Development
The Double Choco Latte Project Management System
Double Choco Latte is an open-source project management system, it is one component of the GNU Enterprise (GNUe) collection of business-related software tools.
Double Choco Latte is a web-based system. The software requires PHP 4, a web server, an SQL database, and a web browser for its use. See the Requirements document for details.
DCL assists in project management by providing work orders and call center tickets. It can be used for tracking project history and other statistics. See the features page for some examples, and the screenshots page to see the software in action.
Double Choco Latte is being used for general project management, task and time management, customer call tracking, bug tracking, order fulfillment, and call logging. The list of users shows many examples of companies who are using the software.
The online documentation for DCL is somewhat out of date, Up and Running with Double Choco Latte gives a project overview, and the Developer Documentation delves into the internals.
Version 0.9.4 of Double Choco Latte
was announced this week.
"After many months, DCL 0.9.4 has been released.
This is a major release for many reasons.
" The
release notes contain a detailed list of changes as well as this
summary:
"Many bug fixes, security fixes, and enhancements, including web-based setup, SCCS integration support, moved all menus to phpLayersMenu, significant changes to UI, and much more.
"
System Applications
Audio Projects
Planet CCRMA Changes
The latest changes from the Planet CCRMA audio utility packaging project include updates to CM/CLM/CMN, Cmucl, JACK, Hydrogen, JAMin, QJackctl, Gmorgan, Alsaplayer, Xosd, Sndlib, Mammut, and more.
Database Software
MySQL 4.0.17 has been released
Version 4.0.17 of the MySQL database has been released. "This is a bugfix release for the current production version."
phpMyAdmin-2.5.5-rc2 is released! (SourceForge)
Version 2.5.5-rc2 of phpMyAdmin is out. "This is the second release candidate for 2.5.5. A few problems were discovered and fixed from 2.5.5-rc1. phpMyAdmin is a tool written in PHP intended to handle the administration of MySQL over the Web."
PostgreSQL Weekly News
The PostgreSQL Weekly News for December 15, 2003 is available. "Well, holidays are coming and going which will probably be a least a little disruptive to development the next few weeks. Case in point; the holding off of the 7.4.1 release in order to get schedules better worked out."
Embedded Systems
BusyBox 1.0.0-pre4 released
Version 1.0.0-pre4 of BusyBox, a collection of Unix-like command line utilities for embedded systems, has been announced. "This release includes major rework to sed, lots of rework on tar, a new tiny implementation of bunzip2, a new devfsd applet, support for 2.6.x kernel modules, updates to the ash shell, sha1sum and md5sum have been merged into a common applet, the dpkg applets has been cleaned up, and tons of random bugs have been fixed."
Mail Software
milter-sender 0.48 available
Milter-sender 0.48 and LibSnert 1.29 are available. "This release has several important fixes and its recommend that all sites update. Well I won't bore you with highlights as its time for me to prepare supper."
Printing
AFPL Ghostscript 8.12 release
Version 8.12 of AFPL Ghostscript has been announced. "This is mainly a bugfix release. However there are a number of feature improvements as well. Highlights include improved font rendering and color[space] handling, and unicode text support for high-level devices."
LPRng 3.8.24 available
Version 3.8.24 of the LPRng print system is available. Change information is in the source code.
Web Site Development
phpWebSite 0.9.3-2 Stable released (SourceForge)
Version 0.9.3-2 of the phpWebSite content management system has been announced. "This release is mainly a performance enhancement upgrade from previous versions. The memory requirements have been dropped below the 8MB php default and the execution time has been cut in half. Many of the interfaces have been cleaned up and made more consistent. Also a new category view has been implemented for announcements, links, and documents."
TownPortal 0.5 "Little Christmas" released
Version 0.5 of Town Portal, an open-source web-based portal system for villages and local communities, is out with lots of new features.
Miscellaneous
Divmod Quotient Release 0.8.8
Version 0.8.8 of Quotient, an open source product that combines a multi-protocol messaging server with tools for information management and retrieval, has been announced. "In this release there has been a lot of polish and bugfixing applied to existing code. In particular, the database has been simplified and streamlined, and the extraction framework has been made more robust."
Desktop Applications
Audio Applications
Cultured Perl: Fun with MP3 and Perl (IBM developerWorks)
Teodor Zlatanov writes about MP3 manipulation with Perl in part one of a series on IBM's developerWorks. "Every self-respecting computer and music fan needs to be able to manipulate MP3s -- the defacto standard for recreational digital music use. In this article, Ted looks at ways to manage and manipulate MP3s (searching, tagging, renaming, commenting, etc.) using the autotag.pl application. Ted takes you through the application, illustrating how CPAN modules enable the application."
Desktop Environments
Ettore Perazzoli is now gone (GnomeDesktop)
Footnotes eulogizes GNOME/Ximian hacker Ettore Perazzoli who died unexpectedly on December 10.GNOME Development Release 2.5.1 (GnomeDesktop)
Development Release 2.5.1 of GNOME has been announced. "This release is a snapshot of development code. Although it is buildable and usable, it is primarily intended for testing and hacking purposes."
This week's GNOME Summary
The GNOME Summary for December 13 is out; it looks at the passing of Ettore Perazzoli, the new Foundation board, the 2.5.1 development release, and many other topics.KDE-CVS-Digest
The December 12, 2003 KDE-CVS-Digest has been published, here's the summary: "Mostly bug fixes. Code folding and highlighting fixes in Kate. Message selection and deleting bugs fixed in KMail. Screenshots of Kexi, the graphical database front-end."
KDE Traffic
Issue #71 of KDE Traffic has been posted. The KDE.News summary says: "Lots of news await you in the just-released KDE Traffic. If you're interested in hearing about KDE Performance, Quanta, KOffice, KDevelop, Image Viewers and more, check it out."
Electronics
XCircuit 3.1.32 released
Version 3.1.32 of XCircuit, an electronic schematic drawing package with lots of other uses, is available. Change information is in the source code.
Financial Applications
BIE 5.7.0 (alpha) released (SourceForge)
Version 5.7.0 alpha of BIE, the Business Integration Engine, has been announced. "BIE (Business Integration Engine) is an open source integration system that makes it easy for organizations to exchange data with external trading partners regardless of their native applications. It competes in the same space as applications like Microsoft BizTalk except that it is truly cross-platform since it written in Java. BIE 5.7.0 includes multiple feature enhancements and bug fixes. An LDAP action and LDIF message formatter have been added to assist in working with LDAP data sources."
SQL-Ledger 2.2.1 released
Version 2.2.1 of SQL-Ledger, a web-based accounting package, has been released. The changes include a new cash transfer entry screen, improved translations, better multibyte encoding support, and bug fixes.
Graphics
Inkscape 0.36 released (GnomeDesktop)
FootNotes is carrying the announcement for the second release of the Inkscape vector drawing editor. There is a long list of new features; it seems the Inkscape developers have been busy.
GUI Packages
New FLTK software available
A number of new software releases are available for FLTK, the Fast, Light ToolKit. Updates include version 2.7 of the FLU library of FLTK Widgets, version 1.2rc1 of flPhoto, an image management system, version 0.1rc2 of the flCash personal finance application, and more.
Interoperability
Samba 3.0.1 released
Version 3.0.1 of Samba is out. See the release notes for the full story. "This is the latest stable release of Samba and the version that all production Samba servers should be running for all current bug-fixes."
Wine Traffic
Issue #200 of Wine Traffic is available with the latest Wine news.Wine 20031212 available
Wine version 20031212 has been announced. "This is still a developers only release. There are many bugs and unimplemented features. Most applications still do not work correctly."
Music Applications
gmorgan 0.18 released
Version 0.18 of gmorgan, an electronic organ simulator with rhythm station and auto-accompaniment, is out. This release features new documentation, new edit functions, code improvements, bug fixes, and more.
Office Suites
OpenOffice.org: KDE Integration project launched today (KDE.News)
A new OpenOffice KDE Integration Project has been announced. "Maybe you remember Cuckooo, a KPart allowing OOo to be embedded in the Konqueror window (as a viewer). In the meantime this has evolved into an OpenOffice.org Qt port and the development does not stop there. KDE Integration is now an official "Incubator" project at OpenOffice.org, which means that it has been accepted by the OpenOffice.org community and if it continues well, it will become an official "accepted" project."
OpenOffice.org Newsletter
The December, 2003 OpenOffice.org Newsletter has been published. Take a look to read about the latest deployments, software developments, and more.
Web Browsers
Mozilla.org Staff Meeting Minutes (MozillaZine)
The Minutes are available for two Mozilla.org staff meetings. For the December 1, 2003 meeting: "Issues discussed include Mozilla 1.6 Beta, the website, localisations on CD and the Mozilla Foundation."
For the
December 8, 2003 meeting:
"Issues discussed include CVS over SSH, Mozilla 1.6 Beta, Talkback, Mozilla Firebird 0.8, streamlining the release process, localisation packs, the website, upgrading bugzilla.mozilla.org and future meetings.
"
Word Processors
AbiWord 2.0.2 released (GnomeDesktop)
Version 2.0.2 of AbiWord has been announced. "This release is a bugfix release over 2.0.1 and includes fixes to footnote handling, Windows font rendering (now matching Word's text layout exactly) and table handling, amongst others."
AbiWord Weekly News
Issue #174 of the AbiWord Weekly News is available, here's the summary: "Finally, Abi-Centric releases! AbiWord 2.0.2 and Enchant 1.1.2 have been released! AbiWord 2.1.0 has been almost released. And, a new major feature hits CVS HEAD; all those details, and more news on AbiRelatives inside."
Languages and Tools
Caml
Caml Weekly News
The December 9-16, 2003 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with another roundup of Caml articles.
Java
Explorations: Generics, Erasure, and Bridging (O'Reilly)
William Grosso writes about Java Generics, Erasure, and Bridging on O'Reilly. "In my first two articles, I'm going to talk about some of the more advanced aspects of the current generics implementation. More specifically, this first installment is about erasure and bridging. Both of these are code transformations the compiler performs in order to implement the generics specification."
Perl
Gtk2-perl 1.020 released (SourceForge)
The second stable release of gtk2-perl, the Perl bindings to Gtk+ has been announced, along with some new related libraries. "The major focus of this release is documentation: now we have full API reference documentation, generated automagically from the source code. It also includes a fix for major memory leak, as well as the ability to create your own CellRenderers in Perl, and fixes a bunch of bugs. We strongly recommend all users upgrade to this version."
This Week on perl5-porters (use Perl)
The December 8-14, 2003 edition of This Week on perl5-porters is online. "In two words, this was a busy week. Various topics were discussed, from the low-level C portability stuff to the Perl anguage considerations."
This week on Perl 6 (O'Reilly)
O'Reilly's This week on Perl 6 for the week ending on December 7, 2003 is out with more Perl 6 information.
PHP
PHP Weekly Summary for December 16, 2003
The PHP Weekly Summary for December 16, 2003 is out. Topics include: New fgetcsv() behaviour, rmdir() and mkdir() are now using streams, Magic __toString() method, ext/tidy enabled by default in PHP 5, New “with” construct request, PECL vs. Sibiria.Using data structures in PHP (DevChannel)
Josh Bressers explains the use of data structures in PHP. "Some languages, such as PHP, do not provided a straightforward way of easily working with data structures. The most challenging, yet most important, part of working with data structures in PHP lies in handling variable references."
Python
Python-dev Summary
The Python-dev Summary for November 16-30, 2003 is out with a look at the traffic on the python-dev mailing list.Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!
Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for December 15, 2003 is available. Take a look for links to lots of Python articles.numarray-0.8 released
Version 0.8 of numarray, a re-implementation of Numeric array manipulation extension module for Python, is available. See the release notes for change details.
Tcl/Tk
Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!
The December 16, 2003 edition of Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is out with another weekly collection of Tcl/Tk article links.
XML
DocBook XSL Stylesheets 1.64.0 released (SourceForge)
Version 1.64.0 of DocBook XSL Stylesheets is available. "This release includes many bugfixes (including an experimental fix for correctly generating links when the dbhtml 'dir' PI is used), some performance improvements, and some new features, including a new option for controlling which sections are included in running headers or footers, better control over superscript/subscript properties, and support for the newly add "code" and "stepalternatives" markup."
The XOM Java XML API (IBM developerWorks)
David Mertz examines XOM on IBM's developerWorks. "In this installment, David looks at Elliotte Rusty Harold's XOM. Broadly speaking, this is yet another object-oriented XML API, somewhat in the style of DOM, however a number of features set XOM apart, and Harold argues that they are important design elements. Chief among these is a rigorous insistence on maintaining invariants in in-memory objects so that an XOM instance can always be serialized to correct XML. In addition, XOM aims at greater simplicity and regularity than other Java XML APIs."
Cross Compilers
The GPAL compiler
The GPAL compiler has been added to the GPUTILS collection of tools for Microchip PIC microcontrollers. "GPAL is the GNU PIC Algorithmic Language. It is a very simple Ada like language for Microchip PIC microcontrollers. The language is still being defined, so I will have to provide the details later."
Editors
Leo 4.1 rc1 released (SourceForge)
Version 4.1 rc1 of Leo, a programmer's outlining editor and browser, has been announced. Changes include a new batch mode, support for Unicode characters, new script capabilities, bug fixes, and more.
IDEs
Charming Python: Review of Python IDEs (IBM developerWorks)
David Mertz reviews Python IDEs on IBM's developerWorks. "David looks at four open source development environments for working with Python code on Unix-like operating systems. He evaluates two general-purpose editors/environments and two Python-specific ones, and compares the merits of each."
Miscellaneous
OOP over the top (Inspirational Technology)
This article on the Inspirational Technology site looks at the effects of too much Object Oriented design. "OO techniques are a tool, they are not an end goal. Starting to design a system to achieve OO purity is the fastest way to build a system that will be ten times more complex then it likely needs to be."
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