JavaScript Calendar Popup

The JavaScript Calendar Popup is a great tool which allows a much better usability at entering dates. It has many features and is pretty much customizable.
Here is another variant using overLIB:
* http://javascript.internet.com/calendars/date-picker.html
I found them through this thread at the cocoon developer mailinglist.

Subversion release 0.28

Subversion 0.28 has been released and there is an interesting article with the title "Subversion release 0.28 - the better CVS - also for Eclipse, Emacs, Tortoise and more" from Christoph C. Cemper.

I'm looking forward at Subversion becoming mainstream for open source projects!

A Compact Syntax for W3C XML Schema

The article A Compact Syntax for W3C XML Schema on XML.com by Erik Wilde presents an interesting alternative to the verbose W3C XML Schema while preserving the same semantic.
Here's an example from the article to give you an idea:

W3C Schema fragment:

<xs:element name="complexContent" id="complexContent">

  <xs:complexType>

    <xs:complexContent>

      <xs:extension base="xs:annotated">

        <xs:choice>

          <xs:element name="restriction" type="xs:complexRestrictionType"/>



          <xs:element name="extension" type="xs:extensionType"/>

        </xs:choice>

        <xs:attribute name="mixed" type="xs:boolean"/>

      </xs:extension>

    </xs:complexContent>

  </xs:complexType>

</xs:element>

XSCS (XML Schema Compact Syntax):

element complexContent extends xs:annotated {

  ( restriction { xs:complexRestrictionType } | extension { xs:extensionType } )

    attribute \mixed { xs:boolean } }

That's definitely less verbose although I don't know if I like the curly bracket and the backslash that much ;-)

BONITA - A Cooperative Workflow System

BONITA is a flexible cooperative workflow system, compliant to WfMC specifications, based on the workflow model proposed by the ECOO Team, which incorporates the anticipation of activities as a more flexible mechanism of workflow execution.
The system provides:
* A comprehensive set of integrated graphical tools for performing different kind of actions such as process conception, definition, instanciation, control of processes, and interaction with the users and external applications.
* 100% browser-based environment with Web Services integration that uses SOAP and XML Data binding technologies in order to encapsulate existing workflow business methods and publish them as a J2EE-based web services.
* A Third Generation Worflow engine based in the activity anticipation model. This flexibility allows a considerable increase of speed in the design and development phases of cooperative applications.

OWL - Web Ontology Language Candidate Recommendation

The OWL Web Ontology Language Candidate Recommendation of the W3C has been released on August 18th.
It is designed for use by applications that need to process the content of information instead of just presenting information to humans. OWL facilitates greater machine interpretability of Web content than that supported by XML, RDF, and RDF Schema (RDF-S) by providing additional vocabulary along with a formal semantics. OWL has three increasingly-expressive sublanguages: OWL Lite, OWL DL, and OWL Full.

Java DocTree

Java DocTree is a comprehensive index to the JavaDoc from 56 Java projects. It links to 1521 packages and 20054 classes from a single page which saves you having hundreds of bookmarks for every Java project you use. Click on the package names below to drill down to the required JavaDoc.

Weblog temporary closed: Online Demonstration Against Software Patents

This weblog will be temporarily closed from August 25th until after August 27th due to an online demonstration against software patents.

Here is some further information on why this is such a big problem and what you can do to help:
* http://swpat.ffii.org/group/demo/index.en.html
* http://swpat.ffii.org/group/todo/index.en.html
* http://swpat.ffii.org/index.en.html

Sign the EuroLinux Petition against Software Patents!

If you want the net to stay a free platform take it as serious as many others do!

Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design

Microsoft Windows: Insecure by Design says an article of the Washington Post.

AOP with JavaScript

This article shows you how you can use AOP with JavaScript.
Found through this posting.

Reading a new book: Practical RDF

I started to read the new O'Reilly book "Practical RDF" by Shelly Powers.
It has about 330 pages and shows you the practical side of RDF.
I'm not a very fast reader, since I only read such books when I've got some time on the week ends or on holidays. Today I got to page 6 then I had to jump into the pool because of the hot weather ;-)

Talking about standardization

I had an interesting talk about standardization with my father-in-law Leopold Lasselsberger, who holds some important offices concerning biogenous fuels and wood combustion systems.
He encouraged me to take a closer look at the standardization efforts done by such consortiums like W3C, Oasis, IETF and others.
Let's see where this leads me to ...

LDAPd - Java LDAP Server

LDAPd is a Java-based pure Java LDAP v3 protocol compliant server. It's architecture is based on Matt Welsh's Staged Event Driven Architecture (SEDA).
The first version is available as Avalon Poenix application.

cuckooo - OpenOffice.org nested in KDE

cuckooo is a KDE Part, which allows running OpenOffice.org in a Konqueror window.

Current features:
* Shows (read-only) all document formats supported by OpenOffice.org.
* Can be embedded as a Part in Konqueror.
* Can run as a standalone application.

Really cool stuff!

Go and checkout the screenshots, which demonstrate viewing MS Word, MS Excel and MS Powerpoint files inline within Konqueror :-)

KnowledgeTree - OpenSource Document Management

KnowledgeTree (TM) is an Open Source document management system. The product provides a content repository, workflow and routing of content, content publication, content metrics definition and analysis.

SAMBA 3.0.0rc1

Samba 3.0.0rc1 has been released.
It has many improvements and goes a big step forward in NT 4.0 compatibility. Additionally it supports many features of Windows 2000/XP/2003.

b+m Generator FrameWork

The b+m Generator FrameWork is now available as Open Source. It features sphisticated MDA/D support and allows great flexibility in customizing it for your tasks. There's also an eclipse plugin!

Apache Cocoon 2.1 Finally Released

Let's have a party!
Apache Cocoon version 2.1 has been finally released after a very long development time.
This release makes a big step from an XML publishing framework to a componentized XML-based web application development framework.
Congratulations to Carsten and his helpers for doing this great release!

DocMan - DocBook Toolchain Manager

DocMan is a DocBook Conversion Toolchain Manager, a program that allows you to easily convert DocBook into a number of output formats.
I found this one on Lars Trieloff's Weblog and is written by himself. There are very promising DocMan screenshots. I definitely have to check this out!

IsaViz 2.0 Released

IsaViz is a verry impressive RDF visualization tool from W3C. It features now GSS (Graph Stylesheets) to render RDF graphs.
I think this is one of the most important visualization tools for RDF. Definitely worth a look!

AndroMDA - MDA Code Generation Framework

AndroMDA (pronounced: andromeda) is an open source code generation framework that follows the model driven architecture (MDA) paradigm. It takes a UML model from a CASE-tool and generates classes and deployable components (J2EE or other), specific for your application architecture.

RSSOwl - Newsreader

RSSOwl is a freeware newsreader for RSS written in Java using SWT as fast graphic libary.
If you're interested look at this screenshot.

SourceForge Utilities

SourceForge Utilities is a collection of open-source code which makes it easy for project administrators and release technicians to work with SourceForge without having to manually navigate its website and project tools. It currently provides a Java interface to the SourceForge file release system, with more features planned down the road.
You can easily integrate these tools into your Ant build to automatically release files to SourceForge.

LDAP Schema Resources

Yesterday I looked around the net to learn about LDAP schemas and found those nifty tools and resources:
* LDAP Schema Viewer
* LDAP verstehen (in german)
* LDAP Schema (University of Florida)
* List of LDAP related RFCs
* LDAP Linux HOWTO
Really helpful, if you want to learn LDAP!

Gmane - Mail To News And Back Again

Gmane is a very nice mailing list archive with many features. One I really like is the threaded view to easily follow discussions!

oreilly.com: Practical RDF

O'Reilly published a new book: Practical RDF.
It explains RDF from the ground up, providing real-world examples and descriptions of how the technology is being used in applications like Mozilla, FOAF, and Chandler, as well as infrastructure you can use to build your own applications.

(I already reserved my copy at amazon.com ;-)

Linux / WinXP Usability Study

relevantive AG has done a Linux Usability Study by comparing the Linux desktop KDE with WindowsXP.
Linux/KDE is not very far behind WinXP!
It is very well written and shows you where the usability problems lie. The report is written in german. An english version will be available soon.
The report is available under a certain Open Content license.

Wedding and wonderful honeymoon

Yes, we finally married!

Originally Maria and I were afraid from this step as we both hate big celebrations. Nevertheless it was the most beautiful day in our life.
To some part that was due to the fact that we didn't want to have a traditional wedding. Instead we wanted to have it the way it fits best to us. I'm sure we hadn't got so much positive feedback afterwards if we followed every hint about how we should do it ;-)

Now some more infos:
We married on July 19th (the 25th birthday of Maria) at the registry office in Wieselburg (15:00) and afterwards (with some drinks and photos in between) at the church in Neumarkt (17:00).
Theb we had some time to talk to friends, relatives and neighbors while having a drink and something to eat.
After that we drove to the Mostlandhof, where we had an excellent dinner. This restaurant is located on a hill where you can overlook beautiful parts of the Erlauftal. The weather was excellent and we could enjoy a really beautiful sunset.

At about 24:00 we were taken to a quite new Hotel in Amstetten, called Exel, where we spent our wedding night.
On monday at 02:15 early in the morning a bus catched us and brought us to Venice (Venedig for german speakers ;-). There we got onto the ship Costa Classica where we had a wonderful one-week cruise: Venice - Bari - Katakolon/Olympia - Santorin - Mykonos - Rhodos - Dubrovnik (Croacia) - Venice.

I never imagined that our wedding could be so beautiful.
Here I'd like to say thanks again to the parents and grandparents of Maria for making us such a big present with the Hotel and the cruise.

Hard week, no entries

This week was really hectic because bad things always happen just at that time, where you have other important things to do.
Somehow we managed most of the problems (surprisingly fast unlike originally expected) and therefore our 3-day advanced Cocoon training held by Guido Casper could take place without major interrupts. It completes the training of some weeks ago held by Matthew Langham, where he taught us the foundations of XML and Cocoon.

After these three days I have the feeling that Cocoon is like a big surprise box where you can take out presents as many you like and everytime you think now it must be empty someone else pulls a new present out of it.

Guido really did a great job at teaching us the Cocoon internals and different form frameworks without taking too much influence on our decisions and staying objective about the pros and cons.

I'm looking forward to work with you on our project and bringing it to a great success!

Happy Birthday Grandpa!

My grandpa turned 69 today and my grandma will be 70 on the 24th of June.

He always told me that computers are something that he'll not understand anymore.
Now he uses computers to write letters with Word, do calculations with Excel and compose music with Sibelius.

Some time ago he told me, that computers are ok, but he's too old to understand the internet...
Guess what!
Now he uses Google to search for information, writes emails and wants to do telebanking with his 56k modem.
I'm sure it won't take long 'til he has a highspeed internet connection.

He's really an interesting person who has many interests and is in many ways like me. He always want's to know what's behind it and doesn't hesitate to put much energy into findig out himself.

Time to marry

Christian Haul announced on the cocoon developer mailinglist that he'll marry his girlfirend today.

These were his words:
Hi team.
I will be offline 'till ~12th (and largely have been for some days already)
due to some happy event in my life: I'm going to marry my girl friend tomorrow!

Chris.

Many people congratulated him, and I thought it was time, to "out" myself too. I did so while sending my congratulations to Chris.

Here are some more details about our wedding:
Maria and me live together for 6 and two-third years now and we will marry on July 19th in Neurmarkt/Ybbs (Lower Austria, Austria, Europe, Earth ;-). This date is not chosen by accident, because it's the 25th birthday of Maria and we decided it while enjoying a wellness weekend at Therme Geinberg in end of May 2002.

Those of you who've read my FOAF profile (viewable with FOAF Explorer) perhaps noticed that I've already silently included our wedding event some time ago.

Tomcat Clustering Models and Implementations

The OSCOM session about "Tomcat Clustering Models and Implementations" on July 9th by Jason Brittain looks very interesting. Unfortunately I can't be there.
But the little information on the session description page was enough for me to recognize the possibilities you have for clustering tomcat. Very nice, if you just want to have a brief overview about the possibilities.

JBoss 4 Developer Release 2

The JBoss Group has released JBoss 4 Developer Release 2.

This is a list of recent changes:
* JBossDO: JDO for transperent persistence for POJOs. First iteration from the hard work of Alex Loubyansky.
* JMS rewrite: First iteration from Nathan with help from Bela Ban and Adrian Brock. P2P serverless topics by way of reliable multicast.
* AOP XDoclet integration: Great work from Andy Godwin. JSR-175/C# metatags right now in JBoss 4!
* Expand AOP Pointcuts: Per method, field, constructor as well as Caller pointcuts.
* AOP Performance Improvements: Framework speed up by factor of 6.

It's really amazing what the AOP framework aims to solve. Let's hope, that it holds what it promises. But what's going to happen with all the J2EE standardization? Will all the extensions that JBoss brings you lead to incompatibility or will it merely drive the J2EE standardization process. In the later case would not then JBoss define the state of the art and all other application servers try to do the same?

I'd be really interesting in your thoughts on this topic, unfortunately I have no comment functionality on my weblog. But there are enough places where you can post your JBoss comments (The Serverside).

RSSCreator.class.php - bitfolge.de

RSSCreator.class.php is a PHP-based class to create RSS-feeds for the versions 0.91, 1.0 and 2.0.

Perhaps I should use this one instead of the old hand-written RSS-feed creator of our website at work.

Weblog of Lars Trieloff

Lars Trieloff has mentioned some interesting links (1, 2) on his weblog:
* A german tutorial about DocBook
* ArgoFMC, a plugin for ArgoUML, enabling you to draw FMC diagrams. It is heavily based on a tool named ArgoPNO.
* Apache Modeling Portal

He also sent me a mail with a link the following tool to do manual trackback pings (see posting from yesterday):
* Simpletracks

Thanks again, Lars!
This makes manual trackback pings much easier ;-)

How to do manual trackback pings

I'm just figuring out how to use trackback.
Unfortunately blogger, the weblog provider I'm using, does not support trackback (neither direction). So I want to ping other weblogs 'by hand' and therefore I have to learn how to do that.

I've found these resources so far:
* TrackBack Explanation (Movable Type)
* TrackBack Development (Movable Type)
* Movable Type User Manual: Trackback
* How Trackback Works
* The Next Generation of TrackBack: A Proposal

The first manual try of the first article failed although I got a successful response.
The second try with the second article succeeded but - stupid as I am - I've chosen the wrong article to ping.
But the third try with the third article was finally perfect ;-)

As you see, doing trackback 'by hand' is really possible but is really painful and error-prone. If you have a blogging tool which automatically supports trackback, please continue using it. You didn't miss anything ;-)

BTW, does anybody know, how it's possible to - at least - ping trackbacks on other weblogs based on your blogger-based weblog?
Help is very much appreciated!

Knowledge Sharing vs. Knowledge Hoarding

There is a very interesting article on thought?horizon which explains how knowledge management can be successful and more important that you get much more in return, if you share your knowledge instead of hoarding it.

I totally agree about this!

FoaF/RDF/RSS Tools

MFD Consult has some nice Online Tools available.

1. FOAF-related:
* sha1ify
* Add New Friend
* Topic Finder
* FoaF Explorer

2. RDF-related:
* Weather Information as RDF/XML
* RDFS Explorer

3. RSS-related:
* Syndication Subscription Service

I've already mentioned the FoaF Explorer some time ago.
All of these are really interesting tools if you want to learn how the technologies around the Semantic Web are working.

New Morphon XML/CSS-Editors available for free

Morphon Technologies has made available Morphon XML-Editor 3.1 and Morphon CSS-Editor 1.3.6 available for free today.
Both are written in Java and run therefore on a wide range of systems.

I'm just downloading it but it's damn slow. Perhaps their server wasn't prepaired for the load after giving it away for free ;-)
I'll tell you more, when I was able to try it out!

Update:
I could now have a look at it and have to say, that it's really worth a try!
It uses an CSS-based WYSIWYG editor to edit your XML files.
I've tried it out with docbook and it really looks great!

WinSCP - SFTP and SCP client for Windows

I was just looking for an SFTP/SCP GUI client for Windows and found this neat freeware tool:
* WinSCP
If you know and like putty, than you'll like this one too.
I can really recommend it!

Metadata for your Blog!

I found some interesting meta tags on Eric Vitiello's site called Perceive Designs which allows you to put even more semantic information to your weblog. Examples are some geographic information, dmoz IDs and autodiscovery of blogroll OPML files.
I've included them into my weblog, so have a look at the quite growing header of the HTML source, if you're interested.

Here are some useful links, which helped me to include the right meta tags:
* Metadata Help on Syndic8
* TGN - The Getty Thesarus
* DMOZ - the Open Directory
* GeoTags - GeoTags
* List of Meta Tag values at Bauser.com

I'd encourage everyone to put all this valuable information into their own websites. That's the foundation to build tools which make use of this information!

Some cool FOAF viewers

Here are some online FOAF viewers I've found with an example link to view my FOAF profile:
* FoaF Explorer (my FOAF profile with FOAF Explorer) lets you explore a given FOAF file. Has a nice interface, which also shows you the photo, if you have set one in the FOAF file ;-)
* FOAF Web View (my FOAF profile with FOAF Web View) has a spider to which you can add your FOAF file. Then you can navigate through the network of who knows who. - Quite interesting!
* FOAFNaut can generate SVG images from a network of people who know each other.
* FOAFBot is a bot which you can ask some questions about persons and he gives you the answers.

Somehow I get pretty addicted to the possibilities, the RDF-based technology gives to you ;-)

RSS News Readers

Matthew has recommended the RSS news reader NetNewsWire with a three-paned-interface for Mac OS X on his weblog.

Unfortunately I don't have a Mac, but want to use something similar under Linux or Windows I did a query on google.
That's what I found:
* This list of RSS Readers (RSS Info) is from Blogspace.com

These are the one's I liked most:
* amphetaDesk is (open source, cross platform)
* Beaver (.Net)
* clever cactus (Java)

These are online services:
* Meerkat
* NewsIsFree
* RSS News Reader

Other Utils:
* RSS to Email Aggregator

Sun Releases JDK 1.4.2

You can download it from Sun's download page and have a look at the release notes.
This release has new features, performance improvements, and over 2400 bug fixes. Some of these include: Class.forName() has been sped up, Itanium support, many hotspot improvements, NTLN auth for windows, AES encryption support in SunJCE, new Swing look and feels, startup time improvements, and many more.

Does somebody know, if it has some (hopefully positive) impacts on Cocoon?

SOAP 1.2 now a W3C Recommendation!

According to the W3C News SOAP 1.2 now a W3C Recommendation!

It consists of the following documents:
* SOAP Version 1.2 Primer
* SOAP Version 1.2 Messaging Framework
* SOAP Version 1.2 Adjuncts
* SOAP Version 1.2 Assertions and Test Collection

Further info:
* Press Release
* Testimonials
* Changes and Benefits
* FAQ
* W3C Web Services Home Page

Cool Blog Tools

Chris Pirillo has put together some Cool Blog Tools.

Here are some of them:
* Blog Comparison Table lets you compare many different blogs with their features
* BlogMatcher lets you search for weblogs that match the same interests

New Cocoon Portal Engine

Just played a bit with the new Cocoon Portal, which will be in version 2.1 and have to say, that I'm really amazed!

I did not see much of it yet, but what I saw I liked a lot: I integrated my weblog into the portal and discovered, that you can control the coplets in every way you like.
E.g. you can set up content syndication with a life feed of a weblog, can control if you want to buffer the content and can even give an error URI, if the life newsfeed is not available.
Integration of my weblog including learning the portal and creating an XSL stylesheet for it was done within one hour!

I believe this will make our work so much easier ;-)

Google Toolbar 2.0 beta with BlogThis!

The newest version of the Google Toolbar for MS Internet Explorer has some new features (Popup Blocker, AutoFill, BlogThis for Blogger - you know, that Blogger has been bought by Google, no?).
I wonder what's happening to the Internet Explorer, after MS decided to not distribute future versions without an operating system anymore and leaving the development of such common things like popup blocking to search engine providers like Google? hmmm...
Honestly I don't really care, since I'm quite happy using Mozilla, Konqueror and Opera. IE sees my desktop only if I have to and I can assure you, that's not often ;-)

Report of the Cocoon Stamtisch

It was really a nice evening yesterday which started at 20:00 and took until 00:40 for the toughest ones (Reinhard, Manfred and me ;-)
It's really amazing, how such events help to realize that people often develop the same things at work which you're going to do.
Perhaps we'll join our effords on certain areas in the future.

Matthew had to get off a bit earlier to be well rested, because he should do some Cocoon training for us today and tomorrow ;-)
I can't tell you that I am well rested :-(

I can't await the next Cocoon Stammtisch and perhaps some other Cocoon events will take place in the near future in Vienna, but I don't want to spread vapor now.
So stay tuned!

Cocoon Stammtisch in Vienna

Today I'll go to the Cocoon Stammtisch in the Centimeter I (Vienna).
According to the mailing list, there well be about 15 persons.
Matthew Langham, who will do a Cocoon training for us the next two days, is coming too.
This is my first Cocoon community meeting, so I'm a bit excited ;-)

Completely BlogRolled Sidebar!

Thanks to the excellent support of BlogRolling I even can manage the complete sidebar (yes, even my buttons! - except the weblog archives of course) within BlogRoll. No need to fiddle with HTML code anymore! Now I can add new links with just a mouseclick while surfing the web :-).
It has some more features (like making liks available in RSS, OPML, for PHP or via JavaScript), which I'll investigate in the future.

Now BlogRolling!

All links on the sidebar (except the buttons, since I don't know if it's possible) are now maintained via BlogRoll.
This allows me to maintain the links much easier and gives me the possibility to show you some backlinks ;-)

Heavy Storm

10 minutes ago a really heavy storm suddenly arrived here in Vienna. I had to close all windows to prevent some damage. Like you know it from the movies, I saw a deracinated bush and many other things crossing the place in front of our house 8-[.

Enriching my Weblog

Erik C. Thauvin (The Truth is Out There) inspired me to enrich my weblog with the following thingies:
* Add a FOAF RDF description of me including a button for it
* Add BlogChalk Metadata including a button and the BlogChalk text on the bottom
* Make it kown as Java Weblog and add button for it
* Added a suitable Creative Commons license

Blog Buttons

I found some very interesting resources in the web regarding uniform style buttons for weblogs.
Here are they in the order of navigational discovery:
* Nifty Icons
* Archive of blog buttons
* MetaFilter blog button announcement
* Jeremy Hedley is the author of these buttons
* And here's a button maker to create one yourself
I didn't look for them without a reason.
Now you can enjoy these buttons on my weblog :-)
If you want to use them yourself, I've put together two ZIP-files of 256 blog buttons as GIFs as PNGs.
Additionally I've added my BlogChalk.

FOAF Resources

Here are some FOAF resources which I came across while adding FOAF value to my Weblog:
* FOAF
* Dublin Core
* Airports
* Contact
* WordNet
* Geo
* BIO: A vocabulary for biographical information
* FOAF Relations
* FOAF-a-matic - Generates a FOAF description of values you fill into a form
* FOAF Autocreation - Generates a full FOAF description from a personal FOAF file and an OPML blogroll
* Myers Briggs personality types test

RDF day @ freshmeat

Seems like yesterday was the RDF day at Freshmeat.net with 4 RDF-related posts on one day!
The first one I recogniced (Joseki) I've already mentioned below.
Here are the other ones:
* IsaViz is a visual authoring tool for RDF
* Jena is a semantic web toolkit
* sesame is an Open Source RDF Schema-based Repository and Querying facility.
It's really nice to see that the semantic web is going further every day!

Joseki

Joseki is a server for publishing RDF models on the web. Models have URLs and they can be accessed by query using HTTP GET. It is part of the Jena RDF toolkit and provides a coarse-grained web API that is based on extracting a subgraph from the published RDF. The extracted RDF can then be processed locally with the fine-grained API provided by Jena.

Sunday ice cream walk

My girlfriend, Maria, and I did again our loved walk from Volkstheater (where we get off from the line 49) to the ice cream parlor at Tuchlauben (if you speak japanese or just want to look at some photos you can have a look at this japanese page ;-) where you get the best nougat ice cream I know, passing by some beautiful buildings (Natur-/Kunsthistorisches Museum, Heldenplatz, Hofburg, St. Peter's Church) of Vienna.
If you ever come to Vienna in summer I really recommend to visit these places (among some others of course ;-)!

Blog Polishing

I just did some polishing on my weblog which is reflected by some new buttons at the bottom of the left sidebar.
The site is now valid XHTML 1.0 Strict and contains valid CSS2 which you can check yourself.
Additionally I've added buttons for the RSS feed of my weblog, a button for subscribing this weblog with the Radio Userland client, a GeoURL-Button where you can find blogs located near me and a button to my BlogShares account.

Enjoy!

The Silent Penguin

Matthew Langham announced, that he finally finished moving his weblog to a new site based on MovableType.

XMLStarlet Command Line XML Toolkit

XMLStarlet is a set of command line utilities which can be used to transform, query, validate, and edit XML documents and files using a simple set of shell commands in similar way it is done for plain text files using UNIX grep, sed, awk, diff, patch, join, etc commands.

ReadySET - Ready-to-use Software Engineering Templates

ReadySET is an open source project to produce and maintain a library of reusable software engineering document templates. These templates provide a ready starting point for the documents used in software development projects. Using good templates can help developers work more quickly, but they also help to prompt discussion and avoid oversights.

This is yet another interesting new project at Tigris.org, the excellent platform directed at collaborative software development.

Do you know an intermediate web page description language?

I'm searching for an XML language, which allows you to describe web pages/portals in a very high abstraction level.
I need it for transforming different data oriented XML schemas to an intermediate representation which is in turn transformed to the final ouput format (html, wml, pdf, ...).

Here are some requirements for the language I'm looking for:
* High level abstraction of portal elements (e.g. menu, ads, search field, logo, registration area, content area, forms, actions, ...)
* Presentation neutral description of content elements
* Embeding of different namespaces
* Prevent to write transformations from every data oriented language to every presentation format

Here's what I found so far:

Data oriented:
* News Industry Text Format (NITF)
* NewsML
* PRISM
* DocBook
* Cocoon/Forrest Document DTDs

Presentation oriented:
* (X)HTML
* XSL:FO (for PDF, ...)
* WML

Presentation independent:
The following only satisfy my needs partly:
* XHTML 2.0
* Forrest site.xml
* Forrest Book.xml
* ? (if you know some standards or drafts which fit in here please write an email to the address 'andreas dot hochsteger at oeamtc dot at').

It's really curious, that I could not find something similar, since I think it was quite common to transform data into an intermediate format and this intermediate format into the needed output format instead of transforming from every data format into every output format directly :-|

Code Generation Library

Code Generation Library is a powerful, high performance and quality Code Generation Library. It is used to extend JAVA classes and implements interfaces at runtime.
Sounds very interesting.
I found the link on the cocoon developer mailing list.

Persistent URLs

Persistent URL allows you to create persistent URLs by providing an intermediate resolution service.
I've seen using it for many XML namespaces (e.g. Doublin Core, RSS).

Modified Style

Did some finishing of the just chosen style with respect to spacings and font sizes.
I think I'll leave the standard color for a while until I get sick of it ;-)

New Style

I just noticed that the Blogger Pro software has been upgraded to a completely rewritten version with the code name Dano which provides some new features and will do so much mor in the future.
As a result I was able to change my old weblog style (which I never really liked that much ;-) to the style "Sand Dollar" which has been created by Jason Sutter.
Perhaps I'll do some customizations in the future (smaller fonts, other colors, ...) to fit my personal taste.
I hope you like the new style too!

Sapia Vlad - Open Source Validation Engine

Sapia Vlad is an Open Source validation framework. The rules can be specified by an XML syntax.
Perhaps that's something we can use at our project at work ;-)

IDE plugins for Subversion

It seems that support for Subversion in IDEs is gaining more interest and is becoming more and more usable.
I just found the following projects:
* Subclipse for Eclipse (at SourceForge)
* Svn4Eclipse for Eclipse (at Tigris)
* Svn-Up - pronounced: Seven-Up, for IDEA (at Tigris)
I can't await using the full power of Subversion for everything I'd need version controlling!

Aegis Software Configuration Management System

Aegis is a transaction-based software configuration management system. It provides a framework within which a team of developers may work on many changes to a program independently and Aegis coordinates integrating these changes back into the master source of the program, with as little disruption as possible.

I found this quite interesting project in the current issue of the german Linux Magazin.
It seems that it can use different RCS backend systems like CVS for example. An integration with Subversion would be the Perfect Solution (TM).
Let's see what the future's bringing us ...

xmlTRAM+: Using XML Technology to Manage Software Requirements and Architectures

This paper describes xmlTRAM+, which is another way using XML technology to manage software requirements and architectures.
I don't know, if there's something usable available - at least I didn't find anything.

Selected Software Engineering Books

Jason E. Robbins has a very good page with selected software engineering books.
They are grouped by the different stages of software engineering (requirements, configuration management, design, testing, ...) and provide a very good overview.
Check it out!

XML-based Software Requirements Specification

I just found this really useful project on Tigris.org: xmlbasedsrs.
Maybe that's what I've been looking for many months ...

Bon Jovi concert in Vienna, Austria

Yesterday I was at the Bon Jovi concert in Vienna, the best band on god's earth!
I took some poor pictures with my smartphone. I don't know yet, if they're worth it to publish here.
Nevertheless it was yet better than the one's I've seen before.
They started at 20:30 and played until 23:10, started with classics like Like "Livin' on a Prayer", "Wanted Dead or Alive" and moved on to the newer songs like "Joe", "Everyday", "Misunderstood", ...
I look forward to the next concert.

Free SyncML Implementations

Finally I found something to test the SyncML capabilities of my new Sony Ericsson P800 Smartphone ;-)
* http://sync4j.sourceforge.net/ (has JBoss support)
* Do you know some more? Mail me!
Let's see, if I find a better way to synchronize all the PIM applications I'm using (P800, Outlook, KOrganizer, KAdressbook, Mozilla, ...) both at home and at work.

+chris_pix

This is the second Weblog of Christian Burger, where he's going to publish his daily pics.
I wrote about it in the my weblog entry.

Weblog fever is spreading

My colleague Christian Burger has opened it's own Weblog.
I think hearing all the good things about Weblogs from me and from Matthew Langham in Paderborn last Wednesday couldn't keep him away any longer.
He told me that he wants to use it to take a photo every day and write some thing about it.
And he really wants to do it every day!

Sounds interesting...
I'll surely keep an eye on it.

Journey to Paderborn

I just returned from a two-day meeting in Paderborn with Armin Vogt, Guido Casper from s&n and my colleagues Christian Burger, Thomas Haginger, Andreas Köll and Christoph Takacs.
The meeting was intended for synchronizing our ideas for a project at our firm.

The landing (Air Berlin) at the Vienna Airport was a bit bumpy so that the oxygen masks at the next seat in front of us popped out ... but we survived it ;-)

Yesterday we had a very nice evening at the Brauhaus where Uwe Bröker, Carsten Ziegeler and Matthew Langham joined us.
Some photos were taken from this event, so perhaps you'll be able to see something.

In general I can say, that this journey was a great success (for both parties I hope ;-) and I'm looking forward to meet again in Vienna, Munich or Paderborn

Guido Casper noticed my Weblog

Ah, Guido Casper just noticed my Weblog. Promptly my BlogShares value raised from $0.0 to $100.72 for some days ;-)

Haystack - An RDF-based Information Management System

Haystack is a research project of MIT which seeks to bring modern information management and retrieval technologies to the average computer user in order to make computers a more compelling place for users to interact with their information. Haystack looks into the use of artificial intelligence techniques for analyzing unstructured information and providing more accurate retrieval. It also deals with the modeling, management, and display of user data in more natural and useful ways.
It's available for Windows and Linux (GTK+ 2.0) on June 1st 2003.

Mozile - Mozilla Inline Editor

Mozile is an Inline XHTML editor for Mozilla.

CiteSeer - Scientific Literature Digital Library

For those of you, who don't already know it: CiteSeer is one of the best sources for papers about computer science hosted on the NEC Research Institute.

Working with DocBook

I was looking for some information on how to write good papers with the help of DocBook and just found Working with DocBook from Ted Neward. The subtitle of this paper is "Having Fun with XSLT and XSL:FO". Looks promising ...
Update:
While reading this interesting paper I found some more papers from him, most notably X-Power which introduces an XML format for White Papers.

Information Architecture

This article with the title "A visual vocabulary for describing information architecture and interaction design" from Jesse James Garrett is a very good discussion about how the information architecture can be easily visualized with simple and well-understood graphical elements. Good examples and descriptions explain how to use them.
Additional there's a good page with resources about information architecture.

Web Development with Mozilla

LiveHTTPHeaders allows you to view the HTTP headers (with Header-TAB on Page Info), edit request headers and replay URLs. - Very great!
This article is about "Using Mozilla in Testing and Debugging Web Sites". There you can read about the JavaScript Console, Cookie Controlling, Source Code Viewing, Page Info, JavaScript Debugger, LiveHTTPHeaders (see above), DOM Inspector and Cache Manager.

Bugzilla installed at work

Today I installed Bugzilla at work on my Linux box and must admit, that I like it ever more the more I use it!
I always was a bit sceptic given the overwhelming large screens with dozens of form elements, but finally I gave it a try.
Time will tell, if this was a good decision ;-)

jBpm - Java Business Process Management

jBpm is a business process engine wirtten in Java and licensed under the LGPL. It has a very nice demo too. Definitely worth a look!

BlogShares - Weblog Ranking

Just found BlogShares through a Message on Matthew Langham's Radio Weblog.
Seems that nobody has discovered my Weblog yet :-(

Twingle - A Mozilla-based CMS Client

Just found Twingle on Guido Casper's Radio Weblog.
It's a Mozilla based CMS client which communicates via WebDAV and aims to be independent of any particular CMS.

sunBow 1.0 released

sunBow 1.0 has been released on Martin Dulisch's Radio Weblog.
sunBow is a collection of Eclipse (2.1) plugins that make it easier to develop Cocoon based applications and XML solutions in general.

ContentEditable in Mozilla

ContentEditable in Mozilla is a standards-based implementation of 'contentEditable' in Mozilla.
It allows to edit HTML pages directly in the browser.

Web Usability Tests

Usability News 5.1 2003 of the Software Usability Research Laboratory (SURL) brings some usability tests about:
* Paging vs. Scolling
* Breadcrumb Navigation
* Cascading vs. Indexed Menu Design

PMD/CPD - Finding copied and pasted code

PMD/CPD - Finding copied and pasted code in Java source code.
This gives you a good indication about how poor your OOD is ;-)

SourceForge.net now provides RSS feeds for projects

SourceForge.net now provides RSS feeds for projects.
This document explains everything you should know about it.

OpenOffice2HTML XSLT Stylesheets

Here are XSLT stylesheets available, which can transform OpenOffice documents into HTML for displaying in a web browser.

Thinlet GUI Toolkit

Thinlet is a GUI toolkit, a single Java class, parses the hierarchy and properties of the GUI, handles user interaction, and calls business logic. Separates the graphic presentation (described in an XML file) and the application methods (written as Java code).

Its compressed size is 28KB, and it is LGPL licensed.

Thinlet runs with Java 1.1 (browsers' default JVM) to 1.4, Personal Java, Personal (Basis) Profile, and MIDP. Swing isn't required.

Music related development (XML, Java)

MusicXML is an universal translator for common Western musical notation from the 17th century onwards.

Java Music Specification Language (JMSL) is a new Java-based development tool for experiments in algorithmic composition, live performance, and intelligent instrument design. JMSL is the evolutionary successor to Hierarchical Music Specification Language (HMSL).

Project XEMO is an open source, modular software environment for the development and delivery of interactive music, audio and sound applications. It is written in Java and runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X.

The Jesktop Project

The Jesktop project is a desktop system written in Java that can have GUI applications installed into it. It is dependant upon Avalon which is a server framework from Apache.

STX - Streaming Transformations for XML

STX - Streaming Transformations for XML
STX Transformation Language Specification
Article about STX on XML.com.
Joost ist the first implementation of STX.
This post explains how you can use it with Cocoon (just config work!).

Sarissa

Sarissa is a cross browser JavaScript API for DOM extentions. It can be used to do move XSLT transformations (e.g. for Cocoon) to the browser.