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Development

The GNOME Foundation launches an accessibility outreach program

By Forrest Cook
March 4, 2008

The GNOME Foundation has announced a new outreach program for the GNOME accessibility project:

The GNOME Foundation is running an accessibility outreach program, offering US$50,000 to be split among individuals. This program will promote software accessibility awareness among the GNOME and broader Free Software communities, as well as harden and improve the overall quality of the GNOME accessibility offering. The program is sponsored by GNOME Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, Google's Open Source Program Office, Canonical, and Novell.

[GNOME Accessibility]

Applications were opened for review starting on March 1, the project closes on December 31. Acceptance of long-term tasks closes on October 1, short-term task acceptance closes on December 15. The goal of the program is to work on improving shortcomings in the existing GNOME accessibility system. There is an aim to increase awareness of accessibility-related issues, encourage developers to work on accessibility issues and generally improve accessibility in free software.

From the project announcement: "There will be two tracks to the program: In the first track accepted individuals will work towards accomplishing one of the major projects nominated for the program, earning US$6,000 and can take up to six months to complete the task. The second track will reward contributors US$1,000 for fixing five bugs out of a pool of accessibility bugs nominated by the program judges."

The program rules explain the contract that the developers will work under, the process of claiming tasks, the judging process and more. A list of tasks has been announced: "Are you a developer who wants to become more familiar with accessibility? Are you an artist that can draw? Maybe you might also be interested in becoming a module maintainer some day. A great way to get started is by fixing bugs, and we're offering you a way to get paid to do it. :-)"

The list of long-term tasks includes:

  • Writing and updating accessibility documentation.
  • Improving accessibility support in the Evince document viewer.
  • Adding and improving GNOME magnification support.
  • Building an accessibility testing framework.
  • Adding new participant-defined accessibility projects.

Developers who need some income and are willing to improve availability of GNOME to all should consider taking on a task.

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System Applications

Database Software

SQuirreL SQL Client: Version 2.6.5 released (SourceForge)

Version 2.6.5 of SQuirreL SQL Client has been announced. "SQuirreL SQL Client is a graphical SQL client written in Java that will allow you to view the structure of a JDBC compliant database, browse the data in tables, issue SQL commands etc. This is a bug-fix release".

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Postgres Weekly News

The March 2, 2008 edition of the Postgres Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.

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Web Site Development

Samizdat 0.6.1 released

Version 0.6.1 of Samizdat is out with new security features. "Samizdat is a generic RDF-based engine for building collaboration and open publishing web sites. Samizdat provides users with means to cooperate and coordinate on all kinds of activities, including media activism, resource sharing, education and research, advocacy, and so on. Samizdat intends to promote values of freedom, openness, equality, and cooperation."

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Miscellaneous

SBLIM: new release: JSR48 CIM Client 2.0.4 (SourceForge)

The JSR48 CIM Client 2.0.4 component of SBLIM has been announced. "SBLIM (pronounced "sublime"), the Standards Based Linux Instrumentation for Manageability is an IBM-initiated Open Source project, intended to enhance the manageability of GNU/Linux systems. It does so by enabling WBEM, Web Based Enterprise Management. Today the SBLIM project has released the initial public version of the JSR48 CIM Client, a Java Class Library based on the Java Specification Request 48 which can be used for the development of applications which need to communicate to a CIM server via the CIM Operations over HTTP protocol."

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Desktop Applications

Audio Applications

MIDI Happenings in Ardour

There is a new report on MIDI progress with the Ardour multi-track audio recorder. "Dave “MIDI” Robillard writes: Hi all. Thought I’d make a little post on MIDI stuff so things appear alive to you weirdos who aren’t on IRC 24 hours a day. Just some random not-very-prepared screenshots. An older shot showing multi-line controllers, and the editor controllers: Editor controls. On MIDI controller tracks (CC) the bar controllers can be used to record/touch, or twiddled in realtime to control MIDI apps/gear. MIDI import was introduced yesterday (Importing MIDI is done with the same dialog as audio, though it doesn’t look appropriate yet..). Here’s some Mozart imported into Ardour from a (single, multi-track) Standard MIDI File: Mozart Import."

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pyjackctl 1.0 released

Version 1.0 of pyjackctl has been announced. "This project was created to take advantage of Nedko Arnaudov's JACK Audio Connection Kit (improvements) patches, especially the dbus proof of concept patch. It offers basic functionalities to control a JACK daemon over a dbus interface (start/stop, configure, etc.), it also includes a jack log viewer, a wmdock applet and a script to display jack's state on a G15 keyboard's LCD. Those curious of how it looks will find a set of screenshots on the homepage. You are welcome to test and comment."

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Vamp plugin SDK 1.2 now available

Version 1.2 of Vamp plugin SDK has been announced. "Vamp is a plugin API for audio analysis and feature extraction plugins written in C or C++. Its SDK features an easy-to-use set of C++ classes for plugin and host developers, a reference host implementation, example plugins, and documentation. It is supported across Linux, OS/X and Windows. Version 1.2 contains a further addition to the host extension classes introduced in 1.1".

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Desktop Environments

GARNOME 2.22.0 release candidate (2.21.92) announced

Release candidate 2.21.92 of GARNOME 2.22.0, the bleeding edge GNOME distribution, is out. "This is the last unstable GNOME release before 2.22.0. It's been a pretty fun ride since September. New features. Bug fixes. Translations. Documentation. Lots of bug triaging too. And we're getting ready to start again for 2.23!"

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GNOME 2.22.0 release candidate (2.21.92) released

Release candidate 2.21.92 of the GNOME desktop is available. "This is the last unstable release before 2.22.0. It's been a pretty fun ride since September. New features. Bug fixes. Translations. Documentation. Lots of bug triaging too. And we're getting ready to start again for 2.23! But before, we need to make sure 2.22.0 will be rock-solid. There's still a few days before the hard code freeze, so it's not too late to fix this last bug you're ashamed of ;-)"

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GNOME Software Announcements

The following new GNOME software has been announced this week: You can find more new GNOME software releases at gnomefiles.org.

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KDE Software Announcements

The following new KDE software has been announced this week: You can find more new KDE software releases at kde-apps.org.

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Xorg Software Announcements

The following new Xorg software has been announced this week:

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Financial Applications

SQL-Ledger 2.8.13 released

Version 2.8.13 of SQL-Ledger, a web-based accounting system, has been announced. Changes include: "added subject, message and inline/attachment option to batch email, removed extra line when "Ship all" was clicked, added missing customer number to generate sales order list, fixed foreign exchange gain/loss calculation when exchange rate is 1, added company name to title line for account detail report, updated German and Swiss German translations."

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Games

Ember progress report (WorldForge)

The WorldForge game project has published a new Ember progress report. "Since the release of 0.5.1 I’ve spent some time fixing a large number of bugs, many of which were discovered through the public release of 0.5.1, and reported on the Launchpad. So far I’m very pleased with the Launchpad, since it’s actually being used for bug reporting. However, I’d like to highlight some of the new features in Ember currently being developed. The main improvement is the inclusion of a new system for rendering foliage and trees. It’s called the Paged Geometry engine and is a plugin component to Ogre."

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Announcing the public release of Te Tuhi Video Game System

The first release of Te Tuhi Video Game System is available. "Te Tuhi is not a game in itself; rather it creates games based on arbitrary images that it is given. To use it, you draw a picture of the game you want to play, and it will give you the game that you really drew. The software was originally written for an exhibit at Te Tuhi Centre for the Arts in Manukau City, New Zealand, from which it borrowed its name. That show ended on 10 February 2008, at which point the software was released under the GPL. It is written primarily in Python and C."

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GUI Packages

FLTK 1.1.8rc1 released

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Instant Messaging

AJAX Chat: Version 0.7.4 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.7.4 of AJAX Chat has been announced. "AJAX Chat is a fully customizable web chat implemented in JavaScript, PHP and MySQL which integrates nicely with common forum systems like phpBB, MyBB, PunBB, SMF and vBulletin. A Flash and Ruby based socket connection can be used to boost performance. AJAX Chat now features an easy to use installation script to create the required database tables. Additionally some minor bugs have been fixed and some translations have been updated (see changelog for this release)."

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Mail Clients

Claws Mail 3.3.1 announced

Version 3.3.1 of Claws Mail has been announced. Changes include bug fixes and: "Forbid attaching anything containing "../" or ".ssh/" in mailto: URIs. Add a hidden preference, 'use_networkmanager', to disable NetworkManager handling Updated translations: French, Hebrew"

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Multimedia

MediaInfo: 0.7.6.0 released (SourceForge)

Version 0.7.6.0 of MediaInfo has been announced. "MediaInfo supplies technical and tag information about video or audio files (MKV/AVI/MOV/MPEG1, 2, 4/M4A/M4V/MP3/AAC/RM/...) There are several versions: Graphical interface, Command line, or DLL for third-party software developers (like emule). GUI is multi-language. In this release: RMP3 and Id3v2.2 support, better detection of Lame encoder (MP3), and few bug fixes."

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Music Applications

Amuc version 1.6 announced

Version 1.6 of the Amsterdam Music Composer has been announced. "This version is aiming more at "real composers", who are not supposed t[o] be computer geeks also. So more menu's and less need to use the command line. Also a Debian package is available, so you don't need a development environment in order to install Amuc."

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Office Suites

OpenOffice.org Newsletter

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PalOOCa: Version 0.8.0 Release (SourceForge)

Version 0.8.0 of PalOOCa has been announced. "PalOOCa is a Java based OpenOffice OLAP Add-On intended to be used with OpenOffice Calc. It is supposed to be the equivalent to the Palo Add-in for MS Excel. It took a while longer before I was able to test this release but finally it is done. Version 0.8.0 includes a first version of the promised modeller aswell as the ability to localize most of the dialogs. I also localized it into German to give an example how it is done."

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Web Browsers

Mozilla Links Newsletter

The February 7, 2008 edition of the Mozilla Links Newsletter is online, take a look for the latest news about the Mozilla browser and related projects.

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Languages and Tools

C

GCC 4.3.0-rc2 available

Version 4.3.0-rc2 of GCC has been announced. "Please test the tarballs there and report any problems to Bugzilla. CC me on the bugs if you believe they are regressions from previous releases severe enough that they should block the 4.3.0 release."

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GCC 4.3.0 Status Report

The March 3, 2008 edition of the GCC 4.3.0 Status Report has been published. "GCC 4.3.0rc2 is out and we are not expecting further delay of the 4.3.0 release. The trunk is in stage1 since two weeks."

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Caml

Caml Weekly News

The March 4, 2008 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new articles about the Caml language.

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Java

Retrotranslator: 1.2.6 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.2.6 of Retrotranslator is available with some new capabilities. "Retrotranslator is a tool that makes Java applications compatible with Java 1.4, Java 1.3 and other environments. It supports all Java 5.0 language features and a significant part of the Java 5.0 API on both J2SE 1.4 and J2SE 1.3. In other Java environments only the Java 5.0 features that don't depend on the new API are supported."

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Perl

This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)

The February 17-23, 2008 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is out with the latest Perl 5 news.

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Python

Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links

The March 3, 2008 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.

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Tcl/Tk

Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links

The February 27, 2008 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

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XML

xmote: 1.0.0 released (SourceForge)

Version 1.0.0 of xmote has been announced. "xmote is a standard for exchanging data in a compact standardized XML format. In addition to defining the standard, xmote aims to provide a fully compliant and easy to use reference implementation. Version 1.0.0 of the xmote standard and Java API are now available."

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Version Control

Elijah Newren on what's happening in the VCS world

GNOME hacker Elijah Newren has put up a survey of recent developments in version control systems. "I have often found it somewhat strange that mercurial doesn’t have more active vocal proponents. Usually one hears from the git or bzr proponents, but not so much from mercurial. Yet it has always had many of the advantages of both (and, in some ways seems to have the most svn-like UI, and would seem a more natural transition for svn converts). I guess it’s a case where having most of the advantages or capabilities of other systems (even multiple other systems) yet not clearly standing out in one particular area will rob you of the active advocates that you could otherwise have."

On a related note, it appears that Emacs will be moving to Bzr, not for a specific technical reason, but because Bzr is becoming a GNU project.

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