I know of a few people who are waiting for a release version of Antville and Helma, and they're in the very uncomfortable situation of not having any clue when to expect that. Since my feeling is that we're pretty much there, I propose we commit to release new preview versions of both Helma and Antville early next week. I think we are far enough to be able to guarantee a smooth transition from that release to what will be the final Helma 1.2 and Antville 1.0.

Here's what I think should be in that Antville release:

• My content-as-XML hack
• Robert's new DB schema (Robert, would you like any help with that?)
• All the db fields we know we'll need
• Either HSQLDB or Mckoi as embedded database
• The new ultraliberal Helma license

What do you think? (This posting is inteded as much for those waiting for an Antville release as much as it is for those putting it together. So you, yes you: if you are interested in running your own Antville server, either just to play around with it or to do something serious, please chime in and let us know what you'd like to see.)

PS: early next week would be [monday..wednesday].

i'm nearly finished with the db-schema (currently without all the missing columns), runs fine with both mySql and Oracle, although there the maximum length of a text when using Oracle is now 4000 characters (because of search, you can't use LIKE-clauses on columns of type LONG). Whats missing is the renaming of the prototypes membership and member (to membermgr and membership).

currently i see a bigger problem than that: the new db-schema made some renaming of prototypes necessary, and that means that macro-handlernames also have to change (weblog is now named site, goodie is named file). now this won't be a problem with new Antville-installations, but it's a big one for antville.org. Also for consistency reasons some macros had to be renamed (eg. webloglist -> sitelist).

i'd like to add two smaller things to your list:

• the two new macros for embedding stories in skins (as in our "roadmap") plus
• bugfixing and changing image-handling (as mentioned by chris/tobi)

bottom line: +1 for trying to finish the next preview version within next week (i'll be in vienna from tomorrow on).

Please include up-to-date version of docs as part of the release? It helps to have a local copy of docs when net connection is unavailble. By docs, I mean javadoc + helma.org/docs + whatever else you can manage.

thanks!

-jay

a new release of antville would be highly appreciated. as some might know i´m waiting hard for the extensible stories-feature to be able to run the plastikmädchen-site on antville. thanks in advance!