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See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects


News and Editorials

Python documentation seems to be a hot topic this week. Cameron Laird has taken a look at Python documentation in a feature article on O'Reilly's onlamp.com site: "What's important and best about Python is not its use of white space, or capacity for metaprogramming, or any other single feature in isolation. Python's use is exploding because it fits well. It's a tool engineered with good balance, the right combination of rigor and flexibility to match our human needs. Yet one of the best things about Python is its documentation -- especially the kinds of documentation reference books and tutorials rarely explain."

[Python] The python.org site's Python Documentation page contains a whole slew of interesting document categories such as Python Introductory Material for beginners, Python HOWTO Documents for getting started on a specific topic, Language Comparisons for comparing Python to other languages that you may know, and the important Python Global Module Index for all of the details about the hundreds of Python modules, the real meat of the documentation. The site also offers up the entire Python 2.1 documentation for downloading.

Meanwhile, a new Python 2.0 quick reference by Simon Brunning and Richard Gruit has been announced. A Python 2.1 version is also coming along soon from the same folks.

Lastly, for those of you who speak Portuguese, a Brazilian Portuguese translation of the Python Tutorial release 2.1 has been announced this week.

Happy reading!

Clusters

Stacking briQ's. LinuxPPC.org has received a stack of briQ's - small PowerPC systems the size of a CD-ROM drive. This report talks about installing and running Linux on these boxes. (Thanks to Jason Haas)

Databases

Building a Database-Driven Web Site Using PHP and MySQL (MySQL.com). MySQL.com is running an in depth tutorial that explains how to set up a database driven web site using PHP and MySQL. "By the end of this series, you can expect to have a grasp of what's involved in setting up and building a database-driven Web site."

Documentation

LDP Weekly News. The latest LDP Weekly News has been published. This week saw updates to the Linux FAQ and the Transparent Proxy with a Squid mini-HOWTO. Also included is a new overview of the X Window System architecture.

Education

SEUL/edu report for May 14, 2001. The May 14, 2001 edition of the SEUL/Edu report is out. Topics include the Linux For Schools Project in the UK and Linux-SIS in Thailand, as well as a few new educational software releases.

Embedded Systems

Embedded Linux Newsletter for May 17, 2001. The latest edition of the Embedded Linux Newsletter has been published. Topics include a feature article on switching from Windows to Linux, news on Loki and Nokia bringing Linux games to the Nokia Media Terminal, and a report on Motorola's upgrades to its Linux for telecom applications.

Three reasons why Linux will trounce the embedded market (IBM developerWorks). Linux is likely to win the embedded market wars according to this IBM developerWorks analysis. "'A side benefit to Linux is that embedded developers can use the device drivers, applications, and libraries that the open source development community keeps up to date', said Larry Macfarlane, director of Application Environments at Wind River. 'It's not Linux our customers want,' said Macfarlane. 'They like open source software because they like to have the community maintain the device drivers.'"

Office Applications

LyX Development News for 20010523. The latest issue of the LyX Development News is now available. The LyX project has also released another stable version of LyX, version 1.1.6, which features lots of bug fixes.

Science

Freemed version 0.2.1.2 released. The Freemed Foundation has released a new test version of Freemed, an open-source EMR and practice management package for the medical community.

DURITO: search the web and CDROMs. DURITO is a new Perl based XML and RDF semantic web search tool that aims to be used in the humanities and social sciences areas.

Security

Encrypting with Stunnel (IBM developerWorks). John Viega discusses the use of stunnel for encrypting network communications in an IBM developerWorks article. "Most network-aware programs should use cryptography to protect data from prying eyes but many do not, either because they are legacy applications or because Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) can be difficult to add into applications. Stunnel is a program that allows both programmers and system administrators to easily add encryption to arbitrary TCP sessions. You can SSL-enable clients and servers with ease -- and you can do so without interfering with program source."

Web-site Development

Apache 1.3.20 Released. The Apache Software Foundation and The Apache Server Project have released version 1.3.20 of the Apache HTTP server. This release contains primarily bug fixes and security updates.

Zope Weekly News for May 18, 2001. The Zope Weekly News for May 18th is available. "Tired of the Web? Talk to zope in many ways. Who has the biggest zope? the longest? Zope 2.4 alpha coming soon, and more Zope.org information in this week's Zope Weekly News."

MWS for 18th of May, 2001. The Midgard Weekly Summary for May 18th, 2001 is available. Topics include: Midgard 2.0: the reason and the means to get there, Linksystem Muenchen and the midHoo project, Yet Another Midgard Packager and more.

mnoGoSearch version 3.1.13 available. A new version of the mnoGoSearch web search engine is available. This version features a new install script, HTTPS support and lots of bug fixes.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook


May 24, 2001


Application Links
GIMP
Mozilla
Galeon
High Availability
ht://Dig
mnoGoSearch
MagicPoint
Wine
Worldforge
Zope

Open Source Code Collections
Berlios
Freshmeat
OpenSourceDirectory
Savannah
Le Serveur Libre
SourceForge
Sweetcode

   

 

Programming Languages


Assembly Language

C

25 days to GCC 3.0. A posting from Mark Mitchell to the GCC Project mailing list states that GCC 3.0 should be out on or about June 15th. (Thanks to Nathaniel Graham)

Caml

Caml Weekly News for May 16 through 22, 2001. The May 16 through 22, 2001 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out. News includes a new release for Camlp4, a new draft of the CDK documentation tool, and snapshots of the lablgtk with Glade support.

Java

Faster apps on a better machine (IBM developerWorks). Running faster Java requires faster boxes, and this article from IBM's developerWorks looks at how to profile, monitor and performance tune those boxes. "If your application is not I/O- or network-bound, the simplest way to improve performance is to increase memory and processor speed. If your application is network bound, check your network topology and network adapter card settings, since they can affect overall performance." Bigger sledge hammers drive bigger nails.

Lisp

LISA 0.9 Beta released. The first official beta of LISA, version 0.9 Beta, has been released. This version includes improved documentation and a new RETRACT-INSTANCE function.

Perl

Perl 5 Porters for May 20, 2001. The May 20, 2001 edition of the Perl 5 Porters Digest is out. This week's topics include internationalization, the death of pseudo hashes, magic, a legal FAQ, and more.

Perl 6 Porters returns. After a bit of a hiatus, the Perl 6 Porters digest has returned with the May 21, 2001 edition. Topics include Perl 6 internals, perl 5 and Perl 6 differences, Sandboxing, Undecorated References, Lexing and Pushdown Expressions, and more.

New site: learn.perl.org. A new web site, learn.perl.org has shown up with the purpose of teaching Perl to beginners. The site currently manages a few mailing lists including one for daily Perl tips, and the operators are looking for article contributions.

Perl and :CueCat Help You Roll Your Own Data Capture (Dr. Dobb's). Dr. Dobb's is running an article on how to use the freely available :CueCat bar code scanner and Perl to read ISBN bar codes off of books, pull information on the book from the net, and store the results in a MySQL database.

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for May 21, 2001. The May 21, 2001 edition of the PHP Weekly Summary is out. Topics include manual language translations, PHP 4.0.6 RC1, Associative and Indexed arrays, a disktotalspace function, and more

Advanced PHP Variables and Functions (ONLamp.com). O'Reilly's ONLamp.com is running an article by John Coggeshall on Advanced PHP Variables and Functions.

Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! (May 21, 2001). Dr. Dobb's the week on Python summary is available. Topics this week include comparisons of Python to Lisp, compatibility of Zope with Python 2.1 and a discussion of an upcoming Python 2.1 quick reference.

Charming Python: A review of Python IDEs (IBM developerWorks). David Mertz continues his IBM developerWorks series on Python with an article on Python Integrated Development Environments. "My overall impression of Python IDEs leads me to a somewhat surprising conclusion. Perhaps some general principle underlies this, or perhaps it is merely chance. In general, I find the free tools quite a bit better than the commercial ones that cost money."

Python:The one-size-fits-all programming language (IT World.com). Nicolas Petreley looks at Python in an IT World.com article. "I'm a big fan of Python -- the open source programming language. In case you're wondering, Python is indeed named after the BBC comedy group Monty Python. The language was created around 1990 by Guido van Rossum, a fan of Monty Python. Since then it has matured at a phenomenal rate, thanks to its open source nature."

Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! (May 21, 2001). Dr. Dobb's has posted their weekly Tcl-URL! summarizing the weekly news for the Tcl world. News this week includes a discussion on creating a database in pure Tcl, a Tcl benchmark, and the release of the Tcl-enabled AOLServer 3.4 web server.

XML

Perl XML Quickstart: The Standard XML Interfaces (O'Reilly). O'Reilly's XML.com site features a second article by Kip Hampton on using Perl to produce XML. "This month we look at the Perl implementations of the standard XML APIs: The Document Object Model, The XPath language, and the Simple API for XML."

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

 
Language Links
Caml
Caml Hump
Tiny COBOL
Erlang
g95 Fortran
Gnu Compiler Collection (GCC)
Gnu Compiler for the Java Language (GCJ)
Guile
Haskell
IBM Java Zone
Jython
Free the X3J Thirteen (Lisp)
Use Perl
O'Reilly's perl.com
Dr. Dobbs' Perl
PHP
PHP Weekly Summary
Daily Python-URL
Python.org
Python.faqts
Python Eggs
Ruby
Ruby Garden
MIT Scheme
Schemers
Squeak
Smalltalk
Why Smalltalk
Tcl Developer Xchange
Tcl-tk.net
O'Reilly's XML.com
Regular Expressions
 

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