---

Release Digest: GNOME, June 25, 2003

Eighth release of PythonCAD

I’d like to announce the eighth development release of
PythonCAD, a CAD package for open-source software users. As the
name implies, PythonCAD is written entirely in Python. The goal of
this project is to create a fully scriptable drafting program that
will match and eventually exceed features found in commercial CAD
software. PythonCAD is released under the GNU Public License
(GPL).

PythonCAD requires Python 2.2. The interface is GTK 2.0 based,
and uses the PyGTK module for interfacing to GTK. The design of
PythonCAD is built around the idea of separating the interface from
the back end as much as possible. By doing this, it is hoped that
both GNOME and KDE interfaces can be added to PythonCAD through
usage of the appropriate Python module. Addition of other
interfaces will depend on the availability of a Python module for
that particular interface and developer interest and action.

The eighth release features improved preference controls. There
is now a unified preference dialog box for setting drawing
preferences, and more optional settings are now possible. Setting
the background color of the drawing window is now available, and
many dimension entity settings have been added, such as dimension
bar color, dimension endpoint marker size, and dimension text
color. The new preference dialog also allows for the setting of
leader line arrow sizes and font color. Another new feature in this
release is a tool for drawing polygons. The polygons can have any
number of sides from three on up.

A number of internal code improvements are included in this
release as well. The intersection code has been reworked again to
return entity intersections as tuples containing float values. This
release also has the beginnings of the rework of internal storage
and handling of the user preferences and options. This work will
continue for the next several releases at least. There are the
usual assortment of bug fixes, documentation additions, and code
improvements as well.

The new preference dialog does have a display bug when showing
the font selection widget. I haven’t figured out what is wrong, but
opted to make the release with the bug present. A simple workaround
is to select another option to modify so the font display widget
gets removed, then reselect the option with the font display
widget. This workaround will usually make the widget display itself
properly. The next release should have this bug removed.

The mailing list for the development and use of PythonCAD is
available. Visit the following page for information about
subscribing and viewing the mailing list archive:

http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/pythoncad

I’d like to again publicly acknowledge and thank the developers
and maintainers of PyChecker for the work they’ve done in
developing this most useful tool. PyChecker is an effective tool
for identifying errors in Python code, and I’ve been using it more
and more. PyChecker gets a big recommendation from me and so I say
thank you to the people who make it available.

http://pychecker.sourceforge.net/

Visit the PythonCAD web site for more information about what
PythonCAD does and aims to be:

http://www.pythoncad.org/

Come and join me in developing PythonCAD into a world class
drafting program!

Art Haas

Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against
absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is
the sport of every wind.

-Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822


BEAST/BSE v0.5.3

BEAST/BSE version 0.5.3 is available for download at:

ftp://beast.gtk.org/pub/beast/v0.5

or
http://beast.gtk.org/beast-ftp/v0.5

This is a quick update to fix crashes upon script initialization
on some systems where short writes can occour.

BEAST (the Bedevilled Audio SysTem) is a graphical front-end to
BSE (the Bedevilled Sound Engine), a library for music composition,
audio synthesis and sample manipulation. The project is hosted
at:

http://beast.gtk.org

This new development series of BEAST comes with a lot of the
internals redone, many new GUI features and a sound generation
back-end separated from any GUI activities.

The most outstanding new features are the track editor which
allowes for easy selection of synthesizers or samples as track
sources, loop support and unlimited UnDo/ReDo capabilities.

Note, the .bse file format hasn’t fully stabilized yet, so
incompatibilities with future versions may occur, though we’re
making every possible attempt to maintain backwards
compatibility.

Overview of Changes in BEAST/BSE 0.5.3:

  • Seperated core plugin loading from LADSPA plugin loading
  • Fixed memory leaks in various places
  • Added child process (bsesh) error monitoring
  • Fixed bsesh (script) communication for systems with short
    writes


ciaoTJ


Heartbeat 0.2

Application

Heartbeat 0.2

Description

A pygtk server monitoring application with ablility to monitor
multiple services and multiple servers

Enhancements

  • Support for using multiple configuration files using –config
    <config.xml>
  • Defaults section has been added to the xml configuration file
    so you do not have to add certain properties to each service you
    wish to monitor. If the service does not have a particular property
    defined in it, heartbeat will then check the defaults section for
    that property.
  • The mysql service now checks for the existance of the MySQLdb
    python module and uses it to connect to the mysql server.
  • The postgresql service now checks for the existance of the
    pyPgSQL python module and uses it to connect to the postgresql
    server.
  • The debug log can now be saved to a text file
  • The debug log will now autoscroll by default when new text is
    added to it
  • The debug log now displays more verbose error messages and uses
    red text on error messages as to make them stand out more
  • Removed the ability to edit service properties for the time
    being
  • Added Stock Icons to the menus and buttons.

Download

http://www.nolongervalid.com/heartbeat/heartbeat-0.2.tar.gz

http://www.nolongervalid.com/heartbeat/heartbeat-0.2.tar.bz2

GNOME Software Map entry

http://www.gnome.org/softwaremap/projects/hearbeat

Freshmeat Project


http://www.freshmeat.net/projects/heartbeat/


Conglomerate 0.5.4

Application

Conglomerate 0.5.4

Description

Conglomerate is an XML editor for GNOME, aiming to be as
user-friendly as possible, to help non-technical people to use
DocBook and similar formats.

Enhancements

  • Fixed bug #115460: the executable is now named “conglomerate”,
    rather than “conge”
  • Major rewrite of the node “Properties” dialog. It’s now
    modeless, a lot tidier, and supports the renaming of
    attributes.
  • The display spec can now specify that Conglomerate should
    override the standard node property dialog for a tag, and use one
    from a plugin instead. I’ve begun the implementation of one of
    these plugins: a dialog that handles the standard attributes that
    are present on nearly every DocBook tag.
  • We no longer depend on eel or libbonoboui, which should make it
    easier to build
  • We now depend on libglade, which should make it much easier to
    support things like accessibility.
  • Numerous minor fixes

Download

http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82766

GNOME Software Map entry

http://www.gnome.org/softwaremap/projects/conge


gwget2 0.5

Application

gwget2 0.5

Description

Gnome2 wget front-end.

Enhancements

  • Added Drag&Drop support. Now it’s posible to drag urls from
    galeon/mozilla to gwget2.
  • Added speed of the download.
  • Added dutch translation (thanks to Reinout van Schouwen).

Fixes

  • Fixed a bug with i18n support. Now i18n works but not in the
    column titles. I don’t know why, so if you know how to fix this,
    let me known (with a patch 😉 )
  • Fixed path of gwget2.xpm install to.

Download


http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=1708&release_id=167736

GNOME Software Map entry

http://www.gnome.org/softwaremap/projects/gwget2

Get the Free Newsletter!

Subscribe to Developer Insider for top news, trends, & analysis