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Hi folks, |
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It's 11th, the suggested "pencil down" date for Google Summer of Code |
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2008. It's been fun. And it'll continue to be. No pencil down |
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unofficially. :) |
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Here's a long due report on Beacon. |
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My post mid-term deliverable was the collaborative editor. The initial |
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week was spent learning, cleaning and sprucing certain sections of |
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code and realizing how much more I need to learn. I spent quite a time |
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looking around, reading other codes and going through articles on many |
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topics in Web Apps. I wanted a know how on how to make a great web |
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app, issues with scalability (after a twitter/blog update by Anant ;) |
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[1]), good asynchronous JavaScript programming patterns etc. [2]. |
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There are not many open source collaborative RTEs out there [3]. I |
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started my coding on it and changed my practices. So the post mid-term |
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code turned out to be different and more manageable and re-factoring |
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other code will not be difficult. I had tried to avoid the use of |
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libraries so I could understand more [4]. |
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The collaborative editor has pretty much the same layout as the 'solo' |
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editor. The document, but, is not fully editable at once. I am using |
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inline editors (like in the original beacon), which allow user to edit |
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a part of the document by clicking on it. The click makes the text |
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editable (much like the Dojo inline editor, which sadly did not have |
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the support for an RTE and since I have a framework for one, I forged |
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it myself). This helps me in applying section locking so as to prevent |
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changes by different editors from colliding. |
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There is a tiny chat widget on the page and a user list which can help |
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editors stay in sync with each other within the editor itself. |
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As the document is being edited the sections get locked/unlocked |
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giving the user a complete view of what's happening. Epic events like |
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adding a chapter/section are handled differently by locking the whole |
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document. This part is still being worked upon. |
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Another major learning step was good (shudder) Ajaxing. Reading a lot |
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many articles by JS gurus I tried to find the best way to handle the |
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large amount of asynchronous requests made in the collaborative |
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editor. There are some periodical poll functions like getting the |
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connected users list, chats, server syncs and data comms. I had to |
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find the some ways to remove the HTTP open/close overheads but sadly |
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browsers don't support some hacks so well so went ahead with simple |
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polling. An interesting read at [5]. |
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So what's remaining now? |
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- The completion of server-client communication in the collaborative editor. |
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- Perform the much needed testing and bug fixing. |
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- Completing the stand-alone editor's missing features like support |
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for certain GuideXML elements and output of well formatted XML. |
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Staying in tune to the project 'title' I plan to set afloat a beta |
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after the first two tasks. |
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Thanks to bonsaikitten, there's a demo of the current code base at |
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[6]. The 'solo' editor is pretty useable and you can play with the |
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chat feature in the collab editor. To let another user join your |
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session just copy the URL in the browser and paste it to the other |
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person. Or you could just open two tabs in the browser and chat with |
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yourself. :P |
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My future plan is to basically just continue work with Beacon and make |
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it as extensible and feature rich as possible while keeping it very |
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easy to install and run anywhere. I also plan to port it to Python |
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later (for a possible integration with the Google App Engine, thanks |
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to quantumsummers for that idea :) ). |
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It has been a great learning experience! More updates later. |
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Kind Regards |
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Nandeep |
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[1] http://www.kix.in/blog/2008/07/weeks-8-9-load-balancing-oauth/ |
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[2] One of the good articles on JS patterns: |
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http://www.klauskomenda.com/code/javascript-programming-patterns/ |
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[3] Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_real-time_editor |
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[4] A nice article by JS guru Stuart Langridge on use of libraries: |
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http://www.kryogenix.org/days/2006/12/24/the-fog-of-libraries/ |
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[5] A bit on HTTP connections: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comet_(programming) |
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[6] http://dev.gentooexperimental.org/~n9986/beacon/trunk/editor/ |
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(currently supported only in Firefox) |
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