[Powerjournal-devel] [Fwd: Re: Powerjournal]

[Chris A. <sta...@cy...>]

I am replying to this via the list so others in the future can see what 
we did.

As far as the other developer (Simon), I haven't asked if he is okay 
with me posting his previous email on this list so I will forward it to 
you privately in another email so you can know what he was working on.


Chris


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Powerjournal
Date: Tue, 17 Aug 2004 21:16:50 -0600
From: Trenton D. Adams <tre...@te...>
To: Chris Arrowood <sta...@cy...>
CC: tr...@te...
References: <E1B...@sc...> 
<412...@cy...>

I don't know if tr...@te... worked, but that wasn't me! :)

Chris Arrowood wrote:
> Trenton D.Adams wrote:
> 
>> That's a really good start for a journaling program.  I was
>> hoping to find a good place to start for this.
> 
> 
> Thanks; A start is what I consider it.  I  was burned out by the time I 
> finished it and never made it as feature rich as I envisioned it.

Yeah, it looks like you put a lot of work into it.  That's what I didn't
want to do! :)  I know what it takes starting a new program, it's a
whole lot of work.  I prefer maintenance programming if possible.  Of
course it really sucks to do maintenance programming on a lowsy piece of
software too though.

I'm working on a relatively large java program at work that was written
by lowsy programmers.  They have no concept of object oriented design.

> 
>> I'm thinking of adding some more features to it.  For
>> instance, I would like to keep the date field, but I also
>> want to have an entry date field.  So, if I don't record a
>> journal entry the very day that I need to, then I at least
>> know what date it was for.
>> I was also thinking of adding a topic list feature.  Each
>> entry should be able to be associated with mutliple topics.
> 
> 
> Sounds like good ideas.
> 
>> I also want to add search capabilities as well.

I think, to start anyhow, I'll just use RDBM style searching.  That way
it's up and running right away.  Then I can get into BTREE stuff
afterwards.  I'll probably do the BTREE stuff in C and use JNI to tie
them together.  That's what I did with my Java backup program to be able
to backup permissions.  It's a really sucky backup program though, not
very well designed.  It was one of my first java GUI programs which I
wanted to get running right away. :)  You can check it out on
sourceforge if you like.  It's called Mocha Backup.

> 
> 
> Yes, this has been suggested more than once.  Several people would be 
> glad to see it.
> 
>> I'm not sure that I'll have a whole lot of time to do any of
>> this, but I'm going to try and make some time since I really
>> need a good, feature rich journaling program.
> 
> 
> I know what you mean about having the time...  The latest source code 
> contains a few minor bug fixes.  I'll make it available in a SVN 
> repository for you or I can provide a zip if you'd rather. If you want 
> to work directly out of the SVN tree, I will provide you with a user/pass.

A ZIP for now would be good, I want to get my feet wet first.

> 
>> p.s.
>>
>> Did you make the storage mechanism abstract?  If not, that
>> should probably be my first task.  Especially seeing that
>> the search mechanism won't work well in a RDBM.  The data
>> should probably be stored in a BTREE or something like that.
>>  And also, people can then make any data storage
>> implementation that they like.  Perhaps a CMS, other type of
>> DB, BTREE, text file, etc.
> 
> 
> The storage supported is currently MySQL or HSQL (an embedded Java DB). 
>  There is a DBManager class that loads the appropriate driver.  It 
> should be easy to add other database support, less so for other storage 
> mechanisms, but not hard.  You will probably want to abstract it.
> 
> There is another developer who is interested in working on this.  he 
> contacted me a month or so ago and was going to internationalize it and 
> provide a translation for his language.

What sorts of features was he planning on adding?

> 
> Since multiple people are interested in moving this forward, I would 
> prefer that we use a common source repository and use the dev mailing 
> list set that is set up so we can coordinate our efforts.  I probably 
> will not be terribly involved since I am a new father and have my hands 
> full ;-)
> 
> Or do you want to branch and work alone? Let me know.
> 
> Sign up on the development list here:
> http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/powerjournal-devel

I'll signed up.

> 
> Thanks
> 
> Chris Arrowood
>