Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 02:58:15 -0600
From: Ken Pooley kpooley@sewanee.edu
To: MWS mws@midgard-project.org
Subject: MWS #55: What should be in the Midgard Site, 1.4.1 is
coming, A 2.0 road map, Midgard on IRC!
MWS #55, January 11th 2001
Greetings!
It has been an interesting time in the world of Midgard. After a
lot of work, by a lot of people, 1.4 is stable and released. There
is concrete movement towards 2.0 and Ami Ganguli has pretty
specific requests for help and a good timeline marking out where
and when we should see pieces along the way. Bergie has returned
from his stint with Finland^Òs finest and is motivated to
push the project ^Óto be all it can be^Ô; I am working
on an interview with Bergie that should be ready in the next issue
or so. There are discussions crossing all of the lists about how to
rework the Midgard Project site to better serve the wide range of
users who need resources and support. There is a new IRC channel,
sponsored by Torben Nehmer, to give all of us a place to meet when
we just can^Òt get to Paris. I am still interested in
talking to current Midgard users who would like to answer questions
about how they use Midgard and what it has brought to their
organization.
Contents:
Editor’s Note
Discussion of Midgard-project.org and its future.
Bergie starts a discussion of what we need from the project website.
1.4 is out and 1.4.1 is on the way.
PHP 4 and Repligard in late January.
A revised timetable and roadmap for Midgard 2.
Good news:We are on schedule. Bad news: Here is the list of things to do, or
no 2.0 for you!
A Midgard IRC Channel debuts.
It's a good way to ask a question when that is looking so wrong.
Discussion of Midgard-project.org and its future.
One of the first things Henri Bergius initiated upon returning to
the list was an ongoing discussion of what information and services
should be included in the Midgard-Project website. There have been
a number of threads. They are mostly related to the need to make
basic information available to new users, readily assist with
software installation and make the documentation as easy to access
as possible. This is a really important discussion for the whole
Midgard community to participate in, if you haven^Òt put in
your .2 euros, you should think about it. The growth of the
installed Midgard server base over the last year has been
tremendous, this growth brings with it a lot of different
perspectives and valuable experience. There should be a
requirements document coming out of the discussion and all will be
urged to review it when the time comes.
1.4 is out and 1.4.1 is on the way.
Midgard 1.4 was released, on schedule right, around Christmas day
and seems to be a successful release. There have been relatively
few bugs reported though all are encouraged to check in, and if
necessary report bugs at the bug tracking webpage, http://www.midgard-project.org/bugs/.
The bug tracker is also the place to request features in future
versions.
The next release, 1.4.1, is scheduled for late January. 1.4.1 is
intended to provide support for Php4 as well as provide fully
functional and integrated Repligard. 1.4.1 is the last planned
release in the 1.x tree, as most development energies will turn
towards 2.0 over the next few months. There is potential for a 1.5
release but that will only happen if feature needs arise which are
appropriate to the architecture of 1.4.
A revised timetable and roadmap for Midgard 2.
Ami Ganguli has been working hard on writing the core of what will
become Midgard 2.0. He has released a revised road map for the
development process and a timeline for completion of the various
stages (The web version of this article will have the text of the
road map appended to it.) Most encouraging is a projected
completion date for the whole version of December 1st. In the mean
time there is a lot of work to be done. The code is being written
in C and the development projects are currently prioritized
according to their relative effort and priority. While the schedule
is ambitious it is also assembled in such a way that parts can be
easily dropped if they prove unwieldy or they consume too many
resources. The modular nature of Midgard 2.0 should allow enough
feature extensibility that parts dropped now can be re-included at
a later date if resources allow.
A Midgard IRC Channel debuts.
Torben Nohmer has put up an Internet Relay Chat channel and has
been trying to moniter it most days. IRC is a great way to get in
touch with someone who can help you out, in real time, when you get
stuck on that one line of Midgard script that just won^Òt
work, compile or go away. Even though it seems like Emile is
running an e-mail based chat it is just an illusion, as we have
recently discovered he, does go on vacation and there is not a T-1
on the beach in Surinam. Torben, however, does not vacation in
faraway places. He is online most afternoons and evenings but is
looking for others to cover those times when he isn^Òt
available. The IRC channel is #Midgard, the server is found at
irc.Midgard-project.org. Like the discussion forum Jakob Nielsen
posted at
http://www.jakobnielsen.net/midgardforum/viewboard.phtml?BoardID=1,
IRC is a great place to toss out that nagging question see what
comes back. I will try to be there during the day, central standard
time (GMT-6), as soon as I get back to my office everyday.
About Midgard
Midgard 1.4 is a content publishing tool for small and medium
sized sites. It is based on Apache, MySQL and PHP. The application
and its documentation are licensed GPL, LGPL and GFDL. This
licensing strategy guarantees that developers, webmasters, ISPs,
and business managers are investing in a strategy where they’re
free to share solutions and participate in the application
design.
-> http://www.midgard-project.org
About MWS
The Midgard Weekly Summary is a bi-weekly newsletter for the
Midgard user and developer community, as well as the extended web
community. If you would like to release it or publish it, please
contact Ken Pooley (kpooley@sewanee.edu).
Previous issues of Midgard Weekly Summary can be found archived
at the Midgard web site.
-> http://www.midgard-project.org/topic/169.html
Midgard mailing list.
The Midgard mailing list is one of the most vital and visible
aspects of the Midgard Community. Questions get answered,
suggestions debated and work gets done.
E-mail:midgard@greywolves.org
Places to see Midgard in Action:
http://www.midgard-project.org
http://www.hklc.com
http://www.5fthigh.com/
http://www.linuxde.org/
http://www.hec.nl/
http://www.stonejobs.com/
http://www.cruisexcursions.com/
-More to come