The virtual filesystem explorer is ok

The new file explorer will make it in the snapshot release. I've been testing it a lot. Bookmarks support is still missing but it doesn't matter for the snapshot distribution.

Not quite why I want but...

I am not satified with the virtual file system explorer. When allowing multiple file selections, I have lots of issues. Conditions here and there, bad code make it more complex than it is. When I have a look at Sun JFileChooser implementation, I see about 1000 lines of code. I should have classes with less than 500 lines and simple interfaces.

I will leave the code as it is for now and rewrite it later. I will have a better look at jfilechooser's code to see how they handle multiple file selections vs single file selections.

XPontus File Explorer improvements

I am now able to hide the user credentials in the location bar. The problem is that I still have duplicated entries in the location bar history list. For the snapshot release I guess it is ok as long as the browser behaves well enough.



The file explorer supports sftp, ftp, cifs, webdav protocols. It can browse local files too!.

Virtual FileSystem Browser almost done

I am almost done with XPontus virtual filesystem browser. I am missing the following parts :

• Bookmarks supports
• Path history
• User notifications(when the control takes time to display the directories or files)
  

What's new

I am coding a virtual file system browser based on Apache Commons VFS. I found existing components, but I didn't get the permission to use them yet.

Almost there

Done today

• I fixed some bugs in the transformation profiles
• I completed the transformation profiles support for saxon6.x , saxon 8.x and stx and fop.
• The outline plugin is behaving well
• I took the time to test most parts of the program
• I started programming the XML signature module
  

Remaining issues

• Code completion
• The code completion doesn't work well with nested schemas
• The code completion doesn't store a cache on the user's hard drive
• I need to add built-in completion for XSL, Apache ant files, xml schemas, HTML

• Virtual file system
• The implementation is not complete(ssh, ftp, smb)
• Sometimes I hardcoded the files path. I should always use a filesystem abstraction so that remote files can be found.
  
• Users settings
• In the previous versions of xpontus there was no plugins so I had a big panel with a tree to browse and set the preferences
• Now most parts of the software are plugins and some of them can/should be customized by the user(font color, encoding, etc.)
• I should write a settings importer for the old versions of XPontus
• Using a relational database to store user settings might not be a good idea. If I upgrade XPontus and there are some major changes in the API, then all the users settings are gone unless I keep lots of old code in the program. I might revert to XStream which serialize objects in XML. If XStream API changes, I can still parse the data.
  
• Plugin management
• Because there are plugins the plugins browser must be at least able to install, list, remove plugins. I will think about the upgrade later.
• The themes and icons modules are not ready yet. I need a settings initializer because the theme and icon set must be known before loading the program
• Expression evaluator
• The expression evaluator is not working well when evaluating xpath expressions. If the result is a boolean value, then no navigation link should be provided to look at the result. Sometimes it seems that the xpath expression is correct but no result is returned...
• The xquery expression evaluator should have it's own output window to display the result. Sometimes the result is a node, but sometimes it will be plain text or whatever else.
  

Catching up with the previous development version fo XPontus(without plugins)

I am adding features quickly, maybe too quickly. Well I'm going to clean up the code later.

The following components have been added today :

• a simple quicktoolbar plugin(Comment XML selection and INSERT CDATA section)
• a code structure view of XML documents

Up and still coding

I'm spending my holidays in Montreal. With my old laptop, I cannot use Eclipse or Netbeans, so I took few hours to learn emacs. I am satisfied with it : I can chat on IRC, play some music, commit to SVN, program without leaving emacs!

I am working on the users transformation profiles. There are still few bugs in there.




I will be working on the Outline Viewer soon. I have to rewrite the "Save action behaviour" and few other parts. There's still no window for the users settings. I wonder how I am going to implement it as almost everything is now a plugin in XPontus.

2008 ultimatum

I plan to release a snapshot version of XPontus 1.0.0-pre1. XPath support has been added. Here is the development status.

The core IDE
Some basic text editing features are still missing.

• As I moved from local filesystem usage to commons-vfs for filesystem abstractions, you cannot save a document yet.
• Printing bugs present in 1.0.0-rc3 will be fixed. Some people reported that they can't print multiple pages. In Ubuntu to be able to print you have to downgrade your version of cups to 1.2.8(cups or java bug??).

Expression evaluator plugin (WORK IN PROGRESS)
The expression evaluator plugin allows you to use 3 engines to evaluate expression

• The xpath1 module is able to evaluate xpath 1.0 expressions
• The xpath2 module is able to evaluate xpath 1.0 expressions
• The xquery module is able to evaluate xquery expressions

Users transformations plugin (WORK IN PROGRESS few bugs)
It allows you to manage transformations profiles and execute them. The following engines are available :

• Xalan 2.7.0
• Saxon 6.5.4
• Saxon 8
• XQuery
• STX

Documentation generator plugin (READY)

• It supports generating documentation from DTDS or XML Schemas. It only supports single files.
• The XSL documentation generator plugin is not added yet. It depends on my other project Jxsltdoc.

Schema converter/generator plugin (READY)
The schema converter plugin allows you to generate/convert files into differents formats.
Supported formats are :

• DTD
• XML Schema
• Relax NG
• XML.

XPontus virtual file system plugin (WORK IN PROGRESS)
It allows the editor to open a local or remote files. It will support the following protocols :

• Local : to open files on a local hard drive
• Samba : to be able to open documents over a LAN
• SSH : to edit files located on a SSH server
• FTP
• HTTPS

XPontus themes plugin (WORK IN PROGRESS)
It allows you to use different look and feels for the editor : Windows look and feel, etc.

XPontus icons plugin (WORK IN PROGRESS)
It allows you to use a different icon theme

XPontus plugin's browser (WORK IN PROGRESS)
It allows you to install , remove, update or query available plugins

Validation plugin (READY)
It allows you to validate files. 3 sub-plugins are available for now

• Simple xml validation
• Batch XML validation
• External Schema validation

Lexer plugin (WORK IN PROGRESS)
The lexer plugin is responsible for syntax coloring. For now here is a XML and HTML lexer.

Completion plugin (WORK IN PROGRESS)
It will first be available for XML files which are constrained by a DTD or schema.

Managing the upgrade

Well I am comparing XPontus 1.0.0-rc3 to the upcoming version to see what is missing or what should be improved.

Working on users transformations

I am working on the user's transformation plugin for XPontus. As the plugin must support different kinds of plugins(JAXP, etc.), I have to think again about it. Here is a mock-up of the interface.

12/12/2007

Everything is going smooth lately. I am done with the Batch Validation plugin and the schema converter/generator plugin.
I will try to get most stuff ready for Christmas and release only a Java Web Start version of XPontus. That version will be called xpontus-snapshot-date. My last effort will be working on the code completion plugin to make it work without looking for performance. The xml outline plugin should also be there....

Simons says "Another coffee, another plugin, maybe another release..."

Batch Validation Plugin

The Batch XML Validation plugin of XPontus is being worked on. It will be more flexible and efficient than the one implemented in the previous releases.

I am also working on the schema converter plugin

Merry Java Christmas

It's been a long time. I haven't coded for a while. Well I was having a look at Apache Felix, an OSGI framework. I already started writing the plugin architecture of XPontus using JPF. I can't drop JPF now, I have done some stuff with it and I don't have classloader or securitymanager issues with it. Apache Felix looks nice, but I'm not familiar with it yet.

I am done with few plugins and writing some others. Here is the Batch XML validation plugin mockup below. It's implemented as a menubar plugin

Development halted

My hard drive died but I had a backup of the development copy of XPontus. My dev pc is getting repaired. In the meanwhile I cannot code that much on the laptop which is way too old.

I can see clearly now

XPontus 1.0.0-pre1 might hit sourceforge mirrors in late september. I am almost satisfied with the new architecture. Moving completely to Apache Maven was a late but great initiative.
I haven't added code completion yet. There are also few bugs remaining for syntax highlighting and other stuff. My coffee cup is back and I think I will be able to code a lot these weeks.

About the new core API of XPontus

I swill spend the next weeks finalizing the core API of XPontus XML Editor. It is going on well, I still need to decide if some stuff needs to be extended by plugins or not. Some code I have written, must get more generic to allow integration of XPontus code in other applications, mostly java text editors applications.
When I am done with the core API, I might publish a snapshot version of the software to get feedback before the official 1.0.0-pre1 release.

New logo for XPontus

Thanks to a friend from Apama design, XPontus has a brand new logo :p. I am done with mime types handling, it will be done using JAF. The main problem is now creating some plugins for the outline view and the text editor. I will try to look at jedit, netbeans and eclipse to get some ideas.

Icons showing up

About XPontus progress 04/08/2007

I am decided to finish the i18n plugin today. I am not happy with the menubar and toolbar plugins. Those plugins use hashmaps a lot and there is too much code to write for it.

The menubar and toolbar extensions should be configurable via simple xml files.

The screenshot of the day