University was quite successfully killing my overall productivity. Past week was grand finale, so I'm completely back to TinyMCE and Plone.
For few past weeks I was working on upgrading TinyMCE to version 3.4.3 (Plone currently uses version back from 2009). Fully automated upgrade procedure is now as easy as running a shell script. Upgrade was twice (or more) as painful as I originally anticipated. During upgrade many walls were hit and I questioned the whole approach. The conclusion is more or less: this is not maintainable. Few thoughts:
- we maintain separate branch from TinyMCE guys and make changes directly into the core -- correct approach would be to merge important changes upstream and keep our plugins separate (although this is near to impossible with current TinyMCE architecture)
- every Plone change to TinyMCE should be commented (explained atleast briefly) and noted where it starts and ends
- I created github fork of TinyMCE to keep merging easier. It will brings a little bit painful development, but that can be solved.
Mockups for browser dialog are finished! I'm quite satistifed with the result: screenshots. Following things were kept in mind while redesigning the interface, to keep it more inituitive:
- elaborate icons
- separate shortcuts and link types (also add explicit "internal" link intead of clicking "home")
- more clear idea that "current folder" is a place where uploaded file will land
- image thumbnails
- less fragments of window to make it less confusing
- few new features like external image upload
Until the midterm evaluations (15. July) I will try to get new design converted into HTML/CSS ready for backend changes and merge upgraded TinyMCE to github. Would love to hear comments on redesign, what can be further improved?
Two very wanted features landed in Gentoo Linux portage tree.
- PyPy ebuild submitted just 2 months ago!
- automatic unmask of packages released in portage 2.1.10! Thanks Zac Medico, you rock!
--autounmask and --autounmask-write are two new parameters for portage that every user was dreaming of. It will even respect --ask flag! Here is what happens:
- emerge --ask --autounmask-write pypy will ask you to unmask latest pypy version and to confirm configuration changes
- emerge --autounmask-write pypy will just unmask needed packages without asking.
In either case, you have to confirm changes with dispatch-conf or similar tools. Happy Gentooing!
PS: I put EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS="--autounmask-write" into /etc/make.conf to make life easier.
Another year, another Google Summer of Code, another project! This time I'm working on most needed and used part of CMS — text editor.
Following has been done on Products.TinyMCE:
- pep8-ified the product
- ported all doctests to unit/integration tests
- added product to jenkins with coverage/pep8/lint reports on Plone 4.0/4.1/3.0
- wrote specifications for new UX of image/link browser in TinyMCE and forwarded it to Peter Čuhalev for mockups
Next week, I will work on current tickets at plone.org tracker. Time to shoot some bugs!
PS: Changes were commited to svn collective, although I keep them at github.
PS2: The Sweet Vandals were my spiritual company for past week, wonder what funk is coming up for the next one :)
It has been a long time since last blog post. Not that I have nothing to say, but a lot has happend in last half a year and I promised myself I would switch to new blogging platform before using it again.
Welcome blogofile. Since Zine is history, I figured out static website/blog is what I should do in the first place. Now, my whole blog (including all posts) is available at github.com. Instead of reporting issues with blog in comments, you can create pull request for me to review and push to production.
I was accepted for Google Summer of Code 2011 again, this time working on TinyMCE integration improvements for Plone CMS. Weekly reports coming up!