Home Blog Page 9103

EU will investigate HP-Compaq merger

Author: JT Smith

Reported at the Industry Standard: “The European Commission will
investigate the $25 billion takeover of Compaq
Computer by Hewlett-Packard, a Commission
spokeswoman said.

“If the deal meets the sales thresholds set forth in
the European Union competition regulations, then
it will be examined by the Commission,” said
Amelia Torres, a Commission spokeswoman on
competition matters.”

Building a better computer chip

Author: JT Smith

Reported at CBS News: “Motorola Inc. has
developed a computer chip it
says is 35 times faster than
today’s models and will cut the
cost of manufacturing electronics
such as cell phones and DVD
players, the company
announced Tuesday.

The semiconductor combines
silicon, the inexpensive material
commonly used to produce semiconductors, and gallium arsenide,
a more expensive material that can transmit signals at much
higher speeds.”

Category:

  • Unix

Opera releases beta for Mac OS X

Author: JT Smith

Announced at Opera Software: “Opera Software today released Opera 5 for Mac OS X Carbon Beta 1. The Opera 5.0 for Mac, which has received international
recognition for its speed, small size and standards-compliance, now offers Mac users the same stability whether they use systems 7.5.3
to 9.x or Mac OS X Carbon.”

MS eBook cracker keeps findings secret

Author: JT Smith

“An anonymous programmer has created a program that cracks the security of
Microsoft’s eBook reader software in a development that put a fresh spin on the
case against Russian programmer, Dmitry Sklyarov.

According to the MIT Technology Review, a “home brewed decryption program” has
been developed which defeats the digital rights management features in Microsoft
Reader.” From a report at The Register.

Category:

  • Linux

Renaming Linux to LING (Linux is not GNU)

Author: JT Smith

Commentary from Mojolin’s Dan Barber: “I’ve been silent on this issue though it has bothered me for some time now — at least since Richard
Stallman sent me an email asking that I use the GNU/Linux appellation on my web site. I have given the issue
quite a bit of consideration since then, going back and forth on how reasonable the request was — though I
never seemed to actually see-saw into agreement with Mr. Stallman. In the end, and after much time, I have
decided that it is not appropriate.”

Microsoft unveils new XP Embedded version

Author: JT Smith

CNET News.com reports on the second beta release of Microsoft’s new Windows XP Embedded operating system. “Microsoft has had a difficult time expanding its software dominance into the embedded market,
which has been dominated by lesser-known companies such as Wind River Systems, and into
the server market, where Unix systems and even older mainframe computers still rule the roost.”

New release of GTK+ libraries (1.3.7)

Author: JT Smith

A new release of the development versions of GTK+ and associated
libraries (GLib, Pango, Atk) is available at:

ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v1.3/

The JPEG/PNG/TIFF libraries and pkg-config 0.8 are needed to compile this
release. These are available at:
 
  ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v1.3/dependencies/

 (pkg-config latest canonical upstream location is
  at http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig/ - note that 
  it has moved from sourceforge. But gtk.org mirrors the 
  0.8 version you need to build GTK 1.3.7)

You will also need "libiconv" on systems with C libraries that lack
the iconv() function:
  
  http://clisp.cons.org/~haible/packages-libiconv.html

Library Descriptions
====================

GLib 1.3.7

 GLib is the low-level core library that forms the basis of GTK+ and
 GNOME. It provides data structure handling for C, portability
 wrappers, and interfaces for such runtime functionality as an event
 loop, threads, dynamic loading, and an object system.

  http://www.gtk.org

Pango 0.18

 Pango is a library for layout and rendering of text, with an 
 emphasis on internationalization. It forms the core of
 text and font handling for GTK+-2.0.

  http://www.pango.org

Atk 0.3

 The ATK library provides a set of interfaces for accessibility.
 By supporting the ATK interfaces, an application or toolkit can
 be used such as tools such as screen readers, magnifiers,
 and alternative input devices. 

  http://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/

GTK+ 1.3.7

 GTK+ is a widget toolkit for X and other windowing systems. It 
 is used in such projects as the GIMP and GNOME. 

  http://www.gtk.org

Notes
=====

This release is meant for:

 * Those interested in the development of GTK+. 
 * People planning to port to the upcoming GTK+-2.0 version of GTK+.

   Note: the API is mostly frozen at this point. Major API changes
   beyond the remaining open '2.0 API freeze' bugs in bugzilla are
   unlikely to occur before GTK+-2.0 is released.

This is a an unstable preview release and should not be used in
production. Only minimal testing has been done, and we expect that
significant bugs and portability problems remain at this point.

This release is incompatible with GTK+ and GLib 1.2.x. Software that
has not been explicitly ported will not compile with this version.  Do
not send bug reports about such compilation problems to either us or
maintainers of software that uses GLib and GTK+ 1.2.x; The currently
supported version of GLib and GTK+ is version 1.2.10.

If you install these libraries, do NOT replace your current GLib
and GTK+ packages with them; these libraries are designed so they
can be installed in parallel with a GTK+ install without affecting
it.


Comments should be sent to:

 GLib, GTK+: gtk-devel-list@gnome.org
             http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-devel-list

 Pango:      gtk-i18n-list@gnome.org
             http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gtk-i18n-list


 ATK:        gnome-accessibility-list@gnome.org
             http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-accessibility-list


Bug reports should be filed in the GNOME bug tracker at:

  http://bugzilla.gnome.org


Source and binary packages of these libraries build against Red Hat
7.1 can be found at:

 ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v1.3/binary/RedHat-7.1


The source RPMS can most likely be rebuilt and installed on other
RPM-based Linux distributions.


Overview of Changes in GLib 1.3.7
=================================

* Integrate GClosure support into the main loop  [Owen Taylor]
* More GSignal convenience functions (macros)  [Sven Neumann, Tim Janik]
* Introduced weak references for GObject  [James Henstridge, Sven, Tim] 
* Minor hash table optimizations
* Main loop and threading improvements  [Sebastian Wilhelmi]
* Added g_ascii_* functions to be used for locale insensitive UTF-8
  compliant code instead of old string functions  [Darin Adler, Alex Larsson]
* Add functions for Unicode case-conversion, normalization, 
  and collation  [Owen]
* GString improvements  [Owen]
* Reworked the GIOChannel code  [Hidetoshi Tajima, Ron Steinke]
* Removed glib-config-2.0 in favour of pkgconfig  [Sebastian]
* Make code 64bit clean  [Mark Murnane]
* More G_CONST_RETURN fixes
* Many improvements to the win32 code  [Tor Lillqvist, Hans Breuer]
* Miscellaneous bug and API fixes

Other contributors: 
  Michael Natterer, Christopher James Lahey, Padraig O'Briain,  
  Matthias Clasen, Josh Pritikin, Steve Baker, Cesar Rincon, Garry R. Osgood,
  Michael Meeks, Laszlo Peter,  Martin Baulig, Kjartan Maraas, Andrew Lanoix, 
  Peter Williams

Overview of Changes in Pango 0.17
=================================

* Add PangoLanguage type for language tags, use consistently.
* Add support for different font orderings for different lanuages to
  basic shaper.
* Win32 fixes  [Alexander Larsson, Hans Breuer]
* Add pango_context_get_metrics() to get metrics for a font description
* Add GTypes for various types  [James Henstridge]
* Lots of warning fixes  [Darin Adler]
* Fix to PangoLayout for lines with only tabs on them  [Matthias Clasen]
* Improve compositing of glyphs for pangoft2 backend  [Sven Neumann]
* Export pango_color_parse().
* Adapt to changes in GLib.
* Build and bug fixes.

Other contributors:
  Tim Janik,  Jens Finke, Havoc Pennington, Darin Adler

Overview of Changes in Atk 0.3
==============================

* API improvements to AtkTable, AtkSelection
* Add AtkDocument interface
* Rename AtkHyperLink to AtkHyperlink
* Allow for screen or window relative coordinates
* Utility functions
* Various minor tweeks and cleanups. 
* Documentation improvements
* Add default implementations for important functions

Contributors:
  Padraig O'Briain, Marc Mulcahy, Bill Haneman, Jens Finke,  Brian Cameron,
  Hans Breuer,  Darin Adler, Tim Janik, Louise Miller, Lucy Brophy

Overview of Changes in GTK+ 1.3.7
=================================

* Many Pixbuf (loader) improvements  [Matthias Clasen, Soeren Sandmann]
* Added publically installed utility gdk-pixbuf-csource to generate
  inlined pixbufs in C source code  [Tim Janik]
* Optional movement of button children on press  [Soeren, Owen Taylor]
* Interactive searching in GtkTreeView  [Kristian Rietveld]
* Sorting/ordering improvements for GtkTreeView  [Kris, Jonathan Blandford]
* Animation of expander motion for GtkTreeView  [Anders Carlsson]
* Lots of misc GtkTreeView fixes and improvements  [Jonathan]
* New/improved stock icons  [Jakub Steiner] 
* Code and API rework for window resizing  [Havoc Pennington]
* Converted accel groups to GObject  [James Henstridge]
* More property support improvements
* Add facility for "secondary" buttons in 
  GtkButtonBox/GtkDialog  [Gregory Merchan]
* Disentangled child visability from MAPPED state  [Owen]
* Plug/Socket improvements and port to the XEMBED protocol  [Owen]
* Added priorities for styles in RC files, 
  support multiple parse contents  [Owen]
* Made GdkVisual and GdkDevice GObjects  [Alexander Larsson]
* Key binding improvements  [Havoc]
* Added GtkWidget::event-after signal since normal event handling
  is now aborted as soon as a handler returned TRUE  [Tim]
* Dnd fixes and improved icon support  [Owen]
* Removed GtkPacker widget
* Fixing missing paired getters/setters  [Kris]
* Nuked remaining GtkArg cruft, implemented container/child properties  [Tim]
* Added window grab groups  [Owen]
* Many frame buffer improvements  [Alex]
* Win32 fixes and improvements  [Hans Breuer]
* Warning fixes  [Darin Adler]
* Miscellaneous bug and API fixes  [Matthias et. al]

Other Contributors
  Joshua N Pritikin, Hidetoshi Tajima, Manish Singh, ERDI Gergo, Jens Finke, 
  Chema Celorio, Lee Mallabone, Vitaly Tishkov, Sebastian Wilhelmi, 
  Nicola Girardi, Sven Neumann, Padraig O'Briain, Michael Natterer, 
  Suresh Chandrasekharan, Jonas Borgström, Jay Cox, Michael Meeks,
  Mathias Hasselmann, Peter Williams, Thomas Broyer, Kjartan Maraas, 
  Joel Becker, Jeff Franks, Brian Cameron, Skip Montanaro

GNOME Summary

Author: JT Smith

The latest GNOME Summary is now available. This edition looks at the GNOME Accessibility Framework, Sun’s desktop division, Ximian’s new shrinkwrapped software, additions to the GNOME Foundation, and the status of libgnome.

This is the GNOME Summary for 2001-08-19 - 2001-09-01
    
==============================================================
Table of Contents
--------------------------------------------------------------

1. GNOME accessibility
2. Sun's Desktop Division making headway
3. GNOME 2.0 Status Interview: James Henstridge and libglade
4. Ximian shrink-wrap software
5. Gnome Foundation news
6. libgnome* status
7. Bonobo-python 0.2.0
8. Hacker Activity

==============================================================
1. GNOME accessibility
--------------------------------------------------------------

An early access release of the GNOME Accessiblity Framework was announced by 
the Foundation. The ATK (Accessibility ToolKit) is a toolkit independent 
implementation which allows assistive technologies (screen readers etc) to get 
information about the desktop. This is a general capability that any GUI 
toolkit could use, in GTK+ 2.0's case the standard widgets have built-in 
support. So applications written with GTK+ 2.0 will automatically be 
accessible, though coders can do various things to make their apps more 
accessible - the GAP (GNOME Accessiblity Project) project has more information. 
This is an important piece of work predominantly provided by the SUN hackers. 

        http://www.gnome.org/pr-accessible.htmlhttp://developer.gnome.org/projects/gap/

==============================================================
2. Sun's Desktop Division making headway
--------------------------------------------------------------

Christian Schaller interviews many of the Sun hackers to find out what they've 
been up to with GNOME. Topics covered include some of the reasons Sun chose 
GNOME, usability, accessiblity, testing and how the transition from CDE is 
planned. This is a wide-ranging interview which really gives you a feel for 
what this team hopes to achieve working with GNOME. 

        http://www.linuxpower.org/display.php?id=213

==============================================================
3. GNOME 2.0 Status Interview: James Henstridge and libglade
--------------------------------------------------------------

Glade and libglade have been two of the most outstanding successes of GNOME for 
application developers. Describing the GUI as an XML document allows quick 
development and freedom to try different designs quickly. Jeff Waugh asks James 
about the port of libglade to GNOME 2.0. 

        http://perkypants.org/projects/gnome-2.0-interviews/libglade/


==============================================================
4. Ximian shrink-wrap software
--------------------------------------------------------------

Ximian announced availability of its' commercial version of the GNOME 
evironment. The Ximian desktop is a packaged version of GNOME provided on CD 
for either $29.95 or with Staroffice for $49.95. Meanwhile the Ximian hackers 
are all steam ahead to get Evolution 1.0 ready by October: a competition for 
anyone helping with bug-hunting was announced. 

        http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-6984949.htmlhttp://www.ximian.com/products/ximian_desktop/http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/08/29/1846223&mode=thread

==============================================================
5. Gnome Foundation news
--------------------------------------------------------------

The GNOME Foundation announced Timothy Ney as Director of the GNOME Foundation. 
He will be responsible for the administrative side of the Foundation and will 
also be the main contact point. This is an exciting development, with a full 
time employee hopefully the Foundations work will progress quickly. Federico 
also released the proposed policy on gnome.org accounts - comments are sought. 

        http://www.gnome.org/pr-ney_execdir.htmlhttp://lists.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2001-August/msg00027.htmlhttp://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2807176,00.htmlhttp://lists.gnome.org/archives/foundation-list/2001-August/msg00008.html
==============================================================
6. libgnome* status
--------------------------------------------------------------

Anders Carlsson the new maintainer for the libgnome* libraries sent an update 
on their status and what's left to be done for the freeze to become solid. 
There's still lots to be done and a number of tough problems to sort out, but 
it's down to enough issues that everyone can concentrate on them. Some of the 
core developers have started considering moving to the GNOME 2.0 platform so 
that bugs will be more easily discovered such as Nautilus and gide. 

        http://lists.gnome.org/archives/gnome-2-0-list/2001-August/msg00405.html

==============================================================
7. Bonobo-python 0.2.0
--------------------------------------------------------------

Johan Dahlin released an initial version of Python bindings for Bonobo the 
GNOME component architecture. There are some basic examples and screenshots on 
his homepage, hopefully more will come. As bonobo is becoming more important to 
the development platform more effort is being put into language bindings. 

        
http://lists.gnome.org/archives/gnome-announce-list/2001-August/msg00033.html

==============================================================
8. Hacker Activity
--------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for Paul Warren for these lists.

Most active modules:
 230 evolution
 77 galeon
 68 gtranslator
 63 gnumeric
 60 web-devel-2
 58 mc
 40 gtk+
 37 gtkhtml
 34 gnome-core
 31 procman
 31 nautilus
 28 pan
 27 guile-gobject
 24 gnomemeeting
 24 balsa
 23 gnome-utils
 23 libglade
 22 gnome-xml
 21 gdm2
 21 guppi3
[110 active modules omitted]

Most active hackers:
 70 kabalak
 56 proskin
 55 chyla
 52 rodrigo
 44 damon
 44 martin
 44 ettore
 32 jirka
 30 kmaraas
 28 darin
 27 jesusb
 27 veillard
 27 fejj
 26 jamesh
 26 trow
 26 kevinv
 26 jberkman
 25 peterw
 24 mpeseng
 23 menthos
[122 active hackers omitted]


==============================================================
8. Hacker Activity
--------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks for Paul Warren for these lists.

Most active modules:
 111 gnome-utils
 91 galeon
 77 evolution
 57 gtranslator
 45 gnumeric
 38 gtk+
 29 pan
 29 nautilus
 28 ximian-setup-tools
 28 libgnome
 26 gimp
 26 gdm2
 26 libgnomeui
 25 procman
 25 web-devel-2
 23 mc
 20 guile-gobject
 17 gnome-core
 17 devhelp
 16 gtkhtml
[124 active modules omitted]

Most active hackers:
 102 linas
 88 baddog
 63 jirka
 51 kabalak
 42 martin
 41 darin
 31 mpeseng
 24 chyla
 24 olau
 24 menthos
 22 cactus
 21 jody
 21 proskin
 20 unammx
 19 lark
 18 uraeus
 18 bansz
 18 hp
 17 trow
 17 rodrigo
[117 active hackers omitted]

Until next time,

Steve
gnome-summary@gnome.org


_______________________________________________
gnome-announce-list mailing list
gnome-announce-list@gnome.org
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnome-announce-list

Category:

  • Linux

Zope 2.4.1 released

Author: JT Smith

Zope 2.4.1, the Open Source application server and portal toolkit has been released, and you can download it from zope.org or read all about the latest changes or browse the history file for more information.

Category:

  • Open Source

TurboLinux releases PowerCockpit

Author: JT Smith

Posted at BusinessWire: “By dramatically reducing the time it takes to deploy or redeploy servers, Turbolinux
PowerCockpit makes using Linux simpler, faster, and less expensive.
PowerCockpit enables instant reconfiguration of computing systems, representing a radical shift in the way servers are currently defined and creating enormous
ramifications for every segment of the marketplace. For instance, manufacturers can benefit from simplified system configuration through automation and IT managers can
reconfigure and redeploy systems as the need arises, recycling computing power on demand. Web servers, for example, can become application servers in 10 minutes or
less using just a few simple commands.”