future plans...

I think it is time to tell you about Jigsaaw futur plan. For the time
being, as I said several time, I will concentrate on turning Jigsaw
first into HTTP/1.1 compliancy , then into a caching proxy. More
preciselyt:

a) Rewrite all the w3c.mime package, for more efficiency
b) rewrite the Request/Reply class to make use of the new Mime parser,
and to fix some of the problems that have been mentioned here
(Request/Reply deficiencies).

These two changes should be invisible from the high level APIs, I hope
to be able to do them and still leave the Request Reply APIs unchanged
(there may be some minor tweaks, but not too much).

c) Write the caching proxy stuff, this will have no impact on the
APIs, and hopefully (again !)  Jigsaw should be the first 1.1 caching
proxy :-)

d) Fix a number of deficiencies in current APIs:

d1) Most of the feedback I got from this list (thanks to you) should
be incorporated in next release, this includes things like the extend
flag of directory resource also serving as a shrinking indicator,
etc. At this point this is the precise list of things:

    FileResource should delete themselves when the underlying file (in
    the filesystem) &nbsp;is erased <I>and</I> the extensible flag is
    set.

    ResourceStoreManager should be able to save/load&nbsp;.jigidx from
    some other directory. 

    User name resolution through a speical UserDirectoryResource.

    The <I>.jigidx</I> default value for the DirectoryResource storeid
    attribute should be a property. 

    "Couldn't parse request" and "Resource temp unavailable" should
    not be displayed in the errlog file.

    Deleting a directory resource should also delete the associated
    resource store 

    The extensible flag should also control "contraction" of the
    directory (non existing files). 

    Deleting auth realms doesn't work.

    w3c.jigsaw.forms.FormCardHandler:notifyEndProcessing should be
    able to return back a full Reply, rather then only a simple
    redirection.  

    Virtual host handling

    [If you do thing I have missed some items, let me know]

d2) Fix the .jigidx file format. This one is the one that will hurt
Jigsw's users. The poblem with the current .jigidx fie format is that
it doesn't allow for extensions: it you change the attribute list of a
resource, you have to erase the whole .jigidx file. The next format
should allow for better upgrading scheme, typically by using a less
efficient property-like format (attr=value).

In the mean-time applet based configuration is being worked on, along
with various new resources (we already have, for example, a
MapFileResource to handle server-side image maps, and server side
include should also be worked on). A sample implementation of PEP
(Protocol Extension Protocol) will also be worked on as a filter.

Now, when will this new release of Jigsaw will be out ? My hope is to
get it out by the end of August, and it will be Jigsaw1.0a2, or
Jigsaw1.0beta depending on how comfident we are...both in Jigsaw and
in the underlying Java implementations ;-)

Anselm.

Received on Sunday, 23 June 1996 21:06:54 UTC