[albatross-users] Status on Albatross

[Andrew McNamara]

>Johan> Hi there, I'm looking into Albatross as a possible framework
>Johan> for my next web project, however, I'm a little concerned about
>Johan> the apparent development freeze ?  Has Albatross become
>Johan> abandonware, or is it still in development ?
[...]
>We feel that Albatross is our most important free software project and
>the company plan is to continually invest time and money in the
>maintenance and enhancement of Albatross.

To add to what Dave says, we are also using Albatross in several of our
ongoing consulting jobs, so it definitely will not be abandoned.

We hope to be able to do a new release next week. 

As a teaser, here's the part of the release notice that deals with changes:

* PageModuleError is raised when a page module is loaded which does not
  define one of page_enter(), page_leave(), page_process() or
  page_display().

* Application merge_request() method now defers browser request
  merging to the execution context.  This allows the RecorderMixin class
  to define the correct request merging process.

* Include filename in template load errors - when templates are loaded
  by any means other than <al-include>, the filename was often not in
  the traceback.

* When you use FormRecorderMixin you must now specify LIST
  attribute on <AL-INPUT> and <AL-TEXTAREA> tags if more than one
  field in a form has the same name.  This also causes the request
  merging to always place those input values into a list in the local
  namespace regardless of how many values were sent by the browser.
  FieldTypeError is raised when LIST attribute value is inconsistent
  with multiple/singular instances of an input field in a form.

* Replaced all relative module imports with absolute imports to avoid
  namespace clashes.

* Several SessionFileAppMixin portability fixes - use "rb" and "wb"
  mode on open of session files for windows portability, and improvements
  to handling of platforms without /dev/urandom.

* albatross.random module renamed to albatross.randompage.

* SessionFileAppMixin now checks that the session-id returned from the
  browser does not contain any filesystem path components that could be
  used to access files outside the session file directory.

* Tag constructors are now passed the execution context as the first
  argument, which makes them consistent with other methods, and allows
  greater flexibility in code placement.

* Macros are now registered at load time, rather than execution
  (to_html) - this allows forward references, and other tricks.

* New "ellipsis" mode for tree iterator, which are a variant of lazy trees
  where nodes at shallower levels are progressively collapsed into
  ellipses as the user opens deeper nodes. The user can reopen the
  collapsed nodes by selecting an ellipsis

* TreeIterators now support get_open_aliases(),
  get_selected_aliases(), set_open_aliases(), set_selected_aliases()
  methods to set and get open and selected nodes for the
  TreeIterator. This allows you to enter a page with tree nodes already
  open or selected, and also to save the state of the tree for future use.

* Added a basic /etc/init.d style rc script for the TCP session
  server. The session server script is now installed to you scripts
  directory (typically /usr/local/bin). Session server component modules
  simpleserver and pidfile are now installed into the albatross module
  directory, along with the rest of albatross.

-- 
Andrew McNamara, Senior Developer, Object Craft
http://www.object-craft.com.au/