See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

As with most emulators, performance is not exactly spectacular, The Bochs FAQ claims a 1.5 MIPS equivalent speed while running on a 400Mhz PII Linux machine. This slowness is partly attributable to the fact that Bochs can run on non x86 processors including PPC, Alpha, Sparc, and MIPS, there is no dependence on the native instruction set of the host processor.

There are many uses for such a system, including testing new OS installs and debugging OSes while maintaining a working system. Bochs should also be useful for running that one special application that isn't available under Linux.

Bochs has been successfully used to run the Windows 95, 98, and NT operating systems, various Microsoft Office apps have been tested under those OSes. Performance is typically too slow for the more complicated games, such as DOOM, although a 1.7 Ghz processor may help in that area.

Emulation of a number of typcial PC hardware devices is provided, Bochs has support for emulated ports, soundcards, CD-ROMs, and one netorking card. The emulated filesystem appears as one large file on the host OS filesystem.

The project has announced the release of Bochs 1.3. This release includes quite a few performance improvements, a number of new features, and a new, menu-based configuration system.

The Bochs project is looking for help from PC hardware gurus in the area of more hardware emulation, and bug fixing in currently emulated devices. Help is also needed in the area of documentation and testing. This project has made some serious progress; it's worth a look. The Bochs Documentation is a good place to start.

Education

SEUL/edu Linux in Education Report. The SEUL/edu Linux in Education Report for December 10 is out. Covered topics include Linux in Manitoba schools, the KDE Edutainment Project, and more.

Electronics

XCircuit 2.5.1 beta released. A new beta version of the XCircuit schematic drawing program has been released. Version 2.5.1 adds support for numerical parameters, the XCircuit license has also been changed to the GPL.

New Icarus Verilog Snapshot. A new snapshot of the Icarus Verilog simulation language compiler has been announced. See the release notes for all of the details.

Embedded Systems

Embedded Linux Newsletter for December 6, 2001. The December 6, 2001 edition of the LinuxDevices Embedded Linux Newsletter is out. This issue looks at HP's blade server initiative, and ZapMedia's ZapStation. A developer's contest for the Sharp Zaurus SL-5000D Linux PDA has also been announced.

Mail Software

Procmail Basics (O'Reilly). Dru Lavigne discusses Procmail installation on O'Reilly's OnLamp site. "If you receive more than a few email messages a day, you've probably discovered that it becomes increasingly difficult to sort and prioritize your email. Messages you want to read immediately can get lost in a sea of less-important messages. Worse, your inbox can become cluttered with spam, virus-infected messages, and other disagreeables. Fortunately, the procmail program has been designed to help you sort through this mess."

Web-site Development

The return of Quanta. Quanta is a KDE-based web development tool. Its status has been unclear for some time, since some of its developers have decided to turn it into a proprietary product. Now, however, Quanta Plus 2.0 has been released under the GPL. The release announcement includes a long description of what's up with Quanta, and where the developers plan to go for the next big release. (Thanks to KDE Dot News).

mnoGoSearch-php-3.2.0.beta1 released. A new version of the php search front end for mnoGoSearch has been announced. This version features search daemon support, support for synonyms, bug fixes and more.

ASPSeek v.1.2.7 released. Version 1.2.7 of the ASPSeek search engine has been released. This version features a number of bug fixes and portability improvements.

Zope 2.5.0 beta 2 availble. Zope version 2.5.0 beta 2 has been announced. This version features a fix for a major memory leak and other bug fixes. New features include a preview field for image objects, a new user management API, user folder password encryption, session tracking, and more.

Miscellaneous

Intel released OpenCV 2.1. Intel has announced the open source of OpenCV 2.1, an computer vision library which can perform stereoscopic processing.

Packaging software with RPM, Part 2 (IBM developerWorks). Dan Poirier continues with part two in his series on building RPM packages. See part one for the whole story. Build an RPM package and get your open source project into wider use.

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

Glame 0.5.4 released. A new version of the Glame audio file editor has been announced on the Linuxmusic site. The Glame home page has not yet been updated. This version is considered beta quality and features filteredit improvements, a cool export dialog, bug fixes, and more.

WaveSurfer 1.2 released. Version 1.2 of the WaveSurfer sound visualization and manipulation tool has been released. New features include support for Ogg/Vorbis files, support for Unicode and localization, and more functionality for HTK/MLF files.

Web Browsers

Mozilla Status Update. The December 6, 2001 Mozilla Status Update lists a number of changes to the Mailnews and Editor sections of Mozilla. Also see the Mozdev site for more Mozilla development news.

Galeon 1.0.1 released. Version 1.0.1 of the small, fast Galeon web browser has been announced. This version fixes a few bugs. RPMs for Red Hat 6.X are also available for this release. Downloads are available here.

New fresh and exciting Encompass available (gnome.org). Gnome.org reports on the Encompass browser. "Rodney Dawes has just made a new release of the browser Encompass. This is an early preview mainly targeted at developers, but it do show of the power of Encompass's new codebase."

Desktop Environments

This week's GNOME Summary. The GNOME Summary for December 7 is out. This issue includes some GNOME2 screenshots, the Encompass browser, the final GNOME Foundation board election results, and more.

GNUstep Weekly Editorial. The December 7, 2001 GNUstep Weekly Editorial is out with the latest developments from the GNUstep desktop environment.

Kernel Cousin KDE #28. Kernel Cousin KDE #28 is out. Topics covered include Opera style mouse gestures for Konq/E, SVG and KDE3, an application for learning conjugation, Konsole development, Konqueror and online banking, and more.

People of KDE: Adriaan de Groot. This week, KDE.org interviews Adriaan de Groot, the current maintainer of KPilot.

Games

Crystal Space 0.92. A new version of the Crystal Space C++ game development kit has been released. This version features bug fixes, better documentation, and a few minor API changes.

Graphics

Open CASCADE 4.0. Version 4.0 of the Open CASCADE 3D modeling library has been released. There's a number of new features, including the new Extended Data Exchange facility.

GUI Packages

How to Develop with GLADE!. Gnome.org points to two articles on developing with GLADE, the GNOME RAD GUI tool.

Interoperability

Wine Weekly News for December 12, 2001. The latest Wine Weekly News is available. This issue looks at the implications of the Microsoft antitrust settlement on Wine, OSS fixes, SHLWAPI Additions, an async I/O Patch, and more.

Office Applications

Kernel Cousin GNUe #6. The December 8, 2001 issue of Kernel Cousin for GNU Enterprise is out with the latest development from that project..

AbiWord Weekly News #73. The latest AbiWord Weekly News is available. This edition features a rant on people's expectations of AbiWord.

Miscellaneous

Guikachu 1.0.0: 'Team Pocket'. Gnome.org takes a look at Guikachu 1.0.0, a utility for creating PalmOS resource files under Unix based systems. Guikachu is licensed under the GPL license.

Programming Languages

Assembly Language

Osimpa macro-assembler. Here's a report on the latest developments to the osimpa macro-assembler. "osimpa is a macro-assembler or 'compembler' written entirely in GNU Bash. With minor modifications it should also work with pdksh and zsh. It currently supports the Intel 80386 real and protected modes."

Caml

The latest Caml Weekly News. The December 5 through 11, 2001 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out. Topics include code size versus languages, unreliable threading, Ensemble 1.33, embedding Ocaml, and SML to OCaml.

SCaml extension to the OCaml compiler. SCaml is an extension to the OCaml compiler. It adds module unloading, a workaround for mangled function names, and an uninliner for .cmx among other things.

FORTRAN

g95 Progress. Work continues on the g95 FORTRAN compiler project. "G95 is still in an embryonic state. Perusing the g77 source, we estimate that about 200,000 lines of code will be necessary to implement g95. G95 is currently about 33,000 lines long, making it about version 0.165. The current g95 does nothing except print the contents of internal data structures."

Lisp

OpenMCL 0.9 released. A new version of OpenMCL has been announced. Version 0.9 features internal file structure changes, more debugging and introspection tools, new memory access primitives, and sample code for OpenGL/GTK+.

Perl

Parrot 0.0.3 is released! (use Perl). A new version of Parrot, the Perl 6 interpreter has been announced. This version adds full support for custom data types.

The Perl Foundation launches. The Perl Foundation is a non-profit operation which seeks to promote the use and development of the Perl language. The Foundation's web site is now up, and the 2002 grant funding drive has begun.

Damian Conway Interview (pair.com). Pair Networks is running an interview with Damien Conway. Among other things, Damien talks about many new Perl modules that he is working on.

Perl 6 Porters for December 10, 2001. The December 10, 2001 edition of the Perl 6 Porters digest is out. Topics include Parrot 0.03, the Parrot FAQ 0.2, The GCC Register Transfer Language, the Parrot Execution Environment, and more.

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for December 11, 2001. The December 11, 2001 edition of the PHP Weekly Summary is available. Topics include a long list of bugs, fixes, and new features for PHP.

PHP 4.1.0. PHP 4.1.0 has been released. There's numerous performance improvements and such, but the most significant change is probably the move away from automatically setting up form parameters as global variables. This feature makes form programming easy, but opens PHP code up to a number of potential security problems. For now, code that depends on the old behavior will not break, but things are clearly moving in that direction. (Thanks to Serguei Sokol).

Python

This week's Python-URL. Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for December 10 is out, with the usual roundup of interesting stuff from the Python development community.

Python timeline. Mark Pilgrim has put together a Python Timeline, covering Python history back to Guido's announcement of the language in 1991. The site is open to suggestions about more historical Python events.

Ruby

This week on the Ruby Garden. This week, the Ruby Garden covers the String#match method, programming Ruby in Spanish, the Torrent work flow Library, and more.

Ruby/FLTK 0.5.0. A new version of Ruby/FLTK, the Ruby binding to the FLTK toolkit, is available.

Tcl/Tk

This week's Tcl-URL. Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for December 10 is out, with the latest from the Tcl/Tk development community.

XML

Effective XML processing with DOM and XPath in Java (IBM developerWorks). Parand Tony Darugar writes about XML processing in Java on IBM's developerWorks. "Based on an analysis of several large XML projects, this article examines how to make effective and efficient use of DOM in Java. The DOM offers a flexible and powerful means for creating, processing, and manipulating XML documents, but it can be awkward to use and can lead to brittle and buggy code."

Java configuration with XML Schema (IBM developerWorks). Marcello Vitaletti writes about Java and XML Schema on IBM's developerWorks. "This article shows how to use a Java XML parser together with the Java language reflection features to create an arbitrary set of named objects according to the content of an XML file. Objects created by the proposed initialization process live in a hierarchical, global namespace. References to these objects anywhere in the code can be obtained by a simple query."

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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