status update

maintained by Chris Nelson <chrisn@statecollege.com>

Last Updated Saturday, November 21st, 1998

This status update page is updated every Friday evening or Saturday morning (but check back, because I may add in late updates on the weekend). To get updates and news throughout the week , I invite you to check out mozillaZine, a site I maintain devoted to Mozilla advocacy.

Previous Updates

There has been a lot of behind the scenes reshuffling at the Mozilla Project this week. Because of this, a number of the module names no longer apply; I used the old names this week. There should be new module names next week, and we should have more to report on the restructuring as the pieces fall into place.

Module Updates
Unix, GTK & NGLayout (until there's a new name)
November 20th
Submitted by Mike Shaver <shaver@netscape.com>

Mike Shaver writes in with a GTK specific update:

 
JavaScript Debugger
November 20th
Submitted by John Bandhauer <jband@netscape.com>

John Bandhauer writes in:

"I added a serious of pages rooted at http://www.mozilla.org/js/jsd/jsd2/ to gather together ideas and plans for the new JavaScript Debugger for Mozilla.

This is planned to be an open source debugger integrated into Mozilla, implemented in JavaScript as much as possible, and using XP widgets for the UI."

 
Editor
November 20th
Submitted by Akkana Peck <akkana@netscape.com>

Here's Akkana's update on the status of the editor (composer) through the transition:

  • We've started to move our preliminary (very preliminary!) design specs out onto mozilla.org, in case people are interested in commenting or contributing.
  • We've started checking in some code, under the mozilla/editor directory. We're using the xpviewer as a base to add our editor functionality; compile with the environment variable NGEDITOR=1 to build the xpviewer with editor functionality enabled.
  • Our main thrust over the next few weeks will involve selection, typing, simple commands and the transaction manager.

XPFE
November 20th
Submitted by Mike Pinkerton <pinkerton@netscape.com>

Mike Pinkerton writes, "The XPToolkits group has been doing the following:

  • assigning ownership of areas to engineers
  • trying to solve the DOM vs. RDF debate
  • writing specs for the XML-UI
  • meeting with the mail team to try to get them to use XPTk
  • writing web pages to show the mozilla community what is in our brains
  • A lot of new stuff has appeared at http://www.mozilla.org/xpfe in the last week."

 

JavaScript/Java Reflection
November 20th
Submitted by Scott Furman<fur@netscape.com>

It's been another quiet week in JavaScript-land (ECMA standards meetings sucked up a lot of time).

  • Mike McCabe is changing the way some JS Array methods work to to track recent additions to the ECMA v2 spec.
  • Scott Furman checked in some bug fixes for JS1.4 Release 2 and LiveConnect version 3.

See all the recent JS1.5 checkins.

 

XML
November 20th
Submitted by Vidur Apparao <vidur@netscape.com>

Vidur Apparao writes in with his first update as the owner of the XML module...

Our XML support improved this week.

I gave a talk at XML '98 and, among other things, showed the demo that can now be found off the page http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/demo/index.html. (If you have a recent release of NGLayout, check this out - it's really impressive! -c)

 

RDF and HT (HyperTree)
November 20th
Submitted by Chris Waterson <waterson@netscape.com>

Chris Waterson writes in with this RDF update:

  • Got some new documentation published to http://www.mozilla.org/rdf/.
  • Working on pluggable RDF data sources.
  • Trying to figure out how to wire up stuff to the XPFE.

 

NGLayout
November 20th
Submitted by Troy Chevalier <troy@netscape.com>

Kipp:

  • fixed up percentage based padding and margins
  • lots of bug fixes
  • updated the viewer test app to better handle automated testing and web crawling

Steve (tables):

  • fixed a gnarly column width balancing problem
  • some minor bugs fixes in GetTableFrame and in code that computes nested table's container's width
  • complete implementation of nsHTMLTableElement DOM interfaces
  • implemented table height algorithms. We handle everything except <TD WIDTH=x%>
  • made a slight modification to the way a table finds its container's width

Troy:

  • mostly XML work with Vidur

 

ImgLib (Image Library)
November 20th
Submitted by Pam Nunn <pnunn@netscape.com>

Pam Nunn writes in with this update:

  • A function in if.cpp, il_image_complete(), has been tidied up.
  • If you see a simple html file with an image tag not working properly in NGLayout, it is probably not an image problem, but a parser problem. see bugzilla #1461.
  • Couldn't view your png images? You can now. NGLayout wasn't recognizing the png mime type as an interal format.

 
OJI
November 20th
Submitted by Patrick Beard <beard@netscape.com>

Patrick Beard writes:

  • Most of the work of late involved getting Liveconnect to work on Win32 and Mac. On Win32 we use JDK1.2 based plugin from Javasoft and on Mac we use MRJ 2.1EA3 from Apple.
  • We reached a significant milestone on Win32. We are now able to make secure calls from JS to Java and vice-versa. Java and Javascript stack frames are chained together to get the desired secure liveconnect functionality. On Mac we are able to go both ways as well but security is not implemented yet.
  • For upcoming weeks we plan on stabilizing APIs, running a series of tests and fixing as many bugs before we land into the tip. Currently we are developing in the old codebase (MozillaSourceClassic_19981026_BRANCH) trying to get OJI more stable. Solaris plugin is coming along well but it is not API complete yet. We plan to stick in this branch for some more time until we feel the tip is stable and has enough functionality to support us. Most of the API is in place, so feel free to integrate a VM of your choice! We will be documenting our OJI interfaces to make it easier on developers.

 
Builds/Release
November 20th
Submitted by Chris Yeh <cyeh@netscape.com>, Sarah Broadwell <sar@netscape.com>

Chris Yeh writes in to say, "Autoconf became the default build system today after the static Makefiles that comprise the nglayout source were cvs removed.

Static makefiles still exist in several other sections in the tree (most notably the sections that were used to build MozillaClassic). These may get pruned over time.

(on a side note, it gave me the willies to be cvs removing nearly 100 Makefiles at one time.)

Autoconf for the Windows builds is still being investigated, but we've run into a few dead ends, the most severe of which is that the configure script requires the GNU bash shell. The current Windows toolset assumes a DOS Shell and has been proven on several occasions to not work well with other 'foreign' shells.

One of the more interesting ideas being kicked around is to implement a subset of autoconf/configure functionality by using perl to dynamically change static makefiles in the tree. We don't know how feasible this is yet or who would be willing to take on the work."

Sarah writes, "Today (nov 20) the classic makefiles are being retired from the Unix world. Autoconf is the one and only build system new module names are on their way. Raptor will return to it's pristine existance, and SeamonkeyBrowser, SeamonkeyMail, SeamonkeyCore, SeamonkeyLayout, SeamonkeyEditor, and SeamonkeyXPTk are coming. (names subject to change to protect the innocent.)"

Previous Updates