Re: [Hypercontent-users] HyperContent 2.0 beta available now

[Carl B. <C.P...@hu...>]

Thanks very much!  I've been  eager to take a look for a while :)

I've set it up standalone outside uPortal for now and I've had a play. 
Initial thoughts are good! A couple of  comments straight off...

The directory structure isn't collapsible as before. I know the users 
here did like being able to see the full structure.

The users here will really welcome the ability navigate though the 
actual website as they would normally and then click edit on the 
required page.

I've not had proper look, at how it works but the workflow looks like it 
would be well received by users here.

I'll have a go at migrating a project from 1.4 and let you know how that 
goes......

Have a good vacation!!!

Cheers
Carl

Alex Vigdor wrote:

> Hello all,
>     I'm happy to announce that the HyperContent  2.0 beta release is 
> now available from
>
> https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=101745
>
> This distribution has been successfully tested under Windows and Mac 
> OS X; the code has also been tested on Tomcat 4.1.x under Solaris with 
> an Apache front end and NFS mounted filesystems (our production 
> setup).  JDK 1.4.2 and Ant are required; JDK 1.5 has not been tested.  
> An embedded version of Tomcat 5 is included, but not required. The 
> included READ ME has installation instructions, as well as 
> instructions on how to migrate an existing 1.x project into 2.0 (about 
> a 10 minute process, not including manual re-entry of groups and 
> permissions!).   Firefox is the recommended browser for using this 
> release; IE will work fine, but there area a couple cosmetic glitches 
> I didn't catch in time.
>
> I must apologize in advance to those of you eager to get started with 
> 2.0; I happen to be leaving for a one week vacation to remote and 
> tropical areas (i.e. no internet access) early Wednesday morning, so 
> you have a little over 24 hours to ask me questions before I 
> disappear.  Hopefully you will be able to spend that week exploring 
> the system, and of course I'd encourage you to help each other out on 
> this list.
>
> Most of the known issues with this release are cosmetic and/or related 
> to localization support (or the lack thereof); the underlying web 
> serving, workflow and batch processing engines are quite stable and 
> have been optimized for performance.  The rendering pipelines and 
> build/publish are 100% backwards compatible with existing 1.4 project 
> configurations and data.  The editors are exactly the same in both 
> functionality and appearance to their 1.4 counterparts, with the 
> exception of DTD parsing and prediction improvements for the XML 
> editor, which make it possible to work with DocBook DTDs, among 
> others. The only 1.4 features that aren't yet present are copy/move 
> files, rebuild search index, and the Build Options editor.  The latter 
> will not be brought forward, barring public outcry - it will 
> eventually be superseded by a capacity for inline XML includes (post 
> 2.0).  Copy/move files and rebuild search index will be added in time 
> for the final release, and hopefully a scheduling component for the 
> workflow engine will be added as well.  Target date for the final 
> release is next month.
>
> Q. If so much of version 2.0 is identical to 1.4, what's so great 
> about it?
> A. Lots!
>     - standalone operation as a java web application (not just a portal
>       channel any more)
>     - built-in web server and workflow engine
>     - integration with external authentication, LDAP, web and file
>       servers
>     - redesigned GUI allows users to navigate the output web site
>       to get around inside the system
>     - support for multiple open files
>     - persistent user history tracks recently viewed and saved files
>     - management screens are themselves subject to content
>       management, and can be overridden or extended by any project
>     - batch processing that can split large asynchronous jobs across
>       a pool of servers
>     - support for binary data processing pipelines (e.g. image
>       thumbnails)
>     - support for ** directory patterns in xml & resource definitions
>       (e.g. /**/*.jpg = allow jpg files anywhere)
>
> And now a quick word on workflow, which is the major feature everyone 
> has been waiting for.  The workflow engine is script-driven, and every 
> project can have its own set of custom workflow scripts; by default, 
> new projects get copies of the scripts installed in the bootstrap 
> project.  The bundled scripts right now allow
>
>     - non-approving authors to request approval of changes
>     - approving users to request changes from a member of the authors 
> group
>     - upload and download zips
>     - build & publish (individual files or whole site)
>     - watch files (receive notification of changes)
>
> Any work generated in a workflow is kept around as long as it is 
> "enqueued" somewhere, which means you can keep a history of your 
> builds, publications, uploaded and downloaded zips, etc. Right now you 
> can manually delete the work records any time after they are complete, 
> and when the scheduling component is ready you will be able to 
> configure self-deletion after a specified amount of time.
>
> Email notifications require you to configure a valid SMTP server in 
> the hypercontent.properties file, and you must add valid e-mail 
> addresses for users in their VCard files  (these are linked from the 
> user's name when logged in).  When integrated with your campus 
> authentication and LDAP, HyperContent can automatically construct a 
> VCard for each user on first login, including email address, that will 
> be used to support workflow.  When I return from vacation, I'll be 
> happy to give people some guidance on this integration; for the 
> adventurous, JAAS is used for pluggable authentication, and the LDAP 
> to VCard configuration file is the same as in version 1.4, so go for it.
>
> Good luck to everyone, I look forward to hearing your feedback.
>
> Cheers,
>     Alex
>
>
>
>
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Carl Barrow
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