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status update

maintained by Chris Nelson <chrisn@statecollege.com>

Last Updated Monday, April 5th, 1999

Sorry for the delay with this update. I was away all weekend, and had an urgent task at my real job.

This status update page is updated every weekend. To get updates and news throughout the week , I invite you to check out mozillaZine, a site I maintain devoted to Mozilla advocacy.

Previous Updates

Friends of the Tree

  • Jeremy Lea submitted some Linux make file patches

  • Bruce Mitchener Jr. submitted many good patches to fix memory problem

Module Updates
XPCom
April 2
Submitted by Suresh Duddi <dp@netscape.com>
  • Switched to using nsIRegistry instead of libreg/ directly. Thanks to Nicholas Ambrose
  • is now Threadsafe
RDF
April 2
Submitted by Chris Waterson <waterson@netscape.com>, Robert Churchill <rjc@netscape.com>
  • RDF is now scriptable via XPIDL. Documentation forthcoming.
  • New utility "rdfcat" (Win32/Unix only) for validating RDF/XML.
  • FTP data source was added. Note that FTP is limping along on Windows, but currently crashes on Mac (haven't tried it on Unix)... it isn't a problem with the FTP datasource, but with FTP in Netlib. Also, with the current implementation of Netlib, we can't specify that we want output in HTTP-INDEX format as it only returns HTML, so at the moment the FTP datasource is doing a simple parse of the HTML. Once Netlib changes, we'll change the FTP datasource over to using HTTP-INDEX which is the way to go.
  • the Bookmarks datasource now imports "IE Favorites". This works great on Mac as IE stores its favorites in a HTML file. On Windows, they are stored inside a directory and, due to a bug in nsFileSpec, access to Favorites won't work.
  • the Find datasource works, but to see it in action at the moment you need to edit sidebar.xul. Find the line that starts with " and swap the references to "rdf:find" and "rdf:files" so that "rdf:files" is first and "rdf:find" is second. (Note that this change prevents the file system datasource from working properly at the moment.) Run apprunner, load in "resource:/res/rdf/sidebar.xul" and open up the "Sample Find Queries" folder to see some examples. Obviously, all the bugs and gotchas need to be fixed... but its nice to see more datasources working again with RDF.

Other interesting tidbits:

  • We added an implementation of URL shortcuts or nicknames (or whatever they'll end up being called.) Basically, any bookmarked URL can have a nickname assigned to it in bookmarks.html. Enter the nickname into the location bar and the real URL will be loading in.
M4 Status
April 2
Submitted by Chris Hofmann <chofmann@netscape.com>

The M4 milestone is fast approaching.

Here are the events expected to take place over the next couple of days.

  • Last of the feature and bug fixing work for M4  continues from now until Tues 12:00 midnight.
  • Tree won't be closed over the weekend, but automated 8:00a builds will kick off Saturday and Sunday as additional sanity check points.
  • On Tuesday afternoon engineering leads will convene to  update status on which M4 features and infrastructure tasks will be completed for M4,  or moved to a future milestone.  Preliminary M4 feature and infrastructure task list have been posted at on mozilla.org under project seamonkey.
  • On Wed. afternoon we need to be bouncing off zarro M4 bugs.  Great progress has been made in the last couple of days. Since Tuesday we are down from 608 to 498 open M4 bugs.  Only critical bugs that will affect a wide number of engineers and testers working on the seamonkey project should hold up the M4 release should be mark Target Milestone M4 by Wed. morning.
  • Wed.  afternoon we will look at testing results on the Wed. morning build, the open bug list  and figure out the schedule for branchingthe tree for M4 builds and reopening the trunk.
  • Thursday we will start making release notes.  Add comments to the m4 release note bug  if you have additions to the release notes.
  • Contact pauld@netscape.com to get on the porting notes page for M4.

Go M4!

NGLayout
April 2
Submitted by Troy Chevalier <troy@netscape.com>

Troy writes in with this update:

"Not much in the way of status. We're all working on bug fixing and any final feature work. I'm working on :before and :after pseudo-elements (generated content), which has been a widely requested feature"

Mail/News
April 2
Submitted by Phil Peterson <phil@netscape.com>

Phil Peterson has news regarding the Mail/News client:

This week

  • Ported IMAP parser
  • IMAP cross-thread and events code mostly done
  • IMAP URL and factory done
  • Worked on message threading code
  • Lots of work bringing up the Linux build and Mac build of mail/news. Linux is up, and Mac is real close.
  • First life of message copying to/from local mail folders
  • Worked on multiple identities
  • Landed new MIME emitter code to put the message headers into XML and put them in a different web shell from the message body.
Next week
  • M4. Updated milestone info coming soon.
  • Ongoing work in message threading, IMAP, views, news
  • Cross-component (mail, editor, browser) tiger teams for key pieces such as dialog boxes, app cores, preferences, etc.
Footprint watch - Looks like the footprint is inflated by two static libraries with which a lot of our code links.
  • xplib.lib, which is swamped by all of the old XP_GetString resources. I would have thought that /mozilla/lib/xp/ shouldn't be used in the new mozilla (only in the old "classic" code). Is this right?
  • mork.lib, which is presumably going to migrate to a DLL soon.
Mail/News disk footprint (optimized code on Win32)
Filename
What is it?
How big is it?
mailnews.dll Main mail/news stuff (app core, data sources, DB code, etc.)
 42,288
msglocal.dll POP3, local mail
 217,776
msgnews.dll NNTP and newsgroups 
269,232
msgcompose.dll app core for message composition
 306,656
mime.dll MIME parser
 307,408
mimect-cal.dll MIME converter for vCal
 15,760
mimect-vcard.dll MIME converter for vCard
 251,696
htmlemitter.dll Generates HTML based on MIME structure
8,000
xmlemitter.dll Generates XML based on MIME structure
8,528
Total
 1,427,344

 

XPToolkit
April 2
Submitted by Peter Trudelle <trudelle@netscape.com>

Highlights

  • We survived the layoff intact.
Lowlights
  • The layoff cost us one of our most valued testers, Greg Lynn.
Accomplishments
  • Completed XP, Mac and Windows-specific work on Clipboard, and added it to AppRunner so it can be conditionally built. (rods, pinkerton, mcafee)
  • Added "OpenWindow" support to the AppRunner. (rods)
  • Cleaned up toolbox to do reflow better and handle borders correctly. (pinkerton)
  • Checked in KeyBind Manager XP code, and are now hooking it into menu code on all platforms. (sdagley, saari)
  • Adapted nsIFileWidget to  support GetFile with an nsFileSpec instead of an nsString so files will work properly on all platforms.
  • Windows can now be sized and given border titles from XUL. This is preliminary work and wants adjustment (titles should be affected by the main HTML content's <title> attribute) and window sizing wants to be much more clever.  But it works for now.  Bugs have been filed for these shortcomings.
  • Posted an initial Configurable Chrome Spec.
  • Implemented chrome URLS. (hyatt)
  • Implemented the chrome registry. (hyatt)
  • Fixed a few M4 bugs.
  • Interviewed Stuart Parmenter (aka Pavlov, the GTK module owner) for possible openings in the late spring or summer.  Consensus is positive, so follow-up interviews will be happening on Tuesday.
Decisions
Priorities
  1. Get keybinding working and checked in on all platforms. (saari)
  2. Complete File Dialog wrapper for Windows. (rods)
  3. Drag & Drag infrastructure. (rods)
  4. Make programmatic window Close work on Windows and Linux. (danm)
  5. Get windows onto the UI thread. (danm)
  6. Finish clipboard support on GTK. (mcafee)
  7. Connect streams to XUL. (scc)
  8. Open/Save file, choose folder dialogs. (sdagley)
  9. XP Scrollbar widget. (evaughan)
  10. Work on persistence of XUL. (hyatt)
Issues
  • Tree instability, horkage and regressions are once again taking up too much time, delaying development work.
People
  • Scott Collins is now working onsite, and will be for the next 5 weeks.
  • SDagley and DanM will be on vacation next week.

Previous Updates