Toluu

Sam Ruby

It’s just data

Building Firefox with HTML5 parser supportJanuary 5

Start by installing some build prerequisites.  The following are for Ubuntu, adjust as necessary:

sudo apt-get build-dep firefox sudo apt-get install mercurial libasound2-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev

Now check out the source to an HTML5 enabled Firefox:

mkdir -p ~/hg/ cd ~/hg/ hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/users/mrbkap_mozilla.com/html5parsing/

The next step requires requires Python, Subversion and JDK 5 or later (JDK 6 and Hardy’s OpenJDK work).

mkdir -p ~/svn/ cd ~/svn/ mkdir checker cd checker svn co http://svn.versiondude.net/whattf/build/trunk/ build python build/build.py checkout dldeps

if you get a timeout from SourceForge, simply try again.  At the present time Google code’s hosting of jing-trang is currently down.  For our purposes, that library is not necessary.  Press on.

You are not done yet.

mkdir tmp wget http://javaparser.googlecode.com/files/javaparser_2008-06-19.zip -O tmp/javaparser_2008-06-19.zip unzip tmp/javaparser_2008-06-19.zip -d dependencies/ javaparser_2008-06-19.jar

On to generating the cpp sources from java...

cd htmlparser/translator-src/ javac nu/validator/htmlparser/generator/GenerateNamedCharactersCpp.java java nu.validator.htmlpar

iCalendar Validator?January 3

Jon Udell: If we recapitulate the RSS/Atom experience with ICS, and lots more ad-hoc ICS feeds arrive on the scene, charts like this will go even redder.  To make them go green, we’ll need a more robust ICS validator.

Jon has done an excellent first step: demonstrating that there is a problem.

The next step is harder, and for the feed validator was borne mostly by Mark.  For each of the red entries on that page, somebody needs to identify what should be tested for, and for each test identify a short message, an explanation, and a solution.  Identifying real issues that prevent real feeds from being consumed by real consumers and describing the issue in terms that makes sense to the producer is what most would call value.

Once this is done, the coding is straightforward.  I’d be willing to volunteer to take on a large chunk of this.

Thanks for Volunteering!December 31 2008

Larry Masinter: When the C++ committee (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC22/WG21) produces a document, are they producing a Technical Specification of the language, or an Applicability Statement on compiler implementation?

The context for the above statement is an argument by Ian Hickson that "Technical Specifications", as you are describing them, are worthless.

James Britt:  The consolidation removes this useful competition. This is maybe a plus for folks who prefer Rails, and a gain for people who want to do things the Merb way but can now say they are using Rails. Less useful to people who want to see more distinct options.

The context for the above statement is the fact that Yehuda Katz (of Merb fame) is joining the Rails Core team.

What do Yehuda and Ian have in common in this case?  They are both working on causes they believe in.

Dan Connolly: I also suggest we demote m

AWDwR3 Beta 7December 26 2008

Beta 1.7 of Agile Web Development with Rails, Third Edition is out; I just completed the most exhausting and time consuming portion of this task: attempting to examine literally every single page of rdoc trying to determine what should be documented and what need not be, and to compare that against what has been documented vs what has not.  This is not as obvious as it sounds, as with all human endeavors there is a mix of pages which are autogenerated which only describe internal details, and other features which are highly dynamic which do not show up on rdoc pages at all.

I was originally intending to do this exercise based on Rails 2.1, but as there was a general feeling that Rails 2.2 was just around the corner, I waited a bit.  It was released last month, and now that I’ve updated the book based on what was included, Rails 2.3 is again “just around the corner”.

Sigh.

Given that Merb is getting merged into Rails 3, it looks like being an author of a Rails book is a full employment proposition.  If kept on top of, it shouldn’t be an

Rack'em Up!December 17 2008

Rack is Ruby’s answer to Python’s WSGI.

A year and half later, Rails replaced the guts of script/server with a call out to Rack.

Days later, Phusion Passenger™ essentially became mod_rack, though you can still call it mod_rails if you like.

Yesterday, a new micro-framework named Metal has been introduced which allows one to intercept requests, whether it be for performance reasons or simply to call out to another framework.  Sinatra has already been demonstrated, Merb can’t be far behind.

I love it when a plan comes together