See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

Python 2.0 release candidate 1. The first release candidate for Python 2.0 has been announced. This will be the first release since the development group moved to BeOpen, and the first under the BeOpen license. Despite being a "dot-zero" release, Python 2.0 does not bring major changes to the language. Instead, the changes are mostly incremental. They include:

• Python users will finally be able to code things like:

  	x += 1
  

  The language has avoided this sort of "augmented assignment" until now. Note that the autoincrement and decrement operators (i.e. x++) are still not supported, and probably never will be.

• A new notation for generating lists from other lists - they call it "list comprehensions." For example:

         [2*x for x in list]
         

  will double each entry in a list full of numbers.

• Some new import syntax which allows renaming of imported modules.

• A new print statement which can print to streams other than the standard output.

• A new garbage collector which can catch cycles which elude the standard collector, which is based on reference counts.

• A fancy new XML module.

This is, with luck, the only 2.0 release candidate. For those who are interested in helping, now is the time to try out this release and report on anything that it breaks for you. In the absence of trouble, the real 2.0 release will be out shortly.

Browsers

Opera for Linux Beta 1. The Opera for Linux beta version is finally out. Opera is based on Qt but a statically linked version is available so you don't necessarily need Qt to run it. A strong feature set is presented for this new Linux browser entry including XML, CSS and PNG support, plus Netscape and IE bookmark import features.

There are some rather unpleasant bugs, but they are mentioned on the Web site - use with caution.

MozillaTranslator.org opens. Mozilla Translator is both a program and a website. The program helps to automate the process of translating Mozilla to new languages. The web site aims to be the central repository for Mozilla translation software and should help to bring people working on translations together.

Databases

PostgreSQL Developers Join Great Bridge. Three PosgreSQL developers, Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane and Jan Wieck, have been hired by Great Bridge LLC to fill senior level positions. " 'Bruce, Jan and Tom provide Great Bridge with an unparalleled level of technical expertise in open source development. By joining Great Bridge, they can turn their part-time passion into full-time careers,' said Great Bridge President and CEO Robert Gilbert. 'It is also a strong endorsement of Great Bridge's efforts to build a strong support system for businesses that use open source software. We share the belief that open source is the best, most efficient model for producing powerful software, and our business targets the single most significant barrier to its being adopted on an even larger scale -- the perceived lack of corporate support services.'"

Education

SEUL/edu Linux in Education Report. After a week off, the SEUL/edu Linux in Education Report is back. It presents a wishlist for simple math programs, and covers a number of other available educational resources.

Electronics

gEDA snapshot available. A new snapshot of the GPL Electronic Design Automation (gEDA) package is available for download. The gEDA project is a collection of programs for simulating electronic circuits and drawing schematics among other things.

GNU Waveform Viewer: gwave. A new version of gwave, the GNU Waveform Viewer has been released on October 9, 2000. "Gwave can read binary or ascii files written by HSpice from transient, AC, or Sweep analyses, "raw" files written by Spice2, Spice3, or ngspice, and transient analysis files from the CAzM simulator. "

Games

Fanwor mimics Atari Legend of Zelda (Identicalsoftware). A new version of Thomas Huth's action-adventure game, Fanwor version 1.11, has been released. Fanwor has been released under the GPL license.

Embedded Systems

Microwindows v0.89 pre2 released. The Microwindows Project has released microwindows version 0.89 pre2. A number of new features have been added including handwriting recognition, and a new window manager. "Microwindows is an Open Source project aimed at bringing the feature of modern graphical windowing environments to smaller devices and platforms. Microwindows allows applications to be built and tested on the Linux desktop, as well as cross-compiled for the target device."

Lineo releases BusyBox 0.47. Lineo has announced the release of BusyBox 0.47. BusyBox is a set of tiny command line utilities for embedded (and otherwise space-constrained) systems; it was originally written by Bruce Perens.

Network Management

BIND 9 released. Version 9 of the BIND DNS nameserver has been released. BIND 9 is a complete rewrite of the code, and features improved security, IPv6 support, and more.

This week's OpenNMS update. Here is the OpenNMS update for October 10, covering the latest from the Open Network Management Software project. The OpenNMS folks seem to be busy with trade shows at the moment; they'll have a booth at ALS for those who would like to drop by.

Office Applications

KOrganizer 2.0. KOrganizer version 2.0 will be included in the upcoming, if somewhat delayed, KDE 2.0 release. "KOrganizer is the KDE calendar and scheduling application. It provides management of events and tasks, alarm notification, web export, network transparent handling of data, and more." KOrganizer looks to be a very useful desktop application and is definitely worth checking out.

Gimp 1.1.27 bug fix release available. Gimp 1.1.27 has been released. This is a bug fix release that fixes some Perl problems from the previous release. Gimp is a full-featured image manipulation program with capabilities similar to Adobe Photoshop.

On the Desktop

KDE2 Release Delayed One Week. KDE Dot News reports that the release of KDE2 has been delayed for a week, as a result of it being not quite stable yet. A new release candidate is being prepared, and the new release date is October 23.

The People Behind KDE: Waldo Bastian. The "People behind KDE" series continues with this interview with Waldo Bastian. " I try to ensure that the fundaments of KDE are technically sane, reliable and well-performing. I also edited the last incarnation of KDE's style guide and promote this to others as so ensure that the whole of KDE has a consistent look and feel."

Trolltech releases Qt 2.2.1. Trolltech has released version 2.2.1 of Qt, the windowing toolkit used by KDE. This version is mainly a maintenance/bug fix release which solves several compatibility problems.

KDE wins Linux Community Award 2000. According to KDE Dot News: "Matthias Elter announced today that KDE has won the Linux Community Award 2000 at LWE in Frankfurt/Germany!"

GNOME Foundation Elections. The election for the GNOME Foundation board of directors will happen during the first week of November. They say that "anybody who has contributed in any way to GNOME" is eligible to vote; it is, however, necessary to register first. See this item on Gnotices for more information on how the election will work.

Science

Genomes at Home? (NewsBytes.com). In the footsteps of the wildly successful Seti@Home project comes Fold@Home, a project to "unravel the mystery of protein folding, or how proteins self-assemble." Join in and let your computer chew on some data in it's spare time.

Web-site Development

Apache 2.0 alpha 7 released. The seventh alpha release of Apache 2.0 has been announced. This release contains a number of bug fixes, and a new "input filtering" capability as well.

Midgard Weekly Summary. Here is the Midgard Weekly Summary for October 11. The first release of the Midgard 2.0 requirements document and a number of other Midgard development topics are covered.

Upcoming Zope Book. Michel Pelletier and Amos Latteier are in the process of writing a new book on Zope. Parts of the book are available online, and the authors are seeking comments on the material. Beware that this is an Alpha release of the book and it may contain errors.

Zope Weekly News. The somewhat misnamed Zope Weekly News for October 11 is out. It covers a number of topics in Zope development, including session tracking and write locking in Zope, web security, using Zope with Python 2.0, ZPatterns examples, and more.

PyPortal web portal creation software. PyPortal is a Python library that is useful for the creation and maintenance of web portal sites. The announcement claims that you can create a web site in under 5 minutes. PyPortal has been released under the GPL license.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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

C/C++

GCC steering committee position on use of snapshots. The GCC Steering Committee has issued a statement on the use of snapshots in distributions. This statement is clearly in response to Red Hat's use of gcc-2.96 in its Red Hat 7 release, as covered in last week's LWN Weekly Edition. "We would like to point out that GCC 2.96 is not a formal GCC release nor will there ever be such a release. Rather, GCC 2.96 has been the code- name for our development branch that will eventually become GCC 3.0. Current snapshots of GCC, and any version labeled 2.96, produce object files that are not compatible with those produced by either GCC 2.95.2 or the forthcoming GCC 3.0." (Thanks to Toon Moone).

Java

Do not reassign the object reference of a locked object (IBM Developer Works). Peter Haggar has written an article for IBM's developer works that discusses the Java synchronized keyword and its application for the locking of objects.

Perl

University of Perl reports (Use Perl). Use Perl has run a series of articles by Nathan Torkington that document what has been happening at the recent University of Perl class:

• day 1
• day 2
• day 3
• day 4
• day 5

Python

This week's Python-URL. Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for October 9 is out, containing, as usual, the latest from the Python development world.

PyXML 0.6.1 is released. PyXML version 0.6.1 has been released. This version has numerous bug fixes, better test suite support, and support for Python 1.5.2. "The Python/XML distribution contains the basic tools required for processing XML data using the Python programming language, assembled into one easy-to-install package. The distribution includes parsers and standard interfaces such as SAX and DOM, along with various other useful modules."

Python 9 Conference. The 9th International Python Conference is being held from March 5 through 8, 2001 in Long Beach, California. Information on paper submission dates has been given.

ReportLab 1.01. ReportLab version 1.01 is now available. ReportLab is a Python package that is used to generate PDF documents.

Tcl/tk

This week's Tcl-URL. Here is Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for October 9. Check it out for the usual collection of interesting Tcl/Tk tidbits.

FreeWrap 4.4 announced. FreeWrap is a program that converts TCL/TK scripts into single-file binary programs. The release of FreeWrap version 4.4 has been announced.

Software Development Tools

Autoconf/Automake Book. Havoc Pennington, GTK+ expert and author, pointed out an upcoming book from New Riders called GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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