General Development Archive

PEAK is a Python framework for rapidly developing and reusing application components. While Python itself is already a very high-level language, PEAK provides even higher abstractions, largely through the clever use of metaclasses and other advanced Python techniques. In many ways, PEAK does for Python what J2EE does for the Java™ language.

An application developer can choose any one of a number of strategies to read and use an XML document. In some very simple examples a script containing a number of regular expressions might do the job, but normally a more rigorous technique is required. The Simple API for XML (SAX) is one of the two key techniques for analysing and processing XML documents (the other is the more complicated Document Object Model (DOM)). Read the article here.

The Subversion development team has released version 1.0.3. This is a security bugfix release and the team suggests all Subversion users upgrade: "Subversion versions up to and including 1.0.2 have a buffer overflow in the date parsing code. Both client and server are vulnerable. The server is vulnerable over both httpd/DAV and svnserve (that is, over http://, https://, svn://, svn+ssh:// and other tunneled svn+*:// methods). Additionally, clients with shared working copies, or permissions that allow files in the administrative area of the working copy to be written by other users, are potentially exploitable."

My physics teacher likes to say that physics like to make problems they face look like ones that they know how to solve. A simple harmonic oscillation was one he frequently used in class, as is presumably the case in physics in general.

The multi-platform C++ Fox toolkit 1.2 has being released. There's also a "Whats New" article written by Lyle Johnson in addition to the announcement.

In recent years "scripting languages" are becoming a path which is a must go for rapid application development. The open source community has seen many scripting language implementations. Some really popular and good ones available are perl and python.

In terms of time and space shared memory is probably the most efficient inter-process communication channel provided by all modern OSes. This article explains how to Use Shared Objects On Linux.

This article shows how to grid enable applications using the first two of the six strategies so the applications can run as single or multiple instance batch jobs that are location independent. It explains the characteristics of applications using these strategies and details what the application developer must, should, and can optionally do to implement these strategies. A major objective when using Strategy 1 and Strategy 2 is to ensure that the application is as flexible as possible regarding middleware products.

If you're coming from a different programming background, one feature of XSLT (all versions) may seem especially difficult to grasp. I'm not referring to the XML-based syntax; once you get a feel for it, it is surprisingly transparent (even if bulky). For many novices, much more puzzling is XSLT's lack of an assignment operator. Read the article at DevChannel.

Luax is a similar framework as Java or Python for that matter, offering OS-independent programming platform for writing any kind of applications. Unlike Java, LuaX uses existing C/C++ open source libraries extensively (SDL, etc.) to do its work.

Even if your work doesn't require you to reboot your Linux machine several times a day, waiting for a system to reboot can be a real drag. Enter kexec. Essentially, kexec is a fast reboot feature that lets you reboot to a new Linux kernel -- without having to go through a bootloader. Faster reboot is a benefit even when uptime isn't mission-critical -- and a lifesaver for kernel and system software developers who need to reboot their machines several times a day. Kexec is currently available on the x86 32-bit platform only.

This article discusses a "Minority Report"-alike user interface developed at Microsoft (video here). In the meantime, Windows Forms 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 (both codenamed "Whidbey") are the next release of Microsoft’s smart client platform and tools.

This article describes how to find common programming mistakes that may lead to poor startup time and how to correct them. Included is a case study demonstrating how the Runtime Spy was used to improve the startup performance of IBM WebSphere Studio Application Developer. The previous article, Part 1, introduces the Runtime Spy.

The Eclipse Modeling Framework (EMF) is an open source framework for developing model-driven applications. It creates Java code for graphically editing, manipulating, reading, and serializing data based on a model specified in XML Schema, UML, or annotated Java. This article will step you through the process of creating a model, generating code, using the generated apps, and customizing the editor.