See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

Version 0.6.0 of the Omni printer driver has been released by IBM. Omni provides printer support by using the Ghostscript framework.

The Omni Project Documentation explains the driver operation and details the process of building XML based printer definition files. More project background is available here. Unfortunately, we were unable to locate any documentation that actually describes the process of installing Omni on any of the common Linux distributions. Hopefully, that information will be forthcoming.

The number of printers that are already supported is large and continues to grow, this version supports 410 printers. This release also adds support for more media types.

With version 0.6.0, a number of bugs have been fixed and some GCC compiling problems have been resolved, see Changelog file for the complete story.

Omni is being distributed under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Documentation and code for Omni are available here.

Audio Projects

ALSA packages 0.9.0beta12 released. New development releases of the ALSA sound driver, library, utility, and tools packages are available. Change information is in the source code.

Clusters

Linux High Availability status report. Alan Robertson has sent us the latest Linux High Availability status report, with news from the LWCE conference, Ram Pai's cluster membership algorithm, progress on the Open Cluster Framework API, and more.

CORBA

Help with Designing or Debugging CORBA Applications (Linux Journal). Linux Journal features an article by Frank Singleton on analyzing CORBA network traffic. "This article explores how I have added some useful extensions to an open-source protocol analyzer in order to allow the extraction of OMG IDL (interface definition language) defined data types from TCP/IP traffic (using GIOP/IIOP)."

Databases

Online Training for PostgreSQL. A new Flash-based online training course is available for PostgreSQL. A working knowledge of SQL is recommended.

Database Access Using Lightweight Applets (O'Reilly). Donald Bales writes about database access with applets on O'Reilly's OnJava site."Using HTTP as the communication protocol and a servlet peer for database queries, you can write a rich-content user interface applet that can dynamically interact with a database, yet remain small enough in size to perform well."

Embedded Systems

Embedded Linux Newsletter (LinuxDevices). The LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Newsletter for February 21 is out, with a complete roundup of interesting happenings in the embedded Linux world.

Printing Software

GNU Ghostscript 6.53 release. A new release of GNU Ghostscript has been announced. "This release includes the same security update as the 7.04 release, autoconf support, IJS integration, and improved asian text handling from the gs-cjk project."

LPRng 3.8.8 released. A new version of the LPRng print spooler system is available. The CHANGES in Version 3.8.8 include some bug fixes.

Web-site Development

New Bricolage Releases (use Perl). use Perl reports on the new 1.3.0 development release of Bricolage, a Perl-based content management and publishing system. Version 1.3.0 features a new SOAP server, and bug fixes.

A new stable version, Bricolage 1.2.1, has also been announced.

Zope 2.5.1 beta1 released. Zope 2.5.1 beta1 is available. This release fixes a bug that was causing Zope to crash. Other bug fixes and an updated ZODB are included, among other things. See the CHANGES file for all of the details.

Zope Members' News. This week's Zope Members' News items include an announcement for a new Zope Stability document, discussion of Zope 2.5.1 beta 1, Zope training, and more.

Insecure Web Proxy Servers (O'Reilly). Noel Davis looks at a number of common web proxy server vulnerabilities on O'Reilly. "In this column, we look at insecure Web Proxy Servers; buffer overflows in ncurses, Squid, hanterm, and ripMime; and problems in gnujsp, the NetBSD kernel, jmcce, the IRIX Unified Name Service Daemon, and Chuid."

Preventing Cross-site Scripting Attacks (O'Reilly). Paul Lindner describes cross-site scripting attacks and shows how to avoid them when using mod_perl.

Miscellaneous

Packaging software with RPM, Part 3 (IBM developerWorks). Dan Poirier presents part 3 of his series on using RPM packages. "In this article, third in a series, Dan explains how to run scripts when your package is installed or uninstalled, or when other packages are installed or uninstalled."

You may want to start with part 1 and part 2 of the series.

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

Noatun Gets a Web Interface (KDE.NEWS). Flood is a new web interface plugin for KDE's Noatun media player. See the announcement on KDE.NEWS.

Desktop Environments

GNOME 2.0 beta. The beta release of GNOME 2.0 has been announced. "It is hoped that the real release notes will show up RSN."

GARNOME Preview Two (Gnotices). A new release of GARNOME has been announced. "GARNOME 0.7.0 - the bad-ass, bleeding edge GNOME distribution for testers and tweakers everywhere - is ready for more tire-kicking and bug-bashing. If you're dying to try the GNOME 2.0 Desktop, but don't want to fall into the depraved addictions and co-dependencies of testing from anonymous CVS, then GARNOME is for you."

This week's GNOME Summary. The GNOME Summary for February 23 has wandered in. Covered topics include the GNOME 2 beta release, GStreamer applications, and more.

Coding with KParts (IBM developerWorks). David Faure writes about KParts on IBM's developerWorks. "This article discusses KParts, an architecture for graphical components, found in KDE, the K Desktop Environment. KParts allows applications requiring the same functionality to share a component by embedding the graphical component into the application's window. This article compares KParts with other component models, such as CORBA, and describes the main concepts used in KParts, including actions, plug-ins, part managers, and GUI merging."

Interview with Mandrake's & KDE's David Faure (OSnews). OSnews has interviewed KDE developer David Faure. David discusses Konqueror, KDE object prelinking, and Gnome, among other things. "I do think that Linux will make it on the desktop. I think it has already made it to some desktops, and will continue to improve, thanks to user-friendly interfaces such as KDE, 'konquering' (pun intended) JoeUser's desktop.

My own family is obviously the testing bed for this, I have my own usability labs in the persons of my wife, her sister and my parents."

People of KDE: Jaime Robles. This week's People of KDE focuses on Jaime Robles, team coordinator for the KDE Spanish translations.

Kernel Cousin KDE #32 and #33. Kernel Cousin KDE #32 covers DCOP for C, bleeding edge issues, aRts, KDE Thumbnails, and more.

Kernel Cousin KDE #33 is also out this week, topics include a mini golf game, animated GIFs, an XML configuration proof of concept, an improved malloc, SVG icons, and Kmail configuration migration.

Games

Pykanoid 0.14 released. The Pygame site features a new version of the tile breaking Pykanoid game.

GUI Packages

FLTK v1.1.0b11 Available. FLTK v1.1.0b11 is available. " FLTK 1.1.0b11 contains bug and compile fixes, as well as the initial port of the FLTK 2.0 drag-n-drop support". Also new is FLTKCallback++ 0.0.2.

GTK+ libraries 1.3.15 released. In what is hoped to be the last release before version 2.0, the GTK+ libraries version 1.3.15 has been released. This version features bug fixes and performance improvements.

Interoperability

Kernel Cousin Wine #116. Issue #116 of Kernel Cousin Wine is out. Topics include Wine and Lindows, Wine licensing, DTR flow control, DirectInput key mapping, X11drv color depth, Odin, and more.

Office Applications

AbiWord 0.99.2 released.. Gnotices is carrying an announcement for the 0.99.2 release of AbiWord. This release features bug fixes, a new Thesaurus, and an incremental document loader which allows documents to be viewed as they are loaded. See the release notes for all of the details, the code can be downloaded here.

AbiWord Weekly News. The February 26, 2002 issue of the AbiWord Weekly News looks at the new 0.99.2 release of AbiWord. "If you have not already downloaded it, you probably want to do that ASAP as it fixes many many Bugs and adds/completes quite a few features!"

Kernel Cousin GNUe #16. Issue #16 of Kernel Cousin GNUe looks at GNUe history and philosophy, Unicode support, form tips and tricks, a PHP client for GNUe forms, and much more.

Miscellaneous

gphoto2 2.0 released. Version 2.0 of gphoto2, the digital camera interface program, has been released. "Gphoto2 is a complete rewrite of the award winning gphoto. gphoto2 is now a library to access digital cameras. This library comes with a command-line frontend and others frontends are available separately (gtkam, GnoCam, kamera). "

Programming Languages

C

GCC 3.0.4 released. GCC version 3.0.4 has been announced. This release mainly features a number of bug fixes for C++ compiler and library problems. A new 3.1 release branch is also planned. (Thanks to Pat Eyler and Craig Rodrigues.)

Caml

Caml Weekly News. The February 19-26 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out. Topics include embedded ocaml, Osiris 1.0, and XML light.

COBOL

TinyCOBOL 0.57 released. Stable version 0.57 of TinyCOBOL is available. Downloads are available here.

Java

Java 1.4 available. Sun released Java version 1.4 a few weeks ago. See Sun's documentation on the Java 2 Platform and the Java 2 SDK new features for all of the details. (Thanks to Adrien Beau.)

Extending XML tools with Jacl scripts (IBM developerWorks). Phil Whiles introduces Jacl scripts on IBM's developerWorks. "This article shows how to extend open-source Apache XML tools using Jacl, a Java implementation of the popular Tcl scripting language. With Jacl, you can embed scripted functionality within XML or XSL."

Lisp

Yadda Lambda Lisp Magazine. A new online Lisp magazine has been announced. Known as Yadda Lambda, the magazine is currently soliciting articles for it's first issue, which will come out in April, 2002.

Common Lisp Cookbook moves to SourceForge. The collaborative Common Lisp Cookbook project has been moved to SourceForge.

Perl

Hietaniemi Posts perl 5.8.0 Time Line (use Perl). Jarkko Hietaniemi has posted a time line for Perl 5.7.3 and 5.8.0. The latter is to be released before the end of May. Read about it on use Perl.

mod_perl Developer's Cookbook source code. The source code has been made available for the mod_perl Developer's Cookbook. (Thanks to Paul Lindner.)

Why mod_perl? (O'Reilly). Stas Bekman introduces mod_perl on O'Reilly's perl.com. "In this article, I'll give an initial introduction to mod_perl, make you want to give it a try and present a few examples of the well-known sites that are powered by mod_perl enabled Apache."

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for February 25, 2002. The February 25, 2002 PHP Weekly Summary is out. Topics include a new fmod() function, socket extensions, disabling magic quotes, FOSDEM pictures, and more.

PHP-GTK version 0.5.0 has been released. Version 0.5.0 of PHP-GTK has been released. See the change log for all of the details.

Python

The latest from the Daily Python-URL. This week, the Daily Python-URL looks at decompyle, Java-Python Extension version 2.0, Ogre, PYX, Grouch, XPipes, Fle3, PyTheater, and much more. It's been a busy week for Python development.

This week's Python-URL. Here's . Topics include scripting C++ from Python, Python daemons, a logo-like turtle graphics library, and more.

Ruby

This week on the Ruby Garden. This week's Ruby Garden articles include a discussion on the problems with eXtreme Programming, IO orthogonalization, Ruby licenses, and more

Ruby Weekly News. The latest Ruby Weekly News looks at the ruby-lang IRC, Ruby Graph Library 0.1, the Ruby Hardware Definition Language, RubyConf 2002, and more.

XML

XML 2.0 -- Can We Get There From Here? (O'Reilly). Kendall Grant Clark writes about the process of formulating the XML 2.0 specification. "Whatever XML 2.0 eventually becomes technically, the process that creates it will be more social and political than anything else, and it's that process which seems perilous and fragile at best."

Integrated Development Environments

GNUstep Weekly Editorial. The February 21, 2002 GNUstep Weekly Editorial is out with reports of the latest progress in the GNUstep object oriented development environment.

Miscellaneous

Handling attachments in SOAP (IBM developerWorks). Joshy Joseph discusses SOAP attachments on IBM's developerWorks. "Web services will require the ability to send more than just text messages between services in a process. Often it will involve complex data types such as language structures, multimedia files, and even other embedded messages. This article takes a look at how the SOAP with Attachments specification can be used to send such information."

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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