You are viewing a plain text version of this content. The canonical link for it is here.
Posted to dev@wookie.apache.org by Olexiy Chudnovskyy <ol...@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de> on 2012/10/16 12:37:19 UTC

Tools around W3C Widgets

Hi everyone,

 

in our research group at Chemnitz University of technology we are developing
several tools around W3C widgets, which we think might be also interesting
and useful for others. I would like to introduce them here on the mailing
list first and would be happy to get your feedback, criticism and
suggestions. 

The first tool, the so called Inter-Widget-Communication Extender [1][2],
lets one enrich W3C widgets with messaging facilities, i.e. make them
publish/subscribe to global event bus when some events like form submission
or clicks on table rows happen. This way widget can exchange data (e.g.
submitted parameters or table data) with other widgets, e.g. when integrated
in a dashboard like Apache Rave. To do this, the tool records user actions
within the widget and asks him to provide their “semantics” (i.e. event and
parameter names). Afterwards the tool injects several JS files into the
widget package so that the widget starts emitting messages each time the
recorded actions are detected. The advantage of the approach is that no
manual intrusion into the widget code is needed. The tool performs IWC
extension automatically. 

Another tool, the so called W3C Widget Converter [3], enables to convert
several proprietary widget formats into W3C widgets. Currently supported
formats are Opera, Netvibes and iGoogle gadgets. The best conversion rates
are reached for the Netvibes widgets, whereas it was also possible to
convert iGoogle gadgets and Opera widgets (see conversion rates on the
homepage). There are a lot of apps in the Netvibes repository [4] and with
help of the tool we are now able to import them and use within Apache Wookie
or Rave. 

 

So, feel free to visit the links below and try out the tools. We hope you’ll
find them useful and will provide us your feedback. Thank you in advance!

 

References:

 

[1] IWC-Extender Homepage:
<http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/demo/iwc-extension/>
http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/demo/iwc-extension/

[2] IWC-Extender Demo:
<https://vsr-web.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/iwc-extender/>
https://vsr-web.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/iwc-extender/ , see last 3
widgets: weather, map and tabletest 

[3] W3C Converter Homepage:
<http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/demo/w3c-widget-converter/>
http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/demo/w3c-widget-converter/

[4] Netvibes Apps:  <http://eco.netvibes.com> http://eco.netvibes.com 

 

Best Regards,

Olexiy

---

Chemnitz University of Technology

Department of Computer Science

Distributed and Self-organizing Systems Group

Straße der Nationen 62

D-09107 Chemnitz

Germany

E-Mail:  <ma...@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de>
olexiy.chudnovskyy@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de

WWW:  <http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/people/chudnovskyy>
http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/people/chudnovskyy

Phone: +49 371 531 39146

Re: Tools around W3C Widgets

Posted by Scott Wilson <sc...@gmail.com>.
On 17 Oct 2012, at 11:31, Ross Gardler wrote:

> On 17 October 2012 11:08, Olexiy Chudnovskyy <co...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> For that we'd need CLAs from all the contributors (I'm assuming its
>> yourself,
>>> Sebastian and Michael) to accept the contribution. How is IP handled at
>>> Chemnitz - are you all individual owners of your work. or is it held by TU
>>> Chemnitz?
>> 
>> Yes, there are 3 contributors currently. Are there any templates for the
>> CLA?
> 
> Actually the CLA is only required if you are to be given commit access
> to an Apache repo. Naturally I assume the proposal here is that you
> would be given access to manage these resources so that you can
> continue to manage them. The CLA is at
> http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt
> 
> On the other hand I wonder if we are getting to the point of needing
> to think about a new project. The Widget templates don't really fit in
> Wookie but don't have enough momentum right now to warrant a project
> in their own right. I'd also suggest your tools are also not really
> Wookie material as they are about the creation and management of new
> widgets rather than the delivery of widgets. In particular I'm keen to
> understand if you and/or members of your team would be continuing to
> work on these tools beyond the life of the OMELETTE proejct.
> 
> I've not yet reviewed your projects but would be interested to hear
> thoughts about the idea of creating a separate project with a focus on
> "tools to assist with the creation and management of widgets". This
> would include the widget template stuff here in Wookie and your
> proposed tools.

The widget converter is also just as good a fit for Cordova as for Wookie, so maybe a separate incubating project would be sensible.

> 
> Ross
> 
> 
> -- 
> Ross Gardler (@rgardler)
> Programme Leader (Open Development)
> OpenDirective http://opendirective.com

Re: Tools around W3C Widgets

Posted by Scott Wilson <sc...@gmail.com>.
Bumping this as I think its a topic worth moving forwards.

Another good example of a W3C Widget tool thats not really an integral part of Wookie is the standalone widget signer app, which can be used with other W3C Widget implementations, not just Wookie.

So that would give us so far:

- the template system
- the format converter 
- the IWC extender/trainer
- the signer

These would also make sense as components of an authoring suite. I'd love to see the template system integrated with MyCocktail[1], for example.

S

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/mycocktail/


On 17 Oct 2012, at 12:31, Ross Gardler wrote:

> On 17 October 2012 11:08, Olexiy Chudnovskyy <co...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>> For that we'd need CLAs from all the contributors (I'm assuming its
>> yourself,
>>> Sebastian and Michael) to accept the contribution. How is IP handled at
>>> Chemnitz - are you all individual owners of your work. or is it held by TU
>>> Chemnitz?
>> 
>> Yes, there are 3 contributors currently. Are there any templates for the
>> CLA?
> 
> Actually the CLA is only required if you are to be given commit access
> to an Apache repo. Naturally I assume the proposal here is that you
> would be given access to manage these resources so that you can
> continue to manage them. The CLA is at
> http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt
> 
> On the other hand I wonder if we are getting to the point of needing
> to think about a new project. The Widget templates don't really fit in
> Wookie but don't have enough momentum right now to warrant a project
> in their own right. I'd also suggest your tools are also not really
> Wookie material as they are about the creation and management of new
> widgets rather than the delivery of widgets. In particular I'm keen to
> understand if you and/or members of your team would be continuing to
> work on these tools beyond the life of the OMELETTE proejct.
> 
> I've not yet reviewed your projects but would be interested to hear
> thoughts about the idea of creating a separate project with a focus on
> "tools to assist with the creation and management of widgets". This
> would include the widget template stuff here in Wookie and your
> proposed tools.
> 
> Ross
> 
> 
> -- 
> Ross Gardler (@rgardler)
> Programme Leader (Open Development)
> OpenDirective http://opendirective.com

Re: Tools around W3C Widgets

Posted by Ross Gardler <rg...@opendirective.com>.
On 17 October 2012 11:08, Olexiy Chudnovskyy <co...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> For that we'd need CLAs from all the contributors (I'm assuming its
> yourself,
>> Sebastian and Michael) to accept the contribution. How is IP handled at
>> Chemnitz - are you all individual owners of your work. or is it held by TU
>> Chemnitz?
>
> Yes, there are 3 contributors currently. Are there any templates for the
> CLA?

Actually the CLA is only required if you are to be given commit access
to an Apache repo. Naturally I assume the proposal here is that you
would be given access to manage these resources so that you can
continue to manage them. The CLA is at
http://www.apache.org/licenses/icla.txt

On the other hand I wonder if we are getting to the point of needing
to think about a new project. The Widget templates don't really fit in
Wookie but don't have enough momentum right now to warrant a project
in their own right. I'd also suggest your tools are also not really
Wookie material as they are about the creation and management of new
widgets rather than the delivery of widgets. In particular I'm keen to
understand if you and/or members of your team would be continuing to
work on these tools beyond the life of the OMELETTE proejct.

I've not yet reviewed your projects but would be interested to hear
thoughts about the idea of creating a separate project with a focus on
"tools to assist with the creation and management of widgets". This
would include the widget template stuff here in Wookie and your
proposed tools.

Ross


-- 
Ross Gardler (@rgardler)
Programme Leader (Open Development)
OpenDirective http://opendirective.com

AW: Tools around W3C Widgets

Posted by Olexiy Chudnovskyy <co...@gmail.com>.
Hi Scott, 

> I think for the converter tool it would be useful also to contact the team
at
> Opera to see if they can help improve it as they've been asking the
> community about what they do for the future of their widgets. If we can
get
> the conversion success rate up that would be good for them, and good for
us
> too.

Nice idea. I'll make a post on their forum. 

> 
> The Extender also looks great for Wookie+Rave as we can retrofit lots of
> Widgets - including former Opera and Netvibes ones - to work with the IWC
> capability in Rave. I notice you've taken the previous one you'd worked on
> that was integrated with the old Wookie UI and built it as a completely
> standalone application, which is great.
> 
> One possibility is for us to develop these as sub-projects within Wookie,
> alongside the parser lib and the signer app.
> 
> For that we'd need CLAs from all the contributors (I'm assuming its
yourself,
> Sebastian and Michael) to accept the contribution. How is IP handled at
> Chemnitz - are you all individual owners of your work. or is it held by TU
> Chemnitz?

Yes, there are 3 contributors currently. Are there any templates for the
CLA? Regarding IP - the tools have been developed within the OMELETTE
project, where we formally agreed on making results open source. However,
I'll check if there is something to consider from the university's side.

Best Regards
Olexiy

Re: Tools around W3C Widgets

Posted by Scott Wilson <sc...@gmail.com>.
Hi Olexiy,

On 16 Oct 2012, at 11:37, Olexiy Chudnovskyy wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> 
> 
> in our research group at Chemnitz University of technology we are developing
> several tools around W3C widgets, which we think might be also interesting
> and useful for others. I would like to introduce them here on the mailing
> list first and would be happy to get your feedback, criticism and
> suggestions. 
> 
> The first tool, the so called Inter-Widget-Communication Extender [1][2],
> lets one enrich W3C widgets with messaging facilities, i.e. make them
> publish/subscribe to global event bus when some events like form submission
> or clicks on table rows happen. This way widget can exchange data (e.g.
> submitted parameters or table data) with other widgets, e.g. when integrated
> in a dashboard like Apache Rave. To do this, the tool records user actions
> within the widget and asks him to provide their “semantics” (i.e. event and
> parameter names). Afterwards the tool injects several JS files into the
> widget package so that the widget starts emitting messages each time the
> recorded actions are detected. The advantage of the approach is that no
> manual intrusion into the widget code is needed. The tool performs IWC
> extension automatically. 
> 
> Another tool, the so called W3C Widget Converter [3], enables to convert
> several proprietary widget formats into W3C widgets. Currently supported
> formats are Opera, Netvibes and iGoogle gadgets. The best conversion rates
> are reached for the Netvibes widgets, whereas it was also possible to
> convert iGoogle gadgets and Opera widgets (see conversion rates on the
> homepage). There are a lot of apps in the Netvibes repository [4] and with
> help of the tool we are now able to import them and use within Apache Wookie
> or Rave. 


These are both really useful tools, and I can see them being great to have alongside Wookie.

I think for the converter tool it would be useful also to contact the team at Opera to see if they can help improve it as they've been asking the community about what they do for the future of their widgets. If we can get the conversion success rate up that would be good for them, and good for us too.

The Extender also looks great for Wookie+Rave as we can retrofit lots of Widgets - including former Opera and Netvibes ones - to work with the IWC capability in Rave. I notice you've taken the previous one you'd worked on that was integrated with the old Wookie UI and built it as a completely standalone application, which is great.

One possibility is for us to develop these as sub-projects within Wookie, alongside the parser lib and the signer app. 

For that we'd need CLAs from all the contributors (I'm assuming its yourself, Sebastian and Michael) to accept the contribution. How is IP handled at Chemnitz - are you all individual owners of your work. or is it held by TU Chemnitz?

> 
> 
> 
> So, feel free to visit the links below and try out the tools. We hope you’ll
> find them useful and will provide us your feedback. Thank you in advance!
> 
> 
> 
> References:
> 
> 
> 
> [1] IWC-Extender Homepage:
> <http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/demo/iwc-extension/>
> http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/demo/iwc-extension/
> 
> [2] IWC-Extender Demo:
> <https://vsr-web.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/iwc-extender/>
> https://vsr-web.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/iwc-extender/ , see last 3
> widgets: weather, map and tabletest 
> 
> [3] W3C Converter Homepage:
> <http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/demo/w3c-widget-converter/>
> http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/demo/w3c-widget-converter/
> 
> [4] Netvibes Apps:  <http://eco.netvibes.com> http://eco.netvibes.com 
> 
> 
> 
> Best Regards,
> 
> Olexiy
> 
> ---
> 
> Chemnitz University of Technology
> 
> Department of Computer Science
> 
> Distributed and Self-organizing Systems Group
> 
> Straße der Nationen 62
> 
> D-09107 Chemnitz
> 
> Germany
> 
> E-Mail:  <ma...@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de>
> olexiy.chudnovskyy@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de
> 
> WWW:  <http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/people/chudnovskyy>
> http://vsr.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/people/chudnovskyy
> 
> Phone: +49 371 531 39146
> 
> 
>