See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

Version 2.0 of GTK+, the Gimp Toolkit widget set is available. GTK+ was originally developed for The GIMP image manipulation system. It now sees wide use as the toolkit for the popular GNOME desktop.

Some of the more popular GTK+ based applications include the GIMP, the AbiWord word processor, the Dia drawing program, the Glade user interface builder, the GnuCash financial program, and the Gnumeric spreadsheet.

GTK+ consists of three libraries:

• GLib "is the low-level core library that forms the basis of GTK+ and GNOME. It provides data structure handling for C, portability wrappers, and interfaces for such runtime functionality as an event loop, threads, dynamic loading, and an object system."
• Pango "is a library for layout and rendering of text, with an emphasis on internationalization. It forms the core of text and font handling for GTK+-2.0."
• ATK is the library that "provides a set of interfaces for accessibility. By supporting the ATK interfaces, an application or toolkit can be used with such tools as screen readers, magnifiers, and alternative input devices."

GTK+ 2.0 Features

The announcement for GTK+ version 2.0 lists these new features:

• Enhanced internalization with full Unicode support.
• A text widget that supports multiple views of a buffer, styled text, and internationalization capabilities.
• A powerful tree and list display widget.
• Improved accessibility support via ATK.
• The ability to load and manipulate images via gdk-pixbuf.
• Improved programming interfaces as a result of developer feedback.
• Improved usability including better keyboard navigation.
• A new default appearance.
• Type and object abstraction for wider use.
• A preview version of the Microsoft Windows port.
• A simplified and enhanced API which is the result of developer feedback.

GNOME 2.0 Beta 2.

The second beta of the GNOME 2.0 desktop, which uses GTK+ 2.0, also has been released for testing. The developers are looking for testers to find and fix bugs.

Databases

SAPDB Version 7.3.00.21 available. Version 7.3.00.21 of the SAPDB relational database is available. See the release notes for all of the details.

Embedded Systems

The birth of the Embedded Linux Specification. LinuxDevices.com is carrying a call to all Embedded Linux companies to attend the Embedded Linux Consortium meeting on March 12 in San Francisco (during the Embedded Systems Conference). The purpose of the meeting is to start work on the Embedded Linux Specification, a standards effort which looks much like the Linux Standard Base for embedded systems.

Imaging

Graphics programming with libtiff (IBM developerWorks). Michael Still introduces libtiff, a C library that implements the TIFF graphics standard. "TIFF (Tag Image File Format) is a raster image format that was originally produced by Adobe. Raster image formats store the picture as a bitmap describing the state of pixels, as opposed to recording the length and locations of primitives such as lines and curves. Libtiff is one of the standard implementations of the TIFF specification and is in wide use today because of its speed, power, and easy source availability."

Mail Software

Python milter v0.4.0 released (Milter). A new version of Python milter, a mail filtering utility, has been announced. This version features bug fixes and simplified content scanning in the mime module.

Peer to Peer

Expanding ChatBot's Repertoire (O'Reilly). DJ Adams continues his article on Chatbot, a Perl-based Jabber bot. "Rather than write a silly function that doesn't do much more than say 'Hello World,' let's look at giving ChatBot a facility that has some use beyond this article. Despite the arrival of the Euro currency in Europe, currency conversion still has its uses, especially for those countries (like my homeland) that have not yet taken the plunge. Another use of currency conversion is it allows for discussion of prices of items essential for everyday life, such as MP3 hardware, between the U.K. and the U.S."

Printing Software

LPRng-3.8.9 has been released. Version 3.8.9 of the LPRng print spooling system is available. The changes include bug fixes and new documentation.

Science

XML Biometrics Standards Committee Forms (LinuxMedNews). LinuxMedNews reports on a new standards committee that has formed to define an XML-based standard for biometric information.

Web-site Development

New version of PHP Review. A new version of the PHP Review book review system is available and includes a couple of bug fixes.

Zope Members' News. The latest Zope Members' News includes a report on the rapid growth of FreeZope.org, an announcement for the Zope BBQ, and takes a look at NuxDocument 0.9 and ZCVSFolder 0.2.7b1.

asp2php Version 0.76.1 released. A new version of asp2php is available. This version features a newly rewritten program core. More changes are on the way.

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

Desktop Development

Audio Applications

mpg321 0.2.9 Released. Version 0.2.9 of mpg321, the free replacement for mpg123, has been released. Highlights of this version include Shoutcast support, ID3 tag support, a bug fix for gtoaster, improved network support, and more.

AlsaPlayer 0.99.56 released. Version 0.99.56 of the AlsaPlayer PCM player is available. This release features "lots of small bugfixes".

Web Browsers

Encompass 0.4.99.14 Alpha Release 2 (Gnotices). A second alpha release of the Encompass web browser for GNOME has been announced. "This version contains preliminary support for HTTP POST, HTTP Authentication, and HTTP Proxy via the http_proxy environment variable."

Mozilla 0.9.9 released. Version 0.9.9 of Mozilla has been released. This version now supports MathML by default, it also has an improved JavaScript debugger, SOAP support, TrueType font support, and the ability to disable pop-up messages, as well as many other features. A fix for the recent zlib security vulnerability is also included.

Galeon 1.2 released. Following quickly after Mozilla 0.9.9, it didn't take long for Galeon version 1.2 to be released. Check out the announcement and then hit the Galeon home page for your download.

MozillaZine. The latest MozillaZine looks at Mozilla 0.9.9, the new Mozbot 2.2 IRC bot, and more.

Desktop Environments

GNOME Summary. The GNOME Summary for March 2 is available. Covered topics include the new GNOME software map, reviews of Evolution, Galeon, and Gnumeric, and more.

NEW GNOME Installation Guide And Review For GNOME 2.0 Published. A new version of the Gnome Installation Guide has been announced, this edition features new information on GNOME 2.0.

GARNOME Preview Four: 'Perdon; estoy buscando mis pantalones.'. GARNOME 0.8.0, "the bad-ass, bleeding edge GNOME distribution for testers and tweakers everywhere," has been released. Here's a (relatively) easy opportunity to test out the upcoming GNOME 2.0 desktop and find any remaining problems.

New KDE documentation site. By way of KDE.News, we've learned of the launch of docs.kde.org, a new, comprehensive documentation site for the KDE desktop.

People of KDE: Neil Stevens. This week's People of KDE features Neil Stevens, the person in charge of "Kit, Kaboodle, Megami, and a bunch of hard-to-translate Noatun plugins".

LinuxQuestions Members Choice Awards: KDE Kleans Up. LinuxQuestions.org has picked KDE as their favorite desktop. Applications such as Konqueror and KMail also received high scores.

Games

The Chopping Block for March, 2002. The March, 2002 issue of The Chopping Block is available on the WorldForge Game site. Articles include a description of the WorldForge project, a look at the COAL map handling library, a review of the Kings Feast project, and talk on licensing issues.

Pygame: BOMBERS. This week, the Pygame site features BOMBERS 0.7, a "space shootem up" game.

Graphics

Gimp 1.3.4 released. Gimp version 1.3.4, which is "targetted for developers and curious users" and not for daily work, has been announced. See the README for details.

GUI Packages

New fltk applications. The FLTK site lists two new applications, SpiralSynthModular 0.0.8, an object oriented modular softsynth / sequencer / sampler, and FL-Inventor 0.9.1, a 3D VR applications toolkit.

Interoperability

Wine 20020310 announced. A new version of Wine has been announced. Version 20020310 is identical to the previous version, except for the change to the GNU Lesser General Public License.

Wine Weekly News. The March 8, 2002 edition of the Wine Weekly News has been published. Topics include Crossover 1.1.0, Wine licensing, an X11-licensed fork, and more.

Samba 2.2.3a released. Version 2.2.3a of Samba has been released. It includes a bug fix for a Windows Explorer bug that showed up in the 2.2.3 release. Upgrades are recommended.

Multimedia

GStreamer 'GUADEC By Foot' 0.3.3 released (Gnotices). Version 0.3.3 of the GStreamer Multimedia framework has been released. "This release contains a lot of nice fixes and updates including a new cothread system, a new autoplugger, many new plugins and more."

Office Applications

Release of GnuCash 1.6.6 (Gnotices). A new version of GnuCash has been released. Version 1.6.6 features new and updated translations, improved exchange rate calculations, bug fixes, and other features.

Two new Gnumeric releases. Gnumeric 1.0.5, a bugfix version of the stable release , has been announced.

Gnumeric 1.1.1, from the development branch, has also been announced, the claim is that this version works as well as stable version 1.0.

Kernel Cousin GNUe #19. Issue #19 of Kernel Cousin GNUe has discussions on the GNUe Application Server v2 (GEAS), using analysis patterns for module proposals, integrating Zope and GNUe, data protection, databases, and more.

AbiWord Weekly News #83. Issue #83 of the AbiWord Weekly News covers the latest developments on the AbiWord word processor.

Programming Languages

Caml

Caml Weekly News. The March 12, 2002 edition of the Caml Weekly News looks at WhizzyTeX 1.0 and an ssl library for Ocaml.

FORTRAN

g95 status. Progress continues on the g95 FORTRAN compiler project, the current goal is to finish the type resolution system. A Linux binary is available if you want to see how g95 reacts to your FORTRAN code.

HTML

Cache-Friendly Web Pages (O'Reilly). Jennifer Vesperman explains the HTML Expires and Cache-Control headers on O'Reilly's Linux Devcenter. "There are a lot of HTTP caches out there. How long are they holding your pages? How long should they hold your pages? RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1) specifies that caches must obey Expires and Cache-Control headers--but do your pages have them? How do you add them? What happens to your pages if you don't?"

Java

Merlin brings nonblocking I/O to the Java platform (IBM developerWorks). Aruna Kalagnanam and Balu G write about nonblocking I/O in Merlin. "Until JDK 1.4 (aka Merlin), the Java platform did not support nonblocking I/O calls. With an almost one-to-one ratio of threads to clients, servers written in the Java language were susceptible to enormous thread overhead, which resulted in both performance problems and lack of scalability."

Top Ten Cool New Features of Java 2SE 1.4 (O'Reilly). David Flanagan examines Java 2SE 1.4 on O'Reilly's OnJava site. For the impatient, the covered features are: Parsing XML, Transforming XML, Preferences, Logging, Secure Sockets and HTTPS, LinkedHashMap, FileChannel, Non-Blocking I/O, Regular Expressions, and Assertions.

Lisp

Free The X3J Thirteen! for February, 2002. The February, 2002 edition of Free The X3J Thirteen! is out. "This issue covers a new vendor-neutral package format for cCLan, MK:DEFSYSTEM 4 and CLAWK, the Common Lisp Cookbook project, the SPARC and Alpha ports of SBCL, a new version of CL-PDF, and the forthcoming releases of CMU CL and CLISP."

Universal Foreign Function Interface. UFFI, the Universal Foreign Function Interface is available. UFFI is a tool for interfacing Common Lisp to C-language compatible libraries.

Perl

Rindolf Specification Document v0.1.12. A new version of the Rindolf Specification Document has been published by Shlomi Fish. Rindolf is a dialect of Perl. Briefly, "Rindolf aims to be an improved and re-engineered Perl 5".

Perl 6 Porters. The March 12, 2002 Perl 6 Porters looks at an effort to redesign printf, Parrot 0.0.4, version 1 of the proposed Assembler PDD, and multi-method dispatch in Parrot.

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary. The March 11, 2002 edition of the PHP Weekly Summary looks at the NAPA XSLT processor, socket re-work, an aggregation function bug, the new build system, a new Universe CORBA extension, the path to version 4.2.0, and more.

Python

The Parade of PEPs. Guido van Rossum has posted The Parade of the PEPs, a look at outstanding Python enhancement proposals and his frank opinion on what should happen with each. It's an interesting read for those following the development of the Python language.

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!. The March 11, 2002 Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is out. Topics include seeking fame and fortune developing Python, the Disipyl Python interface to DISLIN, RPy, for interfacing to the R language, processing volume images with BBLImage, the lfm v0.8 midnight commander clone, and more.

Text Processing In Python draft available. David Mertz has announced that a draft of his upcoming book Text Processing In Python, (to be published by Addison Wesley) is available on the web. He is looking for feedback on ways to improve the book, of course.

The Daily Python-URL. This week's accumulation of articles on The Daily Python-URL include an announcement for a new Python Imaging Library, the EDDIE Tool systems administration helper, the disipyl DISLIN wrapper, the BBLimage image processing tools, and more.

Ruby

The Ruby Garden. This week's Ruby Garden looks at BioRuby.org, which features Ruby libraries for working with DNA data.

The Ruby Weekly News. The March 11, 2002 edition of the Ruby Weekly News looks at DBTalk 0.5, an interactive GUI based tool for database querying, programming, and administration, the RDoc documentation tool, Ruby/SMB, and more.

Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobbs' Tcl-URL! for March 11. The March 11, 2002 edition of Dr. Dobbs' Tcl-URL! is out. Topics include a cash register application in Tcl, Tcl in embedded systems, the Tk look and feel, garbage collection, and more.

XML

Donald Eastlake on XML Digital Signatures (IBM developerWorks). Larry Loeb interviews Donald Eastlake, editor of the XML Digital Signature (XMLDSIG) RFC. "What is 'truly secure XML?' The phrase is meaningless without a definition of what security properties you are trying to achieve and what your threat model is. XMLDISG provides a building block. It is a flexible mechanism for the cryptographic binding of data to a key."

Integrated Development Environments

GNUstep Weekly Editorial. The GNUstep Weekly Editorial for March 8, 2002 is available. Topics include the CDPlayer application, Objective-C++ support, a gnustep-make roadmap, and more.

Software Testing

oprofile version 0.1 released. Version 0.1 of the oprofile code profiler is available. The release notes lists reporting of more symbols and a better output report, in addition to lots of bug fixes.

Miscellaneous

Valgrind memory debugger. Valgrind is a memory debugging tool for C/C++ on the x86 platform, it has been used by the KDE development community for debugging libraries and applications. Valgrind has been released under the GPL. (Thanks to Julian Seward.)

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

Next: Commerce