Pascal Server Pages Announce [February 2006]

After a long period of public silence (though it was a period of hot private
discussions) Pascal Server Pages Development Team is proud to present you
this announcement.

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CONTENTS:

1. Recent events in the world of PSP.
2. PSP DevTeam 2006.
3. Project roadmap:
  3.1. PSP 1.5.X.
  3.2. PSP 1.6.X.
  3.3. PSP 1.7.X.
  3.4. O-PSP.
  3.5. PSP-IDE and FakeLinux.
4. References
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1. Recent Events in The World Of PSP.

No doubt that our project is gaining popularity. The number of PSP users grows
and so does the number of PSP haters. But, however, Pascal Server Pages keeps
progressing. Here are some events which have happened during last several
months and which can interest you.

First of all, Pascal Server Pages is now more than 2 years old. The first
publically available version (1.0.1) was released on the 2nd January of 2004.
2 years is a young age for an open source project, but we still congratulate
all the members of PSP DevTeam, former DevTeam members, people who have gone
through this period of time together with us and all the PSP users all over
the world!

The 1.4.2 release (21 November 2005) was the last one in the 1.4.X branch,
which is no further developed. Though it stays in our file archive and
currently it is the most stable and complete package. Nowadays PSP DevTeam is
working on 3 new branches (1.5.X, 1.6.X and O-PSP) which are described in
"Project Roadmap" section.

PSP-IDE and FakeLinux release has been delayed. Lars Olson (L505) has been too
busy with other directions of development and hasn't yet packaged them. So it
is still available on SVN only. For more information see the "Project
Roadmap" section.

Lars Olson has improved the old PSP-based forum engine called PSP4UM. The
rewritten version is called PasForum. The source is included in the examples
section of PSP 1.5.X/1.6.X. The main online discussion is open at Z505
(http://z505.com/cgi-bin/PasForum/index.psp) as well as PasWiki
(http://z505.com/cgi-bin/qkcont/qkcont.cgi?p=PasWiki%20Directory). At the
same time the original PSP4UM
(http://www.psp.furtopia.org/cgi-bin/psp/forum/index.psp) has been
unfortunately closed because of the spam bot attacks. It interacts since May
of 2004 and can not be modified in order to resist the modern spam bot
attacks. All the information is statically available and later it will be
inherited by a new forum.

In the beginning of this new year 2006 two new developers have joined the
Pascal Server Pages development team: Amir Aavani and Anthony Henry. You can
find the detailed information about their role in the development process in
the "PSP DevTeam 2006" section.

At the end of January 2006 Vladimir Sibirov (Trustmaster) published an article
containing the overview of Pascal Server Pages project and especially PSP
1.5.0 features. The original Russian version is available at
http://freepascal.ru/article//raznoe/20060127073733/. English translation is
available at http://www.psp.furtopia.org/doc/overview-1.5.0.html. Although the
article has caused lots of
both positive and negative responses, we still aim it to be informative for
users which are new to PSP 1.5.

In February the Development Team communication turned into a dedicated mailing
list (pascal-webdev-devel[=at=]lists.sourceforge.net). Hot developers talks
(containing lots of fresh ideas and undocumented things) are publically
available at http://sourceforge.net/mail/?group_id=145841.

PSP Users can now communicate, help each other and share experience using
their own dedicated mailing list:
pascal-webdev-users[=at=]lists.sourceforge.net.

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2. PSP DevTeam 2006.

As the Development Team has changed, you might be probably interested in what
a concreet person is currently busy with. Here is the answer to this
question.

2.1. Vladimir Sibirov a.k.a. Trustmaster. Is a project coordinator,
administrator and conception/implementation consultant. Currently is too busy
to contribute any code.

2.2. Lars Olson a.k.a. L505. Is the second administrator and the top developer
of PSP 1.5.X, PSP 1.6.X and FakeLinux/PSP-IDE.

2.3. Anthony Henry. Is the developer of PSP 1.5.X, 1.6.X and some PSP-based
software. If saying more exactly what he does in PSP DevTeam, he is writing
WebCRT unit, optimising the main PWU unit, working on embedded HTML wrapper
(HTMw) and developing PSP-based Music Jukebox
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/cgi-musicbox).

2.4. Amir Aavani. Is the maintainer of the O-PSP subproject. A master of
Object Orientation in PSP. Also he is researching some experimental ideas for
CGI programming improvement. And helps with optimising the PSP core.

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3. Project roadmap.

This section describes our nearest plans and features expected in the upcoming
releases.

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3.1. PSP 1.5.X.

Although it now seems like this branch will be merged with 1.6.X, at least PSP
1.5.1 will be released because we need a complete stable package in this
branch (note that 1.5.0 is actually beta). So, the plans are to:
- include recent bugfixes and improvements,
- include more extras and examples, such as CompactUtils, RapidHTML, etc.
- add documentation,
- provide packaging (i.e. 3 different tarballs like in 1.4.X).

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3.2. PSP 1.6.X.

This branch is already available on SVN. It is compatible with 1.5.X and these
2 branches will be merged in the 1.6.0 release. The main feature of this
branch is that you can choose, what version of the library to use: static
or dynamic. Static library consists of units just as usually. Dynamic one has
a core stored in a dynamic library (DLL/DSO) which saves server's RAM usage
and makes the executables much smaller. Both are the same from the user's
point of view. So, in 1.6.X we are planning to:
- provide alternative dynamic and static versions of the library,
- optimize file uploading mechanism,
- optimize i/o buffering,
- optimize SDS query parser and add some new features such as UNIQUE fields,
- fix HTTP/SMTP i/o stability,
- enhance the PSP Template engine (with inclusion, logical nesting, cycles and
other custom sequences),
- provide the availability of using full-featured write() and writeln() with
automatic buffering and GZIP compression instead of webwrite(),
- add more extras and examples,
- provide FPDoc-based documentation.

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3.3. PSP 1.7.X.

Once having been given a choice between static and dynamic core in PSP 1.6.X,
then you will be given a choice  between procedural or object oriented
interface to it.

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3.4. O-PSP.

O-PSP is Pascal Server Pages rewritten in pure Object Oriented style. First
snapshots are already available on SVN. O-PSP is written entirely in OO from
the core to interface and is perfectly suitable for object orientation
adherents. Later there will be an easy-to-use Lazarus component with some
visual elements. It is also probable that O-PSP will turn into a reasonable
ISAPI replacement which will increase your application performance without
paying much for it.

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3.5. PSP-IDE and FakeLinux.

In upcoming PSP-IDE distributions there will be 3 alternative versions:
improved LazarusRB with Plugger support developed especially for web
application development, improved Syn with Plugger, plugins for integration
with generic IDEs. The work on FakeLinux is held in the direction of
shortening the FakeLinux Debian image for coLinux. Dedicated UNIX machine
owners and virtual machine (MS Virtual PC, vmWare Workstation, Parallels
Workstation, etc.) users will be pleased with UNIX-native version of FakeUnix
which is connected to PSP-IDE via TCP/IP networking.

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4. References.

SVN Respository = https://opensvn.csie.org/pspcgi/
PSP at SourceForge = http://sourceforge.net/projects/pascal-webdev
PSP Homepage = http://www.psp.furtopia.org
Z505 Portal = http://z505.com

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That's all we have to say for today. Hold on, more Pascal Server Pages news is
coming soon.