[Rdfapi-php-interest] RdfAPI / patches / future

[Christian W. <cw...@cw...>]

Hello all,


I am a student of information technologies in Leipzig, Germany and I am
doing my master/German Diplom under supervision of S=C3=B6ren Auer (creat=
or
of Powl). My task is to port Powl to use SPARQL, and to fix/enhance
RAP's SPARQL engine to be more efficient and support the QL standard bett=
er.

Now I do already have some patches lying on my harddisk that fix some of
the simple bugs in the bug tracker, and half of a bigger one that wraps
RAP into a PEAR-compatible package that can be installed and used more
easily than today. Question is if the devs here do want this, or if I'm
wasting my time.

Advantages of the PEAR approach are:
- Consistent class namings that don't clash with other packages. For
this, I prefixed the classes with RAP_ and modified them according to
the directory structure (e.g. RAP_Model_DbModel since it's in
RAP/Model/DbModel.php)
- Classes include the files they need directly, without those strange
"proxy" files you are currently using (such as Model/DBase.php) that
only include two files.
- One of the bigger advatages: including files is a breeze, since PEAR
has its own include path in most PHP installations - no need to define a
RDFAPI_INCLUDE_DIR, just do a "require_once RAP/Model/DbModel.php" and
you're done.
- Very easily installable: "pear install RAP-0.9.6.tgz" and it's done.
That way, other packages can /depend/ on RAP, so that it gets installed
automatically if they install some PEAR-compatible-packaged application.


I will spend the next 3/4 year working on Powl and RAP. May I get CVS
access (username is cw...@us...) some time in the
future? Whom shall I sent my patches?


Another question: test/Readme.txt states that there are Unit tests for
the API on the homepage. Unfortunately, I did not find them there or in
CVS. Could somebody point me to the right place please?

--=20
Regards/MfG,
Christian Weiske