GNU Spotlight October 2023

Originally published on the Free Software Foundation's community blog:
October GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: Eleven new GNU releases!

Eleven new GNU releases in the last month (as of October 29, 2023):

  • cgicc-3.2.20: GNU cgicc is an ANSI-compliant C++ library for writing CGI applications, featuring support for FastCGI. The library supports several features, including handling both GET and POST data, handling a variety of form data types, and on-the-fly HTML generation.
  • c-intro-and-ref-0.0: This manual provides an introduction for learning the GNU C language and also serves as a reference for it.
  • fisicalab-0.4.0: GNU FisicaLab is an educational application for solving physics problems. Its main objective is allow the user to focus on physics concepts, leaving aside the mathematical details.
  • gama-2.26: GNU Gama is a program for the adjustment of geodetic networks. It is useful in measurements where Global Positioning System (GPS) is not available, such as underground. It features the ability to adjust in local Cartesian coordinates as well as partial support for adjustments in global coordinate systems.
  • gettext-0.22.3: GNU Gettext is a package providing a framework for translating the textual output of programs into multiple languages. It provides translators with the means to create message catalogs, as well as an Emacs mode to work with them, and a runtime library to load translated messages from the catalogs. Nearly all GNU packages use Gettext.
  • g-golf-0.8.0-rc-1: G-Golf (Gnome: (Guile Object Library for)) is a library for developing modern applications in Guile Scheme. It comprises a direct binding to the GObject Introspection API and higher-level functionality for importing Gnome libraries and making GObject classes (and methods) available in Guile's object-oriented programming system, GOOPS.
  • gnuastro-0.21: The GNU Astronomy Utilities (Gnuastro) is an official GNU package consisting of various programs and library functions for the manipulation and analysis of astronomical data.
  • mediagoblin-0.13.0: GNU MediaGoblin is a free media publishing platform. It runs in a federalized manner, freeing the user from centralized web services. It supports pictures, videos and audio.
  • parallel-20231022: GNU Parallel is a tool for executing shell jobs in parallel using one or more computers. Jobs can consist of single commands or of scripts and they are executed on lists of files, hosts, users or other items.
  • texinfo-7.1: Texinfo is the official documentation format of the GNU project. It uses a single source file using explicit commands to produce a final document in any of several supported output formats, such as HTML or PDF. This package includes both the tools necessary to produce Info documents from their source and the command-line Info reader. The emphasis of the language is on expressing the content semantically, avoiding physical markup commands.
  • unifont-15.1.03: GNU Unifont is a bitmap font covering essentially all of Unicode's Basic Multilingual Plane. The package also includes utilities to ease adding new glyphs to the font.

For announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu.

To download: nearly all GNU software is available most reliably from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/. Optionally, you may find faster download speeds at a mirror geographically close to you by choosing from the list of mirrors published at https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html, or you may use https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.

A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance. Please see https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint if you'd like to help. The general page on how to help GNU is at https://www.gnu.org/help/help.html.

If you have a working or partly working program that you'd like to offer to the GNU project as a GNU package, see https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.

As always, please feel free to write to me, bandali@gnu.org, with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.