Category: Open Source

Free and Open Source Software Listing

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OpenDocument is now ISO approved!

This may be already a stale news, but I’ll post it anyway. OpenDocument recently was approved as international standard (ISO/IEC 26300), hooray. For you information, OpenDocument is an open document file format for saving and exchanging editable office documents such as text documents (including memos, reports, and books), spreadsheets, databases, charts, and presentations.

The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats including the popular but undocumented DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office, as well as Microsoft Office Open XML format.

In a nutshell, everybody is free to implement OpenDocument (ODF) support, and users will not be locked out by a single vendor as in case with proprietary office format like Microsoft Office and Lotus SmartSuite.

Currently the most popular applications that support OpenDocument is < a href="http://openoffice.org">OpenOffice (supported on a number of operating systems), Abiword and KOffice.

Visit OpenOffice Wikipedia entry for more information about OpenDocument Format

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Open Source : Do you still use Microsoft Windows? Then read on

open source application mypapit

With the rapid growth of GNU/Linux and as a production operating system, open source and free software has become more common now. More people has adopted GNU/Linux or one of the *BSD variant as their choice of operating system.But don’t feel bad if you are one of the people who are still using Microsoft Windows, because you can still join the open source club.

Introducing Open Source Windows, a website which list the best free and open source software for Windows. The folks behind OpenSourceWindows has made their objective to showcase the best, most important, and easiest to use free and open source software for average people to download.

If you are not using Windows, can’t use GNU/Linux for some reason and prefer Mac OS, then fear not, there’s also Open Source Mac page, brought to you by the same folks for your convenient.

Now there’s no more reason not to use FOSS anymore, everything’s easy!

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GnuBoy – Play Classic GameBoy Games in your Computer

I don’t know if any of you ever had one of these back in the 90s. It’s a sort of handheld game console, veteran gamers might recognise it as a GameBoy console. Too bad in those days i can’t afford the luxury to buy one of those game console :p, thus I occasionally borrowed my friends’ GameBoy and logged many hours with it.

Why I suddenly blog about GameBoy? Because one fine day, I find myself curious about the gnuboy package included in my Ubuntu universe repository. The package reads

gnuboy emulates the Color GameBoy handheld console in portable C, with interfaces for X11, Linux fbcon and svgalib, SDL, DOS, and Windows, with other ports planned in the future

So I decided to try the out the gnuboy emulator and try to relive Nintendo GameBoy feeling. The gnuboy itself is flexible and supports SDL, X11, svgalib and fbcon display. However, I chose the SDL version because I like how games are implemented in libSDL. Suprisingly, the game I’m trying to play was emulated faithfully without noticeable bugs or artifacts (besides the retro 90s look), I could say that this is one of the best game emulator that I ever tried besides DosBox which provides emulation for DOS games.

Where to get GameBoy ROM files ?

Legally, you need to actually own the game in order to have the ROM . However there is a place where you can get legal GameBoy ROM files which is here : http://www.pdroms.de, and here : jaymzroo 86 site.

Where you can get gnuboy ?

You only need to enable multiverse/universe software repository if you are using Ubuntu. Try to check your software repository under games or emulator if you are using other GNU/Linux distributions. There’s gnuboy ports exist for FreeBSD under emulators.

The source code for gnuboy can be located at http://brightrain.aerifal.cx/~laguna/, if you are interested to compile it from scratch. Microsoft Windows user can make use of these precompiled binaries http://brightrain.aerifal.cx/~laguna/windows/

Happy gaming!

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Guido van Rossum – fun playing Python on S60 (pys60)

Nokia 6630 MypapitThe Python for Nokia is really exciting from the moment you download it, to the moment it runs on your phone. I know that experience first hand when I saw my Python applications was up and running on my phone! Previously I only had experience writing mobile applications in Java J2ME, but writing the same stuff in Python is a whole new experience for me. It seems that I’m not the only one having fun with Python for Nokia. Python creator Guido van Rossum, also states in a forum that he has too much fun with Nokia 6630 phone that he recently acquired.

He expressed that Nokia has done an outstanding job for porting Python to its own product line, incorporating Python library inside the phone. Additionaly, extensions also exists to handle phone’s operation like dial a call, snap a picture, send/receive SMS, Bluetooth, and Internet.

Finally, Nokia has made writing Symbian applications even easier with GUI modules that handles menu, alert, tab, canvas, event loop and other low-level event without the need of recompiling application. Python for Nokia is indeed fun. Why don’t you try it yourself now?

Original forum thread : http://www.artima.com/forums/

symbian,nokia,python,pys60,s60,mobile

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libcurlemu – a pure PHP curl implementation (libcurl emulator)

Have you came across a situation where you need to use php libcurl extension and it was not enabled on your webserver? Then, try libcurlemu, apure-PHP implementation to PHP cURL. It emulates all of the curl_* functions normally provided by the native cURL extension itself.

libcurlemu works transparently regardless of the availability of PHP cURL extensions, thus making your script even more portable across web server that does not have PHP cURL extensions.

What is libcurl / cURL?

cURL is a command-line tool that supports transfering files with URL syntax. It supports many protocols like FTP, FTPS, TFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, TELNET, DICT, FILE and LDAP.

libcurl is a library based on cURL that helps you to connect and communicate with different type of protocols. libcurl currently supports the http, https, ftp, gopher, telnet, and ldap protocols.

For HTTP/HTTPS protocol, libcurl supports POST, PUT, GET and DELETE method, making it suitable for writing web services, particularly REST-like services.

Stay tune for code examples on how to use libcurl to emulate a browser submitting POST request to a server.

libcurlemu is written by Steve Blinch, and can be downloaded at his website : http://code.blitzaffe.com

php, libcurl, curl, rest, opensource

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AJAX Web applications with Yahoo UI Library !

Yahoo Developer Network has released the Yahoo! User Interface Library. It is a toolkit library written in Javascript for building web applications by utilising DOM scripting, XHTML and AJAX (XMLHttpRequest).

The library is designed to simplify web development and to enhance web experience for the web applications users. Among things that included in the library are :

  • Animations
  • Connection Manager
  • DOM
  • Drag and Drop
  • Event
  • Calendar
  • Slider
  • Treeview

The Yahoo! UI Library is released under the BSD License. Please refer to http://developer.yahoo.net/yui/ for more information.

yahoo, ajax, webdev, yahoo.com,dom, javascript