GNU Spotlight April 2023

Eighteen new GNU releases in the last month (as of April 29, 2023):

• a2ps-4.15.4: GNU a2ps converts almost anything to a PostScript file, ready for printing. It accomplishes this by being able to delegate files to external handlers, such as Groff and Gzip. It handles as many steps as is necessary to produce a pretty-printed file. It also includes some extra abilities for special cases, such as pretty-printing `--help' output.
• auctex-13.2: AUCTeX is an integrated environment for producing TeX documents in Emacs. It allows many different standard TeX macros to be inserted with simple keystrokes or menu selection. It offers an interface to external programs, enabling you to compile or view your documents from within Emacs. AUCTeX also features the ability to place inline previews of complex TeX statements such as mathematical formulae.
• coreutils-9.3: Coreutils includes all of the basic command-line tools that are expected in a POSIX system. These provide the basic file, shell and text manipulation functions of the GNU system. Most of these tools offer extended functionality beyond that which is outlined in the POSIX standard.
• gcc-13.1.0: GCC is the GNU Compiler Collection. It provides compiler front-ends for several languages, including C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Java, Ada, and Go. It also includes runtime support libraries for these languages.
• g-golf-0.8.0-a.4: 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.
• gnun-1.4: GNUnited Nations is a build system for translating the web site at www.gnu.org. It works via template files, which allow changes to be merged into individual translations of a page, from which the final HTML is generated. In effect, this helps to keep all translations of a page up-to-date.
• gnunet-0.19.4: GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking. The high-level goal is to provide a strong foundation of free software for a global, distributed network that provides security and privacy. GNUnet in that sense aims to replace the current internet protocol stack. Along with an application for secure publication of files, it has grown to include all kinds of basic applications for the foundation of a GNU internet.
• gnupg-2.4.1: The GNU Privacy Guard is a complete implementation of the OpenPGP standard. It is used to encrypt and sign data and communication. It features powerful key management and the ability to access public key servers. It includes several libraries: libassuan (IPC between GnuPG components), libgpg-error (centralized GnuPG error values), and libskba (working with X.509 certificates and CMS data).
• health-4.2.1: GNU Health is a free medical software system, including support for electronic medical records (EMR), a hospital information system (HIS), and health information system. It supports both Spanish and English interfaces. It has been adopted by the United Nations University for implementation and training, as well as by several hospitals and health ministries around the world.
• lightning-2.2.2: GNU Lightning is a library that generates assembly language code at run-time. Thus, it is useful in creating Just-In-Time compilers. It abstracts over the target CPU by exposing a standardized RISC instruction set to the clients.
• linux-libre-6.3-gnu: GNU Linux-Libre is a free (as in freedom) variant of the kernel Linux. It has been modified to remove all non-free binary blobs.
• mediagoblin-0.12.1: 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.
• octave-8.2.0: GNU Octave is a high-level interpreted language that is specialized for numerical computations. It can be used for both linear and non-linear applications and it provides great support for visualizing results. Work may be performed both at the interactive command-line as well as via script files.
• parallel-20230422: 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.
• parted-3.6: GNU Parted is a package for creating and manipulating disk partition tables. It includes a library and command-line utility.
• poke-3.1: GNU poke is an interactive, extensible editor for binary data. Not limited to editing basic entities such as bits and bytes, it provides a full-fledged procedural, interactive programming language designed to describe data structures and to operate on them.
• r-4.3.0: R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics. It provides a variety of statistical techniques, such as linear and nonlinear modeling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification and clustering. It also provides robust support for producing publication-quality data plots. A large amount of 3rd-party packages are available, greatly increasing its breadth and scope.
• taler-0.9.2: Taler provides a payment system that makes privacy-friendly online transactions fast and easy.

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.

This month, we welcome David Thompson as a new co-maintainer of guile-opengl. Edit: this entry was added by mistake: David is an uploader for guile-opengl, not a (co-)maintainer.

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.