I've been looking over the roadmap for BoltWire 3.xx and realize we
are about ready to make the jump. Most everything on the list is
either done, not going to be done, or can wait. The main thing likely
to disrupt sites is the change to how BOLTargs functions, and I just
finished writing the new code. Was quite easy and should improve
things significantly. Now just need to check every function that uses
it and similarly update the plugins (many of which will break
otherwise).  I plan to do a massive scan over all our plugins to find
the ones likely to have problems and then fix them by hand. Shouldn't
take too long... And hopefully it won't be too rocky a transition...

Here's essentially what I'll be doing. Let's say you have a string
like:  term field=value 'two' three="3" and you pass it through
BOLTargs. It comes back like this:

 [''][0] => term
 [''][1] => two
 [field] => value
 [three] => 3

Now it will come back just like this, which should make it easier for
plugin developers. Simple change, but will break some existing
plugins, obviously.

 [1] => term
 [2] => two
 [field] => value
 [three] => 3

The other things to do for the plugins is eliminate reliance on
BOLTtemplatemarkup and update scripts that use BOLTdisplay. All under
the hood stuff. Just rewiring things so the connections all still
work.  Unless we miss something the upgrade should go seamless as long
as you simultaneously upgrade your plugins.  I have a bit of time this
weekend, and think I can make the switch then.

As for the other things on the roadmap:

* Changing Skin Installation -- It won't take but a second to setup
the new installation feature (it already exists). The problem is we
don't have skins ready for installation method. So probably I'll keep
the old mechanism until our existing skins are updated. And allow
either install method at present to give us some transition time.

* Simplify (strip out) some of BoltWire's core hg functions and
replace with hooks for plugins and a SuperHg plugin to restore them.
This could also be delegated to the future. Will probably affect few
people. There's no urgency here. And it's not critical to the big
2.xx/3.xx upgrade.

* Establish a new site.public or public hierarchy for various system
pages that need to be readable but not writable. We just need to pick
one or the other, and change our default settings. I prefer
site.public.

* Split into two downloads -- talked out of it. :)

* Merge all farm folders into one -- talked out of it.  :)

* After the recent success doing UTF8 page names, I've decided to try
to get optional % Encoding of page names. Would hopefully just take an
hour or two of coding. Would like this to go into 3.xx

* Rework how paragraph tags are inserted into the text to allow proper
xhtml and bring us more inline with Creole. I have an idea how to do
this. Note: this won't break sites, but will adjust line spacing.

* More refinement of caching. Time limits. Touch command/action (or
use with action=view) to force new cache. Purge caches of deleted
pages (etc). This would also be good for 3.xx. But could be added
afterwards I suppose.

* Add installation messages/descriptions to plugins, in backup files.
This is an important one. May try to squeeze it into 3.xx also.

* Rewrite file read/write functions to allow for a central, custom
backend hook. Easy code. Just a line or two..


The rest are feature enhancements that probably should come as plugins:

* Tools for accessing database info, and a command to be able to write
to a database (a plugin?)
* An update manager which scans all plugins, calls BoltWire for last
modified date and compares.

Anyway, just an update. Comments always welcome. I'm really thinking
3.00 will be out over or just after the weekend.

Cheers,
Dan

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