RE: [DRAFT1] Jakarta Newsletter - June 2002
I'm not trying to be a PITA, but shouldn't this thread be posted on the Tomcat-Dev list where all the Tomcat developers can join in the fun? -T. I could be an idea but the proposal make reference to Avalon, so it's outside tomcat-dev and we don't want to restart a flam wars on 2 lists isn't it. BTW, Pier and others are looking at that list and may comments my resume. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[DRAFT1] Jakarta Newsletter - June 2002
Jakarta Newsletter == Issue: 1 Date: June 2002 URL: http://jakarta.apache.org/newletter/200206.html Welcome to the issue #1 of the Jakarta Newsletter. The aim of the newsletter is to try and let people know what's been going on in the jakarta projects that when have been unable to monitor all of them. The editorship of the various sections and overall will probably vary which should hopefully lead to a fairly dynamic monthly newsletter. So who's sending this to you? I'm a UK software developer working mainly with database webapps but with an interest in development processes. My involvement at jakarta has been mainly as a user of various subprojects, a lurker on the general and commons-dev lists, a long time lurker and occasional conributor to Ant, and lately this Newsletter has become my pet project. This month we have news based contributions from several projects and a plea for requirements from avalon. I'd like to thank those who contributed and hope that you enjoy the read. If you would like to comment further on any of the highlighted discussions then please do so on the appropriate list, if you want to comment on the newsletter itself then please point your comments to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rob Oxsping Contents General Ant Avalon Commons Log4j Object Bridge ORO POI Struts Taglibs General === Editor: Rob Oxspring Discussions on general have been fairly light weight this month. The main points have been in regard to issue 0 off the newsletter [1] and some discussion about how best to setup the scarab installation for bug reporting [2]. The other main on topic thread regarded java.sun.com's new look. Is it time for jakarta to have a facelift? can we learn lessons from sun? The answer seems to be wait for maven or forrest but generally the familiar open source rule of your itch, you scratch it applies [3]. The same thread also discusses the idea of announced and arranged live chats about the various jakarta project with key developers on hand to help explain and assist. [1] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=10232855325r=1w=2n=21 [2] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=10239199531r=1w=2n=12 [3] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=10252004412r=1w=2n=10 Avalon == Editor: Berin Loritsch The Avalon team is in the process of identifying the requirements for a new version of the Avalon Framework. The changes are minimal, and focus on a tighter definition of the contract between the container and the component. The container is the code that manages all the components and how to access them. The Avalon team has identified some anti-patterns related to its use, and wants to provide a way to make it easier to use correctly. What we want to find out from the community at large is: 1) Are you currently using Avalon in one of your projects? 2) If not, what would it take for you to consider using it on a future project? 3) If yes, what did you like best? What were your greatest challenges? If you could choose one way to improve Avalon, what would it be? Slated for the next version of Avalon already: 1) Enhanced Meta Data. We are unifying the way we define meta data for the components. This allows the component to be used in any Avalon compliant container with zero issues. Previously you had to find out how any one container defined meta information (like version, whether the component is threadsafe or not, etc.). 2) (Tentative but likely) Standard way of extending the component lifecycle. Avalon already has a rich lifecycle management system, but sometimes you need an application specific extension. We have plans of allowing that to happen, and use any of the existing containers. 3) Enhanced tutuorials, user documentation. The new docs (when written) will focus first on how to use Avalon (the biggest complaint about our documentation). It will then present the anti-patterns that Avalon is supposed to address, and the patterns it uses to solve those issues. Ant === Editor: Rob Oxspring Conor MacNeill introduced some documentation aobut his Ant2 proposal and this lead to a discussion of how we could make ant projects more object oriented and reusable and looking at how other systems achieve a similar result [1]. In particular the Myrmidon Ant2 proposal featured with discussion moving onto whether templating could solve the problems being faced [2]. The antidote (ant gui) project has seen a small revival this month with a couple of new developers joining forces with Christoph Wilhelms to try and drive the project forward [3,4]. The cvs freeze for Beta3 went without a hitch [5,6] and in preparation for the release Erik Hatcher and Steve Loughran lead the way updating javadocs and manual entries for various tasks [7]. In the aftermath of Beta3 some new version checks and diagnostic information have been discussed and added to aide users in getting the appropriate help later [8]. Among the task specific issues this month was a question regarding how
Re: [DRAFT1] Jakarta Newsletter - June 2002
Hopefully you'll find attached the xdoc version of the letter and the generated html copy (zipped). I think it would be useful to have the online html version and linked to it from the newsletter so if we agree could some one put the 200206.xml file into jakarta-site2/xdocs/site/newsletter please. (or a different name location with a patch to the letter). If you have minor alterations let me know and I'll chuck them in. If there are bigger changes / additions then diffs to the xdoc would make my life easier since at the moment the text version is just a cut and paste from the html in IE. Eventually I'll get round to learning velocity and writing a template to produce the text from the xdoc. Hopefully I've not missed any contributions out... shout if I have. Ceki - I lost the umlauts(?) in your surname because they were causing the xdoc-html transition to fall over... any ideas how to fix? or is it not a problem? Pier / Henri - Care to summerise the tomcat 5 flamewars and other stuff there? or maybe find someone else to do so? I don't have the time to look into it myself so if its gonna go in then someone else needs to write it. Anyway, have a read and see what you think. If there are no -1s and there is no discussion I'll aim to send out the proper version on wednesday. Special thanks to Berin, Ceki, Thomas, Daniel, Avik, Joe and Shawn for arranging conributions and to those others who've added thoughts comments along the way. Rob - Original Message - From: Rob Oxspring [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 1:53 PM Subject: [DRAFT1] Jakarta Newsletter - June 2002 Jakarta Newsletter == Issue: 1 Date: June 2002 URL: http://jakarta.apache.org/newletter/200206.html Welcome to the issue #1 of the Jakarta Newsletter. The aim of the newsletter is to try and let people know what's been going on in the jakarta projects that when have been unable to monitor all of them. The editorship of the various sections and overall will probably vary which should hopefully lead to a fairly dynamic monthly newsletter. So who's sending this to you? I'm a UK software developer working mainly with database webapps but with an interest in development processes. My involvement at jakarta has been mainly as a user of various subprojects, a lurker on the general and commons-dev lists, a long time lurker and occasional conributor to Ant, and lately this Newsletter has become my pet project. This month we have news based contributions from several projects and a plea for requirements from avalon. I'd like to thank those who contributed and hope that you enjoy the read. If you would like to comment further on any of the highlighted discussions then please do so on the appropriate list, if you want to comment on the newsletter itself then please point your comments to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Rob Oxsping Contents General Ant Avalon Commons Log4j Object Bridge ORO POI Struts Taglibs General === Editor: Rob Oxspring Discussions on general have been fairly light weight this month. The main points have been in regard to issue 0 off the newsletter [1] and some discussion about how best to setup the scarab installation for bug reporting [2]. The other main on topic thread regarded java.sun.com's new look. Is it time for jakarta to have a facelift? can we learn lessons from sun? The answer seems to be wait for maven or forrest but generally the familiar open source rule of your itch, you scratch it applies [3]. The same thread also discusses the idea of announced and arranged live chats about the various jakarta project with key developers on hand to help explain and assist. [1] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=10232855325r=1w=2n=21 [2] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=10239199531r=1w=2n=12 [3] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=10252004412r=1w=2n=10 Avalon == Editor: Berin Loritsch The Avalon team is in the process of identifying the requirements for a new version of the Avalon Framework. The changes are minimal, and focus on a tighter definition of the contract between the container and the component. The container is the code that manages all the components and how to access them. The Avalon team has identified some anti-patterns related to its use, and wants to provide a way to make it easier to use correctly. What we want to find out from the community at large is: 1) Are you currently using Avalon in one of your projects? 2) If not, what would it take for you to consider using it on a future project? 3) If yes, what did you like best? What were your greatest challenges? If you could choose one way to improve Avalon, what would it be? Slated for the next version of Avalon already: 1) Enhanced Meta Data. We are unifying the way we define meta data for the components. This allows the component to be used in any Avalon compliant container with zero issues
Re: [DRAFT1] Jakarta Newsletter - June 2002
Ceki - I lost the umlauts(?) in your surname because they were causing the xdoc-html transition to fall over... any ideas how to fix? or is it not a problem? Save the file as UTF-8 (use vi or another tool, since some editor will put a utf-8 identifier in the beginning of the file.. Mvgr, Martin BTW The newsletter looks very good! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [DRAFT1] Jakarta Newsletter - June 2002
The Url no works. Nice job though [from the email]. Wonder when there'll be a drive for a separate mail list just for the newsletter, or to send it to the announce list. Hen Jakarta Newsletter == Issue: 1 Date: June 2002 URL: http://jakarta.apache.org/newletter/200206.html -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [DRAFT1] Jakarta Newsletter - June 2002
Pier / Henri - Care to summerise the tomcat 5 flamewars and other stuff there? or maybe find someone else to do so? I don't have the time to look into it myself so if its gonna go in then someone else needs to write it. I'll try to summarise and Pier will make the necessary comments. The TOMCAT 5.0 proposal was launched by Remy. The goal was to design the next generation Tomcat, using the best parts of Tomcat 3.3 and 4.x, using an improved version of coyote (2.0) code as core, and using catalina 2.0 as servlet container. The great thing in that proposal is that members from the 2 olds teams, 3.3 and 4.x agreed on contributing and working together putting the best they learn from 3.3/4.x. There was a proposal from the Avalon team to use Avalon as core, but it was rejected by Remy, who prefer to have something more suitable and lighter for the TOMCAT core. Pier then ask for a Tomcat HA (High Availability), arguing that Tomcat 4.x (he didn't speak about 3.2 or 3.3) was too unstable so it couldn't use it in its production site. There was then a lengthy discussion about stability which should be a major goal and so on. Many people (tomcat-dev) reported having no problems with Tomcat 4.0 or 3.3. To note, the thread was conducted at the same times that many of us make extensive tests on mod_jk 1.2.0 and sus make huge tests on the connector with Apache 1.3/2.0 and Tomcat 3.3/4.0.4 to detect failure in the connector (or in tomcat), and it appears that there was no major problems with both 3.3/4.0.4. As some writers commented, the stability of a web application, depends on many parts, tomcat being one of them, the real java application and remote side (SQL/enterprise applications) being also mandatory. To summarise, I could say that all of us (tomcat developpers) want to have the stablest engine possible and the thread is open. Nota, that the latest proposal is in tomcat4-head : snipet The major goals for Apache Tomcat 5.0 are to: - improve scalability, reliability and performance over previous versions - have simpler/cleaner code, so more people can get involved - merge of the various ideas in 3.x and 4.x - get the community togheter - provide maximum modularity and compliance to the standards - make it easy to continue to maintain the existing codebases /snipet -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [DRAFT1] Jakarta Newsletter - June 2002
Cool Avik! Nice job. This is a nice piece of work and really puts things into perspective. -Andy snip/ POI === Editor: Avik Sengupta The POI team made two releases in June. A production release of version 1.5.1 on June 17, and a dev milestone release 1.7.0 on June 24. The dev release was notable for the inclusion of a large body of formula support. This was preceeded by some expected wrestling with the undocumented parts of the excel file format [2]. The dev list was animated for a while on the issue of whether poi should have a calculation engine built in. Andy summarised the discussion [3]. To better understand how POI and its components are being used in practice, a call for case studies was made [4]. These have been put up on the project site [5]. There have been many requests for a java viewer for excel files. Andy hacked up Sucky Viewer as a GUI component built on POI/HSSF [6]. Logging has been the cause of a large number of problem reports. It was therefore decided that POI would have logging disabled by default, and thus no extra libraries would be required to run POI [7]. However, developers wou ld have the option of enabling logging at runtime using either commons logging or log4j. This decision was further validated when there were reports of significant performance hit with logging enabled [8]. As a result, the 1.5.1 and 1.7-dev versions have logging disabled. The POI team is working towards a 2.0 release that adds the functionality for formula, charting and Word documents. There are many feature requests that have been asked for, but these are the top priority at the moment [9]. [1] - http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/hssf/formula.html [2] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-devm=102382900822300w=2 [3] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-devm=102468743701331w=2 [4] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-devm=102371435712172w=2 [5] - http://jakarta.apache.org/poi/casestudies.html [6] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-userm=102476270711166w=2 [7] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=10233389351r=1w=2 [8] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-userm=102518419020006w=2 [9] - http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-devm=102500927422333w=2 snip/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
RE: [DRAFT1] Jakarta Newsletter - June 2002
-Original Message- From: Henri Yandell [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Monday, July 01, 2002 6:18 AM To: Jakarta General List Subject: Re: [DRAFT1] Jakarta Newsletter - June 2002 The Url no works. Nice job though [from the email]. Wonder when there'll be a drive for a separate mail list just for the newsletter, or to send it to the announce list. How about now? ;-) For people who are not necessarily involved with Jakarta, but want to keep tabs on what's going on here, I think either of these would be good. I don't have a strong preference for one or the other. A separate list is commonly used for newsletters elsewhere, but then again, people who want to keep tabs on what's going on here are likely to be subscribed to announcements@ already. -- Martin Cooper Hen Jakarta Newsletter == Issue: 1 Date: June 2002 URL: http://jakarta.apache.org/newletter/200206.html -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [DRAFT1] Jakarta Newsletter - June 2002
JEdit (free, GNU, java) works well with UTF8. Then, if it's transformed to XHTML add to the top. ?xml version=1.0 encoding=UTF-8? !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC -//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd Or just HTML, try this in the head. meta http-equiv=Content-Type content=text/html; charset=UTF-8 / BTW - The newsletter is very welcomed. Martin van den Bemt wrote: Ceki - I lost the umlauts(?) in your surname because they were causing the xdoc-html transition to fall over... any ideas how to fix? or is it not a problem? Save the file as UTF-8 (use vi or another tool, since some editor will put a utf-8 identifier in the beginning of the file.. Mvgr, Martin BTW The newsletter looks very good! -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Ellis Teer www.sitepen.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]