Re: Status update: IMC CMS and short-term plans for Samizdat

[boud]

hi dmitry, all,

On Wed, 13 Sep 2006, Dmitry Borodaenko wrote:

> Background:
> http://techmeet.sarava.org/Agenda/CMSs
>
> The IMC techs once again decided to do something about the situation
> with Indymedia codebases. The results of the previous attempt in 2002
> inspired me to start development of Samizdat. This time, this push for
> better codebase gives me incentive to move Samizdat forward.

cool :)

> Samizdat has come a long way since 2002, here is a quick sketch of
> where it stands now with regards to the features needed for new
> Indymedia CMS (see details at the above link).
 ...

> While Samizdat covers a lot, many important features a missing, and
> most of them can be added without big changes to the architecture. So
> here is the roadmap for the next few weeks:
>
> - bug: fix for current libgettext-ruby
> - install: setup running default site
> - security: block external images (via xhtml.yaml)
> - doc: update docs, unit tests
>
> I plan to finish this today or in the worst case tomorrow. Once done,
> I will finally release the long-overdue Samizdat 0.6.0, and upload a
> package of it to Debian/unstable.

OK. i'll try installing/testing once it's uploaded/mirrored.

> - security: notify moderator button
> - security: captcha
> - security: spam filter
> - bug: supplement published date with modified date
> - ui: inform guest users that they can't edit even open-for-all messages
> - ui: show file size in non-inline messages
>
> This stuff can be done within this week (including weekend). What will
> help me do that is 1) pointers to some ready captcha (or the like)
> modules and web-ready spam filters for Ruby; and 2) help with testing,
> pointing out bugs, and keeping translations up to date.

spam filters: no idea about ruby, but for twiki, i've found 
BlackListPlugin to work fairly well:

http://www0.torun.linux.org.pl/twiki/bin/view/TWiki/BlackListPlugin

It functions using a mix of several different strategies against wiki
spam which attempts to get high google rankings.

i don't think this helps much except for inspiration...


> - design: get rid of remains of built-in focuses
> - feature: wysiwig HTML editor
> - feature: image manipulation (thumbnailing, galleries)
> - feature: user notifications (research existing mailers)
* > - bug: fix translations (?)
> - speed: mark-and-sweep in cache
> - ui: show nested comments
* > - feature: import RSS feeds (filtered syndication of blogosphere)
> - feature: pod/vodcasting
> - install: research PostgreSQL clustering
> - install: restart Apache in postinst
> - bug: catch and report db connect timeout error
> - bug: reproduce and fix boud's Sanitize issue
>
> All this is a more difficult or lower priority work, I'm not going to
> start on it until I finish with the previous two batches. I would be
> really appreciate if someone could pick up one or two of these tasks,
> the ones marked as features and ui are more easy marks as they are
> relatively straight-forward and can be done without deep knowledge of
> Samizdat internals.

i'm going to try:
* > - feature: import RSS feeds (filtered syndication of blogosphere)

i've started RTFMing a bit about basic ruby (/me has no OO experience :P)
and i'm likely to start experimenting in the next few days.

dmitry - i looked for the standard ruby library package you mentioned
in /usr/share/doc/libruby1.8/README  and i guess you mean REXML ??

i also found this discussion:
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/78027

which points to what seem to be at least 4 different ruby packages/routines:

http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/rss/
http://simple-rss.rubyforge.org/
http://sporkmonger.com/projects/feedtools/
http://syndication.rubyforge.org/doc/

And here's a 10-line hack:
http://involution.com/2006/03/20/rss-parser-in-10-lines-of-ruby-or-in-153-lines-of-c/



i'll also do: 
* > - bug: fix translations (?)

pl - there are some pl translations missing
fr - totally absent at the moment - i should hopefully be able to get this done 
this week


BTW: does anyone know if we are ok with BIDI (bidirectional text - like
hebrew and farsi/arabic) ?

> Now let's see how much I can before Sunday and how much help I can get.


/me will do my best...
cheers
boud