Module Updates Javascript February 13th Submitted by Scott Furman <fur@netscape.com> Scott writes: Most of the JavaScript group's implementation efforts are going towards making XPConnect a reality.  We've even thrown another body at the problem (Mike McCabe) to make the work go faster.  Code to handle non-trivial C<->JS type conversions is almost done. We are on the verge of having typelibs being both written by the XPIDL compiler and read in and used by XPConnect at runtime.  Additionally, John Bandauer has created an nsIXPCScriptable interface for reflection of XPCOM objects with property names that are dynamically determined at runtime.  Mike Shaver has begun work on the IDL Author's Guide. We're ramping up our efforts with the ECMA  standards organization to evolve the ECMAScript language for the upcoming "ECMA 2" standard.  (Netscape's JavaScript is a superset of ECMAScript.) Waldemar has been doing a great job of writing the ECMA 2 proposal.  As you read his proposal, keep in mind a few things: First, it's a proposal, not a standard !  Second, even as a proposal, it's a work in progress and we welcome input from anyone.  Finally, please don't confuse the Javascript language with its object model;  You won't find any references to document objects, windows, forms, etc.  The definition of browser objects falls under the DOM specification. Since JS2 is still a ways off, Norris has been looking at simpler improvements that could be introduced in JS1.5, such as the introduction of packages. Checkout all the recent changes to the JavaScript code.   XPToolkit February 16th Submitted by Peter Trudelle <trudelle@netscape.com> Highlights Checked in initial dialog support and posted a Dialog Cookbook. Please give us feedback ASAP so we can rev this quickly. Lowlights Accomplishments Cleaned up the Toolbar Requirements and Specification. Anyone planning to use toolbars should review these to ensure that the finished widget meets their needs. Wrote and posted  AOM Nodes as the XPToolkit and AppCore/Service APIs, which clarifies the preferred mechanism of communication between XPToolkit and application services. It also clarifies the role of command nodes. Reimplemented the Submit, Reset buttons to be GFX rendered and checked them in. Simplified the Grippy Pane Widget task by eliminating it as a separate widget,  making it a part of the pane splitter. Checked in the rework of nsWebShellWindow and BrowserAppCore to better support the creation of Dialogs and windows. Made the BrowserAppCore a listener of network activity as a starting place for notifications for enabling/disabling and start/stop of various browser components when a page is loading. Performed initial work of turning the AppCorManager into a service. More investigation and understanding of the problem is needed, because it broke the connect to JS. Added "fixed" position for the IFRAME for the AppShell.html file. Now the StatusBar "sticks" to the bottom of the window when it is resized. Rewrote the tree frame construction code in order to merge with Karnaze's new table construction code. Worked with Chris Waterson to get the tree widget displaying mail and bookmarks. Implemented the broadcaster mechanism in the RDF content nodes (for the command infrastructure). Decisions Issues Platform parity, build and regression issues continue to take up way too much time.  Mac folks are wasting at least 10% of their time, and here is what Chris McAfee alone had to do for Unix this week: Finished checking in fixes to the Unix unit tests, this required some Solaris work to keep Tinderbox happy. This fixes 6 or so PP bugs. Solaris purify doesn't appear to be working properly with egcs, I will need to go see if the native compiler can compile mozilla, this might be the only way we get purify on any Unix platform. Fixed libimg linking problem that was preventing non-imglib binaries from linking anything. Fixed build breakage all day on Tuesday. Spent 2 days with the Escalation team getting FullCircle Talkback into 4.51 for HP-UX.  This would have taken weeks for someone else to ramp up and do, we do not have the headcount to make this happen.  Nortel/BBN escalations from last year might go more smoothly this year with HP/Talkback under our Talkback belts. Worked with Jan to update the Bugzilla component list. People Scott Collins has headed back to work at home in Michigan for a few weeks. GTK UI February 12th Submitted by Christopher Blizzard <blizzard@redhat.com> From Chris Blizzard: "Resizing top level windows now works in the gtk front end. This has been a major problem over the last few weeks and the layout people are quite happy that it's been fixed." Grendel (Java Mail/News client) February 12th Submitted by Giao Nguyen <grail@cafebabe.org> Giao has this update for us: "It was a slow week mostly with bug fixes rather than advances. We fixed a lot of bugs with language sanity for moving things to Java 2. Grendel was patched so you can change the layouts of folder display, message, and message body display. It was quite thrilling. Some missing details from the addressbook code committed last week were added to make sure everything compiled. There're currently 4 (is that all???) files that are not compiling. Hopefully, we can get them all compiling and working and not just commenting out the entire thing. Edwin got us a few patches for language sanity. Chars not typed to bytes sort of thing. Jeff is still hacking on addressbook issues. He's also trying to line up some QA on the work. I'm fixing two out of the four files that are not compiling. They're related to how grendel displays dialog boxes." Mail Networking February 12th Submitted by Scott MacGregor <mscott@netscape.com> First, Scott MacGregor has news regarding the networking aspect of the Mail client: "We made some more progress on porting our mail protocols over to the mozilla world using the new networking model. SMTP is now online in (mozilla/mailnews/compose). Part of the mailbox url code (mailbox://) is up and running as well. So right now we have NNTP, POP3, SMTP and mailbox protocol modules checked in under mailnews." Build Config February 12th Submitted by Brian Ostrom <briano@netscape.com> Brian Ostrom has news on Unix platform work... "I've been working on getting the shunned UNIX platforms building. Mostly without much success. Many of my UNIX boxes won't build GLib and/or GTK+ (1.1.14), so I can't go any further until that gets resolved. However, I have set up Tinderbox builds on HP-UX 10.20 and BSDI BSD/OS 3.1. Unfortunately, they still require a lot of work before they'll go green (and when that happens, they'll become part of the standard set of SeaMonkey Tinderboxes, in theory)." Editor February 12th Submitted by Akkana Peck <akkana@netscape.com> Here's Akkana's update on the status of the editor (composer): "The nsIEditor interface is being checked in, along with some examples of how external consumers might use the interface outside of the editor. We hope to have a document soon detailing this; when it's available it will appear under http://www.mozilla.org/editor. Code to implement a blinking caret has been checked in and is almost ready to be turned on. We've been shifting around some of the backend selection classes to make it easier for code outside of the layout library to get access to the selection and to be able to iterate through it. Selection via the keyboard has hit a brick wall, that of relating the geometric position of a frame on the page to its position (if any) in the document, and how to get from one frame to the one geometrically next to it. This is a major issue which will need to be solved with the help of layout people. See jfrancis' post in netscape.public.mozilla.editor for more details. The spec on the Transaction Manager has been updated, and is available now. The txmgr is a very general class, intended for use outside the editor, and we're talking to other groups about how it can be used anywhere that undo/redo is useful. A table editing spec, describing what had been implemented for the old mozilla classic code, which we plan to implement again in the new codebase, has been published at http://www.mozilla.org/editor/ui_specs/TableSpecs.html. Work on dialog/UI specs continues. See the ongoing discussion on the newsgroup, and the specs posted at http://www.mozilla.org/editor/ui_specs/Composer_5_Dialogs.html." NGLayout February 12th Submitted by Troy Chevalier <troy@netscape.com> Troy writes in with this update: Block/Inline: a few bug fixes regression code so we can do automated regression testing XPCOM'ing of the nsIPresContext/nsIPresShell API's Tables: this week: colapsing row groups, rows, col groups, cols last week: map arbitrary html elements to table related elements via display types Printing: this week: win32 - print borders around form controls (using CSS attribute selectors); Mac - similar toWin32 but not fully tested; linux - postscript images last week: win32 - print state of form control widgets; Mac - similar to Win32; linux - postscript printing excluding form controls Forms: this week: gfx radio buttons and check boxes are limping along last week: underlying mechanism for supporting either native or gfx rendered form controls Previous Updates