See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

The XFree86 project has released a new version, 4.2.0, of its ubiquitous X window server software. This is the fifth release in the XFree86 4 series. XFree86 runs on Linux as well as many other common Unix variants. See the README documents for more basic information.

The release notes summary lists the following new capabilities:

• Many enhancements and fixes to the drivers for specific video cards.
• Enhanced input drivers including mouse wheel emulation and support for new devices.
• Updates and bug fixes to the X server and its extensions.
• Updated client and libraries, including a patched xterm program and support for remote hosts in Xload.
• New scalable fonts and better locale support.
• Updated documentation.
• Improved support for various operating systems including:
  • Darwin/Mac OS X
  • Open BSD/powerpc
  • Client side support for sparc64 on NetBSD and OpenBSD
  • IBM S3/90
  • Linux arm32 and mips
  • Support for a few obsolete operating systems will be removed.

The future Release Plans indicate that the next full release, version 4.3.0, should be available on May, 2002.

XFree86 4.2.0 may be downloaded here.
(Thanks to Martin Lindhe).

Clusters

Announcing heartbeat 0.4.9a. A new version of heartbeat, a Linux cluster node monitoring package, has been released. Version 0.4.9a includes a restructured build system, and adds a new standby feature. (Thanks to Alan Robertson).

High availability status newsletter. Alan Robertson has also sent out the January High Availability Status newsletter. It covers work in the emerging Open Cluster Framework, Alan's four presentations at the upcoming LinuxWorld conference, and more.

Documentation

LDP Weekly News. The Linux Documentation Project Weekly News for January 22, 2002 is out. The LDP Wiki remains the top subject; a number of new features have been added to that system, which is still in a beta test mode.

Education

SEUL/Edu report for January 21, 2002. The January 21, 2002 SEUL/Edu report is out. News includes a project to put Linux into schools in the Indian state of Goa, as well as other educational initiatives. Ten new educational software applications are reviewed this week.

Embedded Systems

Real-time and Linux, Part 1 (LinuxDevices). LinuxDevices.com is running the first of a three-part series on Linux and real time. "In practice, a general-purpose operating system, such as Linux, provides sufficient means for an application with relatively long deadlines if the operating environment can be controlled suitably. It is because of this property that one frequently hears that there is no need for real-time operating systems because processors have become so fast. This is only true for relatively uninteresting projects."

Linux Devices Embedded Linux Newsletter. The January 17, 2002 Linux Devices Embedded Linux Newsletter is out with the latest embedded Linux news.

Mail Software

The latest on milter.org. This week, milter.org discussions look at detecting spam with a velocity counter, and filtering based on type and usernames.

Printing Software

HP's hpijs driver is now free (Linux Printing). HP Recently released its hpijs inkjet printer driver under a BSD license, making it the first free printer driver to come from a printer manufacturer.

Science

DigiTemp 2.3 temperature sensor software. A new version of DigiTemp, software that connects the Dallas Semiconductor one wire temperatures sensors to a serial port, has been released. Version 2.3 adds support for 1-Wire Hubs. Perl plotting and web page generation software is also available for examining the resulting data. DigiTemp features a GPL version 2.0 license. (Thanks to Brian C. Lane.)

Web-site Development

New PHP 4.1.x extension for mnoGoSearch. A new PHP 4.1.x compatible extension module has been released for the mnoGoSearch web site search engine.

The latest Zope Members News. This week's items on the Zope Members News feature talk of a new Zope/Python in healthcare mailing list, a call for Euro Zope members, and a stable release of ExternalFile.

Zope 2.4.x crash fix (ZopeNewbies). People who are having problems with Zope 2.4.x crashes should take a look at this report from ZopeNewbies, apparently an upgrade to Python 2.1.2 will fix the problem.

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

Gnome-Media: Get it while it's hot. Gnome-Media version 1.100.0 has been released. New features include a new CD player and a new bonobo based CDDBSlave. The project needs some attention in the area of icon drawing, help out if you can.

Audacity 0.98 released. Version 0.98 of the Audacity multi-platform audio editing tool has been released. This release features new invert and reverse effects, an improved noise removal effect, new OSS code, preliminary support for the KDE/aRts sound server, and lots of bug fixes.

aPcStudio 0.5.9 released. Another cross-platform audio editing tool known as aPcStudio is available, with Linux binaries. Version 0.5.9 has been released and is available for testing. aPcStudio uses FLTK and is licensed under the GPL license.

Linuxmusic updates. The LINUXMUSIC site lists a new version of Trommeler, a fun to use X-window system based drum machine.

Desktop Environments

GNOME 2.0 desktop alpha. The alpha release of the GNOME 2.0 desktop has been announced. This release will be for the adventurous only; the GNOME developers will certainly appreciate any help they can get in flushing out bugs for the final release, however.

What's new in GNOME 2 for Users. Here's a writeup by Havoc Pennington on the user-visible changes in GNOME 2. "Lots of rumors have been going around that GNOME 2 won't have any new user-visible features, but while this was the plan and would have resulted in releasing sooner (cough), it's not really what happened. So here's some hype for you."

Kernel Cousin KDE #30. Kernel Cousin KDE issue #30 is available. Topics include work on the KDE 3.1 feature list, new maintainers for KDE Debian packages, a new CVS module for Art Resources, a KDE3 update for GCC3, and a new discussion forum for KDE Enterprise.

Xfce 3.8.14 released. Version 3.8.14 of the Xfce lightweight desktop environment has been released. Changes include a much improved xftree file manager, speed improvements in xfwm, visual enhancements, and bug fixes. (Thanks to Joe Klemmer.)

GNOME Summary for January 19, 2002. The January 19, 2002 GNOME Summary is out. Covered topics include the GNOME 2.0 desktop, the impending AbiWord 1.0 release, and more.

Matthias Ettrich: Integrating Qt Apps with KDE. KDE guru Matthias Ettrich has proposed a new strategy for integrating Qt applications into KDE by way of a small libQtKDE proxy library.

People of KDE: Dimitris Kamenopoulos. This week, KDE.org's People of KDE series features Dimitris Kamenopoulos, a specialist in Greek language translations.

Games

More games at PyGame. This week's new PyGame entry is PYC4 1.1, a 2 player connect 4 dots game.

Graphics

Guppi 0.40.3 Released. Version 0.40.3 of Guppi has been released. "Guppi is a GNOME-based framework for graphing and interactive data analysis." This version features bug fixes, cleaner code, and better looking graphs.

Interoperability

Kernel Cousin Wine #113. Issue #113 of Kernel Cousin Wine is out. Topics include building a test suite, getting support from IBM, Euro support, NT Named Pipes, and more.

Office Applications

Gnumeric 1.0.3 is available. Version 1.0.3 of the Gnumeric spreadsheet program has been announced. "This release syncs up with Guppi 0.40.3. The graphing interface has been improved a bit."

Kernel Cousin GNUe #12. Kernel Cousin GNUe issue #12 is available with the latest Gnu Enterprise developments. Topics include IBM DB2, DotGNU, Debian Packages, GNUe application server discussion, diagnosing problems with Python, GNUe official applications, and more.

AbiWord Weekly News issue #79. Issue #79 of the AbiWord Weekly News is out with all of the latest news from that project. AbiWord version 0.99.1 is soon to be released.

Miscellaneous

This Week in DotGNU. The This Week in DotGNU newsletter for January 19 is out. Covered topics include Debian Portable.NET packages, the Bizplan project, the upcoming LinuxWorld DotGNU panel, and more.

Programming Languages

Caml

Caml Weekly News. The Caml Weekly News for January 15 through 22, 2002 is out. Topics include dynamic linking with native compilation and a new version of otags.

FORTRAN

Progress continues on G95. The G95 open source FORTRAN 95 project continues to make progress towards a working FORTRAN 95 compiler. Parser development continues, and a Linux binary is available for source code compatibility testing.

HTML

Extending the Web: XHTML Modularization (O'Reilly). Kendall Grant Clark looks at XHTML on O'Reilly's XML.com. "So, for content creators, XHTML -- the W3C's 'reformulation' of HTML 4 as an XML application -- is in fact what XML was in market-speak: a way to semantically extend the Web's lingua franca by adding domain- and genre-specific elements and attributes."

Java

The pros and cons of generating native code from Java source (IBM developerWorks). Martyn Honeyford examines Java native code generation on IBM's developerWorks. "When it was first introduced, it seemed that Java native compilation would surely topple the JVM, taking with it the Java platform's hard-fought platform independence. But even with its growing popularity and the increasing number of native compilers on the market, native compilation has a way to go before it poses a real threat to Java code's portability. Unfortunately, it also may be a while before the technology is mature enough to resolve the Java performance issues so many of us struggle with today."

Gems from the Java Technology Centre (IBM developerWorks). IBM's developerWorks has posted a list of useful Java tips from the Java experts in the IBM Hursley Labs .

Java: Stirring the Cup (Dr. Dobb's). Ed Nisley examines Java as an embedded systems language on Dr. Dobb's Journal. "I was particularly interested in what's required to use Java in an embedded application, given some seemingly significant disadvantages. Judging from the number of places where Java appeared at the Embedded Systems Conference/Boston, though, it's well into the useful stage."

ACUNIA releases Wonka 0.8. According to this LinuxDevices article, ACUNIA has released version 0.8 of Wonka, a JVM and class library. The Wonka license is the GPL-compatible, BSD-like Wonka Public License.

Lisp

Steel Bank Common Lisp 0.7.0 released. Version 0.7.0 of SBCL has been released. "Major changes relate to compiler implementation and optimization, behavior that ANSI Common Lisp explicitly defines as implementation dependent, FFI, deprecation of some old operator names, debugger user interface, better system test scripts, removal of old CMU CL documentation and many bug fixes. The default object file extension and version number have also been changed."

Perl

Apocalypse 4 from Larry Wall. Larry Wall has posted Apocalypse 4, the next set of proclamations on what Perl 6 will look like. It is all about blocks, "what the curlies mean." "Some OO purists say that any time you want to use a switch statement, you ought to make the discriminant of the switch statement into a type, and use method dispatch instead. Fortunately, we are not OO purists here, so forget that argument."

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for January 21, 2002. This week's PHP Weekly Summary features discussions on manual translations, advanced data types, FOSDEM. Also, an alpha version of PHP5 is soon to arrive.

Python

This week's Python-URL. Dr. Dobb's Python-URL for January 21, 2002 is out. Covered topics include privacy concerns with ActiveState Python, the 2.1.2 release, and more.

New Daily Python-URL entries. New stuff on the Daily Python-URL includes a Python tutorial, Poooks, a Python based book reader program, PyGeo, a 3D geometry visualization lab, ftputil, an ftplib interface, a SIG for Python/C++ integration and more.

Ruby

This week on the Ruby Garden. The current edition of the Ruby Garden features talk about consistency in subscripted references, new Ruby RPMs for Red Hat Linux 7.2, Ruby to C translation, and more. The Ruby Weekly News also lists a number of new and updated Ruby projects.

Tcl/Tk

This week's Tcl-URL. Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL for January 22 is out, with the usual collection of useful stuff from the Tcl/Tk community. Among other things, you can get your weekly regexp lessons and learn about Tcl/Tk's role in the discovery of fire.

XML

Bright Year In Prospect For XML (O'Reilly). Ed Dumbill predicts XML developments for 2002 on O'Reilly's XML.com.

What Are XForms? (O'Reilly). Micah Dubinko introduces XForms, the XML answer to HTML forms. "A new technology, XForms, is under development within the W3C and aims to meld XML and forms."

Libraries

glibc 2.2.5 released. Freshmeat lists a new version of glibc. The GNU C library home page has not been updated yet, but the software is available for download. (Thanks to Ben Woodhead)

Gdk-pixbuf 0.16.0 is released. A new bugfix release of the Gdk-pixbuf library, version 0.16.0, aka "Deadly Yellow Snow" has been released.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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