Helma 1.7.0 has escaped its stealth existence

The Helma 1.7.0 release contains some bug fixes and major improvements, such as programmable HopObject collections and prototype mappings, Apache Commons Daemon support, a profiler for measuring function runtime and invocation frequency , and skin/macro introspection, to mention just a few. It also contains an updated version of Rhino and is the first Helma release that has Javascript 1.7 features enabled by default. The Helma 1.7.0 Changelog below has the nitty gritty details. Better get it now, before there is an even better one. Really, it's that good!

Our bugzilla has a list of bugs fixed in Helma 1.7.0 .

• Added ability to create HopObject collections programmatically and on the fly, without having to define them in the prototype's type.properties file.
• Prototype mappings can now be defined programmatically as well using the newly added global function definePrototype().
• Added Apache Commons Daemon support, making it possible to run the embedded Jetty server on port 80 for ordinary users on Unix and running Helma as service on Unix and Windows systems.
• Property names in HopObjects are now case sensitive.
• Added support for lazy collection loading, setting collection.lazyloading = true changes HopObject.list() to no longer fetch all contained objects, amongst other aspects.
• HopObject.href() now takes an optional second argument, an object which will be encoded to a query string and added to the generated URL.
• Added a profiler for measuring function runtime and invocation frequency.
• Added generic header manipulation methods getHeader(), addHeader(), setHeader(), removeHeader() to the helma.Mail object.
• Backported improved helma.file module from Helma NG, which takes an options object as argument and allows to specify the default charset to use.
• Changed Object.prototype.dontEnum to be overridable and not read-only.
• Added support for __defineGetter__ and __defineSetter__ to HopObjects.
• Write locks for non-persistable properties on HopObjects are no longer checked.
• A Rendering bug involving case in skin name has disappeared.
• Fixed strictvars mode to produce the appropriate errors.
• Fixed a bug where debug logging level wasn't unset if the debug property was set to false during runtime.
• Network ports are now checked at startup by opening a ServerSocket on the port in question and seeing if it works.
• Fixed a regression where dynamic relations were broken when the parent wasn't explicitely set.
• Replaced encumbered code base of helma.util.Diff with an alternative implementation.
• Fixed a comparison bug in loop macro in HopObject.js.
• Fixed a slowdown when using getDBConnection() and oracle db that was due to running connection tests to often.
• Fixed an error when retrieving HopObjects by accessname on a programmatic collection.
• Fixed a problem where the return value of a HopObject's size() method did not change when removing children of a collection.
• Fixed a problem with limit and offset on normal collections not working properly.
• Adding an object to a grouped collection right after removing an object from that collection, which was in the same group and was added in the same request, now works.
• Changed sessions for requests that do not already have one to be only created when actually needed.
• Fixed a bug that caused helma.Html.isSelected() method to fail when the last argument was an array.
• Added Skin.getMacros() to offer start and end properties, and getName, getHandlerType, getNamedParams, getPositionalParams and hasNestedMacros methods for skin/macro introspection.
• Fixed a problem with persist() and collections using accessName.
• Calling list() method with min and/or max arguments on HopObjects that are transient now works.
• Changed String.URLPATTERN to use a regular expression instead of java.net.URL.

You can download it here.

Modules, Proxies, and Ephemeron Tables

Kris Kowal and Mark Miller presented a synopsis of topics covered at the January 2010 ECMA TC-39 meeting:

Server-Side Javascript since... way back: RingoJS!

From one of the very early experiments in "Weblogs" in 1998 and the open sourcing of the "HOP" in the year 2000 to the widely deployed and mature Helma as we know it, plus the first experimental attempts at a Helma-rewrite as a lean and mean js runtime, initially called "Rhinola" and running on top of mod_gcj, which evolved into a candidate for "Helma 2" and later was codenamed "Helma NG" , the project now known as RingoJS can truly be called "Server-Side Javascript since... way back!"

RingoJS is a thin wrapper around Rhino providing a CommonJS conformant module library and web application framework. If you are using Rhino and/or are interested in CommonJS and ServerJS in general, the brand new RingoJS 0.4 release might be worth checking out.

http://ringojs.org/wiki/Release 0.4/

The most notable new features:

• updated CommonJS compliance
• improved web application modules
• optimizations regarding code caching and resource loading
• updated Rhino snapshot with more ES5 features in JavaScript 1.8
• unittest module; we are now shipping with 235 tests
• jsdoc module using Rhino's AST feature and powering the API docs web app
• POSIX support; using JRuby's jnr-posix libraries
• admin script for creating web app scaffolding
• simplified Google App Engine deployment
• new logging module based on log4j/SLF4J
• lots of new JSGI middleware; gzip, etag, transaction, profiler, ...
• new CLI arguments parser in pure JS

Pre-built downloads for Linux, Mac and Windows can be found on github: http://github.com/ringo/ringojs/downloads

And, of course, our new ringojs.org site is now powered by RingoJS.

So you can see how easy it is to take RingoJS for a spin on Google App Engine, Hannes has produced the Deploying RingoJS on Google App Engine screencast for your viewing pleasure :-)

Anno 1989: Lambada by Kaoma

Eternal September

Path: gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!uunet!paperboy.ids.net!gilly!dave
Message-ID: <94204205851.dave.22710@gilly.cca.org>
Date: Tue, 25 Jan 94 20:58:52 EST
Organization: The Center for Computational Aesthetics
Reply-To: dave%gi...@paperboy.ids.net
From: d...@gilly.cca.org
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Subject: Re: Weeks? hah!!
References: <2i26q0$75l@whale.st.usm.edu>
Lines: 20

chamb...@whale.st.usm.edu (John William Chambless) writes:

>Let's see...off the top of my head, not looking in the archives...
>There's the "how do I remove a file named '-' from comp.unix.wizards...
>( at least a year so far..)
>The " 'move' is less intuitive than 'copy-and-delete' thread from this
>humble newgroup ( 3 or 4 months, and still kicking! Hi, Mike!).
>The "Furrymuck is for lameoid perverts" thread that Joel Furr keeps
>firing back up on alt.fan.furry...
>And let's not forhget the "Imminent Death of the Net" theme, which has echoed
>at least since the first FidoNet gateway...(or was it Compu$erve?)

Those are all recurring, not long-running.

>Do the cyclical "september threads" count as continuous?

It's moot now. September 1993 will go down in net.history as the September
that never ended.

-<=>- Dave Fischer -<=>- Help Fight Ambient Light! -<=>- d...@cca.org -<=>-

>>> AOL expanding Internet services