by Alan Knowles(alan_k@php.net)
This week sees the number of PEAR packages hit 85, with Richard Stallman acknowledging that the latest version of the
PHP license is far more FSF friendly and helping suggest licenses for PEAR. PEAR continue to grow with PHP offering an unrivaled
library of quality code. Another busy week with a steady flow of releases, 2 Stable, 2 Beta, 1 Alpha and 1 development.
More discussion on standards, and the move towards having method naming guidelines. APD starts focusing on profiling
and MDB moves to release candidate #3. Along with a continuing stream of new packages with 5 proposed this week.
New Releases
Stable
- XML_Transformer - A simple way to transform XML tags into PHP code
or text. (similar concept to XSLT)
- Crypt Xtea - asymmetric encryption of binary strings using a tiny encryption
algorithm
Beta
- Console Table - for outputing data in tabular format for consoles
- HTML_Template_IT - A joint package including HTML_Template_ITX,
which provides a PHPLib compatible template engine (ITX), and a simpler API
version (IT)
- HTML_Template_Flexy - A template to PHP code, templating engine, based on
SmartTemplate, similar to Smarty, but light and fast.
- DB_DataObject - A SQL Builder and Data Modeling package
- bcompiler - A PHP extension that does bytecode compiler and decompile for classes
Alpha
- imagick - a PHP extension to do image manipulation using the imagick
library - handles many image formats
Development
- MDB * Release Candidate 3 of the PEAR MDB, Metabase Merger Database Abstraction Layer.
PEAR-DEV traffic
Common Naming of methods
Following the release of HTML_Template_IT, Marcus Wolff brought up the idea
of starting to document, and produce guidelines for more common methods within
PEAR, methods like getHTML(), toString() where common requirements.
Obviously a balance has to be found here, between breaking Backwards compatibility
on existing classes and improving the general PEAR API, making it easy
to use for all users.
APD focusing on profiling
George Schlossnagle,
followed up with his addition of APD, the advanced PHP debugger, with discussion
surrounding it new focus on profiling, and removing the original tracing
functions, which where not really that useful in comparison to the new profiling
code. The new code is available in the 'execute_wrapper' branch.
MDB moves to Release Candidate #3
Lukas Smith announced another MDB, the Metabase, pear database abstraction
merger release candidate, he has been focusing on on the XML schema parser,
along with fixes relating the the new MDB_Frontend Package. A lively conversation
ensued this release, focusing on issues of making more drivers available,
If you want to help out write MDB drivers for Oracle, MSSQL or any others,
please contact Lukas on the mailing list.
Bugs and Fixes
Thanks to these people for spotting bugs and sending fixes:
Jan Wagner, Mike McCallister, Wolfram Kriesing, Brent Cook
New and Proposed Packages
Console_Table - for displaying tabular output on terminals
Richard Heyes proposed a new package for displaying table like info on
the terminal, and intended to continue work adding colour highlighting in bash.
Text_Password - for making pronounceable passwords
Martin Jansen proposed a new package to generate pronounceable passwords,
After some discussion, it was generally agreed that a more general Text_Password,
which included this feature and possibly a non-pronounceable password generator
would be very useful.
MDB_Frontend - a phpMyAdmin type interface using MDB
Christian Dickmann proposed a new Package MDB_Frontend, designed to provide a Web based phpMyAdmin
type interface to databases utilizing the new MDB abstraction layer, this
was warmly received, after a bit of nudging by Christian.
Net_Ident - for getting ident data from a socket
Ondrej Jombik proposed a Net_Ident class, based on the work by Gavin Brown
Crypt_Xtea - a tiny encryption tool
Jeroen Derks uploaded a new class Crypt_Xtea, which
provides a asymmetric encryption of binary strings using a Tiny encryption
algorithm (called Xtea)
Development
Active on CVS this week has been Auth, Cache, Cache_Lite,
DB_DataObject, DBA, HTML_QuickForm, HTML_Template_IT, Image_Transform, Mail,
MDB, MDB_Frontend, Net_Curl, Net_URL, PEAR_Frontend_Web, PECL::apd, PECL::bcompiler,
PECL::imagick, PECL::mailparse, Perm_LiveUser, SOAP_Interop, Text_Password,
XML_Transformer
New and updated documentation
Changes and additions to HTML_Template_IT and HTML_Template_ITX should show up this week.