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Posted to announcements@jakarta.apache.org by robert burrell donkin <rd...@apache.org> on 2003/05/22 13:55:19 UTC
Jakarta Newsletter Issue 8
Jakarta Newsletter Issue 8
==========================
Issue: 8
Date: March-April 2003
Url: http://jakarta.apache.org/site/news/200303.html
I'm sad to say Rob Oxspring hasn't been able to edit this newsletter
so you'll have to make do with me instead. We'll all miss his
observations of life here in Jakartaland. Hopefully, Rob will be
again back soon.
This is the first wiki-built newsletter. See here
<http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?JakartaNewsletterDrafts>
for more details. The next few issues will probably be bi-monthly.
I'd like to extend the now-traditional thank-you to 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
<http://jakarta.apache.org/site/mail.html>, if you want to comment
on the newsletter itself then please point your comments to
general@jakarta.apache.org
<mailto:general@jakarta.apache.org?subject=[Newsletter]>.
Robert Burrell Donkin
Contents
--------
* Alexandria
* Cactus
* Commons
o Commons CLI
o Commons Codec
o Commons File Upload
o Commons Betwixt
o Commons Digester
o Commons BeanUtils
o Commons Math
* Log4j
* Lucene
* POI
* Struts
* Tapestry
* Turbine
Alexandria
==========
Editor: Nicola Ken Barozzi
Donated code has been integrated in CVS, and now Alexandria generates:
* javasrc - fully linked and highlighted java source source
* javadoc - java docs with standard doclet or in XML
* jsdoc - initial implementation of javascript docs
* uml - graph of relationship of all classes in png and svg
* ant - graphs and docs about the Ant buildfile
For more details, see the site [1] and the CVS [2] or look at the
initial
sample doc generation done for Apache Cocoon [3].
[1] http://jakarta.apache.org/alexandria/
[2] http://cvs.apache.org/viewcvs/jakarta-alexandria/
[3]
http://cvs.apache.org/~nicolaken/whiteboard/alexandria-docs/xml-cocoon/
Cactus
======
Editor: Christopher Lenz
It's now been over half a year since the last stable release of
Cactus, a framework for unit-testing server-side Java code. However,
that doesn't mean that the project has become less active, quite the
contrary. With Christopher Lenz and Julien Ruaux two new committers
have joined the game.
The focus for the next release of Cactus (which should be coming
rather soon - honestly) has been on ease of use. In the past, it had
often been quite hard to integrate Cactus in a development
environment, be it an IDE or an automated build system based on Ant.
The upcoming release of Cactus will provide custom Ant tasks that
can transparently run tests on a variety of containers, as well as a
plugin for the Eclipse IDE that extends the existing JUnit runner
with the capability of running In-Container tests.
Other enhancements include:
* A new ServletTestSuite class that enables a collection of
normal JUnit tests to be executed inside a servlet container
* Cactus test cases can have begin() and end() methods, which
are similar to the JUnit setUp() and tearDown() but get
invoked on the client side.
* A new helper class (JspTagLifecycle) that simplifies testing
of JSP tag libraries by providing a stub JSP engine
* Integration of the Jetty servlet container
* The ServletTestRunner can can perform the XSLT transformation
for displaying a HTML test report on the server side
For more details, see the full feature list [1] and the
list of changes [2].
[1] http://jakarta.apache.org/cactus/features.html
[2] http://jakarta.apache.org/cactus/changes.html
Commons
=======
Commons CLI
-----------
Editor: John Keyes
CLI has been redesigned and as such the next general release
will be 2.0. The initial implementation of the redesign is not
yet in CVS so user comments and feedback have not been gathered
yet. More information will be posted to the mailing lists when
appropriate.
Commons Codec
-------------
Editor: Tim O'Brien
The initial release of Commons Codec 1.1 was release. Commons
Codec contains original phonetic encoders, a Hex encoder, and a
Base64 encoder integrated from xmlrpc and Commons HttpClient
both of which were derived from original source code in
Catalina. Codec 1.1 is mostly RFC 2045 and will be followed up
shortly with release 1.1.1 to bring the project into full
compliance with RFC 2045. This project is currently seeking
input on which stream oriented Base64 encoder to integrate into
a 1.2 release - please send suggestions to the Commons developer
mailing list.
Commons File Upload
-------------------
Editor: Martin Cooper
File Upload has gone through some significant changes recently.
The code base has been overhauled to address several outstanding
bug reports, as well as provide a much more solid base for
customization. At the same time, real documentation has been
added that addresses a large majority of uses of the File Upload
component. A 1.0 Beta 2 release is anticipated as soon as the
few outstanding bug reports are addressed.
User feedback would be very much appreciated.
Commons Betwixt
---------------
Editor: Robert Burrell Donkin
In the last couple of months betwixt has been slowly moving
forwards. Bugs were fixed and the following functionality added:
setter for encoding when writing beans, support for reading
composite map entries, support for specifying custom updater in
the .betwixt file and support for writing mixed content.
Recently, there's been more from developers (which is good to see)
:
http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?listName=commons-
dev@jakarta.apache.org&msgId=698963
http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?listName=commons-
dev@jakarta.apache.org&msgId=697486
Hopefully they'll be more of the infamous refactoring happening
soon - there's even a wiki page for those brave souls that feel
like contributing some design wisdom.
Commons Digester
----------------
Editor: Robert Burrell Donkin
April saw the release of a new Digester release. This was rushed
out to fix a backwards compatibility issue with 1.4.x. So, the
release notes
<http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/digester/RELEASE-NOTES.txt>
contains pretty much all the Digester activity for March and April.
There are some exciting developments (probably) coming up in the
near future including support for some validation:
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=jakarta-commons-
dev&m=105049382329507&w=2
and also Digester plugins (which allow the digestion to be
specified in the xml to be read in!).
Commons BeanUtils
-----------------
Editor: Robert Burrell Donkin
Slow but steady progress for BeanUtils. Bugs fixed - the number
of bug reports and requests for enhancements is impressive and
it takes time to process them with the quality that's required -
but please keep them coming. We've been moving towards
beanification of BeanUtils - creating proper classes that
provide the functionality behind the static utility classes.
This will allow different instances which can have their
properties set and convertors registered just for that instances
rather than globally.
Commons Math
------------
Editor: Robert Burrell Donkin
A new component commons-math
<http://jakarta.apache.org/commons/sandbox/math/index.html> is
in the process of being formed in the sandbox. The aim is to
create library of lightweight, self-contained mathematics and
statistics components. Anyone who's interested is cordially
invited to join in the discussions on the commons-dev list!
Log4j
=====
Editor: Mark Womack
A new book on log4j entitled "The complete log4j manual", |ISBN
2-9700369-0-8|, authored by fellow log4j committer, Ceki G¸lc¸, has
been published early March. The book is available directly from the
author and in select bookshops throughout the world [0].
Development for the 1.3 version of log4j continues.
* The jakarta-log4j-sandbox cvs repository has been created with
filter, selector, and servlet related classes moved into it
for initial contents [1]. The log4j-sandbox, similar
to other Jakarta sandbox cvs repositories, is meant to allow
for less restrictive development related to log4j.
Experimental changes/tools can be explored without exposing
the changes to the core log4j release. As the code matures, it
will be folded into the log4j core release based on core
committer acceptance.
* Changes made to the log4j and log4j-sandbox build scripts to
support CheckStyle and Jalopy targets.
* Various changes from Paul Smith, Scott Deboy, Oliver Burns,
and Mark Womack were applied to the to the Chainsaw gui tool.
Before the changes, Chainsaw was was configured to receive
events via a single socket. Now it can receive events from any
remote appender by configuring it (via a normal log4j xml
configuration file) to use a matching Receiver plugin. Changes
were also made to allow for customized gui's to be built on
top of the core Chainsaw table model using a new
ChainsawAppender.
* MDC support was added to the XMLLayout class and the Chainsaw
gui tool by Paul Smith. PatternLayout was also extended to
support the output of all defined MDC key/values [2].
* Ceki G¸lc¸ recently extended LoggingEvent to allow properties
[3]. Properties are meant to be set by Layout and
Appender classes as they output/process logging events.
Properties are per logging event where MDC values are per thread.
* Mark Womack added LoggingEvent display and filtering to the
Chainsaw gui tool.
* There was a good discussion about changes needed in the
LoggingEvent class to allow instances to be reconstituted when
received from remote sources that do not use LoggingEvent as
the transport type (like XML for example). Changes will be
applied to define a verbose constructor that takes the
required LoggingEvent info [4].
* Richard Bair proposed an interesting Configuration gui tool
[5][6].
* Sub-component configuration within the xml configuration file
was recently added by Ceki G¸lc¸ [7].
* Raymond DeCampo started a discussion about cleaning up and
extending the existing JDBCAppender. This is a goal for the
1.3 release [8].
* Jacob Kjome was accepted as a commiter for the log4j cvs. Paul
Smith and Scott Deboy were accepted as committers for the
log4j-sandbox cvs [9].
* A new version of Chainsaw (v2) is currently under development
in the log4j-sandbox with Scott Deboy and Paul Smith leading
the effort [10]. This new version provides a much
deeper and richer gui tool for viewing logging events.
Development continues at a fevered pace and feedback is
welcomed and desired.
* The Avalon logging facade, Log4JAvalonLogger, has been added
to the log4j core release for v1.3 per the submission by Peter
Donald [11].
[0] https://www.qos.ch/shop/products/clm_t.jsp
[1] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=log4j-dev&m=104434069306491&w=2
[2] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=104807258400001&r=1&w=2
[3] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=104796062500002&r=1&w=2
[4] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=104814323200003&r=1&w=2
[5] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=104852956700007&r=1&w=2
[6] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=104982383200011&r=1&w=2
[7] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=104921701700001&r=1&w=2
[8] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=104916699700002&r=1&w=2
[9] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=105052349500005&r=1&w=2
[10] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=log4j-dev&m=105155769912213&w=2
[11] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=105126865600001&r=1&w=2
Lucene
======
Editor: Otis Gospodnetic
Lucene is preparing for building of 1.3 RC1. We are just waiting for
one or two more contributions to be checked into the CVS repository.
This month Lucene received a bug fix that was causing certain
failures on Windows JVMs, due to a bug in java.io.File's renameTo
(File) method. The fix came from Matt Tucker of Jive Software [1].
Tatu Saloranta refactored QueryParser, making it much
easier to extend and provide custom query parsing behaviour. [2]
For those who want to learn more about idexing text with Lucene, a
new article on that subject has been published on Onjava.com. [3]
[1] http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?listName=lucene-
dev@jakarta.apache.org&msgId=657670
[2] http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?listName=lucene-
dev@jakarta.apache.org&msgId=651229
[3] http://www.onjava.com/pub/a/onjava/2003/03/05/lucene.html
POI
===
* Patch applied to allow setting of sheet order. [1]
* Patch applied to fix issue with rewriting continuation
records. [2]
* Patch applied [3] to:
1. Provide PrintArea Support via NamedRegion References
(i.e. Sheet1!$A$1:$B$2)
2. Refactored PrintTitles a bit to reuse built-in printarea
commonalities (zero length fields, etc)
3. Added new tests
* Jason Height voted a committer [4]
* Development release 1.10.0 created
* Fixed an issue that was causing HDF to crash on certain word
documents [5]
* Interesting discussion on whether to move to a "real" parser
for dealing with formulas. [6]
* Workbook corruption issue when adding already existing row [7]
* Nightly builds stopped for some reason and have now been
restored [8]
* Danny Mui voted in as committer [9]
* Fix for bug #15019. NullPointerException in shiftRows. [10]
* Checkstyle removed from build as part of Andrew Oliver's audit
[11]
* Zoom, Freeze Pan, Split Panes, Printout column/row repeating
support added [12]
[1] http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17491
[2] http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17373
[3] http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17411
[4] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=104592698900003&r=1&w=4
[5] http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17208
[6] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=104569344200001&r=1&w=4
[7] http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=17222
[8] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-dev&m=104569323406383&w=4
[9] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=104466539000001&r=1&w=4
[10] http://nagoya.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=15019
[11] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?t=104453771000003&r=1&w=4
[12] http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=poi-dev&m=104452985604298&w=4
Struts
======
Editor: Martin Cooper
Struts is currently in a holding pattern, awaiting final releases of
all its Commons dependencies. A previous dependency on Commons DBCP,
and hence Commons Pool, has been removed by reverting to the generic
data source used in earlier versions of Struts. The one oustanding
dependency is on Commons File Upload. It is anticipated that Struts
1.1 RC2 will be released shortly after a File Upload final release.
Tapestry
========
Editor: Howard M. Lewis Ship
The Tapestry project is quickly coming together as a Jakarta
project. The final release of Tapestry 2.3 was released at the end
of February [1] and work on the radically improved 3.0
release is surging towards an initial beta release in the near
future. Neil Clayton is working on a revised and improved Tutorial
and Howard Lewis Ship is squeezing in some time to write an improved
User's Guide. Tapestry is now building under Gump. A vote on
Tapestry's acceptance as a full-fledged Jakarta project is currently
in progress, with all indications of a successful outcome.
Meanwhile, new committer David Solis has been providing bug fixes, a
suite of WML components, and documentation. Tapestry is really
thriving under the Jakarta banner!
[1] http://jakarta.apache.org/site/news.html#20030227.1
Turbine
=======
A servlet based framework that allows experienced Java developers to
quickly build secure web applications.
Editor: Eric Pugh, Chris Chew
The Turbine team is rapidly driving towards the initial beta release
of 2.3!
Turbine has seen extensive refactoring over the last two months.
Notable changes include:
* Full integration of the commons-fileupload, commons-email,
commons-logging, and commons-configuration jars
* Significant refactorings of the Security, Templating, and
PullTools Services.
* New ability to run Avalon Components.
* A new implementation of the security service using Torque
generated OM objects. This makes extending the user object
much easier.
See changelog
<http://jakarta.apache.org/turbine/turbine-2.3/changes.html> for a
complete list of enhancements
Additionally a new documentation project is being kicked off by
Chris Chew[1] as well as talks of possibly a new logo.
[1]
http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?listName=turbine-
user@jakarta.apache.org&msgNo=14762
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