status update

maintained by Christopher Blizzard <blizzard@mozilla.org>

Last Updated Tuesday, April 11, 2000

This status update page is updated every weekend. To get updates and news throughout the week you are invited to check out mozillaZine, a site devoted to Mozilla advocacy.

Previous Updates

Module Updates
Builds
Mar 31
Submitted by Leaf <leaf@mozilla.org>
Leaf has made daily talkback builds available on the ftp server. This will help us pinpoint problems in daily builds in addition to the milestone releases. Also, there's a new report that summarizes the top crashes in the past 4 days in the crash-data newsgroup.

Granrose is rewriting the crusty unix automation to be more flexible.

The build group is trying to revamp the tree verification process, to keep the tree open more of the time.

Zope-Mozilla
Apr 2
Submitted by Martijn Pieters <mj@digicool.com>
Mar 17

Now up on the Zope-Mozilla ZWiki is a first cut at the Zope Studio use cases. 33 in total, they are not worked out yet, nor are they claimed to be complete:

http://www.zope.org/Resources/Mozilla/ZWiki/ZopeMozillaDashboard
I have started to build the XUL skeleton for the Zope Studio main window ar as well. Watch out for chekins on this same channel.

Mar 26

This week saw the first burst of development on Zope Studio. In CVS is now a skeleton for the main user interface, with a working mini object browser that will enable you to browse a Zope server, and filter on object meta types.

Because of recent developments on Mozilla, you will need a recent nightly for taking a look at Zope Studio. Often, checkins will contain XUL code that will not work on a nightly Moz build older than the date of the checkin. You have been warned.

Speaking of developments: We have been able to net some of the Mozilla developers on IRC, getting them to comment on the future directions of their respective modules. There are lots of new things afoot: RDF support in Mozilla will move closer to supporting the actual W3C standard, so the RDF Zope emits might actually be useful for something besides Zope Studio. Also, support for XML requests is planned. This would make XML-RPC much easier in Mozilla.

In the mean time I have kept on finding and reporting bugs to Bugzilla. As always, the zopestudio keyword points the way. And yes, Zope Studio will get a tracker as well. We should, anyway =).

Apr 7

This week Shalabh integrated the property editor into Zope Studio. Although only for viewing properties for now, this is a great step.

I worked on getting Zope Studio working again, more or less, with the current nightlies. In the past 2 weeks a lot has changed in Mozilla, especially in those areas we use most. Things should now work better again.

There are a few issues, however, that await fixes in Mozilla:

1/ When opening a new server, the minibrowser will quite often not look correct (no icons and plus/minus symbols). Bugzilla 15586 is the cause of this. Double click on the first line should partially restore the display.

2/ The filter list at the top of the minibrowser will show metatypes visible in the minibrowser, but it doesn't do anything. Bugzilla 34623 needs to be implemented.

3/ No resources that need authentication can be accessed. Bugzilla 33206.

If you want to take a look, you will need a very recent nightly. M15 should be out soon, and the nightlies are stabilising fast, so there is no need to worry too much about the warnings usually applicable to nightlies.

XPToolkit
Apr 3
Submitted by Peter Trudelle <trudelle@netscape.com>
Highlights
 
  • Mike Pinkerton (pinkerton):
  • Improved drop feedback on tree folders.
  • Implemented drop feedback on sorted trees.
  • Daniel Matejka finished the  z-ordering is work on Windows, and  plans to check it in if the tree ever goes green while he's awake. (danm).

  •  
  • Eric Vaughan (evaughan):
  • Completed box infrastructure task.
  • Completed aligning of descent in boxes feature.
  • Completed new XUL image frame.
  • Made splitters resize dynamically.
  • Stuart Parmenter (pavlov):
  • Rewrote linux filepicker (26480).
  • Created new file picker interface to replace existing ones (6783).
  • Rewrote colorpicker in XBL (not checked in yet).
  • David Hyatt implemented XBL Methods and Properties.  (hyatt)

  •  
  • The XPToolkit team resolved 70 bugs in the last week, fixing 38 of  these, including 7 new features.  For details, see our resolved bug list.

  • Lowlights

    • It doesn't look possible to implement z-ordering for windows on GTK, since it doesn't have the necessary hooks.  We'd love for some wizard to show us the light on this; get your name in this space next week!
    • We keep having to spend too much time fixing regressions we didn't cause.  This is very tedious for the engineers that get stepped on,  delays our feature work and bugfixing, and can even block other development work. If everyone would spend a few extra minutes testing their changes better, we'd be moving forward more steadily, and get there a lot faster.
    Priorities
     
  • pinkerton:
  •  13334 click on menu items disappears submenus

  • -OR-
  •  11586  XP Menus need to be scrollable
  • saari:
  •  34056 Cannot type in composer without resizing window first.
     32541"ASSERTION: Failed to update state" when scrolling
     33735 [Mac] Keyboard shortcuts broken when no browser windows open
     33040 Composer Format menu: Mac submenus broken
  • hyatt:
  • Skin-related XBL stuff (like the toolbar grippies 22071 ).
  • Work on chrome registry as needed... waiting on dveditz to do a chrome installer...
  • evaughan:
  •  32153 Finish grid widget.
  • pavlov:
  •  9668 XP cursor support.
  • danm:
  •  8877 Z-ordering on MacOS.
  • 33550 Account Manager freezes when creating new account
  • Mail/News
    Apr 3
    Submitted by Steve Elmer <selmer@netscape.com>
    Mail
    • Scottip: Work in progress on 10875, Standalone message window
    • Jefft:  Finished 11370, working on 16235 and 16244
    • Candice:    32286 [FEATURE]Edit mailing list in address book - back end
      32287 [FEATURE]Delete mailing list from address book
    • MScott:  worked on an auto complete strawman after a design meeting with jean-Francois. Current pass can be found at: http://www.mozilla.org/mailnews/arch/autocomplete.html.
      * Bug #33156 --> doc loader needs to use the new nsIWebProgress APIs.
      * Bug #31806 -->  To and cc in message pane put each name and , on a separate line
    • Seth:  Newsgroup subscribe dialog
    • Alec:  17484 - filter support. Working on the "filter datasource" right now so that we can reflect filter lists into the UI. #18184 - multiple SMTP UI - a first cut has landed in the tree starting with today's build.
    • Paul:  Out last week.
    Profile Manager
    • Finished beta1 work!!
    • 23153, 15264 - profiles I18N friendly
    • 28979, 25609, 28818, 29574 - fixed memory leaks
    Shrimp
    • Memory footprint and DLL reduction work ongoing
    CCK
    • Closed all bugs against beta1 CCK
    Crypto
    Apr 4
    Submitted by Bob Lord <lord@netscape.com>
    Great news: This week we migrated almost all of NSS 3 to the Mozilla CVS tree!  From now on we'll be using that tree for development. The next version of PSM will use NSS 3.  We'll post more updates in the mozilla.crypto newsgroup and on the main PKI project page. We also updated several web pages, including a new SSL/TLS page.
    XPToolkit
    Apr 9
    Submitted by Peter Trudelle <trudelle@netscape.com>
    Highlights

    Most of the team attended the highly successful First Mozilla Developers Conference.  It was amazing to see how many developers came to talk shop. This is really quite a movement we have going here!  It was really good to meet the other contributors, and finally put a face to their names.  I was very glad to see a great deal of interest in mozilla as a platform, with dozens of 'native' apps,  rather than just a suite of a few target applications.

    Accomplishments
     

  • Eric Vaughan (evaughan):
  • Completed Grid widget.
  • Completed box baseline alignment.
  • Completed box infrastructure work.
  • Stuart Parmenter rewrote color picker in XBL (fixed color picker being broken,  bug #34110. (pavlov):

  • David Hyatt rewrote toolbars in xbl, making them skinnable.  (hyatt)

  •  
  • The XPToolkit team resolved 74 bugs in the last week, fixing 48 of  these, including 6 new features and 4 PDT+.  For details, see our resolved bug list.

  • Priorities

    All: Get M15 stable, fix as many M16 bugs as the feature work allows.
     

  • pinkerton:
  •  11586 [feature] XP & content menus need to  be scrollable
  •  13334 [feature] Click on menu items  disappears submenu
  • saari:
  • Fix bugs in focus (one for M15!), events, etc.
  • hyatt:
  • Fix focus regression on win98.
  • evaughan:
  • Grid widget lazy scrolling.
  • Stack z ordering.
  • pavlov:
  •  13161 [FEATURE] implement nsClipboard::HasDataMatchingFlavors 
  • danm:
  • Composer
    Mar 20
    Submitted by Beth Epperson <beppe@netscape.com>

    Highlights:

    • The team focused on wrapping up M15 issues and triaging the list
    • The team also focused on issues that must be resolved for M16
    • Simon is getting the infrastructure in place for the select from JavaScri= pt issue, this should help resolve the Mail auto-complete issue
    • Mike resolved the arrow out of range issue -- if you are at the end of the text string and press the right arrow issue
    • Akkana checked in code for the Composer View Source page and for the colo= r customization bug
    • Joe resolved one of the more annoying caret issues - the caret did the bunny hop when near quoted text in Mail compose
    • Charley fixed the problem with spell checker not working
    • Kathy has been reviewing incoming bugs and getting them assigned to the correct engineer, finding dups, and verifying legitimate issues.
    • 66 editor bugs were resolved this past week
    • 170 open M16 bugs, 70 of those are feature work bugs

    Lowlights:

    • There are currently 249 open Composer bugs (M16-M30)

    Priorities for M16:

    • Kin:
      • find/replace
      • spellcheck
      • caret placement
      • drag select
    • Kathy:
      • Composer preference panels
      • rewrite image dialog
      • drag-n-drop
    • Joe:
      • list transformation (changing list type)
      • remove all styles
      • bigger/smaller font selection
      • tab support
      • block operation
      • IME support
    • Simon:
      • provide selection from JS
      • command updating (caret and toolbar)
      • hook up context menus
      • disable unsupported elements
      • split editor controller
    • Mike:
      • click selection
      • drag select (set capture)
      • select before/after table
      • table cell selection
      • selection thresholds
      • page up/down
    • Charley:
      • rewrite all of the Composer dialogs
      • table edit and selection
      • row and column select and edit
      • provide unknown element widget
      • finalize menus
    • Akkana:
      • rewrite event system
      • help debug several mail compose bugs
      • rewrap in mail
      • double-click word select
      • disable meta refresh
      • doctype support
      • color customization

    Accomplishments:

    • Kin
      • on sabbatical
    • Kathy
      • Worked on some drag and drop issues
        • Talked to Mike Judge and Mike Pinkerton; got them to talk to each other and figure out how to get selection to play nice with drag and drop infra= structure
      • Fixed a keybinding bug on Mac
      • Started redoing image dialog with new xul widgets
      • Triaged incoming bugs for team
    • Joe
      • Fixed bug 31125: Caret mysteriously hops around when typing near quoted html mail quotes.
      • Investigated bug 34559: IME hang that ended up being a selection problem (Mike has since fixed).
      • Investigated bug 34729: basically, GFX text widgets are doing the wrong thing to catch changes in state of the string.
      • Investigated 34885: sometimes if you drag select some text in just the right way, you then can't make it bold, etc.
      • Wrote RemoveAllProperties().  This removes all styles on the selecti= on.
      • Profiled text paste again, now that I've rewritten the code path.  The results break up pretty cleanly into 5 consecutive operations, all of which take to long.  I've assigned a bug for each:
        1. The early part of the Paste() routine, before we actually get to the Inse= rtText call, takes a long time (roughly the same as inserting the text itself).<= /li>
        2. The early part of WillInsertText() takes too long.
        3. The guts of text insertion is now almost totally inside a bunch of Insert= Before() calls, which is a DOM routine.  Even if the rest of the editor paste= time goes to zero, big pastes will always be bound by the speed of Insert= Before().
        4. The rules post-processing still takes too long.
        5. Re-enabling the caret takes a significant portion of the time (!).
    • Simon
      • Worked with pavlov to fix a problem opening local files, in browser and editor (bug 34362)
      • Checked in code to properly detect and respond to attempts to edit a fram= eset document (bug 14599)
      • Fixed a problem unlisting items (bug 28491)
      • Tidied up the Find dialog, and tweaked some other dialogs to use new XUL widgets, and to remember their position
      • Checked in fixes for bugs that I filed long ago -- bugs 29807, 29811
      • =
      • Checked in some changes to get Cut/Copy/Paste on the context menus; work in progress for bug 14874
      • Worked on setting the selection in a text widget from JS (bug 33967). Hav= e the underlying code working, now need to find out how to get access to the widget from JS.
    • Mike
      • Fixed set capture for frames.
      • Fixed events from frames going to the root frame when all else fails.
      • Flowed the root frame events to its child in the case of mouse events so that the blockframe code can "do the right thing" in tracking the mouse movements from the now captured events.
      • Went to the developers conference here and talked to mozilla contributors= =2E they were very interested in embedding ender. I will talk with travis som= e more about how that work is going.
      • Fixed some code for IME.
      • Pierre fixed the nsLookAndFeel to have the selection colors show up corre= ctly I am very excited about that.

      • Fixed a couple problems with keyboard navigation that I saw.
    • Charley
      • Fixed window title after Save As ( 28591 ), parameter range validation ( 33027 ), converted to using nsIFilePicker for file open dialog.
      • Fixed spell checker not working at all ( 34479 ) and spell checking notif= ication when done ( 28152 ). Work in tree (to be checked in soon) for a better solution to this, including adding a "Recheck" feature to restart spell checking.
      • More progress on converting to new XUL widgets ("skinability:"  1956= 5).
    • Akkana
      • Make mail compose window remember its size and position - 24360.
      • Fix the editor's View Source page (ready to check in for M16) - 34414.
      • Added color customization to nsXPLookAndFeel - 34704.
      • Added nsXPLookAndFeel calls to the non-big-3 front ends.
      • Made progress cleaning up nsEnderEventListener code (28401).
      • Lots of time talking to Ben Bucksch regarding various mail/news formattin= g, wrapping and quoting issues.
      • Attended the M16 scheduling meeting for Beth.

    Issues:

    • Still no lead for the open position

    People:

    • Kin out on sabbatical until 4/19
    AIX and HP/UX
    Apr 10
    Submitted by Jim Dunn <jdunn@netscape.com>
    Highlights
    A beta of the HP gnu debugger (a gui environment) is now available. It solved the problem of debugging on HPUX 11.00 with pthreads. It also has some memory tools that we are still looking at.
    Lowlights
    Ran into a regression on AIX with the proxy code. With a change to configure, (NEED_CPP_UNUSED_IMPOLMENTATIONS=1 for AIX), we no longer build xpcom.so because of some proxy code. Working with dougt & scc to fix.
    Issues
    The new IBM AIX compiler is on its way, this should hopefully solve many of the AIX deficiencies.
    Necko
    Apr 10
    Submitted by Warren Harris <warren@netscape.com>
    Lowlights
    • Our necko group outing to Muir Woods today fell through! Between sprained ankles, illness, childcare issues, etc. we've decided to postpone it for now.
    Highlights
    • No status from ruslan, davidm or gagan this week.
    • We're all happy that our beta was so well received, although somewhat concerned about 2 things:
      • what are we going to do to make the UI a little more presentable, and
      • are we going to get hammered on performance/footprint issues for beta2 if all we do is feature work?
    • We're also concerned that much of our necko beta2 work falls below the radar of the user-visible feature set of the product which makes our stuff mostly "non-essential." As Clayton's group moves forward with more of a platform focus, we're going to need to change to a more developer-driven criterion for beta selection -- are the APIs right, are they complete, usable on the right threads, work with minimal dependencies, etc?
    Engineering Status
    • andreas.otte@primus-online.de
      • [34966 fragment id on root-documents without / misinterpreted] fix waiting for tree opening
      • [33868 URL encoding for Basic Realm authentication doesn't work] fix waiting for last review and tree opening
      • [34863 Local Harddisks not found if I tried with C: without \] have fix
      • [31658 doesn't follow clicked link when using base url] worked with Chris Waterson on a different solution
      • [20891 Assertion when displaying message] fix waiting for review
      • [33935 Open File on this test case causes crash] worked on some platform specific code (XP_PC) that resolves paths correctly when there is a drive in the base url and not in the path.
      • [20891 Assertion when displaying message] Need decision to either go with the fix or wait for the conversion to nsIFile.
    • gordon
      • checked in changes to resolve bug 23811 "Support IPv6"
      • tracking down leakage of nsIOService (and thereby nsSocketTransportService and nsDNSService) on Mac
        • worked with Patrick Beard to get Chris Waterson's leak balancing tools working
      • working on:
        • bug 29702 "crash in OT on dns shutdown"
        • bug 30917 "implement DNS caching and request cancelation"
          • need to analyze timing to see if a cache is really needed.
          • need to add platform specific cancellation calls.
        • bug 33821 "cnn.com crash in nsDNSLookup::CompletedLookup"
          • probably a thread safety issue.  I think I need to add a bit more protection to lookup objects.
        • bug 10733 "sched - async dns unix"
    • valeski
      • 29858 - "*/*" file types were crashing us, sending us into a nice infinate layout loop and consumption loop.
      • 34401 - regression: stream converter conflict
      • discovered transport level failure case OnStart/OnStop usage inconsistency. meeting tomorrow to discuss assumptions.
      • spent a lot of time resolving tree blockers without owners.
    • warren
      • Got jar protocol working but couldn't check it in due to tree closure for M15.
      • Recent necko changes have caused some breakage with javascript: protocol. Started working on a fix, but to do this right requires some amount of surgury on the file transport to cause javascript evaluation to occur at the right time.
      • Attended some long boring meetings on scheduling.

      •  
    Beta Schedule
    • Ok, it's really more of a bugzilla query than a beta schedule, but here are our bugs which we feel are a requirement for beta2. They should be scheduled for M16/M17 and we're trying to get them all updated with duration information in the status whiteboard:  Bug List (52 bugs total)
    • Here's another query that shows all bugs marked for us for M15-M17 (what we think we're signed up to do in the beta2 timeframe):  Bug List (126 bugs total)
    Mail/News
    Apr 10
    Submitted by Steve Elmer <selmer@netscape.com>
        
    • Beta2 Feature List
    • Estimated Days to Beta2 Completion (known to be inaccurate, working on it)
      • Rich 15
      • Seth 10
      • ScottiP 10
      • MScott 20
      • Jean-Francois 15
      • Bienvenu 20+
      • Candice 20
      • Jeff 20
      • Alec 20
      • Hangas 20
    • Bugs closed last week
      • New icons for folder and thread panes
      • http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32742 stole much valuable feature dev time last week.
      • Implemented the XAOL-OPTION command to enable the AOL split mailbox view  of your inbox, but didn't turn it on since it's a bit funky (open issue  how we're going to resolve this).
      • Finished filter migration and imap filters that move messages to local folders or other imap servers.
      • Made progress on NNTP connection cache.
    • Bugs for this week
      •  34962 - No attachment paperclip when having weird filename for attach  
      • 34570 - New text when showing signed mails
      • 17795 (subscribe ui)
      • 35216 (ab synch ui)
      • 10875 - Standalone message window
      • Possibly 14106 for views in the thread pane like unread messages
      • 31806, 33156
      • 16354 - autocomplete
      •   Bugzilla bug 33566  Bugzilla bug 34252 ready to check once the tree is open. Will be working on  21742 &  16241
      • try to finish up NNTP connection cache (I've almost finished the coding),
      • start work on mail/news message Search backend
      • 32287  [FEATURE]Delete mailing list from address book
      • 32292  [FEATURE] Add, Edit and Delete entries in a Mailing List
    • Issues
      • vCards getting broken a lot - we haven't changed anything lately...
      • JAR support in beta2 is still unkown quantity
      • Regressions in general are taking a lot of our time
      • Bug  16244 -- Empty trash on Exit for Pop and Imap
      • need a service provided by xpcom to wait until all the async operation completed prior shutting down the app
    • Gayatri will coordinate JAR work for CPD
    • Setting up a recruiting visit to Stanford and working with 4 new external contributors
    • Shippensburg University students participate in Netscape project
    Shrimp
    • Estimated Days to Beta2 Feature Complete
      • Gayatri 15
    • Transitioned DLL optimization from Varada to Gayatri
    • Footprint effort now redundant with Brendan, switching to investigating string opportunities
    Profile Manager
    • Estimated Days to Beta2 Feature Complete
      • Bhuvan 10
      • Varada 10
    • Last Week
      • * Worked on building blocks of moving activation code from mozilla to ns (bugs 28888, 27948).
      • * Fixed bugs 34376 (Setting the browser opening url to the one passed by activation), 17457 (create new profile on the top of old one/a way to use old profile) and 29524 (Getting profile dir from front-end).
      • * Worked on regressions 32696, 32346, 34744, 34302, 35132 (None of these regressions are caused by our code).
      • Migration - Making progress in resolving the migration issues involved in moving from 4.x to 6.0. Have a draft for the analysis of the problem and possible solutions.
    • This Week
      • * Will be working on bugs 18927 (profile directories to reccycle bin), 34385 (signed js support), 34128 (activation - i18n), 31688 (-CreateProfile option).
      • * Also, I will continue my efforts on bug 28888 over the week.
      • * Will meet and discuss issues with activation team.
      • Migration - Mail the 1st version of the analysis of the migration issues and get feedback. Get upto speed on Seth and dbragg's code and start preparing the engg spec needed for the changes to be done if any.

    CCK
    • Last week
      • CCK- did a little bit of work for getting the beta1 bits ready.
    • This week
      • (focusing on profile migration, no large activity planned here)
           
    XUL
    Apr 11
    Submitted by Chris Waterson <waterson@netscape.com>
    Extended XUL <template> syntax being discussed here:

    news://news.mozilla.org/38EE27F4.468D4BD7%40netscape.com

    Should be coming online soon...

    MathML
    Apr 12
    Submitted by Roger B. Sidje <rbs@maths.uq.edu.au>
    Just have a few comments for MathML:

    There has been many exciting developments in MathML. I am preparing a progress report aimed at replacing the now outdated report that is on the MathML project webpage. The report will provide ample details on the current status of the MathML project.

    Web Tools
    Apr 11
    Submitted by Dan Mozedale <dmose@mozilla.org>
    Sometimes when submitting changes to bugs, Bugzilla would hang for a very long time. I've checked in a change which should fix this.
    Mozilla Developer Meeting / Party v3.0
    Apr 11
    Submitted by Dawn Endico <endico@mozilla.org>
    Last Thursay we had our second anniversary party and the day after was our first Mozilla Developer Meeting. The party had an estimated attendence of 1100-1300. Scott Draves provided visuals in the blue room with his program, bomb.

    The developer meeting was very sucessful. Between 60 and 80 people attended. Many of them were visiting from out of town. The people I spoke with seemed to find the meeting pretty productive and if nothing else, it was nice to have an opportunity to finally meet folks face to face. We hope to have more meetings like this. Someone suggested calling it Mozillapalooza.

     

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