[Chandler-dev] [Sum] May 21 - June 3

[Katie Capps Parlante]

Build, Release, QA
------------------
*Checkpoint*
Bear spins checkpoint on May 21:
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008257.html
Dan tests a checkpoint from May 29:
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008307.html

*Orange tinderboxes*
Heikki called out problems making the tinderboxes intermittently go 
orange, suggesting they get fixed quickly to make tinderboxes useful again.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008266.html

*Alpha4 migration*
Jared called out a problem where data created in alpha4 would not 
migrate correctly to the trunk. Grant checked in a fix, and Davor 
validated the fix (migrating successfully).
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008275.html

*Removing account defaults*
Jared asked Morgen to go ahead and check in the patch that removes the 
default accounts. (Discussed on design and service lists).
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008293.html

*Performance update*
Heikki called out big performance changes from Brian Kirsch and John; 
several of the tinderbox tests moved to orange-for-acceptable. Heikki 
observed that new profiles might be interesting after the significant 
changes.
http://builds.osafoundation.org/perf_data/tbox.html
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008297.html

*How to use the blocking flags in bugzilla searches*
Heikki gives the details:
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008301.html

*Test code moves to plugin*
Andi moved test code triggered from the Tools menu to 
Chandler-debugPlugin. He folded in Chandler-I18NTestsPlugin to the new 
plugin.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008310.html

*Import/Export*
Sheila outlined the import/export strategy for Preview. The goal is to 
allow people to migrate their data from some application they currently 
use regularly into Chandler. As we don't have infinite resources, we 
have to focus OSAF resources on a few key cases: widely used apps that 
implement the iCalendar standard. In practice this means Outlook and 
Apple's iCal. We would be very happy to have people help us out by 
testing other applications; Sheila created a wiki page to kick off the 
coordination of any such efforts. We are happy to get bugs logged for 
problems with interop for other applications.
http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/PreviewDesktopImportExport
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-June/008322.html

Dev
---
*Mail service update*
Brian Kirsch checked in a significant architectural change to mail, 
enabling the desktop to handle much larger inboxes (12,000+ messages). 
Chandler now uses two asynchronous threads: twisted mail client thread 
and mail worker thread. The twisted mail client thread handles 
downloading and preprocessing of mail. The mail worker thread takes the 
preprocessed mail off a queue and assigns values to a mail stamped item. 
Performance issues for mail remain in the UI and Repository layer 
(merging, refresh, observer calls). More details:
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008276.html

*Characters not allowed by XML 1.0*
Morgen raised an issue where an ICS body contained a character that ends 
up being rejected by Cosmo (not legal XML). He offered alternatives:
1) strip characters before sending them in XML
2) abort a sync with an illegal character
3) agree on an encoding mechanism with Cosmo
Morgen proposed the last alternative.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008283.html

Phillip Eby explained that characters not allowed can't be encoded. 
Grant noted that XML 1.1 categorizes some of the illegal characters as 
"restricted". Phillip observed that XML 1.1 still doesn't allow NUL.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008288.html

Brian Moseley proposed stripping NUL and control characters, arguing 
they have no place in item data anyway. Grant gave the use case where 
they show up: form feed characters in user generated text. Morgen agreed 
to strip them.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008306.html

*Repository*
Andi changed item loading, so that all values are loaded in bulk. This 
appears to be 45% faster.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008294.html

*Rules for localizable strings*
Philippe gave a gentle reminder to developers to observe good coding 
style to enable future localization work.
- Declare unicode strings: u"mystring"
- Make strings go through the translation service: _(u"mystring")
- Use named arguments: _(u"%(title)s")
- Declare as many strings as there are cases, no string concatenation
Philippe had a clear example in his message.
http://people.osafoundation.org/bkirsch/i18n/busydev.html
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008295.html

Brian Kirsch asked that developers create a Chandler.pot file before 
checking in changes that affect localization. The script will call out 
some errors in translation strings. Grant asked if we could have a unit 
test to detect errors, instead of relying on developers to create the 
Chandler.pot file. Brian agreed to create a localization unit test.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008302.html

Meetings, Announcements
-----------------------
IRC session for migration testing:
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/Projects/DavToEimMigrationUserDoc
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008267.html

John and Andi organized a code review of menu and toolbar code.
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008277.html

Desktop team meeting:
http://chandlerproject.org/Journal/AppsMeeting20070529

Performance evaluation session in IRC:
http://chandlerproject.org/Projects/PerfEvalSession
http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/chandler-dev/2007-May/008304.html

Desktop release meeting:
http://wiki.osafoundation.org/Journal/EngineeringMeetingNotes20070531