See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

The Quixote design goals are:

• "To allow easy development of Web applications where the accent is more on complicated programming logic than complicated templating."
• "To make the templating language as similar to Python as possible. The aim is to make as many of the skills and techniques learned from writing regular Python code applicable to the task of writing Web applications."
• "No magic. When it's not obvious what to do in a certain case, Quixote refuses to guess."

Quixote is plugged into a web server via the CGI directory, it can use CGI, FastCGI, SCGI, and mod_python.

Versions 0.4.5 and 0.4.6 of Quixote have been released recently, both are mainly bugfix releases. See the CHANGES file for information on the latest features.

Quixote is licensed under the CNRI (Corporation for National Research Initiatives) Open Source license agreement.

Education

SEUL/Edu Report #68. The April 15, 2002 edition of the SEUL/edu Linux in education report is out. Topics include software for managing grade books, an open lesson plan site known as LessonForge, LinuxFund winter grants, and several new free educational software releases.

The SEUL/Edu Report is now also available in Spanish.

Embedded Systems

Embedded Linux Newsletter. The LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Newsletter for April 11 is available, with the usual roundup of happenings in the embedded Linux community.

Optimizing Embedded Linux (Dr. Dobb's). Todd Fischer illustrates how to tune an embedded Linux application on Dr. Dobb's Embedded Systems site.

Mail Software

New Mail Filters. The Milter.org site lists a few new mail filtering utilities, j-chkmail and Smtpblock.

Web-site Development

Google API Released, Full of SOAPy Goodness (use Perl). Google has released an API to their search engine using SOAP.

mod_python 2.7.7 released. Version 2.7.7 of mod_python has been announced. "This release (as far as I could tell adequately) addresses the security issue whereby a module indirectly imported by a published module could then be accessed via the publisher." Upgrades are recommended. (Thanks to Giorgio Zoppi.)

Midgard installation notes for Debian. Installation instructions that detail the installation of Midgard on the sid version of Debian GNU/Linux have been announced. (Thanks to Henri Bergius.)

Zope 2.4.4 beta 2 and Zope 2.5.1 beta 2. Two new versions of Zope have been released, stable version 2.4.4 beta 2 and development version 2.5.1 beta 2. See the CHANGES files for version 2.4.4 beta 2 and version 2.5.1 beta 2 for all of the details.

Installing mod_perl without superuser privileges (O'Reilly). Stas Bekman shows how to install mod_perl on O'Reilly's perl.com site. "As you have seen from my previous articles, mod_perl enabled Apache consists of two main components: Perl modules and Apache itself. While installing Apache without root privileges is easy, one should know how to install Perl modules in a nonsystem-wide location. In this article, I'll demonstrate ways to complete this task."

The NemeinRCS revision control library for Midgard. The NemeinRCS revision control library has been released for download. "NemeinRCS is a revision control library for the Midgard application server. NemeinRCS can be used for adding revision control capabilities for custom administration interfaces and content management tools built using the Midgard framework." (Thanks to Henri Bergius.)

Web Services

Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration Part 1 (O'Reilly). Tyler Jewell and David Chappell introduce UDDI on O'Reilly's onJava site. "UDDI -- Universal Description, Discovery and Integration -- is a key Web services technology. In this series of excerpts from Java Web Services, you'll learn how to program UDDI services. Part one here provides a basic understanding of UDDI and how Java works with it."

Documentation

LDP Weekly News. The April 16, 2002 edition of the LDP Weekly News features new HOWTO documents on Game Servers, Russian Tea (yes, the kind you drink), and a new Linux Cookbook.

Miscellaneous

A Fast Start for openMosix. Dr. Moshe Bar recently announced the creation of openMosix, a new Open Source project. The project has attracted a team of volunteer developers from around the globe and is off to a very fast start. openMosix, is an extension of the Linux kernel.

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

WaveSurfer 1.3.1 released. Version 1.3.1 of the WaveSurfer sound visualization and manipulation tool is available. The changes include documentation updates and bug fixes.

Web Browsers

Mozilla Independent Status Reports. The MozillaZine Independent Status Reports page lists a number of new developments including updates to the Optimoz, mozdev, and Beonex projects.

Desktop Environments

The People of KDE: Lukàs Tinkl. This week's People of KDE features Lukàs Tinkl, co-maintainer of kde-i18n, among other things.

KDE Print: Developer Tutorial Now Available. KDE.News has an announcement for a tutorial on using the KDEPrint module. "The tutorial is intended for application developers who wish to make use of KDEPrint within their applications."

Hey, Mom, I did GNOME!. Now you can see who's working on GNOME by checking out the gnome-stats project.

First C++ interfaces for Bonobo (Gnotices). A new C++ interface has been announced for Bonobo. "The gtkmm team have released a first version of libbonobouimm, with a working example. So C++ coders should soon have a sensible way to work with the whole GNOME toolkit."

Games

Tetris meets the Java bean (IBM developerWorks). Scott Clee shows how to implement the Tetris game using Java beans. "IBM Software Engineer -- and gamer at heart -- Scott Clee provides a simple way to take the Tetris game model and wrap it up as a reusable Java bean component. Once the game elements have been broken down into Java objects, they can be reassembled to form the complete game model bean, enabling it to be plugged into virtually any Tetris GUI."

GUI Packages

First Public Release of GTK#. The first public release of Gtk#, the C# language binding for the Gtk+ toolkit, has been announced. "Right now, all we're sure it does is run a Hello World app and a simple Button pressing demo app. We invite you to kick the tires and send us lots of bug reports, if you are the type that likes to adopt technologies long before they do much of anything useful."

FLTK version 1.1.0 b13 released. A new version of FLTK, the Fast Light ToolKit, is available. See the CHANGES file for information on what's new.

Multimedia

Ogg video CODEC released under the LGPL. The VP3 open source video CODEC has been released under the LGPL. The CODEC is to be integrated into the Ogg Vorbis framework, volunteers are needed.

Office Applications

AbiWord Weekly News #87. Issue #87 of the AbiWord Weekly News is out. Topics include the 0.99.5 release of AbiWord, a nifty plot of active and fixed bugs, and more.

Kernel Cousin GNUe #24. Kernel Cousin GNUe issue #24 is out with all of the latest developments from the GNU Enterprise project.

Gnumeric 1.0.6 released. Version 1.0.6 of the Gnumeric spreadsheet has been announced. This version features lots of bug fixes.

Programming Languages

BASIC

It BASICally Works (use Perl). The Perl Parrot compiler now supports BASIC. "Yep, we have a full-featured BASIC interpreter for Parrot in CVS."

Caml

Caml Weekly News. The April 16, 2002 edition of the Caml Weekly News looks at iox-1.00 b3, the Cryptokit library for OCaml, a re-implemented Queue module, Caml data structures, and more.

The Caml Hump. This week's new Caml Hump entry is the Coq proof assistant, which is used for the solution of mathematical proofs.

Java

Create native, cross-platform GUI applications (IBM developerWorks). Kirk Vogen writes about portable Java GUI design on IBM's developerWorks. "The Java language has flourished in the server-side and applet spaces, but when it comes to end-user applications, it isn't usually a player. But it doesn't have to be this way. Using Linux, the GNU Compiler for Java, and the Standard Widget Toolkit, you can create fast, native GUI applications programmed in the Java language."

Jython Tips for Python Programmers O'Reilly). Noel Rappin introduces Jython on O'Reilly's ONLamp site. "For somebody already familiar with Python, the greatest attraction of using Jython is the ability to use any of the wide range of existing Java libraries and tools while being able to still use Python as the programming language."

Lisp

CMU Common Lisp version 18d released. Version 18d of CMU Common Lisp has been announced. This version adds support for the OpenBSD/x86 platform, and features many new improvements.

Perl

Parrot 0.0.5 Released Into the Wild (use Perl). Version 0.0.5 of the Perl 6 Parrot compiler has been released. New features include Perl Scalar support, array and hash types, an EMACS editing mode, support for BASIC, a regular expression compiler, and more.

PHP

PHP 4.2.0 rc4. PHP version 4.2.0 release candidate 4 has been announced. This version features experimental support for Apache 2.0.35, and lots of bug fixes. PHP 4.2.0 is scheduled for release on April 22.

PHP Weekly Summary for April 15, 2002. The April 15, 2002 PHP Weekly Summary is out. Topics include forking of the GD library, EXIF headers, a fix for ZE2 and OpenSSL, a new DOM-XML extension, PHP 4.2.0 RC 3, a fix for Apache 2, and more.

Python

Python 2.1.3 released. The Python Software Foundation has announced the release of Python 2.1.3. "'We're happy to offer this maintenance release. This is not the latest and greatest version of Python, but it introduces several important improvements for people who prefer to continue running Python 2.1,' said Guido van Rossum, creator of Python and president of the Python Software Foundation." (Thanks to Stephan R.A. Deibel.)

Python Software Foundation Announces Python 2.2.1. The Python Software Foundation announced the release of version 2.2.1 of the Python programming language and standard libraries.

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! for April 15. The Dr. Dobb's Python-URL! is available, with all the weekly Python news and links for the week of April 15.

The Daily Python-URL. New this week on the Daily Python-URL, are articles on Zeo 1.0 final, Zope lessons, the Python foundry Wiki, Pyrex, the sociology of language evolution, extending Jython, and more.

Ruby

The Ruby Garden. This week's Ruby Garden looks at constructor initialization, type checking, iterator variable reuse, argv security issues, and more. The April 15, 2002 edition of the Ruby Garden's Ruby Weekly News features Ruby/Google 0.1.0, REXML 2.1.2, and SOAP4R 1.4.3.

Scheme

The latest Scheme News. MJ Ray has sent us the latest Scheme News. Topics include a new Scheme Request for Implementation, reaffirming the IEEE language standard, several new Scheme modules, and more.

Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! for April 16. The Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! is available with all the weekly Tcl news and links for the week of April 16.

XML

What's New in XSLT 2.0 (O'Reilly). Evan Lenz explores the new features in XSLT version 2.0. "In this article, we'll take a look at some of the new features specific to XSLT 2.0, as outlined in the latest working draft. Again, this assumes that you are familiar with the basics of XSLT/XPath 1.0."

SOAP::Lite 0.55 Released (use Perl). Paul Kulchenko has released SOAP::Lite version 0.55.

Integrated Development Environments

GNUstep Weekly Editorial. The April 4, 2002 GNUstep Weekly Editorial covers AppTalk 0.1.0 for integration of StepTalk scripting into applications, and mentions the GSFTP user application.

Miscellaneous

MLton Standard ML compiler. Version 20020410 of the MLton Standard ML compiler has been released. This version adds Cygwin/Windows support, and is SML 97 compliant.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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