See also: last week's Development page.

Development projects

News and Editorials

A few highlights of this release include:

• Improved SPOOLSS printing for Windows NT/2k/XP clients.
• Bug fixes relating to the serving of Access and FoxPro database files.
• VFS layer improvements and the inclusion of a recycle bin vfs module.
• A new tdbbackup tool for backing up and restoring Samba TDBs.
• Scalability and stability improvements to winbind.
• MS-DFS bug fixes.
• Fixes for the Rpcclient's printer commands.

Source code and binary packages for Samba 2.2.4 may be downloaded here. Congratulations go to the Samba team for moving this important project ahead. (Thanks to Gerald Carter)

Electronics

Icarus Verilog snapshot for April 6, 2002. A new version of the Icarus Verilog electronics simulation language compiler is available. The release notes detail all of the changes.

Embedded Systems

WANDER: a Portable Linux Data-Collection System (Linux Devices). Linux Devices features an article on the WANDER portable linux-based data collection system. "We wanted to allow the user (typically a scientist doing environmental field research) to install a variety of sensors and configure the system accordingly -- a somewhat nontrivial problem, as we can't very well anticipate every arcane serial protocol or sensor characteristic that might be encountered."

Device Profile: Cyclades TS100 'device server' (LinuxDevices.com). LinuxDevices has posted a review of the Linux-based Cyclades-TS100. "The TS100 is a powerful yet highly compact device server which is used to connect various serial devices to a TCP/IP network."

Embedded Linux Newsletter for May 2, 2002 (LinuxDevices.com). The LinuxDevices.com Embedded Linux Newsletter is available with all of the latest news and info from the world of Embedded Linux and Linux-based gadgets.

Libraries

A C++ Socket Library for Linux (Dr. Dobb's). Jason But introduces his SocketCC C++ socket library on Dr. Dobb's. "I wrote SocketCC, the C++ class library I present here, which supports both IPv4 and IPv6 network communications using both TCP- and UDP-style sockets. SocketCC is not a comprehensive sockets library, nor is it necessarily suitable for all types of applications. However, it is both class based and open source, so you should be able to work around any deficiencies by inheriting classes or rewriting the base class. "

Network Management

Guarddog Firewall 2.0 Almost Ready For Release. Guarddog Firewall is in need of testing. Guarddog is an easy to use, yet powerful, firewall for Linux machines running KDE 2 or 3.

Printing Software

LPRng 3.8.12 released. Version 3.8.12 of the LPRng print spooling system is available. The CHANGES in this release are fairly minor, involving a patch for Tcp wrappers.

Web-site Development

Zope Members News. The Zope Members News features articles on the Fle3 tools for Collaborative Knowledge Building, the Wing IDE version 1.1.4, BlogFace 1.0, the Emil 0.6.0 Email Client, and more.

Web Services

ActiveState Releases Module for Searching Google (usePerl). UsePerl reports on a new web service that allows Google's search engine to be accessed through SOAP. Perl and Python modules are provided.

Wrapping Web Service APIs (O'Reilly). Stephen Figgins explores the PyGoogle interface to Google on O'Reilly's onLamp site. "There are many approaches to writing XML based web services: SOAP, XML-RPC, REST. If all you want to do is use a service, and there is a Python wrapper for it, you might not care what it was written in. Mark Pilgrim's has wrapped the Google SOAP API. Load up his PyGoogle module and google away. The wrapper takes care of the SOAP for you."

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

Winamp glitch may benefit open source (CNET News.com). Here's an article all about Ogg Vorbis. "A recently disclosed vulnerability in an old version of the popular Winamp media player could provide a boost for the royalty-free alternative to the MP3 format known as Ogg Vorbis."

Rosegarden 4 version 0.1.5. Rosegarden 4 version 0.1.5 has been announced. "The Rosegarden development team would like to announce the release of Rosegarden-4 v0.1.5 - a sequencer and music notation editor for KDE2 now with KDE3 and ALSA 0.9 support.

This is an alpha, development release and while not yet suitable for end-users it has some interesting features and is certainly usable for composition, MIDI playback and recording."

Desktop Environments

GNOME Summary - April 23 - 28, 2002. The GNOME Summary for April 23 - 28 covers the GNOME 2 release, preferences/control panel reorganization, easy bugs to fix, Ximian setup tools, Glade, the frontier extends, AbiWord works in Evolution, and much more.

GNOME Summary for 29 April to 4 May, 2002 AC. Here's the GNOME Summary for April 29 - May 4, 2002. This issue covers a need for GNOME2 maintainers, the world's coolest archiver, a new release of Overflow, and much more.

GARNOME Preview Six (Gnotices). A new version of GARNOME is out. "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."

Games

Announcing the Crystal Space Contest. The developers of Crystal Space, an Open Source 3D Engine, have announced a contest that involves writing a game, demo, or useful tool for Crystal Space using the Crystal Space framework. Prizes totaling $950 will be awarded to three winners.

The Chopping Block. The May, 2002 edition of the Chopping Block has been published at World Forge games. This edition contains a number of meeting summaries and a bonus fictional piece.

PyDDR 0.4.5 (Pygame). The Pygame site lists a new version of PyDDR. "PyDDR is a clone of 'Dance Dance Revolution'. Dance with your body (or your fingers) and try to keep the beat. The better you do, the higher you score. There is full support for floor pads, so you can dance dance the night away."

GUI Packages

FLTK 1.1.0rc1 released. Version 1.1.0rc1 of FLTK, the fast, light toolkit has been announced. Changes include a long list of bug fixes and improvements.

Interoperability

Kernel Cousin Wine. Issue #121 of Kernel Cousin Wine covers the ALSA driver, Winsock 2 patches, tests, Wineinstall bumps, Euro support, the IE Favorites Menu, problems with CDROMs, and the XIM internationalization patch.

Office Applications

Kernel Cousin GNUe #27. Issue #27 Of Kernel Cousin GNUe features a discussion of links between GNUe and DotGNU as well as many more GNU Enterprise development issues.

AbiWord Weekly News #90. Issue #90 of the AbiWord Weekly News covers new additions and bug fixes for the AbiWord word processor project.

Miscellaneous

GnuPG version 1.0.7 released. Version 1.0.7 of the Gnu Privacy Guard (GnuPG), the open replacement for PGP has been released. This version features a large number of changes and improvements.

Languages and Tools

Caml

Caml Weekly News. the May 7, 2002 edition looks at Functional Unparsing, high end type theory, and a problem with input_line.

Lisp

Steel Bank Common Lisp 0.7.3 released. Version 0.7.3 of Steel Bank Common Lisp has been announced. It features support for more platforms, bug fixes, improved documentation, and more.

Vendor Neutral cCLan. A new vendor-neutral comprehensive Common Lisp archive network has been announced. "cCLan (comprehensive Common Lisp archive network) is a Lisp software distribution project much like CTAN for (La)TeX and CPAN for Perl. Its goal is to enable users to issue a single command for downloading, compiling and installing a module or application and all the libraries it depends on."

OpenMCL 0.11 released. Version 0.11 of OpenMCL has been released. "OpenMCL is an open-source Common Lisp implementation derived from Macintosh Common Lisp by Digitool. It runs under LinuxPPC and Darwin/MacOS X."

Perl

The Parrot Answers (use Perl). Parrot Pumpking Dan Sugalski answers a bunch of questions about Parrot, the Perl 6 compiler. Some of the questions concern supported platforms, other language support, mod_perl support, performance issues, timelines, and more.

May Issue of The Perl Review (ThePerlReview.com). The latest Perl Review for May is available in PDF form. Articles in this issue:

• Extreme Publishing: Change Happens -- Brian dFoy
• Cooking Perl with flex -- Alberto Manuel Sim
• Parroty Bits: Bit 1, The Parrot Vooms! -- Dan Sugalski
• Finding Perl Modules -- Brian dFoy

PHP

PHP Weekly Summary for May 6, 2002. The May 6 PHP Weekly Summary looks at the PHP 4.3.0 release plan, PHP 4.2.1 RC 1, the cryptopp and Xdebug extensions, interfaces, string types, and a URL Rewriter.

Python

The Daily Python-URL. This week's entries on the Daily Python-URL include the Python Pattern, fun with generators, ZUBB, embedding Python in ArcView, online polls with Zope, handling units with Unum, and more.

Pyro 2.7 released. Version 2.7 of Pyro (PYthon for Remote Objects) has been announced. "Pyro offers you a Name Server, an Event Service, mobile objects, remote exceptions, dynamic proxies, remote attribute access, automatic reconnection, a detailed manual, and many examples to get you started right away."

Ruby

The Ruby Garden. This week, the Ruby Garden covers ruby_run exiting issues, quotes and hash keys, class/module names and constants, require, and type checks.

The Ruby Weekly News. The May 5, 2002 Ruby Weekly News looks at Ruby/Google 0.4.0, Practical Ruby 0.2.2, RHDL 0.1.0, an RAA wrapper client, and more.

XML

Splitting and Manipulating Strings (O'Reilly). Bob DuCharme shows how to deal with strings with XSLT and XML. "XSLT is a language for manipulating XML documents, and XML documents are text. When you're manipulating text, functions for searching strings and pulling out substrings are indispensable for rearranging documents to create new documents. The XPath string functions incorporated by XSLT give you a lot of power when you're manipulating element character data, attribute values, and any other strings of text that your stylesheet can access."

Debuggers

GNUstep Weekly Editorial. The May 3, 2002 GNUstep Weekly Editorial covers the latest developments on the GNUstep debugger project.

Software Testing

OProfile 0.2 released. Version 0.2 of the OProfile code profiler has been announced. "OProfile is still in alpha, but has been proven stable for many users."

Section Editor: Forrest Cook

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