Re: [Ids-devel] IDS Status

[Jeff M. <jef...@vi...>]

On Fri, 2002-12-27 at 15:45, Ashley M. Kirchner wrote:
>     ...or lack thereof.
> 
>     Hello folks, and a (belated) Merry Christmas to you all.  As many of 
> you noticed, I've been off the face of the planet for several months. 
>  With after finding out I needed surgery on my wrists/hands and all, it 
> became a serious matter for me not to stay around keyboards for very 
> long periods of time.  Well, I'm back.  Not full force, and certainly 
> not to start fending off everything thrown at me.

Welcome back.

<snip>

>     A couple of things are on my plate right now, but I'd like to gather 
> up some volunteers:
> 
>     - Source Forge CVS - read below though  [1]

I'd suggest putting what you have now (the current tar ball with broken
code) into CVS and then adding the patches that get it functional and
then release a 0.83.

>     - Multi Platform porting (we can use SF's compile farm for that)

It's written in Perl, what porting is needed?

>     - A redesign of the IDS web page, adding Piet's RPMs to the list of 
> files.  (Piet, if you send me your files, I can upload them to SF, or if 
> you'd like to volunteer, I will give you access to our site.)

Can't help here.

>     - Forward thinking / brainstorming of the current code
>     - Forward thinking / brainstorming for the 2.x code (which was to be 
> built for mod_perl - however I'm leaving this open for debate)
>     - A total rewrite is in order for v2.x anyway, so whether we use 
> mod_perl, or something else, this is the time to speak up.

Hmm... mod_perl can help improve the speed of perl applications, but I
don't think IDS would benefit from it much. It is probably better to
just code IDS so that it can run under Apache::Registry so the web
server will just use the embedded perl interperter.

As far as I can tell there are 2 areas to look at for optimizations:
1) Templates/Themes
2) Image thumbnails

For the themes perhaps using a templating package that cache's the
resulting template should be used. For image thumbnails make the
existance of previewmaker.pl better known, or have an option to run that
script via the admin screens. Perhaps using the mod_static module can
help but that locks IDS to Apache. So that's another decision to make.

>     - Multi user (this is a finicky situation)  [2]

Life would be easier if Multi-user was the only option. What I mean by
that is code for multi-user, but allow the admin set what can be done by
guests and registered users.

>     - Modular coding: my idea here is to allow others to be able to 
> create additional modules for IDS (file formats, online services hooks - 
> such as ShutterFly)

Yes, breaking index.cgi into smaller chunks is a good plan. But should
those chunks be cgi's or perl modules or a combo of both?

>     - Someone once sent me an email a long time ago, asking we we don't 
> create our own ordering system, for online delivery of copyrighted 
> materials.  This would imply creating something with an online account 
> transaction merchant (a credit card service).  So we could create 
> different modules to work with that, say one for PayPal, one for 
> Authorize.NET, VeriSign, etc., etc.  I don't want this to be part of the 
> mainstream program, but more of an addition.
>     - An online card system (eCards)
>     - There are so many ideas that I've received...I want to brainstorm.
> 

I would call that IDS Professional, where someone pays for those
features.

>     Then there was today's question regarding ShutterFly - as far as I 
> know, no one is getting a kickback.  But that's also mainly because it 
> was never considered to be a real option.  I mean, how many of you 
> really use ShutterFly?
> 

I do. I just read John's message. I was thinking why not get a kickback
to a IDS 'entity'. Funds would be payed to the current maintainer. But
that's another can of worms. Shutterfly also seems Linux friendly (I'm
about to check out their linux software).

<snip>

>     Okay, I've said enough for right now.  Volunteers, please stand up 
> and be heard.

Hopefully I've haven't bored you all! :-)

-- 
Jeff Macdonald <jef...@vi...>
Into birding? Check out http://www.migratus.com