See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

A little background on Foomatic:

"Foomatic is a system for using free software printer drivers with common spoolers on Unix. It supports LPD, PDQ, CUPS, the VA Linux LPD, LPRng, PPR, and direct spooler-less printing and any free software driver for which execution data has been entered in the database."

In other words, Foomatic forms a kind of "glue logic" that connects a number of common spoolers to the appropriate printer driver software. It derives the connection information from the Linux Printer Compatibility Database.

The project aims to give a more comprehensive solution to the problem of connecting a large number of printers to different spoolers. It is more of a "big picture" solution than most of the vendor-supplied printer configuration tools. A printer that is set up with Foomatic will be able to handle a variety of different input file formats such as Text, PostScript, and common image formats.

Foomatic supports a long list of printer drivers and printers, but it apparently does not work with IBM's Omni printer driver as of this writing.

For an example of what needs to be done to get Foomatic running on your system, see the documentation for running it with LPD/LPRng/GNUlpr. More documentation is provided for other spooling systems.

The new version is a test for the upcoming 2.0 release, and features streamlined installation as well as performance improvements. Installation no longer requires dealing with a large number of Perl libraries. The announcement gives a detailed list of new capabilities, the ChangeLog has more developer oriented information. See the Foomatic version 1.9 USAGE document for installation tips.

This whitepaper (PDF format) for a description of the origins of Foomatic and the LinuxPrinting.org site that hosts Foomatic. Foomatic can be downloaded here.

Databases

psycopg. Federico Di Gregorio has brought our attention to the psycopg project. Psycopg provides a python interface to PostgreSQL. "psycopg is different from the other database adapter because it was designed for heavily multi-threaded applications that create and destroy lots of cursors and make a conspicuous number of concurrent INSERTs or UPDATEs." The current version is 1.0.7-1.

Embedded Systems

LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Newsletter. The April 4, 2002 Embedded Linux Newsletter looks at the VTech Helio PDA and embedded Linux in China. An interview with FSMLabs' president Victor Yodaiken is also included.

Mail Software

Sendmail 8.12.3 released. A new version of Sendmail is available. "This version fixes a long-standing MIME (7 to 8-bit) conversion bug and several smaller problems, e.g., a possible communication problem between the MTA and libmilter, a bug in handling (invalid) addresses containing 8-bit characters, a possible problem with small timeouts being lost on slow machines if itimers are used, and the handling of the 421 reply code and timeouts in the SMTP delivery code."

Network Management

Writing PAM-Capable Applications (O'Reilly). Jennifer Vesperman writes about PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) on O'Reilly. "This is the first part of a two-part series on writing PAM-capable applications. This part provides the background knowledge and some of the supporting functions necessary for a developer to effectively use the PAM library. The second part will introduce the PAM library functions."

Printing Software

AFPL Ghostscript 7.20 devel release. A new development release of AFPL Ghostscript has been announced. "Major new features include the new Font API for supporting third-party font renderers, a 'diskn' implemenentation, and tightening of the filesystem access security introduced in the previous stable and GPL releases. -dSAFER now restricts read access as well as write, equivalent to -dSAFER -dPARANOIDSAFER in earlier releases."

Web-site Development

Linux App Writer Wows Skeptics (Wired). Wired examines IBM's SashXB web scripting language. "Some experienced Linux developers say they weren't impressed with the idea of SashXB at first, thinking that working with relatively simple languages such as HTML and JavaScript would limit them and their projects. But the majority of those who finally used SashXB are excited by its promise. " IBM has released the source code for SashXB under the LGPL license. Also see IBM's SashXB homepage and this article on the Gnotices site.

mnoGoSearch-php-3.2.0.beta3 released. A new beta version of the 3.2 branch of the mnoGoSearch web search engine software is available. New features include an Alias command, an improved make script, and an updated search template. The ChangeLog file has all of the release information.

Zope Members' News. This week's Zope Members' News items include an announcement for MailBoxer 1.2beta, SiteBoiler 0.1, ZFireBirdDA 0.0.2, and talk of the Zope BBQ Europe.

Tips for Building Web Database Applications with PHP and MySQL (O'Reilly). Hugh E. Williams gives some tips on building web database applications. "As a backend database management system, MySQL is the perfect partner for PHP. It has a well-deserved reputation for speed in the Web environment, where the commonest class of queries are simple SELECT queries that read from a database."

Documentation

The Linux Documentation Project gets a new domain. The latest Linux Documentation Project Weekly News includes a note that the LDP site has moved to www.tldp.org. There were evidently "some difficulties with the linuxdoc.org domain name." The old address still works for now, but updating of bookmarks and links would appear to be in order.

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

AlsaPlayer version 0.99.59 released. A new version of the AlsaPlayer audio PCM file player has been released. This version adds a number of locking fixes and includes new song information on the playlist.

WaveSurfer 1.3.1 released. Version 1.3.1 of the WaveSurfer multi-platform sound visualization and manipulation tool is available. The changes include new documentation tools, updated documentation, and bug fixes.

Web Browsers

Mozilla 1.0 RC1 coming soon. The Mozilla hope page says that the first release candidate for Mozilla 1.0 is coming soon. A development roadmap shows where the project is headed.

Desktop Environments

KDE 3.0: A New Era In Desktop Choice. KDE.News has posted the announcement for the release of KDE 3.0. "Every advance opens the door to a group of new adopters, and KDE 3 is set to tear the doors asunder."

KDE.de App of the Month: KView (KDE.News). KDE.News reports on the KDE.de Application of the Month, the KView image viewer. (In German)

People Behind KDE: Takumi Asaki. In this week's episode of The People Behind KDE, we travel to Osaka, Japan for a beer with Takumi Asaki. "I'm one of KDE users. I check the Japanese support for other bugs, and report them. Sometimes I write a patch if I can."

Graphics

Crystal Space 0.94r001 Released. Version 0.94r001 of the Crystal Space 3D engine has been released with lots of new features.

Office Applications

AbiWord Weekly News #86. Issue #86 of the AbiWord Weekly News covers the soon to be released version 0.99.5. The news site has been reworked to improve the handling of bugs.

Kernel Cousin GNUe #23. Issue #23 of Kernel Cousin GNUe is out with the latest GNU Enterprise developments.

Miscellaneous

Announcing Ganymede 1.0.10. Version 1.0.10 of the Ganymede metadirectory system has been released. "Lots of minor feature additions, lots of small bug fixes, and a good bit of code maintainability changes that we have put together over the last four months for this release." See the CHANGES file for the a detailed list.

Programming Languages

Caml

The Caml Hump. The latest adds on the Caml Hump include Stew, the OCamlGD GD graphics library interface, mtlib for mutable lists and binary trees, Lablgtk hump for dealing with LablGtk and LablGL, Cryptokit, and more.

Haskell

Glasgow Haskell Compiler 5.02.3 released. Version 5.02.3 of the Glasgow Haskell Compiler (GHC) has been released. New features include compatibility with gcc 3.x and newer glibc releases, and lots of bug fixes. (Thanks to Jens Petersen.)

Java

Create native, cross-platform GUI applications (IBM developerWorks). Kirk Vogen explains how to use the Java Standard Widget Toolkit. "The Java language has flourished in the server-side and applet spaces, but when it comes to end-user applications, it isn't usually a player. But it doesn't have to be this way. Using Linux, the GNU Compiler for Java, and the Standard Widget Toolkit, you can create fast, native GUI applications programmed in the Java language."

Lisp

New Lisp Software. The latest new Lisp software entries include version 0.2.0 of the ICanCAD electronic CAD editor for integrated circuit design, and the Meta-CVS layer on top of the popular CVS version control utility.

The first issue of The Lisp Magazine has also been announced.

Perl

SOAP::Lite servers are in danger (use Perl). use Perl points out a nasty security vulnerability in SOAP::Lite servers. "This is a big one, and relates to how SOAP::Lite dispatches method calls at runtime, and how Perl executes dynamic method calls. The very best thing you can do is take down your SOAP servers until an update is available."

Stem 0.06 released. Version 0.06 of the Stem general-purpose networking toolkit for Perl has been released. This version has been released under the GPL license and includes a new installation script, more documentation, rewritten modules, and bug fixes. See the April, 2002 edition of the Stem News for all of the details.

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for April 8, 2002. The April 8, 2002 PHP Weekly Summary looks at a proposal to make mbstring the default, Apache 2 compatibility issues for PHP, dealing with output compression level, and features an examination of Aggregate and Overload.

Pike

Pike: A Language with Teeth (Linux Journal). Linux Journal introduces Pike, a scripting language with roots in C++. "Why should you use Pike? Its powerful C++-like syntax and multiple packages are a plus, as is its speed. It's a strong web-scripting language and treats sockets like files, allowing beginners to talk to mail servers and other services with a minimal fuss."

Pascal

Writing GTK+ Programs with the Free Pascal Compiler (Linux Journal). Linux Journal shows how to use GTK+ with the Free Pascal Compiler. "Being a fan of Delphi/Pascal for Windows programming, I have been curious about the Free Pascal project for quite some time. Free Pascal is an object-oriented compiled language that has been in development since 1993. I've also been interested in writing GUI applications for Linux, which recently prompted me to give Free Pascal a try. This article will briefly explain, based on my (limited) experience, how to write graphical applications using the GIMP Took Kit (GTK+) and the Free Pascal compiler on Linux."

Python

Dr. Dobb's Python-URL!. The weekly Python-URL! for April 9 is available, with links and news of interest to the Python community.

Python 2.2.1 released. Python 2.2.1 has been released. "This being a bugfix release, there are no exciting new features -- we just fixed a lot of bugs." A bug that affects Zope has been fixed in this release.

Python Options (O'Reilly). Stephen Figgins talks about the handling of command line options in Python. "Parsing and handling options is so simple that when Greg Ward announced Optik, a command-line parsing library, I asked him why he would even bother. He replied, 'The problem is not that it's difficult per se, but that it's too easy -- any idiot can code a loop over sys.argv.'"

The Daily Python-URL. This week's entries on the Daily Python-URL include the Python Computer Graphics Kit, the JpGraph PHP graphing utility, Python 2.1.3, SLiP, the CAGE cellular automaton engine, SVGdraw, and more.

Ruby

The Ruby Garden. This week's Ruby Garden looks at several implicit return issues, endian-ness, LDAP & SSO, the Struct class, and more.

The Ruby Weekly News has announcements for the Eclipse Ruby Development Tool, Devel::Logger/1.0.0, and a new Ruby book.

Smalltalk

Swazoo, a Smalltalk Web Zoo. An new version of the "Open Source, vendor agnostic, dialect neutral web application framework for Smalltalk", known as Swazoo has been announced. New features include SSL support, support for multihomed hosts, better portability, and more.

Tcl/Tk

Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL!. The Dr. Dobb's Tcl-URL! for April 3, 2002 is out with lots of April Fool's Day material as well as more serious Tcl material.

XML

Apache SOAP type mapping, Part 2: A serialization cookbook (IBM developerWorks). Gavin Bong continues his IBM developerWorks series on Apache/SOAP. "SOAP specifies an encoding to represent common types found in databases, programming languages (for example, Java programming language), and data repositories. Apache SOAP's toolkit supports encoding by supplying a base set of (de)serializers; classes that do the grunt work of mapping Java types to serialized XML representations."

Integrated Development Environments

GNUstep Weekly Editorial. The April 5, 2002 GNUstep Weekly Editorial covers the new gslib implementation for gnustep-back, as well as other project developments.

Miscellaneous

Server clinic: Expect exceeds expectations (IBM developerWorks). Cameron Laird writes about Expect on IBM's developerWorks. "Cameron Laird opens his new monthly column with an overview of the popular Expect tool, a language capable of far more than most programmers and administrators realize. Expect is so apt for the general-purpose work needed to keep servers healthy, in fact, that it can serve as your one (almost) universal programming language."

SQL Console 1.3 for Jext. Another new version of SQL Console for the Jext programmer's editor is available and features a new sortable table view.

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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