particular windowing interface also adds mouse support, tooltip information for creatures and items, shortcuts for several keyboard commands, and many customization options."

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GIMP 1.3.11 Released

Development version 1.3.11 of the GIMP, the GNU Image Manipulation Program, has been released. "This release features some incompatible changes to the gimprc file format. If you installed earlier versions of the 1.3 series, you are adviced to remove your ~/.gimp-1.3 directory and do a fresh user installation."

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FLTK Software Updates

The latest round of new software for FLTK, the Fast, Light ToolKit, include: FL-Inventor 0.9.4, Fl_Contour 0.1, ESP Print Pro 4.3, a New Comment/Rating System On-Line, and SpiralSynthModular 0.2.0.

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wxWindows 2.4.0 released

Version 2.4.0 of wxWindows, a cross-platform open-source C++ GUI framework, has been released. "This is the first official stable-API release since 2.2.9 and contains many enhancements in just about every area. 2.4.0 is the first synchronized official release to include wxMac, wxX11 and wxOS/2."

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Kernel Cousin Wine

Issue #151 of Kernel Cousin Wine has been published. The topics include: Visual-MinGW Under Winelib, Separating NTDLL and Kernel32, Best Win32 API Spy Tool?, Best Win32 API Spy Tool?, Winemaker Problems (and Solutions), and Special Characters in Resource Names.

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AbiWord Weekly News

Issue #125 of the AbiWord Weekly News is out with the latest AbiWord word processor development news. "The NSIS 2 branch is in place, all thanks to that Win-devotee, Jeremy. A security bug was found in the wv library that has had a workaround put into place immediately. And, Andrew's attempt at bloodless coup against UCS-2 results in an extensive on list and in chat discussion."

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GnuCash 1.7.7 released

Version 1.7.7 of the GnuCash money management system is available. Changes include the addition of scheduled transactions, a mortgage and loan repayment druid, new small business accounting features, OFX (Open Financial eXchange) import capabilities, HBCI support, redesigned menus, documentation improvements, and more.

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Kernel Cousin GNUe

Issue #62 of Kernel Cousin GNUe is out with the latest GNU Enterprise development news. Topics include: Parsing XML with GNUe's GParser, Translating error messages in python, Christmas songs applied to GNUe Supply Chain, Basic Front End for the AppServer API, GNUe in New York and Australia, Red Hat Packages (.rpm) for GNUe, GNUe Tools and Packages, Primary keys in AppServer, Primary keys in AppServer, GNUe Reports functionality, and Running GNUe on Apple iMac.

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LyX Development News

The January 3, 2003 edition of the LyX Development News is out. Topics include: LyX 1.2.2, XForms 1.0, lyx2lyx, wrapping text around figures, Language encodings in the Qt frontend, and the LyX bug database.

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Calendar Soon to be Included in Default Mozilla Builds

MozillaZine has mentions that Calendar will be included in future Mozilla builds. "The calendar is ready to be included by default in the Mozilla builds. We are currently under going a review process to get the code built by default. Once that happens, it's our hope that you'll be able to download a Mozilla build that includes a calendar."

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Mozilla Status Update

The January 1, 2003 Mozilla Status Report is out. Several project timelines that document Mozilla development in 2002 have been included.

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Caml Weekly News

The December 31, 2002 - January 7, 2003 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out. Articles in this issue include: Coyote Gulch test in Caml, and Native labltk for Mac OS X.

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Introduction to Thin Client Framework (IBM developerWorks)

Peter C. Bahrs and Barry A. Feigenbaum introduce TCF, the Thin Client Framework on IBM's developerWorks. See part 1 and part 2 of the series. "Thin Client Framework (TCF) is a lightweight, flexible, and powerful programming framework for Java client applications. In this two-part series, you will learn about TCF from two of its originators. Follow along as Drs. Barry Feigenbaum and Peter Bahrs use detailed discussion, a working example, and live code samples to introduce you to the TCF architecture, design, and implementation."

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SBCL 0.7.11 released

Steel Bank Common Lisp version 0.7.11 has been released. "This version features improvements to the compiler for generating better code, support for the upcoming FreeBSD 5.0, a new optimization for MAKE-INSTANCE, and several bug fixes."

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This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)

The December 30, 2002 to January 5, 2003 edition of the Perl 5 Porters Digest is out. The list of topics includes: Copy constructor contract, Simple segfault, Parens in pack(), Link black magic, and more.

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The Perl Review 0.7

Volume 0, Issue 7 of The Perl Review is out. Article titles include: Jotto: The Five-Letter Word Game, Processing RSS Files with XSLT, Separating code, presentation, and configuration, and Paying Homage to Perl (PHP).

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PHP Weekly Summaries

Two new issues of the PHP Weekly Summary are available.

Topics in the January 2, 2003 edition include: PHP 4.3, mail() quirk to workaround qmail bug, register_apache_shutdown_function(), snmp module, zip extension built-in on Windows, php-mix and option to start in PHP mode.

Topics in the January 6, 2003edition include: 2002 reviewed, PHP C code extension tutorial, Changelog not changing?, New Database extension, Win32 GD GIF support, Win32 build issues, Beyond 4.3.

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Python-dev Summary

The Python-dev Summary for December 31 is now available. It looks at the first 2.3 alpha release, the FixedPoint type, new import hooks, and several other topics.

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Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links (Jan 6)

Here is the latest Python-URL with news of interest to the Python communtity.

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The Daily Python-URL

This week's Daily Python-URL article topics include: Develop Python/XML with 4Suite, Mailman 2.1, What is RSS?, SimPy simplifies complex models, Python 2.3a1 released, and more.

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The Ruby Weekly News

Topics on this week's Ruby Weekly News include: ruby-dev summary 19151-19226, Ruby in Linux Gazette, Ruby in The Perl Journal, and Drafting a "The Year in Scripting Languages".

New Ruby software includes: Ruby Document Bundle, XTemplate -- XML Template Library, Ruby/Qte 0.3, win32_popen 0.1, ratlast 0.3, RAA/2.2, xml-configfile 0.2.0, String#title_case, and Ruby-GetText-Package-0.5.0.

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The Ruby Garden

New topics on the Ruby Garden include: Hash |, a non in place update.

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This week's Tcl-URL

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for January 8 is out with the latest news from the Tcl/Tk community.

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Named Character Elements for XML (O'Reilly)

Anthony Coates and Zarella Rendon show how to deal with special characters in XML. "HTML users are used to having a lot of named character entities available. They can use " " to insert a non-breaking space, "©" to insert a copyright symbol, and "€" to insert the symbol for the new European currency, the Euro. However, most symbols are not automatically defined in XML. To make them available, you have to use a DTD that defines them or you have to define them in the internal DTD subset of your document."

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"Displaying" XLinks? (O'Reilly)

John E. Simpson covers XLink issues in his XML Q & A column on O'Reilly.

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Never Mind the Namespaces: An XSLT RSS Client (O'Reilly)

Bob DuCharme shows how to put together an RSS client on O'Reilly. "RSS is an XML-based format for summarizing and providing links to news stories. If you collect RSS feed URIs from your favorite news sites, you can easily build dynamic, customized collections of news stories. In a recent XML.com article Mark Pilgrim explained the history and formats used for RSS. He also showed a simple Python program that can read RSS files conforming to the three RSS formats still in popular use: 0.91, 1.0, and 2.0. While reading Mark's article I couldn't help but think that it would be really easy to do in XSLT."

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LazyWeb and RSS: Given Enough Eyeballs, Are Features Shallow Too? (O'Reilly)

Clay Shirky talks about the Lazy Web on O'Reilly. "A persistent criticism of open source software is that it is more about copying existing features than creating new ones. While this criticism is overblown, the literature of open source is clearer on debugging than on design. This note concerns an attempt to apply debugging techniques to feature requests and concludes by describing Ben Hammersley's attempt to create such a system, implemented as an RSS feed."

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