[OpenJade-devel] Re: Development

[Javier F. <sp...@in...>]

Hi Travis:

>I am taking Open Source Software (http://ossclass.wiki.cs.pdx.edu/) as
>an undergrad this summer.  I have 8 weeks to work on an open source
>project (what fun!).  This is one of the projects I'm considering
>investing my time into.  I would love to help, but it will take me
>some time to get up to speed with the project.  I've already committed
>patches, I know C++, XML, LaTeX, and stuff; however, DSSSL is totally
>unknown to me at the moment.
>  
>
Developers for OpenJade are always needed. Although the code is somewhat 
complicated to understand.
Hmmm, I would dare say (perhaps wrongly) that you don't have to be an 
expert in DSSSL programming techniques for programming support for DSSSL 
primitives. Anyway, if you want to know what are your hands on, you have 
two nice tutorials, one by Daniel M. German and another by Paul Prescod, 
and one book by me, which will give you deep knowledge  in DSSSL 
programming techniques.

If you want to spend some time in OpenJade development, there are many 
things that can be done. Some two years ago in the list we discussed 
many directions. I can offer you some suggestions:

-one interesting direction, not directly OpenJade development, is to 
make OpenJade work as a server, creating an Apache module. Read more 
about this in old posts on the list.

-another direction is to help completing the formatting capabilites of 
OpenJade. Cristian's development of the Page and Column models don't 
generate an output. In my oppinion, before doing this, JadeTex should be 
incorporated into OpenJade making OpenJade output pure tex. I was 
planning to spend some time this august on this task. But I haven't 
started yet, and if someone else wants to do this, I can spend my time 
on another area.

-An important and overlooked aspect is the DSSSL transformation 
primitives. I plan to start on this soon.

There are more aspects, like modularizing OpenJade, and extracting the 
formatter and the transformer, and the grove builder as separete tools, 
or integrating a good scheme processor instead of the ad-hot processor.

>Have you made much progress?  What are you working on now?  Are you
>stuck in any way that a second pair of eyes may help with?
>  
>
No, no progress yet, because I must yet finish other things. On 18 July 
I give the dissertation for obtaining the PhD degree. After that, I will 
spend time in other things.

>Which branch are you working on?  Did you take Karl's and Cristian's
>suggestions to use the jade_1_3_branch branch?
>  
>
Of course, I will take their suggestions. I'll meet Cristian so that he 
explains me in person all these things. It will speed up things for me.

Javi