by Mika Tuupola (tuupola@appelsiini.net), Pierre-Alain Joye (paj@pearfr.org), parts reworked by Arnaud Limbourg (arnaud@limbourg.com)


In the press

International edition of PHP-Magazine

We are pleased to see the new international edition of PHP Magazine. In this high quality first issue you can find a very good introduction to PEAR::MDB written by Lukas Smith. Also included is a useful introduction on how to write PHP extensions by Zeev Suraski.

PHP-Magazin

The Jan. 2003 issue of PHP-Magazin (in German) contains an article by Alexander Merz who explains in a useful introduction how to setup, administrate and use PEAR. Hartmut Holzgraefe shows us how to use the PEAR::HTTP_WebDAV_Server and Richard Samar introduces XML databases XPath and XQuery as well as using PEAR::XDB modules, especially the Tamino driver.
Note that Alexander Merz now has a permanent column in the magazine (beginning with the 1/03 issue), where he will write about PEAR.

We are pleased to see that there are more and more articles about the PEAR project. If you come accross such an article feel free to send (pear-dev@lists.php.net) us the references and they will be added weekly news.


PEAR-DEV traffic

DB_DOM ready for CVS

Sandro Zic notified the pear-dev list that the code has gone under pearification. The DOM-like management of XML content in a defined RDBMS table structure package has already been approved on the list and is ready to be committed into CVS. Unfortunately no agreement was reached on the package name, feedback is most appreciated.

Proposed names include: DB_DOM, DB_XML, DB_XML_DOM, XML_DB and XML_DB_DOM. Feel free to send your ideas to the list.

PEAR Foundation?

There was some discussion on whether there should be be a foundation for sponsoring PEAR development or not. There are similar foundations sponsoring big projects such as FreeBSD and Perl. However, PEAR is still in the small league of open source projects and a foundation would be a bit of an overkill. The current per-developer wishlist style approach should be adequate.

Bugs and Fixes

Thanks to these people for spotting and fixing some bugs: Warren Konkel, Demian Turner, Patrick O'Lone, Jeroen Houben, Vlad Borisoff and Blake Schwendima.


New and Proposed Packages

Net_LMTP

Damian Alejandro Fernandez Sosa suggested a class which is cabable of delivering email via LMTP (Local Mail Transfer Protocol, defined in RFC 2033). The proposed name was Net_LMTP which serves the purpose perfectly. Net_LMTP is based upon Net_SMTP.

PhpDocumentor

PhpDocumentor, which has been downloadable from http://www.phpdoc.org/ for a while and is now also available via the PEAR installer. If some people experience problems with installing beta2 under windows please send an email to the list

Gtk_VarDump

Gtk_VarDump made its first PEAR release.

Development

Active on CVS this week have been: Net_SMTP, Mail_Mbox, MDB, Image_GIS, DB_QueryTool, I18N, HTTP_Header, Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer,HTTP_Request, PECL::apd, DB_DataObject, PECL::bcompiler, Gtk_VarDump, PEAR, Perm_LiveUser, DB, HTML_OOH_Form, PECL::session_pgsql, PECL::imagick. PECL::spplus, PECL::radius, PECL::vpopmail and Console_Table.