See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

Here's the current list of the questions that are answered:

• Can I do ++x and x++ in Python?
• Can I use C++'s syntax for ostreams: cout << x << y ... ?
• Is there a better syntax for dictionary literals? All my keys are strings.
• Is there a similar shortcut for objects?
• That's great for creating objects; How about for updating?
• Hey, can you write code to transpose a matrix in 0.007KB or less?
• How do I do Enumerated Types (enums) in Python?
• Why is there no ``Set'' data type in Python?
• Should I, could I use a Boolean type?
• Can I do the equivalent of (test ? result : alternative) in Python?
• What other major types are missing from Python?
• How do I do the Singleton Pattern in Python?
• Is no "news" good news?
• Can I have a history mechanism like in the shell?
• How do I time the execution of my functions?

Audio Projects

ALSA 0.5.12a driver released. The 0.5.12a release of the ALSA sound driver is available. This version fixes problems between ALSA and 2.4.14+ kernels.

Databases

Pear::DB Primer (O'Reilly). O'Reilly is running an article by Joao Prado Maia on Pear::DB. "People start out thinking that platform A is the best one and out of the blue, a business need or a strategic partnership necessitates a change to the project plan. Most of the source code will need to be reviewed to check for problems caused by the database switch.

That is, unless the project was designed to work with any database server that has a significant market share. This is the objective of the PEAR::DB library, which is a part of the PEAR project."

Directory Management Systems

Ganymede 1.0.9 available. Version 1.0.9 of the Ganymede directory management system has been released. This version includes an important fix for an XML parser error that showed up in the previous release.

Software for Disabilities

Programming in the dark. Hans Schou talks about the development of Linux device drivers for several Braille data terminals. "There was not a Linux driver for this terminal, to be found on the net. We know the rules: either you make one yourself, or you are lucky to get help from someone on the net who knows how to do it. We were lucky - Dave Mielke wrote a new driver within only two days and it was working right out of the box.

It might have been easier for Dave Mielke, if he actually had the hardware in front of him. But as Dave Mielke lives in Canada and we in Denmark (Europe) and he had no device, he had to do it in blind - so to speak. Well, Dave Mielke is actually 100% blind, so the C program really was written in the blind."

Documentation

Linux Documentation Project Weekly News. The LDP Weekly News for December 4 is out. The main topic is interesting: apparently most of the LDP document collection carries a license that is not 100% free, with the result that it will soon be removed from the core Debian distribution. A call has gone out for LDP document authors using the old LDP license to relicense their work in the near future to avoid this occurrence.

Embedded Systems

Embedded Linux Newsletter for November 29, 2001. The November 29, 2001 edition of the LinuxDevices Embedded Linux Newsletter is out. This week features a look at Red Hat's embedded Linux developer suite, a look at some new Linux PDA games, and more embedded Linux news.

Mail Software

Python milter 0.3.8 released. A new version of the Python Milter (mail filter) is available. Version 0.3.8 adds the ability to handle malformed Content_type headers.

Network Management

Snort 1.8.3 available. A new version of the Snort network monitoring tool has been released. Version 1.8.3 includes a number of bug fixes and a new command line option for dealing with IP translations. These packages are available for this version.

Printing Systems

LPRng-3.8.2 released. Version 3.8.2 of the LPRng print system has been released. The CHANGES in this release include new configuration capabilities among other things.

Web-site Development

Zope 2.5 Beta 1. Zope 2.5 Beta 1 has been announced, with a whole bunch of new features.

Zope News for December 3, 2001. The December 3, 2001 edition of the Zope News is out. Topics include the new Zope 2.4.3 and 2.5.0b1 releases, new Zope books, a beta new.zope.org, and more.

The latest Zope Members' News. The latest news from the Zope Members includes a discussion of jcNTUserFolder 0.2.1, ZBabel support in LDAPUserFolder and CMFLDAP, availability of a few free Zope sites, a Paul Everitt interview, and more.

PHP Review 1.0.3 released. Version 1.0.3 of PHP Review is available. This version allows the importing of books and publishers from the PHP Review site.

Miscellaneous

This week in DotGNU. The This Week In DotGNU newsletter for December 1 is out. Learn about "Curse of Frogger" - a C#-based game written for the Portable.Net structure - and more.

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 1.2 released. Wavesurfer 1.2, a sound visualization and manipulation package, has been released. The changes in this release include a new dataplot plug-in, real time pitch analysis, and other improvements and bug fixes.

Mpg321 version 0.2.3 released. A new version of the mpg321 audio file player has been announced. This release comes with numerous bug fixes and a few new features.

Browsers

The latest from Mozdev. This week, the Mozdev site lists several new projects including Banner Blind, BrowserG!, and XULmine. Mozilla 0.9.6 now works under FreeBSD.

Desktop Environments

People of KDE: Rob Kaper. The "People of KDE" series interviews Rob Kaper. "[KDE] once locked me up in a gym in South Germany for a couple of nights during LinuxTag 2001. That's probably the meanest thing that happened so far."

Kernel Cousin KDE #27. Issue 27 of Kernel Cousin KDE is available. Topics include Qt 2.3.2 problems, removing desktop icons, KAccel, Dialogs stealing focus, .desktop files, KEdit class improvements, the aRts Linux kernel module, and more.

KDEPrint Site Goes Live. KDE.News has announced the new printing.kde.org site, which covers development and operation of the KDEPrint module in KDE.

This week's GNOME Summary. Here's the latest GNOME Summary. Covered topics include the GNOME Foundation election results, Galeon 1.0, and more.

Games

4st Attack 1.0 released. The Pygame site reviews 4st Attack 1.0, a game that involves arranging stones.

Interoperability

The latest Wine Weekly News. The most recent edition of the Wine Weekly News includes articles on 3D Studio Max, MIDL and COM, screensaver settings, Wine growth stats, loading mmsystem, and shlwapi upgrades.

Samba 3.0alpha0 released. The Samba site lists a new 3.0 alpha release of Samba. Testers are needed. See the release notes for all of the details.

Office Applications

Ximian releases Evolution 1.0. Ximian has announced the release of Evolution 1.0. (LWN reviewed the second Evolution release candidate last week).

Also announced by Ximian is the "Ximian Connector," which will make Evolution behave like a true Microsoft Exchange client. Connector is a proprietary product which will be available "early next year."

Python Checkbook Manager. Version 0.5 of the Python Checkbook Manager has been released. It's a lightweight financial application for those who do not need all the features of an application like GnuCash.

Kernel Cousin GNUe for December 1, 2001. The December 1, 2001 edition of Kernel Cousin GNUe is available. GNUe is the GNU Enterprise, a suite of tools for use in business.

AbiWord Weekly News #72. The latest edition of the AbiWord Weekly News is out, AbiWord version 0.9.6 is coming soon.

Miscellaneous

Pan 0.11.1 newsreader. A new version of the Pan newsreader has been announced. This version features a number of bug fixes, a new filter, and the ability to collapse and expand selected threads.

Programming Languages

Caml

Caml Weekly News for December 4, 2001. Here is the latest edition of the Caml Weekly News. Topics include a pre-release of Mlglade, a discussion on glade, a call for O'Caml interns, and OCaml license conditions.

COBOL

TinyCOBOL version 0.55 released. A new version of TinyCOBOL is available. Downloads and release notes are available here.

Java

Programmatically choose threads for notification (IBM developerWorks). Peter Haggar explains portable, deterministic thread execution in an IBM developerWorks article. "The cross-platform nature of the Java platform is one of its major benefits. However, certain behaviors of the platform are less than desirable. One problem is the inability to consistently rely on which thread from a set of waiting threads will execute after a call to the notify() or notifyAll() method."

Lisp

Free the X3J Thirteen! for November, 2001. The November, 2001 edition of Free the X3J Thirteen! is out. Topics include the merge between ECL-Spain and ECL (ECoLisp), the cl-utils small utilities project, a new Lisp dialect called Arc, the latest from the CMU CL and SBCL projects, and more.

Perl

2001 Perl Advent Calendar. The 2001 Perl Advent Calendar is now up and running, with insights into a new Perl module being offered every day until Christmas.

New CPAN Distributions (use Perl). The use Perl site has posted a large number of lists of new Perl modules that are available on CPAN. See use Perl for all of the details.

First (beta) release of CPANPLUS (use Perl). The first beta of CPANPLUS, a replacement for the Comprehensive Perl Archive Network (CPAN), has been announced.

An Introduction to Testing (Perl.com). Chromatic discusses Perl debugging on O'Reilly's Perl.com site. "Someday, you'll be dubiously blessed with the job of maintenance programming. You might need to add new features or to fix long-standing bugs. The code may be your own or the apparently disturbed mutterings of a long-disappeared agent of chaos."

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for December 3, 2001. The December 3, 2001 edition of the PHP Weekly Summary is available. This week's topics include the upcoming PHP 4.1.1, PHP 4.1.0 RC 3, the GMime extension, C++ extensions, debugging Apache, nested comments, and more.

Python

This week's Python-URL. Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for December 3 is out, with the latest from the Python community. Covered topics include the list of infrequently asked questions (the IAQ) and the OSI's approval of the Python license.

OSI approves Python Software Foundation License. The OSI has approved the Python Software Foundation License. The new license has also received a stamp of GPL compatibility from Richard Stallman.

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!. The Python-URL for November 28 is out.

Jython 2.1b1 released. The first beta release of Jython 2.1 has been announced. Jython, of course, is the Java implementation of the Python language - Python code is compiled down to Java byte codes, allowing it to be run on a Java virtual machine.

Pybliographer 1.0.10 released. Version 1.0.10 of the Pybliographer tool for managing bibliographic databases has been released. This version "provides a direct interface to query the medline database, can output keys of entries to an editor using copy/paste, is able to format for APA publications, and fixes some bugs. It does not brew coffee yet, see emacs for that."

Ruby

An Interview with the Creator of Ruby (O'Reilly). Bruce Stewart interviews Yukihiro Matsumoto, the creator of the Ruby language. "I wanted a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python. That's why I decided to design my own language."

The latest from the Ruby Garden. This week, the Ruby Garden features new articles on regexp handling and the Joy language. "If Ruby is Smalltalk-meets-Perl, then Joy might be described as Scheme-meets-Forth."

Tcl/Tk

This week's Tcl-URL. Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for December 4 is out, with the latest from the Tcl/Tk community.

Debuggers

GDB 5.1 released. GDB 5.1 was released a few weeks ago. Changes include a number of new native configurations, some new target processors, removal of some old targets, conversion of the source code to ISO C, and lots more.

Integrated Development Environments

Announcing Anjuta 0.1.8. A new version of Anjuta, an open source integrated development environment for C/C++, has been announced. Version 0.1.8 is considered a stable release, see the announcement for all of the details.

KDevelop Gains Cross-Platform Compilation Support (KDE.News. KDE.News covers the latest KDevelop capabilities. It is now possible to use KDevelop to build applications for StrongARM based machines, including several palmtops.

Miscellaneous

Jext 3.0.2 programmer's editor. A bug fix release of the Jext programmer's editor has been announced. Downloads are available here.

Peer-to-Peer for Academia (O'Reilly). Andy Oram writes about peer-to-peer computing on O'Reilly's openP2P site. "Academic environments are ideal for experimenting with peer-to-peer and benefiting from peer-to-peer. You have an open attitude toward information, well-educated staff who can adapt to new tools, a variety of projects that require information exchange, and a willingness to expend time and effort in order to save money."

Communication using sockets on Linux and Windows (IBM developerWorks). IBM's developerWorks features an article by Dr. Edward G. Bradford on socket programming, with an emphasis on writing code that compiles on both Linux and Windows platforms.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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