Sakura HyperMedia Desktop / News: Recent posts

Hey. I haven't been on this project in a while, mainly because a lot of the code in it needs badly to be rewritten from scratch. I'd like to make an update on the status and goal of this project though.

The most successful part of this project, Pak, is now officially moved to the PakNet project ( http://sf.net/projects/paknet ). This project will become its sister project, creating code that will link with the code produced in that project. In other words, while the PakNet project creates the network that forms the back end of the coming information society, Project Sakura will create the UI code necessary to interface the PakNet UI systems with the desktop environment within which it will be embedded.... read more

Pak version 0.04 has been released. This version adds a number of new features, including a platform-independent binary data mode, a header card (storing data like pak version, data mode, application, and index), and an unpack option (for reconstructing files out of card data).
This release promises to be even better than the last one in terms of increased possibilities.

Link: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=133637&package_id=163259&release_id=385151... read more

Hey guys,
I just released version 0.03 of Pak. In case you didn't know, Pak is a HyperMedia Card Stack format, and a library in Python for said format. This new version includes a number of new features, including the ability to link to a specific slice of a card and some useful wrappers and utility functions to help applications grab their share of data from the links. Check it out.
Link: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=133637&package_id=163259&release_id=381759

To whom it may concern:

A new version of Sakura has been released. This is a happy thing, as very little has been done on Sakura in quite a while. The last release was, I believe, in September, and we haven't done much active development since mid october. I hope to change this, and bring back the project this used to be. It is partially my fault for the major delay; I had some personal issues that were distracting me from my work. I hope you will all check out this release, and help out by reporting bugs, supporting other users, using the software, and spreading the word. Some of you might be able to help in other ways, like testing and debugging on our brand new addition to libsakura, Cognus. Others of you may want to write docs, or modules, or little apps. Some may even want to write Cognus sites, once we get the documentation up on how it works. It's up to you. But please, forgive us for the long delay, and continue your support.
Link: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=133637&package_id=159632&release_id=377094... read more

Hello, world:

I am pleased to announce that Pak version 0.02 has just been released. Pak has been thoroughly debugged and tested for this new version, now capable of pakking from dictionary files and dumping unpakked data either to the console or a file. Finally, the whole thing works. Also, it now excludes the original except clause, so that it will use python's own error handling system to describe the error (instead of the previous and sundry "unknown error" messages).
I believe that this version is ready for real use, and so I wish to get as many coders as possible to start creating applications and media for this format.... read more

Sakura 0.04 is mainly a bugfix release, fixing a number of bugs in HoloUI, adding docs, and adding a script to update the code to the latest cvs-released version. This version is a step up in the usability of the HoloUI.

This may seem like a very quick release, but it's a massive step up in usability (to the point where I'm using it as my default UI).
New features:
- Tcl console
- Working HoloUI
- Working maintainence menu
- Shipped with system-default main menu support
- Many bugfixes!

Sakura 0.02 has just been released. It contains all the stuff I promised, plus some extras (like the graphical documentation utility).
Link: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=133637&package_id=159632&release_id=357243

Sakura 0.02 is really shaping up, as one can see from the cvs archives, and it has been shaping up very quickly over the past few days. Already, hyper has been rewritten, installers and readmes have been made, and sys has been reentered into the sakura package with a few more scripts.
What to expect for 0.02:
- A total rewrite of Hyper
- A few new widgets in Futaba
- Installers, spm databases, and readmes for everything
- More and better docs
- Some fixed bugs and new features... read more

Version 0.01 of the Pak HyperMedia Container Library has been released. See http://sf.net/projects/sakura-os for downloads and docs. Pak allows one to embed links in any data format, and archive linked documents together. It is written in python.

I did the preliminary work on a rewrite of a library in python called Pak. It works similarly to apple's HyperCard library (excepting that none of us have ever used apple's; just heard about it) in that it stores a kind of archive of interlinked hypermedia data. Right now, Jon is fixing my mistakes on it, and hopefully we'll have it working and uploaded pretty soon.

As I became rather sick of loading up emacs constantly and didn't want to use vi, I wrote a simple text editor in tcl/tk and released it on this project ( papyrus ). Feel free to use and mod it. It's GPL'd.

I posted a mission statement for the Sakura HyperMedia Desktop project. It should answer questions as to what sakura is and what our aims for it are.
Link: http://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=29838&group_id=133637

The next version will probably be 0.02 . In that version, we're thinking about once again splitting libsakura and aoi, and also putting the sys/ folder back into libsakura. Additionally, the next version is going to make use of tcllib and the features from the newest version of tcl and tk ( 8.4 ), so remember to update your tcl. These new features will allow for greater usability (especially of hyper) with less external dependencies. It will also allow us to make a number of things we've been wanting to make, without relying on external programs that may or may not be installed (such as lynx and wget ). These things include a web browser, an irc client, an auto-updater, and internet-based hypermedia capability in the file manager and elsewhere.

Yes, it's true. I did another release finally.
This release has some rather horrible bugs, but it also has lots of great increased functionality, and you won't run into the bugs unless you use the HoloUI stuff, which I hereby mark as alpha code. I wanted to share the new functionality before everybody forgets about this little project, so I released.
The new release has not only partially-working HoloUI (though the holos have to be modified slightly from the example posted in the modules tracker), but a fully working quit option with options to save changed settings (here's another bug; it won't save settings unless you have those settings in a previously written config file :-/ ) and a confirmation dialog. New settings include the capability to change the background, and some fixes to the color options. The LibSakura installer works now (though I'm not sure if it did in the last version or not). I fixed and/or added a few other things too that are slipping my mind at the moment...
Anyway, don't wait until the next version to update! The future is now! Wisdom is ignorance! (actually, no, but if you're too wise to want to try out a version with known bugs then you're really missing out).
Signed,
John Ohno
Lead Developer, Accela Labs
Project Leader, Sakura

I found some rather nasty bugs in the HoloUI code when I tried to call it from Aoi. I fixed a bunch of them, but later today Jon and I will be trying to fix the remainder and get my test holo ( time.holo ) to run inside Aoi's HoloUI widget.
Also, I added a "modules" section to the tracker, for user-submitted modules such as holos, plugins, and custom libraries. I posted time.holo there as a test, and it seems to work.... read more

I have created the first version of sakura in which futaba, hyper, and aoi all work and are still interlinked. The one exception is the tree widget, which is not used by anything except for Fordice, which is being replaced. Hana (formerly called Agent) is not finished, and therefore was not included. Unfortunately, we are going to (very soon) rewrite Hyper in Python, which should throw the whole mix out of wack again, so to speak.
This working version is not yet uploaded to cvs, but includes major bug/continuity fixes, as well as a new library (Haiku) used for extensible error handling, and major revisions to Aoi, making possible easier configuration, more options (such as changing the background image), configuration saves, a customizable main menu, and a new maintenence menu (for regenerating menus, restoring defaults, etc.), plus the dependence and interaction with Futaba (including HoloUI and Event). By the time it is released, it will probably connect with Haiku as well, and Haiku will probably have the capability to save message schemes to a file.
In the app/util works is a graphical event binding configurator for Futaba::Event , a terminal widget for Futaba::HoloUI , a file manager to replace Fordice , and a graphical menu editor for Aoi.
Until next time...
~John

Hi! This is John Ohno (unknown1570), project admin of the Sakura project.
As you all may know, there aren't any files in the files section! This is because we haven't tested anything, nor have a version of anything important that completely works. If you want to see the current version, check CVS, since we often update there. If you want to be notified when we upload a working copy, subscribe to the sakura-os-announcements mailing list.
We have a bit of work done on some various pieces, most of which are currently on CVS, but none of which are tested or in a complete form. If you want to help as a developer, contact me and I'll see what i can do. In the mean time, you can work on the current CVS versions and mail us bug fixes over the sakura-os-devel list. Please don't ask for support on the CVS versions, though, because we know they don't work, and they aren't releases for a reason.
Currently developing pieces:
+ LibSakura - the Sakura Library Set
|---+ Futaba - the graphics/windowing lib
|---+ Hyper - the HyperMedia extensions
|---+ Sys - not actually a piece of LibSakura, but included in the package.
| |---+ SPM (pronounced "spim", not "spam") - the Sakura Package Manager
| |---+ Various utilities, none of which really work
+ LibHana - the Agent support library
|---+ Agent - the Sakura intellegent agent package
|---+ LibHana (proper) - the support library
| |---+ HanaBrain - "brain" parsing code
| |---+ HanaLang - natural language parsing code (limited)
| |---+ HanaCode - Tcl processing code
| |---+ HanaPer - Personality plugin support code
| |---+ HanaPlug - General-purpose plugin support (Tcl)... read more