See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

Gopher is a hypertext system that lacks the graphical capabilities of the web, but it does have file download capabilities. Gopher has been on the endangered species list for quite a while but it may be experiencing a comeback in some circles. The Gopher format is still supported by most of the common web browsers.

The Gopher Project was in use prior to to the wide adoption of the World Wide Web. It offered remote file access without the hassles of logging into an FTP server.

Gopher tends to be a bit more efficient than the web, and is both quicker to use and a lighter load on the server. It could still be a useful protocol for bandwidth and graphics limited devices such as wireless PDAs with small format screens.

The Gopherspace Introduction promotes the protocol and illustrates some of Gopher's history. The Gopher Manifesto documents more Gopher history and contains lots of fun Gopher trivia.

Downloads of the latest versions of the Gopher softweare packages are available here.

Audio Projects

GStreamer 0.3.1 released. Version 0.3.1 of the GStreamer streaming media framework has been released. This version features a number of bug fixes, code restructuring, and reworked utilities. "..this release of GStreamer is still mostly aimed at developers, but users wanting to experiment can test gstreamer using its command line interface documented in the gst-launch man page and in the wiki".

This week on LINUXMUSIC. This week, the LINUXMUSIC site looks at Cow, a set of C++ classes for displaying audio data, Jsynlib, a set of Java synthesizer tools, the terminatorX realtime autio synthesizer, sloop.splitter, a realtime sound effect program, and more audio stuff.

Documentation

LDP Weekly News. The weekly summary from the Linux Documentation Project is out. It looks at the continuing effort to relicense its documents, and gives extensive lists of new and updated HOWTOs.

Education

SEUL/Edu report for January 9, 2002. The January 9, 2002 edition of the SEUL/Edu report is available. This edition takes a look a the new Schoolforge coalition, and other educational free software topics.

The Schoolforge project launches. The Schoolforge project has announced its existence. Schoolforge is the result of a coalition of education-oriented groups which are working to encourage the use of free software (and more) in the educational system. The Schoolforge site already has a comprehensive collection of free resources available.

Embedded Systems

Contest: Linux4.TV applications. The Embedded Linux Journal is running a contest based on the free "Linux4.TV" set-top box platform. They are looking for proposals for interesting applications for this platform using embedded Linux; proposals are due by February 20.

Embedded Linux Newsletter (LinuxDevices). The LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Newsletter for January 3 is available, with the usual roundup of useful stuff from the embedded Linux community.

Kinkatta-Lite ported to Zaurus and iPAQ (KDE.NEWS). The KDE AIM client known as Kinkatta has been ported to the Zaurus and iPAQ PDA platforms. The source code won't be available for a while, but the screenshots look pretty impressive.

Mail Software

Virus Scanner for Squid. Kurt Huwig has announced a patched version of Squid that scans for email viruses using the OpenAntivirus ScannerDaemon.

Network Management

Introducing Hank. Introducing Hank is a document describing the new Hank ("Hank Acts on Network Kaptures") tool. Hank can fill a number of network monitoring roles, including protocol monitoring, intrusion detection, and packet filtering. A version of Hank is available for download now.

Peer to Peer

Distributed Systems Topologies: Part 2 (O'Reilly). Nelson Minar continues his series on peer-to-peer technologies. "In this second part, I introduce seven criteria for evaluating a system design and discuss their relative merits. Systems with hybrid topologies often seem to demonstrate the advantages of the various constituent designs that comprise their makeup."

Web-site Development

Zope News for January 4, 2002. The January 4, 2002 Zope News is out. Topics include the upcoming Python conference, development of Zope 3, ParsedXML changes, the EuroZope mailing list, and more.

The latest Zope Members News. This week, the Zope Members News looks at some Zope LUG news, Zope training, Graph Method 0.3.0, 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

Desktop Environments

Kernel Cousin KDE #29. The January 4, 2002 Kernel Cousin KDE is available. Topics include exporting syntax enlightened source, KBugBuster out of beta, an upgraded KOffice Filter Framework, PIMs, and more.

People of KDE: Christian Couder. This week's People of KDE features Christian Couder, a contributor to the KDevelop project.

GNOME Summary for January 4, 2002. The GNOME Summary for December 16, 2001 through January 4, 2002 is out. Take a look for all of the latest in the world of GNOME.

Evolution 1.0 testimonials. A new new set of Evolution 1.0 testimonial images has been posted. Have a look for information on "Evo nudism," what Alan Cox has in mind, and more.

GNUstep Weekly Editorial. The GNUstep Weekly Editorial for January 4, 2002 is out with coverage of GNUstep developments.

Games

PyDDR: a Dance Dance Revolution clone. Pygame looks at PyDDR this week. "PyDDR is a clone of 'Dance Dance Revolution'. The idea is simple, there's a mat with four directional arrows, and the game scrolls arrows up the screen to the beat while playing a song. When the arrows reach the top of the screen (not sooner and not later), the player hits the corresponding arrow on the pad, and given that it's hit on time with the beat, points are scored."

GUI Packages

FLTK v1.1.0b10 Released. Work continues on the beta releases of FLTK, with the release of version 1.1.0. Beta 10.

Interoperability

Samba turns 10. This week is the tenth anniversary of the first Samba release. Congratulations to the entire team for a decade of excellent and highly useful software! (Thanks to Andrew Bartlett).

Kernel Cousin Wine #112. Kernel Cousin Wine number 112 is available. Topics include building a test suite, cooperating with the Odin project, Lindows, EULA conflicts, and mixed mode CD labels.

Office Applications

KDE.de App of the Month: KNotes. KDE.org examines KNotes as it's KDE.de App of the Month. (in German)

Kernel Cousin GNUe #10. Issue #10 of Kernel Cousin GNUe is out with all of the latest GNU Enterprise developments.

XNotesPlus V3.5 available. Former LWN desktop editor Michael Hammel has announced XNotesPlus Version 3.5, "a personal information manager (PIM) for Linux and Unix systems with full featured support for the Palm Pilot. XNotesPlus is being released as shareware.

Miscellaneous

gFTP 2.0.11 released. A new release of the gFTP FTP client has been announced. Version 2.0.11 features a number of bug fixes.

Programming Languages

Assembly Language

Osimplay, formerly shasm, is now beta. A beta release of Osimplay, an x86 macro-assembler written in GNU Bash 2 has been announced. "It's reasonably useable, and the bugs that arise may now be small enough to not always require the author to fix, although I would love to know about them. This version of osimplay is public domain."

C

GCC on the AMD x86-64. Thanks to Jan Hubicka, Bo Thorsen and Andreas Jaeger from SuSE, GCC now runs on the AMD x86-64.

Caml

Caml Weekly News for January 8, 2002. The January 8, 2002 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out. News includes a new library, ML GMP, that interfaces Objective Caml with GNU MP and an Objective Caml image processing library known as CamlImages 2.00.

Java

Looking Back and Ahead on ONJava.com (O'Reilly). Steve Anglin discusses Java progress in 2001 on O'Reilly's ONJava.com site. "In the Java world, 2001 saw the development of the Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) 1.3 and Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) 2.0 specifications, and the impact of their use with open source Java projects such as Apache's Jakarta Tomcat and Struts. Another important development was the Java API for XML (JAX), aimed squarely at the development of Web services."

Lisp

December 2001 Free the X3J Thirteen! available. The December, 2001 edition of Free the X3J Thirteen! is out. Topics include OpenMCL 0.9, GCL status, McCLIM, CMUCL, SBCL, UncommonSQL, CLOCC, and new cCLan packages.

Perl

Functional Programming (IBM developerWorks). Teodor Zlatanov writes about functional programming in Perl. "Teodor introduces functional programming and several essential Perl idioms important for Perl programmers looking for speed and elegance in their code, such as the map() and grep() functions, and the Schwartzian and Guttman-Rosler transforms."

Perl 6 Porters Digest for January 5, 2002. The January 5, 2002 Perl 6 Porters Digest is out. This issue features discussions on Generators, the beginnings of a signed-to-unsigned migration, Parrot string work, fixed-size output records, and more.

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for January 7, 2002. The January 7, 2002 edition of the PHP Weekly Summary looks at a number of PHP buf fixes, making PHP run in standalone mode, an updated MySQL extension, and more.

Python

This week's Python-URL. Here's Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for January 7, 2002, with a longer than usual collection of interesting happenings from the Python development community. Topics include PyXML 0.7, Python 2.2 on the Zaurus PDA, PyChecker 0.8.7, an overview of date and time arithmetic modules, a Python time period library , and the upcoming Python conference, among other things.

Daily Python URL. This Week, the Daily Python URL looks at data mining in Python, the Cheetah template engine, and Climate Data Analysis Tools.

Ruby

Ruby Weekly News for January 6, 2002. The January 6, 2002 edition of the Ruby Weekly News covers this week's ruby-talk mailing list discussions. Topics include a Ruby application server, a gzip interface to Ruby, OpenSSL for Ruby, and Cardinal, a Ruby front-end to the Perl 6 Parrot interpreter.

Tcl/Tk

This week's Tcl-URL. Here's Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for January 7, 2002 with the latest from the Tcl/Tk community. Topics include processing procedure args, pad and ipad revealed, a weekly regexp lesson, Tcl in systems administration, and lots more.

XML

Real-world XML Schema (IBM developerWorks). Paul Golick and Richard Mader discuss the correct way to define an XML Schema on IBM's developerWorks. "Does your industry provide a set of best practices for XML Schema to streamline industrywide data integration? If not, perhaps it should follow retail's lead. Since 1993, the Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) of the National Retail Federation (NRF) has been developing a standard data model to help retailers integrate applications and interface point-of-sale (POS) data more easily."

XML Anti-Awards 2001. Edd Dumbill points out some of the problems that XML faced in 2001. "As expected, James Clark deservedly scooped up the 'XML Cup' for contributions to the XML industry at XML 2001. To redress the balance in favor of the usual cynical sniping, I'm happy to present the Anti-Awards for 2001, intended to burst some overinflated XML bubbles."

Miscellaneous

OProfile Version 0.0.8 released. Version 0.0.8 of OProfile, a Linux x86 profiler, has been announced. This release adds bug fixes and better library call differentiation.

Introduction to CVS (O'Reilly). Jennifer Vesperman introduces CVS, the widely used Concurrent Versioning System on O'Reilly's ONLamp site.

The MIT Lightweight Languages Workshop (Dr. Dobb's). Eugene Eric Kim covers the MIT Lightweight Language Workshop on Dr. Dobb's.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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