See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

"If successful, this project may become a primary resource for quick, handy, and free solutions to most common programming problems using higher-level programming languages. It could also be useful for comparison on ease-of-use and power/efficiency of these languages."

PLEAC stands for "Programming Language Examples Alike Cookbook". The current list of supported languages includes Perl, Merd, Ruby, Haskell, Python, Masd, and Nasm. The Merd and Ruby implementations are both about 25% finished. Python, Haskell, and the assembly languages are trailing at below 10% completion. The project maintainer is seeking help for the implementation of solutions in ocaml, scheme, tcl, and C++/stl.

Despite the incomplete status, PLEAC already has many useful examples for the various languages. As it fills out, PLEAC should become a very handy resource for programmers who need to reinvent the wheel, a common task indeed.

Audio

Vorbis RC2 released. Release Candidate 2 of the Ogg Vorbis audio compression software is available. The changes file lists some interesting developments to libvorbis including the use of channel similarities to reduce the bit rate, the addition of more bit rates, and an improved decoding engine. Also, several of the Vorbis utilities have been updated to support better functionality for embedded comments and improved file manipulation capabilities.

Databases

GNOME-DB/libGDA/gASQL 0.2.90. A set of three new Gnome database component utilities have been released. "GNOME-DB/libGDA are a complete framework for developing database-oriented applications, and actually allow access to PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, Sybase and ODBC data sources. Apart from this development framework, they also include several applications and utilities which make them quite suitable for many database-related taks. gASQL is a database administration tool based on libgda and GNOME-DB, featuring visual tools for managing any database supported by libgda/GNOME-DB."

Documentation

Linux Documentation Project updates. A number of modifications were posted to the LDP this week, including updates to the XFree86 HOWTO, the XFree86 Video Timings HOWTO, and the Wacom Table HOWTO.

Education

Seul/Edu reports in Spanish. Three new translations of the Linux in Education report are available in Spanish. Issue 48, Issue 49 and Issue 50. (Thanks to Astroboy)

Embedded Systems

LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Newsletter. The LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Newsletter for August 9 is out. Topics include a new guide on ready to go embedded Linux systems, the RTLinux patent, Linux Point of Sale (POS) terminals, and more.

Interoperability

Wine Weekly News for August 2, 2001. The August 2, 2001 edition of the Wine Weekly News is now online. Topics include the use of native DLLs, problems using 16 bit header files, the dangers of Shared Source, and more.

System Administration

Linux Backup Tutorial (IBM developerWorks). While often neglected, regular backups are probably the single most important job that a system administrator has to do. Before your hard drive starts making whining and pinging sounds, check out Daniel Robbins' tutorial on Backing up your Linux Machines (registration required).

Web-site Development

Development branch of mnoGoSearch availbale. A new development branch of the mnoGoSearch web site search engine package is available. Changes in this version include gzip content encoding and bug fixes.

Mod_python 2.7.6 released. A new version of mod_python, the Apache/Python integration package, is available. This release adds support for Python 2.1.

The latest Zope News. The latest Zope News contains an announcement of the latest edition of the Zope Book, mention of a new beta release of DCOracle2, which supports the latest versions of Oracle, and more

SMS: Case study of a Web services deployment (IBM developerWorks). Cameron Laird presents a case study of Web services in an IBM developerWorks article. "Web services brings crucial benefits for this application that CORBA and DCOM can't match. DCOM essentially limits clients to those running on Windows desktops. On the other hand, CORBA is 'heavier' than needed for the simple processing the gateway requires. Moreover, real-world CORBA projects have the reputation of stumbling over firewall and interoperability problems that Web services handles gracefully."

Java and Web Services, Part I (O'Reilly). Al Saganich explains Web services in an O'Reilly article. "Over the past six to twelve months we've begun to see a new Web programming paradigm, that of the Web Service. But exactly what are these Web services anyway? In a nutshell, Web Services are the natural evolution of basic Remote Procedure Calls. In fact, we shall see that Web Services are in fact not a much more advanced technology than RPC of the past, but similar concepts applied in new ways!"

SkunkWeb Web Application Server 3.0 beta 2 released. A new beta release of the SkunkWeb Web Application Server has been released. This version includes much updated documentation and lots of bug fixes.

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

Caml

Caml Weekly News for August 14, 2001. The latest Caml Weekly News is out, with coverage of a new version of LablGTK and a new extended thread synchronization model.

Java

Making P2P interoperable: The Jxta story (IBM developerWorks). Sing Li discusses Jxta and Peer to Peer technology in an IBM developerWorks article. "Peer-to-peer networking is coming, and it promises to create a computing world fundamentally different -- and, in some ways, better -- than the one based on the old client/server model. Project Jxta is a community-run attempt to build a utility application substrate for peer-to-peer applications."

An easy JDBC wrapper (IBM developerWorks). Greg Travis explains data access with a JDBC wrapper on IBM's developerWorks. "JDBC provides a powerful, comprehensive interface for accessing databases from Java programs. For smaller projects, JDBC can seem overwhelming, driving some programmers to avoid using a database altogether. This article describes a simple wrapper library that makes basic database usage a snap. You'll find yourself wanting to use JDBC for every program you write."

Web FORM-Based Authentication (O'Reilly). Dion Almaer presents a tutorial on setting up FORM-Based Authentication in an O'Reilly onJava.com article. "In this article, we will walk through the various security settings that we can set up in the Web Application framework, going into detail on how you can set up FORM-based authentication."

Perl

Quantum::Entanglement, Perl and quantum mechanics (perl.com). Perl.com looks at the Perl Quantum::Entanglement module, which assists in quantum mechanical calculations. "The Quantum::Entanglement module attempts to port some of the functionality of the universe into Perl. Variables can be prepared in a superposition of states, where they take many values at once, and when observed during the course of a program, will collapse to have a single value. If variables interact then their fates are linked so that when one is observed and forced to collapse the others will also collapse at the moment of observation."

Perl 5 Porters for August 15, 2001. The August 15, 2001 edition of the Perl 5 Porters is out. Topics include a rewritten perlpod, Unicode normalization, threading semantics, and shrinking the standard Perl installation, among other things.

SPAM eater. If you are tired of getting too much spam, use Perl and Eliza to generate automatic replies. Fortunately, the program doesn't actually mail the response, which would waste more bandwidth and would likely never be read, it just amuses the recipient. "I've made a few modification to her default vocabulary to adapt to a few of the cheesy things found in spam."

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for August 14, 2001. This week's PHP Summary discusses TODO items for the upcoming PHP 4.0.7 and 4.1.0, problems to be solved with PHP and Apache 2.0, work on Autoconf for making PHP, security and PHP, and more.

Python

Unifying types and classes in Python 2.2. Guido van Rossum has posted a paper on Unifying types and classes in Python 2.2. He is looking for feedback.

And, if that isn't enough to keep Guido busy, he is also seeking feedback on PEP237, which covers the topic of unifying long integers and integers.

Dr. Dobb's Python URL for August 13, 2001. The August 13, 2001 edition of the Dr. Dobb's Python URL is out. Topics include tricks with string quotation, an explanation of tuples and lists, and a few hints from Guido on Python evolution.

Python in the Sourceforge Trove (O'Reilly). Stephen Figgins looks at a few of the thousand Python programs on Sourceforge. A geneology program called Gramps and the Nareau Cluster Tools are examined.

Python shows exponential growth. Just van Rossum has presented a graph of Python posts from comp.lang.python, labeled Python world domination. The graph has a nice exponential curve that shows rapid expansion. It would be interesting to see similar plots for traffic on Perl and other languages.

PyOpenGL status. Tarn Weisner Burton has posted a status update for the PyOpenGL project. PyOpenGL is a Python implementation of OpenGL, it has recently been undergoing intense development.

Ruby

The latest from the Ruby Garden. This week, the Ruby Garden features articles on Ruby Behaviors, a new interactive Ruby reference, dealing with string literals, the AOS virtual machine, and more.

Smalltalk

Squeak News for August 15, 2001. The August 15, 2001 edition of Squeak News is apparently out, but it appears to still be partly under construction. Topics include a focus on beginners, controlling submorphs, and an interview with John Maloney.

Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl URL for August 13, 2001. The August 13, 2001 edition of the Dr. Dobb's TCL URL is out. Topics include the release of Tcl 8.4a3, TclSOAP, home automation with Tcl and the Rivendell project which aims to put Tcl on the palm platform.

XML

Getting Loopy (O'Reilly). Bob DuCharme discusses for and while loops under XML in an O'Reilly xml.com article.

Integrated Development Environments

Anjuta 0.1.6 is released. A new stable release of Anjuta, a C/C++ Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for GTK+/GNOME, has been announced.

Miscellaneous

oprofile 0.0.4 released. An alpha level version of oprofile, a binary file profiler, has been announced. (Thanks to John Levon)

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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