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PHP extension for Cairo graphics library

by Harry Fuecks

Thanks to tip off from Jared “Ren” Williams (is that you? - any link?) here - the Cairo wrapper extension by Hartmut Holzgraefe - nice demo.

Cairo is the “next generation” vector graphics library for Linux and very cool to have it available in PHP. Also cool about the extension was created using PEAR::CodeGen_PECL, which Hartmut describes here: look Mum - no C! (well almost).

This raises the question of whether it’s time to depreciate GD? As far as I’m aware, it and the PCRE extension are the two main problem children preventing PHP from being thread safe. It may be possible to replace PCRE and preserve backwards compability, with ICU regexes, which claim to based on Perl’s regular expressions. Dropping GD would be much more painful but with Cairo and the imagick extension, there might be enough to keep everyone happy. This is in the interest of running PHP under Apache mpm. Would be interested to hear thoughts / opinions on how realistic that is?

Side note: my dumb view of the difference between GD and imagemagick is the former is more for image creation while …

Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 | Posted in PHP | 14 Comments »

Sep 4, 2006 News Wire

by Kevin Yank

• Programmed personal homepages over the last 20 years
  With the plenitude of services being launched to fully customize the page displayed by your browser when you first launch it, this insightful look back at the history of such services may contain some valuable lessons.
  (tags: design)
• Mozilla Firefox 2 Beta 2 Release Notes
  Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 is out. Time to start compatibility-testing your sites and reporting any bugs that may affect you.
  (tags: firefox software)
• Mephisto Immortus Released
  Version 0.6 of the Mephisto Blogging and Content Management System has been released. The new version includes revamped asset management and search features. Mephisto is written for Ruby on Rails (specifically, Edge Rails).
  (tags: rubyonrails software)
• British Airways Flies With Google Earth
  British Airways integrates its online ticket sales with Google Earth (no, not Google Maps—Google Earth!).
  (tags: google)
• Code freeze in preparation of Drupal 5.0.0
  Venerable PHP CMS Drupal is gearing up for a major new release. The final release of Drupal 5.0.0 is at least two months away by current estimates, but development of new features is now frozen. It might be worth taking a fresh look at this powerful tool.
  (tags: php …

Tuesday, September 5th, 2006 | Posted in Industry Links | 3 Comments »

Aug 31, 2006 News Wire

by Kevin Yank

• A Flurry of Prototype Updates
  Justin Palmer’s Encytemedia blog is fast becoming the unofficial source for the latest information about Prototype. Here he dissects a bunch of new updates that have just made their way into the development version of the library.
  (tags: javascript)
• Web Analytics: The Results of Tabbed Browsing
  An analysis of what increases in the prevalence of tabbed browsing mean to services and tools designed to analyze the behaviour of visitors on your site. Nothing earth-shattering, but worth being aware of if you work in the field.
  (tags: business)
• Basic Beta Briefing
  Flash Player 9 for Linux is slated for release early in 2007, with a beta release before that.
  (tags: flash)
• Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 Will Launch Thursday
  Barring an unforeseen critical bug, Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 will be out Thursday, August 31st.
  (tags: firefox)
• IE7, IE6 and The Windows Lifecycle
  Contrary to what has been previously rumoured, Internet Explorer 7 will not be a forced update for Windows XP upon its release later this year. IE7 will be offered via Windows Automatic Updates, but it will not be forced like Service Pack 2.
  (tags: ie)
• SVG Logo Contest
  An alliance of interested parties has …

Friday, September 1st, 2006 | Posted in Industry Links | No Comments »