The added functionality will hopefully mean a new release of Codegoo on the Mozilla add ons website very shortly.

Already new code utilising my DOAP functionality has been written making it possible to submit DOAPS created by Codegoo to Simal (which is a DOAP powered project catalogue).

As Ross is currently in California again (he was visiting the lovely people at Google last week)  this time at Apache Con I haven’t been able to get much hacking done this weekend! With the school holidays over and my son back at school on Monday I should find some free time.  I have really enjoyed hacking away at Codegoo and hope to add more functionality to it.

To be honest I was rather worried at the Madrid Sprint that I had forgotten everything about programming and wouldn’t be able to deliver a project. Everyone on the course seemed very confident, young and knew much more than me. I was beginning to wonder why I had gone! Was I crazy?  It was very daunting and I felt that maybe I had left it too long to return to programming.  Thankfully I have managed to learn more than I had  thought possible thanks to the very kind people from Mozilla.

A new release of Codegoo is available from Mozilla addons this incorporates my patch so that Codegoo now works with Sourceforge projects as well as Google projects.

The new release of Codegoo can be downloaded from:-

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4977/

or

http://code.google.com/p/codegoo/

It is great to see the new release on the Mozilla website and I look forward to reading the reviews! Please be honest

My next step is to add my DOAP code in a new patch. I just have to make some important design decisions!

Is it JUST a tree?

On Saturday we went for a lovely walk in the countryside and this is what we found.

Our son asked “Is it JUST a tree?” Proof Ents do exist!

What is a DOAP file?

It is simply an XML document with the purpose of describing software projects, especially open source.  DOAP is a Resource Definition Framework (RDF) schema.

Below is an example of a DOAP file describing the fictional Foo Bar OSS project taken from the OSSWatch website.

<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
  xmlns="http://usefulinc.com/ns/doap#"
  xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/">

<Project>
  <name>Foo Bar OSS</name>

  <shortname>Foo</shortname>

  <shortdesc xml:lang="en">Platform for making Foo into Bar</shortdesc> 

  <description xml:lang="en">There are too many Foo's in the
  world. This project provides a suite of tools for automatically
  converting various types of Foo into just about any kind of
  Bar.</description>

  <homepage rdf:resource="http://www.foobar.org"/>

  <wiki rdf:resource="http://wiki.foobar.org/" />

  <wiki
    rdf:resource="http://wiki.foobar.org/RecentChanges?action=rss_rc&ddiffs=1&unique=1"
    dc:format="application/rdf+xml"
  />

  <repository>
    <SVNRepository>
      <location rdf:resource="http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/labs/Foo/"/>
      <browse rdf:resource="http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/labs/Foo/"/>
    </SVNRepository>
  </repository>

  <bug-database rdf:resource="http://issues.foobar.org" />

  <mailing-list rdf:resource="http://www.foobar.org/lists" />

  <license rdf:resource="http://usefulinc.com/doap/licenses/asl20"/>

  <download-page rdf:resource="http://www.foobar.org/downloads" />

  <programming-language>Java</programming-language>

  <release>
      <Version>
        <name>FooBar-Milestone2</name>
        <created>2006-01-01</created>
        <revision>0.2</revision>
      </Version>
    </release>

  <created>2007-1-16</created>

  <maintainer>
    <foaf:Person rdf:about="http://www.foobar.org/about/FooMan.html"/>
      <foaf:name>Foo Man</foaf:name>
    </foaf:Person>
  </maintainer>
</Project>
</rdf:RDF>

Why use DOAP files?

If you are involved in an open source project and wish to build your community you should consider creating a DOAP file. The great benefit of creating project descriptors  such as DOAP files and adding them to various Project Catalogues is it will help to attract more users and contributers to your project. You create just one file so it saves time as you just add that simultaneously to catalogues e.g. Simal and the Apache Software Foundations Catalogue projects.apache.org.

You may even wish to create and host your own project catalogue once you have discovered the benefits of DOAP files!

Helpful resources:-

• OSSWatch’s page “Project Catalogues and Project Descriptors using DOAP”
• DOAP web site for more information.
• Semantic Web [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_web]

Sadly on the 29th of September at a routine check with my midwife she could not find a heartbeat for our baby. Hoping all would be well they sent me to the local hospital for a scan. It seemed a very long drive and all the lights were on red.  It was hard to appear fine to my son who was with me, he was just 3 years old. After waiting what felt like a long time at the hospital ultrasound unit surrounded by smiling pregnant mothers they led me into the room where the scan was to be done. The baby was there on the screen but motionless and she had no heartbeat. I felt like I was falling.

I rang Ross at work with the sad news so he could come to the hospital. All I could say was I was really sorry but that the baby had no heartbeat.  I was crying so much but trying not to as my son didn’t understand what was happening and I didn’t want to scare him.

I was induced a few days later and gave birth to a beautiful and perfect baby girl.  Ross and I told her we loved her and I cried so very much. She had my ears and Ross’ very straight fingers, she was so very tiny.  The midwife left her with us in the SANDS room over night. I had to have a minor operation the next day so we said our goodbyes to Isobel just before I had to go into theatre. Ross came with me and held my hand the whole time. I don’t think  I could have coped without his amazing support then or over the last year.

The midwives were very kind and treated Isobel very gently. We were given photos, footprints and information on support groups such as SANDS (Stillbirth and Neonatal Death Society).  It was hard after giving birth to go through the options for Isobels post mortem but I am glad we did try and find out all we could.

Later we had the funeral where Ross carried Isobels coffin down the aisle which was comforting. I had never seen such a tiny coffin. The service was specially designed for Isobel by Ross and I.  The hospital chaplain was extremely helpful with organising everything from candles to the order of service. Ross and our son blew out a candle at the end of the service when we said goodbye again to Isobel.

After a very long wait the post mortem results had been prepared and we were to see a consultant who was to explain them. I hoped for some kind of answer that would make it  easier to accept.  She had looked so perfect I was not sure what the result would be.

After waiting a long time for the consultant we were eventually shown into a room. The consultant was busy seeing some one else.  We saw a very kind and sincere lady registrar who knew nothing about our history and had not been given time to  read the post mortem results.  It was hard to accept but the results said that our baby was totally normal and there was no indicators as to why her heartbeat had stopped. I had so many blood tests but nothing was irregular.

It is nearly a year now and I am hoping to mark the 1st anniversary of her birth with something very special for such a beautiful and loved baby.

The Sourceforge hosted projects now have a search facility that allow the user to search the projects mailing list, tracker, documentation and wiki.   This is all possible from the current Search button on the Codegoo toolbar! The toolbar gives different options depending on whether the project is hosted by Google or Sourceforge. I really enjoyed making the menus dynamic, it was fairly easy thanks to all the great documentation and tutorials on the web!

I still want to refine my regular expression for screenscraping.  I use them alot thanks to my previous boss  at Textpad sharing with me how powerful they are!

My next step is to go through the issues code and understand it.  As I  do this I will rewrite it so that it is compatible with Sourceforge projects.  I’m going for ice cream now with my print out of the issues code.  Luckily for me Ross’ code is so easy to read so hopefully I will crack it soon! It has been a rewarding day!

Some resources I found useful online:-

http://www.javascriptkit.com/domref/documentmethods.shtml http://www.regular-expressions.info/javascriptexample.html

I sent the boys to a small 3 day music festival so I had some time to study Codegoo and hack! I missed the Buzzcocks who where  my sons favourite band (he likes loud guitars) but did catch Dread Zone who had the whole field dancing.

Codegoo now adds Sourceforge projects and gets the correct URL for them when you select them from the project list. I have yet to add the search functionality and Issues. I think I will need to do some screen scraping as Sourceforge.net have lots of different options for hosted apps! Better get hacking!

All works beautifully for about 1 hr and I am getting excited about the shiny new code I will be writing but alas my hard disk problem has magically returned! Trying not to weep into my hot milk, I have to accept I will be parting with my very cute laptop again as it is dead as a Dodo! I am now back in the office  with an old but reliable desktop. It runs of all horrors windows 2000! Considering dual booting but not sure I have the time.  My  son who is 4 years old likes to have my  constant attention so the only time I have is when he is sleeping.  Hoping all goes much better on the desktop during my nightly coding sessions!

Ross Gardler of OSSWatch is the main developer of CodeGoo. It is a Firefox add-on that makes it easier to work with your projects in Google Code.  I am hoping to add some new functionality to it for my project.

Our teachers  are  Pascal, Paul and Vivien. Three guys from the Paris office who all love Mozilla and want to share their knowledge. Also from the French office is Julia a Mozilla intern who is involved with localization.

Pascal an employee of Mozilla Corp and a Mozilla Europe Board Member introduced us to Mozilla.

Vivien introduced us to Fennec, the mobile edition of Firefox of which he is a developer.

Paul showed everyone how to write an addon for Firefox and how the Mozilla platform works.

I’m hoping I have taken enough in to be able to create a useful extension/ addon! Everyone looks very happy and have plenty of ideas. I am still waiting for some inspiration to hit me!

Having looked at the mozilla addons page it is amazing how many have been developed and what they do! The Mozilla community is clearly growing, a welcome sight to all who support open source devleopment.

Some useful web pages for building extensions:-

Extensions FAQ

How to develop a Firefox extension

Code Snippets