[Dynapi-Dev] #1 DynAPI real time inline compression

[Stephen C. <sca...@vi...>]

Greetings everyone,
    I'm really glad that 3.0 beta is out! I've promised to start pulling my
own weight by working on some of my 'big ideas' (well maybe small)  that I
have for DynAPI. Each of the items I have in mind, I've already started work
on. I just needed a good kick in the butt to get the code and ideas out
there. The first item I'd like to address is compression. I know that there
is already a compression tool based on brain jar. But I've been thinking
that the ultimate goal for me with DynAPI is to build a small talk like dev.
environment that I can easily manipulate in realtime, and not have to muck
around with compression as a post process. Because, lets face it, mods will
be made, and I want to do them in an IDE built in DynAPI for DynAPI, and I
want it optimized all the way. So I've come up with the idea of using inline
compression for serving out the DynAPI library itself and would like to run
the idea by everyone else for their impression.

Currently we include src="dynapi.js" in our HTML headers, I've started
creating a script file to replace this that will do the inline compression.
I want to make it cross platform and have the majority of code in ASP for
starters and PERL as the 2nd version. Instead of including src="dynapi.js",
there will be a file called dynapi.asp that will serve up a compressed
version of dynapi.js + a decompression routine if it is not passed any
parameters. Otherwise it will serve up the requested file from the src
directory. The comments for the dynapi.asp file would be broken down like
this:

'' DynAPI real time compression version for ASP based servers.

'' First determine which file is being requested, or serve up dynapi.js
compressed.

'' Get the file date/timestamp and compare it to the cache.dat file in the
cache folder.

'' Find the cache folder, create it if it does not exist.

'' Compare the filename/date/time and stamp and determine if they match

'' Make mods to dynapi.js, add the decompression routine and mod the
library.include/library.load to use dynapi.asp?file=xxx

'' Compress the latest file if needed and save it to the cache folder.

'' Return the compressed file from the cache folder.


This will in effect, allow us to modify any file in the dynapi src or
dynapi.js itself. Using dynapi.asp as your include, should in effect, always
serve up a compressed version of the source files. This will give us the
advantage of being able to mod away without haveing to deal with compression
as a post process. Only the first time a file is served up will there be a
delay while the server compresses a new or recently modified source file.
Subsequent calls will return the contents of the file from the cache folder.

Any thoughts?

My #2 item has to do with keyboard events... I've already worked out a
library that can detect all keys and modifiers (including alt, arror, ctrl,
shift, etc) on both Netscape 4+ and IE 4+. 'cept it doesn't match the
current keyboard API, if someone is willing to take it as is, i can make it
avail. right away for someone to work on it.