NLADA E-Library SourceForge Project

You can find the project on SourceForge at:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/nlada-library

There are currently three threads of development going on here:

DocumentLibrary 1.0

This is the current beta. There are a couple of bugs that I know about with beta 3 that need to be fixed before 1.0 stable comes out.

The more major one is that pathing inside the library catalogs is broken when using virtual hosting. This breaks a couple of things like automatically showing topics when documents are added to them. Amazingly 99% of everything still works fine in this situation though.

The other bug has to do with URL based submission file names. When a file is submitted by URL and there is a query string, the code does not strip this string. The resulting file name is ugly to say the least.

These two bugs will be fixed in the forthcoming beta 4 release, hopefully in a couple of weeks.

E-Library 1.1

The new name will be unvieled with version 1.1. It is basically just to more formerly denote the change of ownership of this project from Kaivo to NLADA. This was a result of the author (Me!) changing employers. Since NLADA is marketing this feature of their site under this name, I thought it appropriate to update the name of the product. Here are the planned features for 1.1:

Enhanced access control

You will be able to secure individual documents and they will only be included in search results for those users who can access them.

Internationalization

Many users have expressed interest in adding i18n to the product. Some have contributed code to "ZBabelize" it. I need to review these contributions and merge them in.

Simple Search Enhancement

I have written some code that better weighs search relevancy. Basically it ranks hits on the title before hits on the rest of the text without duplicates. This code will be incorporated in the release.

HTML Document Representations

Another feature I have implemented in my own libraries is the ability to upload an HTML version of a document along with its original version without having to upload two separate documents. You have to make the HTML, but the interface takes care of the rest. This is actually a minor change coding wise, but one that I think is worthwhile.

Development of 1.1 will be happening concurrently with 1.0 stable. Alpha releases should be available in a few weeks. Versions from CVS will be available sooner.

E-Library 2

This will represent a re-architecture of this product from top to bottom to better embody the new religion of the Zope 3 component architecture. That basically means that the product will be split up into manageable components that can be used together to make the library or split up and recombined in any way you like.

This will make it much easier for you to take cool pieces of functionality like document converters, taxonomies, shared property schemas, etc. etc. and use them for your own purposes. It'll be kinda like a preassembled Lego set. You can take it apart and reassemble it anyway you want and add pieces from other products in a straightforward way, without needing to understand all of the source code.

The code will also be refactored to include interfaces and unit tests and should therefore be all the more robust while also better documented.

I have a long list of features that the version 2 branch could have. I doubt all of them will be doable for 2.0, so check out the online survey and vote for the features you would most like to see! You can access the survey at:

http://sourceforge.net/survey/survey.php?group_id=40432&survey_id=12628

The design of version 2 will be happening along with the development of 1.1. If all goes well, version 2.0 should hit the streets by summer time. Pieces of version 2 should be available from CVS in February.

Conclusion

I am excited to get this project back up and running. I have heard from many of you who are using the product. I invite you to post to the list to tell us what you are doing with it! Of course you are welcome to use the list for questions or bug reports. Please post to the list instead of e-mailing me directly so that others can benefit who might have the same questions or problems. If you do have an issue that you would rather not post to the list, I am as always happy to exchange e-mail with you directly though.

I also welcome you to join the development team if you are interested. Just drop me a line and let me know what you would like to help with.