Forum OpenACS Q&A: Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0

Posted by Bob OConnor on 06/27/00 09:45 PM

In the SDM at:
https://openacs.org/sdm/package-releases.tcl?package_id=1
I found:

*------
Release 3.2.4
Manager: Ben Adida (ben@mit.edu)
Anticipated Release Date:
Release Date:
Supported Platforms: PG 7.0

Release 4.0.0
Manager: Ben Adida (ben@mit.edu)
Anticipated Release Date:
Release Date:
Supported Platforms: PG 7.0

*----
Neither release has an "anticipated release date" specified.
Are there dates available?
They would be helpful for planning.

Thank you.

2: Response to Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0 (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Adida on 06/28/00 11:44 PM

I've posted anticipated release dates for these two releases. 3.2.2 should be coming very soon. 3.2.4 is planned for late July as a patch/fix of 3.2.2 bugs (3.2.3 is skipped because it could be confused with aD 3.2.3 which has specific bug fixes which we already found and fixed earlier). 4.0 is planned for early October.

These dates could change. I'm interested in hearing what projects people are planning around OpenACS release dates...

3: Response to Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0 (response to 1)

Posted by Michael Feldstein on 06/29/00 01:20 AM

Well, for the 3.2.2 release, we're especially looking forward to bug fixes in the portals, pull-down menus, curriculum, and intranet modules. The first three are important to us because we want to put a whole lot more content and functionality behind Knowledge Garden but we first need to make the site much more navigable. Our audience is likely to get lost (or worse, leave and not come back) if we don't give them really good guidance about what's on the site and how to get to it. While we certainly could accomplish this with static pages, the ACS functionality should do the job much better. As for the intranet, we want to use it for our own business purposes, and we're also looking into the possibility of being an ASP for it. We're holding off on serious experimentation with it until it's bug-free (or at least as bug free as it is in ACS Classic.)

The 4.0 release will be extremely important to us, mainly for the content management system (although we're looking forward to the new bboard as well). We have huge plans for integrating content management into the world of eLearning; I expect it will become a sizeable chunk of our business. There are, of course, other goodies we'd like to play with in 4.0, like the group calendar module, the more robust survey module, and wimpypoint2, but we're not really planning any particular projects around those.

4: Response to Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0 (response to 1)

Posted by Ben Adida on 06/29/00 01:23 AM

Did you report all of these bugs? Portals has been fixed by Don.
Pull-Down menus are inherently screwy, I haven't seen them
work anywhere, although we're trying. Curriculum is working fine
for me, and intranet has been fixed up some, yes.

So 3.2.2 is going to be very solid. Ecommerce will never be fully
functional as is because it makes excessive use of crazy SQL
(on-the-fly views, views with unions) that aren't portable to
Postgres right now. We'll do what we can.

5: Response to Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0 (response to 1)

Posted by Michael Feldstein on 06/29/00 01:38 AM

Yes, we've been reporting bugs faithfully as we find them. For a while, we were changing our code as it was updated in the CVS, but we decided it would be more productive to wait and do one major upgrade.

What's turning out to be both fun and frustrating is that every week we seem to discover something else that we didn't know actually worked. Today, for example, we discovered the "who is on the site right now" feature which, as far as I can tell, is not documented anywhere in ACS Classic, never mind OpenACS. Same thing with the user directory. I noticed both of these features working on photo.net, tagged the end of their URLs to the beginning of mine, and Eureka! I discovered a new feature I didn't know I had.

At any rate, we're tremendously psyched about the strides that OpenACS has been making.

6: Response to Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0 (response to 1)

Posted by Michael Feldstein on 06/29/00 01:48 AM

Regarding the pull-downs, I take it that the problem is with the javascript. Is this a problem because (a) javascript itself is messed up, (b) because the coding of the module is shoddy, or (c) because the problem it's trying to solve is hard (he asks naively)? If the root of the problem is (a) or (b), I would consider putting together a Flash implementation and releasing the code. I realize, of course, that Flash has it's own problems, including being a (semi-) proprietary solution and being limited in terms of the browsers that can use it, but it would solve my short-term problem and might solve the short-term problems of some other users as well. Any thoughts?

7: Response to Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0 (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 06/29/00 02:02 AM

Last things first - the answer is (b), with (a) contributing (the fact that netscape and IE have different document models for their Javascript implementations). The Javascript seems to work OK with older netscape and newer MSIE browsers, but breaks in the latest (beta) netscape, version 6, based on the open-source version of Mozilla (check out mozilla.org). It doesn't work in other browsers like Opera and KDE's Konqueror.

While none of the latter browsers are very common, it's certainly shoddy coding to make your generalized toolkit depend upon MSIE and closed-source versions of Netscape.

It should be possible to get them to work as well as they do at photo.net.

I don't like the flash idea, even fewer folks will have that then can use the current javascript version.

8: Response to Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0 (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 06/29/00 02:07 AM

OK, regarding portals, they now work better than ACS Classic 3.2.2, where they were somewhat broken due to the typical aD reasons (original assumptions broken by new code, with no testing to catch the problem).

aD is working hard to fix their systemic QA problems, BTW, let me make that clear while I rag out on them for past habits :)

Intranet's been patched up by me over the weekend, probably by others in weeks past, and Dan's port seems essentially solid. I played with it for a couple of hours on the plane and things mostly seem to work. There are small oddities, like people are never flagged as project leaders on the employee admin page even if you assign them as project leaders (and they do show up as project leaders on the project page). This appears to be an ACS Classic problem, not one introduced by us.

If you don't slight eccentricies like that, it appears to be working fine.

9: Response to Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0 (response to 1)

Posted by Michael Feldstein on 06/29/00 03:46 AM

The Flash suggestion is really just a better-than-nothing fall-back in case the javascript thing is fundamentally unworkable. I was responding to Ben's comment (consistent with everything else I've been hearing) that absolutely nobody has been able to get the damned thing to work at all. If it can work at least as well as the photo.net implementation, that's a horse of a different color. BTW, I would consider paying to have somebody improve the implementation for OpenACS. It's a fairly important short-term business priority for us and we don't have the expertise to do it ourselves. So if any of you cowboys (or cowgirls) out there are up to it and can work with me a bit on price, let me know. At the moment, this is the only way I have at my disposal to "contribute" code to the OpenACS project.

10: Response to Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0 (response to 1)

Posted by Li-fan Chen on 06/29/00 11:03 AM

Someone at SGI made a Flash generator. He gives away the binaries for free for several platforms. There is a free Perl frontend to the C API that drives the generator. It would be a great project to convince that author to give the Free Software world a chance to catch up to the Flash and Shockwave movement.

There are open sourced version of browser plug-ins and some semblance of releasing the file format has been attempted by Macromedia. But overall it's a very closed and proprietary thing.

11: Response to Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0 (response to 1)

Posted by Li-fan Chen on 06/29/00 11:11 PM

Ben said:

I'm interested in hearing what projects people are planning around OpenACS release dates...

Project 1. Get some sleep after release date? 😉

12: Response to Release Dates: for: 3.2.4 and: 4.0.0 (response to 1)

Posted by Scott Mc Williams on 07/18/00 01:00 AM

Hey all...well, as far as projects upcoming, I have a personal site I webmaster that I'm planning on moving to OpenACS around 3.2.4. It is currently at www.sv2s.com as a static site, but will greatly benefit from the community aspect of OpenACS. I have a test site going with an older implementation at 209.235.197.84 . There are no graphics, but the final site will have icons and images galore (fast loading, of course).
The site is for vintage VW bus enthusiasts. We already have a fairly large user base, so this will rock their world. They have no idea what's coming! heheh
I'd love to have eCommerce working at close to full power. I have talked to a number of vendors and I would like to use the eCommerce to show a listing of every part available for the VW bus from 1949-1967 and if it is a part that is still available, the user would be able to order it through the site from one of our vendor/sponsors.
In addition to the standard ACS stuff, we plan on having a number of searchable database tables with year-to-year changes, color charts, interior plans, etc...

I'll post it when we're closer to reality!

Scott