Development
Module configuration with gmodconfig
FootNotes has an announcement for version 0.2 of gmodconfig. The 0.2 release is further documented on the gmodconfig status page. According to the gmodconfig overview:
By using gmodconfig, a user does not have to know how to modify the modules.conf configuration file in order to effect module parameter changes.
Gmodconfig has the ability to pull XML encoded module parameter information from the module's web site via an XSA file that is created by the module author. The information is used to create a dynamically built user interface for configuring the module. Gmodconfig also keeps track of the module description and available versions. There does not appear to be a large assortment of XSA files available for modules at this point in time.
Gmodconfig can control the installation, removal, and configuration of loadable modules, simplifying configuration of devices with lots of configuration options. The gnodconfig screenshots page shows some examples involving the configuration options for a USB camera driver.
More information on gmodconfig can be found in the online Manual and FAQ, the code is available for download here.
System Applications
Audio Projects
Ogg Traffic
The March 18, 2003 edition of Ogg Traffic is available with the latest Ogg Vorbis audio compression software news. Discussion topics include: It's Ogg, not OGG!, Vorbis Decoder from Scratch, Asterisk PBX supports Speex, Speex heading for the RFC Track, WinAmp needs You!, and more.
Database Software
MySQL 3.23.56 has been released
Version 3.23.56 of the MySQL database has been released. "This is a bugfix/security enhancement release for the current production version."
Printing
PyKota 1.01 available
Version 1.0.1 of the PyKota print quota system is available. "Several functionnalities were added : account only mode (no quota enforcement), possibility to choose the recipient(s) of email messages, default values for configuration. Manual pages were added, and redistribution/modification terms of the official package (paid for) are now fully GPL compliant."
Web Site Development
Apache Mod_python 3.0.3 is now available
Version 3.0.3 of mod_python, the Python language extension to the Apache web server, is available. "This release works with Apache HTTP Server 2.0. Please note that this version will not work with older releases of Apache HTTP Server." See this announcement for more information.
CMFOODocument Version 0.2 Released (ZopeMembers)
Zope Members News reports on the release of CMFOODocument. "A new feature release of OpenOffice Documents for "icoya Content & Collaboration Management" http://www.icoya.com has landed. With CMFOODocument OpenOffice Writer files can easily be integrated inside your Plone site. The OO-Documents are converted by XSL transformation into HTML."
ZODB4 alpha 1 released
The alpha 1 release of ZODB is now available. "This release contains essentially the same software that will be in the upcoming Zope3 milestone release. This version of ZODB is very different from ZODB3. The Persistent base class is a new-style class, allowing persistent objects to use many of the features of Python 2.2 new-style classes."
Desktop Applications
Audio Applications
BEAST/BSE 0.5.0 is released
FootNotes mentions that a new version of BEAST/BSE, the BeDevilled Audio SysTem/Bedevilled Sound Engine, is available. BEAST works under GTK+/GNOME.Swami 0.9.1 released
Version 0.9.1 of Swami, a MIDI instrument patch editor, has been released. "The main focus of this release is support for the new FluidSynth 1.0.0 (was called iiwusynth)."
WaveSurfer 1.5 released
Version 1.5 of WaveSurfer, an audio editing application, has been released. The changes include support for packed 24 bit files, playback highlighting for transcription lables, support for Snack 2.2.1, bug fixes, and more.
Desktop Environments
GNOME 2.2.1 released
FootNotes has an announcement for the GNOME 2.2.1 Desktop and Developer Platform.The 2.2.x series is devoted to bugfixes, translations, and general polish of our major 2.2 stable release. We strongly recommend upgrading to 2.2.1 in particular, as it contains the Best Nautilus Release Ever. Faster and more stable than ever before, the Captains of Nautilus have done it again. Bravo!" GNOME 2.2.1 is available here.
Evolution 1.4 Preview 1 available
The first preview of Evolution for Gnome 2 is available for testing.GNOME Summary
The March 3-15, 2003 GNOME Summary is out with the latest assortment of GNOME news.KDE-CVS-Digest for March 14, 2003
The March 14, 2003 edition of the KDE-CVS-Digest is out. "This week in KDE-CVS-Digest, our big feature is a review of the status of the KDE HEAD branch. We cover everything from virtual folders in KMail to Konqueror, Kontact and more."
Web Shortcut Goodness: KDE Support for Feedster
KDE.News looks at the Feedster RSS search engine, which now works under KDE. "Fortunately, adding support for Feedster (and Google News) to KDE proved to be quite trivial. The man behind Feedster was so amazed, he put up a blog entry full of praise for KDE!"
Graphics
GNOME 2 version of Dia
FootNotes looks at version 0.91 of the Dia diagram tool. "The all free Visio like diagram tool Dia is finally availble in a GNOME 2 version. After 9 months of work on changing over to Gtk 2.0 they proudly present version 0.91 of Dia."
Interoperability
Wine Weekly News
Issue #161 of the Wine Weekly News is out. Topics include: WineX 3.0 Preview, Thread Latency, Petzold Example Programs, Named Pipe Patch, Lightwave, and Need New Winsock Maintainer.
Office Applications
AbiWord Weekly News #135
Issue #135 of the AbiWord Weekly News is out. "Various issues come up for a word-processor that wants to support numerous languages. It's a good thing that such things may one day have a Twiki page to cover them. Have you noticed that to the left? Yes, under the "Support" heading, you'll notice Twiki has gained its own page."
LyX 1.3.1 is released
Version 1.3.1 of the LyX GUI interface to the TeX typesetting program has been released. "As expected this is a maintenance release, which adds some polish to the new features of LyX 1.3.0 (especially the Qt frontend) and also fixes some significant bugs in the math editor and the lyx2lyx import script. We also threw in a few new features (new textclasses, latex import improvements) for good measure."
Web Browsers
Mozilla 1.3 released
Mozilla 1.3 is out; new features include spam filtering, rich text editing, image auto-sizing, and lots of fixes; see the release notes for details.Mozilla 1.4 Alpha Coming Soon (MozillaZine)
Version 1.4 Alpha of the Mozilla browser is coming soon. "Right now the freeze is scheduled for midnight on Wednesday 26th March with the release targetted for Friday 28th March."
Galeon 1.2.9 Released (GnomeDesktop)
Version 1.2.9 of the Galeon lightweight web browser has been announced.This is a compatibility release that adds support for Mozilla 1.3 final. There is also a small fix to the gcc abi wrapper so that realplayer and other old plugins work properly even when galeon and mozilla are compiled with gcc 3.x.The code is available for download here.
Miscellaneous
French Translation of ChatZilla 0.8.24 Available (MozillaZine)
MozillaZine has an announcement for version 0.8.24 of the ChatZilla IRC client, which now supports the French language.
Languages and Tools
Caml
Caml Weekly News
The March 11-18, 2003 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out. Topics include Ocaml-beginners ML, monads for dummies, poll - need for a good introductory OCaml book, Beta release of lablgtk2, and OCaml popularity.
Java
ONJava Newsletter (O'ReillyNet)
O'Reilly has published the ONJava Newsletter for March 13, 2003. "This week we have two interesting articles that will help you reduce the amount of code you write. (As they say, you know you're on the right track when you can remove code and add functionality.)"
Getting started with JML (IBM developerWorks)
Joe Verzulli talks about JML on IBM's developerWorks. "The Java Modeling Language (JML) is a notation for detailed design that encourages a new way of thinking about methods and classes. In this primer, Java programming consultant Joe Verzulli introduces JML and some of its most important declarative constructs."
Perl
RTF::Parser: Plea for Help (use Perl)
UsePerl mentions that help is needed for the Perl RTF::Parser module. "I'm looking for people who have used it to send me code they've written using it, on which I can start to build tests for it."
The Many Dates and Times of Perl (O'Reilly)
Dave Rolsky covers a number of date and time concepts in Perl.This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)
The March 10-16, 2003 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is out. Topics include Pseudo-hash deprecation, Posixly////, Imaginary signals, and more.This week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)
The March 9, 2003 edition of This week on Perl 6 is out. Article topics include: Object Specs, IMCC and multiple source files, Patch Roundup, Coroutines end and DFG, SableVM, Parrot 0.0.10 freeze, Signal/slot like mechanism, and more.Parrot v0.0.10 'Juice' released (use Perl)
According to Use Perl, version 0.0.10 of Parrot has been released.
PHP
PHP 4.3.2RC1 Released
PHP 4.3.2RC1 is available. "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."
Working with Forms in PHP, Part 1
O'Reilly has an article on working with forms in PHP. "PHP is handy for templating and displaying dynamic data, but you're missing its full power until you handle user data. John Coggeshall explains how PHP 4.3 handles form submissions securely and sanely."
PHP Weekly Summary
Topics on this week's PHP Weekly Summary include: 4.3.2 RC 1, php-dev name change, 4.3.2 Windows issues, error docref, language on PHP web site, and Iterating objects with Interfaces.
Python
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!
The Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for March 17, 2003 is available, with weekly news and links for the Python community.Python-dev Summary
The Python-Dev summary, covering development activity for the first half of March, is available. Topics covered include the real difference between tuples and lists, capabilities, and more.
Ruby
Ruby Weekly News
Topics on the March 17, 2003 edition of the Ruby Weekly News include: Preventing method overriding, and Dynamically creating methods.
Tcl/Tk
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!
The Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! for March 17, 2003 is available with the usual collection of useful Tcl/Tk information.
XML
Using SAX for Proper XML Output (O'Reilly)
Uche Ogbuji discusses the use of SAX on O'Reilly. "There are other tools for helping with XML generation. In this article I introduce an important one that comes with Python itself. Generating XML from Python is one of the most common XML-related tasks the average Python user will face; thus, having more than one way to complete such a common task is especially helpful."
Truth in Advertising
Kendall Grant Clark covers XML subsetting and namesetting on O'Reilly. "In this week's column I will focus on two of the bread and butter issues of the XML development community: XML subsetting and XML namespace management. While both of these issues are among the permanent topics of conversation (that is, "permathreads") on the XML-DEV mailing list, this time around there are some interesting wrinkles which make reviewing the conversations worthwhile."
Miscellaneous
MLton 20030312 released
Version 20030312 of MLton, a whole-program optimzing compiler for Standard ML that runs on X86 machines, is available. "Improvements include support for source-level profiling of both time and allocation, an updated basis library matching the 2002 specification, and new basis library modules for sockets and networking."
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