All Articles

George Kraft IV Issue #49, May 1998 A major strength of the Common Desktop Evnironment is its programming infrastructure, for example, ToolTalk. This article illustrates client and server plug-and-play through the use of the Desktop’s Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). ToolTalk, in the Common Desktop Environment (CDE), is a message brokering system that enables applications to communicate with each other without ...

Richard Schwaninger Issue #49, May 1998 A discussion of rapid prototyping and how it can benefit programmers in creating software to match the customer’s needs. Creating software is a complex process that embeds the programmer in rules and constraints. Customer needs fight against bugs in the program, and usability fights against production costs. The current procedure to solve all these ...

Eric S. Raymond Issue #48, April 1998 Netscape source is now free, who would have thought it? Eric Raymond, that’s who. Here are his insights into this momentous event. One of the strangest and most disorienting feelings to experience is waking up and realizing you’re making history. I had that feeling the day of Netscape’s bombshell announcement on January 23, ...

Marjorie Richardson Issue #48, April 1998 Mr. Eid began work for Corel Corporation in 1989 and eventually rose to the position of Vice President of Technology. In October of last year, Corel Computer Corporation announced that its newest computer, the Corel Video Network Computer, would come with the Linux operating system installed. Wanting to know more, I asked for and ...

James Shapiro Issue #48, April 1998 Mr. Shapiro shows us how to write a program to compute internal rate of return using three programming languages supported by Linux—Perl, C and Java. The world of finance is rife with mathematical formulas. We are all familiar with the elementary ones like those for compound interest or tallying up the value of a ...

Ivan Griffin Mark Donnelly PhD. John Nelson Issue #48, April 1998 This month we are presented with an introduction to the networking of distributed objects and the use of CORBA. In the last few articles in this series, we dealt with basic low-level network programming in Linux, and with the issues involved in developing network servers (daemons). However, coding at ...

Otto Hammersmith Issue #48, April 1998 Here’s an explanation of how Imake works and how you can use it to build your executables—an article for programmers with C and Unix programming skills. Imake is tool for configuring the X Window System and its components for different platforms and compilers. Imake allows you to create a generic description of how your ...

Bob Hepple Issue #47, March 1998 Linux software to control the Casio QV-10 camera is now available. Mr. Hepple tells us how to use qvplay. In the continuing battle with the Evil Empire, I have recently reduced my dependence on “Them” by one program—I discovered a way to use my Casio QV-10 digital camera with Linux. This article is a ...

Brandon M. Browning Issue #47, March 1998 Here’s a way to filter unwanted mail using procmail. If you regularly receive a high volume of mail (e.g., you subscribe to several mailing lists) or are the target of unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE), mail filtering may have crossed your mind. procmail is a flexible tool that allows you to process incoming e-mail ...

Timotej Ecimovic Issue #47, March 1998 GPIB is a standard bus used in laboratory and industry data acquisition and experimental control that is now available for Linux. Gambling is a way of life with computers. The technology is changing daily, and anyone involved with system administration should try to keep up with it at any cost. Sometimes it’s all too ...