First of all: the inherited problems

Version 1.0 of collective.amberjack.core is a simple Plone 4 compatibility version of the old 0.9 released.

When we released this we already know that the Javascript code inside was a mess, but before beginning some kind of refactoring procedure we need to know how the project will be changed in future.

The product has a core got from the Amberjack library, in last years many different programmers take part to the develop, meanwhile the product itself (and also Plone) was changing.

Amberjack original library is framework independent while Plone (that is a smart guy) rely on jQuery. Also we must not forget that Amberjack has not exactly the same target of collective.amberjack...

Wow... how many problems!

Not all those problems will be fixed in the 1.1 version, but I managed to simplify a little the code of two of the main method of amberjackPlone.js source.

How the old amberjackPlone.js was done

Saying "the code is ugly but works" is not a valid excuse... amberjackPlone.js contains two important methods:

• highlightStep is the method that highlight all the clickable/usable elements in the page for all steps.
  
• doStep is the method called to reproduce the user action on the page

What a user can do in a Plone site is a long list of different actions... list that become something like this for highlightStep:

...
if(type_obj=="checkbox" || type_obj=="radio"){
	obj.parent().addClass(theAJClass);
	obj.addClass(theAJClassBehaviour);
}
else if (type_obj=="select"){
	var highlightThis = jq(obj + " option[value="+ AjSteps[num].getValue() +"]");
	highlightThis.addClass(theAJClass);
	obj.addClass(theAJClassBehaviour);
}
else if (type_obj=="multiple_select") {
...
...going on and on...
...
else{
	obj.addClass(theAJClass);
	obj.addClass(theAJClassBehaviour);
}
...

...and like this for doStep:

...
if (type_obj == 'link') {
	AmberjackPlone.setAmberjackCookies();
	location.href = obj.attr('href');
}
else if (type_obj == 'button')
	obj.click();
else if (type_obj == 'collapsible') {
...
...going on and on and on and on...
...

Ugly enough? Do you think that the AntiIfCampaign hate us? Yes... probably...

So the first step is to remove this mess and try to port in Javascript the concept of adapter (unluckily not so flexible as Zope ones).

Even worst: many of the if statement in both doStep and highlightStep was testing the same expressions (like the "select")!

All this code has been removed.

Now both doStep and highlightStep are simply calling a sort of adapter built in the stepAdapters.js file:

AmberjackPlone.stepAdapters = {
	
	link: {
		highlight: null,
		checkStep: null,
		step: function(obj, type_obj, jq_obj, value) {
			AmberjackPlone.setAmberjackCookies();
			location.href = obj.attr('href');
		}
	},
	button: {
		highlight: null,
		checkStep: null,
		step: function(obj, type_obj, jq_obj, value) {
			obj.click();
		}
	},
	collapsible: {
...
... going on and on, but more readable!
...

For every possible action know, highlightStep and doStep will check if an handler is present in this structure (in this example the code is from the doStep):

if (AmberjackPlone.stepAdapters[type_obj] && AmberjackPlone.stepAdapters[type_obj].step)
	AmberjackPlone.stepAdapters[type_obj].step(obj, type_obj, jq_obj, value);

The highlightStep will check for highlight function.

If not if found, perform the old final else statement.

What is the checkStep section? In this sprint another group (Mirco and Simone Orsi) take a look to the feature that test if a user has completed all the steps before can go to the next page. Again, for some possible action the tour can try to test if you have finished your work.

In the old approach this will lead us to a new big and monolithic function. Now is only a new tiny method that call an handler.

What's next?

Adding some documentation, for sure...

Also other part of the code can be changed to become more clear...

...to be continued!

Symposium

We have started collective.amberjack presence in Sorrento with Massimo's presentation at the European Plone Symposium. 

Sprint

Then we had two sprinting days. We have started day one with brainstorming. We had three objectives/questions:

• collective.amberjack sandbox
• refactoring the code - how to simplify collective.amberjack tour definition and registration
• translations - how to manage tour/steps translations

thanks to a fruitful discussion (garbas, dukebody, gborelli, miziodel, shywolf9982, sorry if I forgot your name ;-) we have right now answers to all of our dilemmas.

SanDbox

First idea of having a sandbox for collective.amberjack came up at last Plone Conference in Budapest. We have collected a lot of ideas for different use cases. We have had also some internal brainstorms in RedTurtle about it. Finally after confronting all the concepts - during Sorrento brainstorming - we will have a simple solution which should satisfy most of the users:

Code refactoring

We have started refactoring collective.amberjack. There are 3 areas of interests: javascript, tour definition and tour registration. Luca was doing a great job trying to simplify javascript part. He also prepare a good startup for future enhancements. I was refactoring tour part. We have decided to use a 

configuration baseD tour definition,

which looks like that:

[amberjack]
steps = 
        0_create-a-new-folder
        1_fill-out-the-fields
        2_publish-the-folder
        3_all-done
title = Add and publish a Folder

[0_create-a-new-folder]
blueprint = collective.amberjack.blueprints.step
title = Create a new folder
url = /
text = Folders are one of ....
validators = 
        python: isManager
        python: isNotFolderCreated
microsteps = 
        0_0_microstep
        0_1_microstep
        0_2_microstep

[0_0_microstep]
blueprint = collective.amberjack.blueprints.microstep
description = If you don't want to perform the ...
automatically done by your browser.

[0_1_microstep]
blueprint = collective.amberjack.blueprints.microstep
idstep = menu_add-new
description = Click the [Add new...] drop-down menu.

[0_2_microstep]
blueprint = collective.amberjack.blueprints.microstep
idstep = new_folder
description = Select [Folder] from the menu.

This concept is well known across the community. I hope it will be also more human readable comparing to python dictionary ;-). We have a working version in the trunk. For new tours we have also 

new tour registration 

- comparing to old approach (registration only using ZCML) you can now use also TTW registration. Other important change is that tour doesn't need to be a python package any more. Because it's a simple .cfg file right now you can simply zip it into an archive (zip, tar) and register it. We have a working implementation for web source and local file system registration (which you can find in the trunk). Archive file can be shipped with multiple tours and with

translationS

which right now are still just a concept that need to be implemented. We would like to make a use of i18ndude tool but because it was designed for ZPT this could be a wrong approach. Overall idea is to keep all the files (tour and the translations) together, something like:

- mytours.zip
  |- tour1.cfg
  |- tour1_en.po
  |- tour1_it.po
  |- tour1.pot
  |- tour2.cfg
  |- tour2_en.po
  ...

Fixing bugs

Mirco and Federica were working together and did an enormous job fixing most of the 1.1a release bugs. Thanks to Rob we have solved also some TinyMCE problems that we have had. We have still some open issues, like 'new portlet creation' tour that need some attention so we still need your help!

What's next?

The current development focus is on 1.1 release, which includes:

• new tour definition (python dictionary based tour will still work until 1.2)
• new tour registration (old registration will still work until 1.2)
• finish translation implementation
• fix last bugs
• deploy sandbox probably on demo.plone.org
• collective.amberjack.windmill - which should become default interface for creating and editing tours; we have right now something more then just proof of concept:

Non so esattamente quale sia la percezione dall'esterno, ma ogni anno la conference rappresenta, per me, la possibilità di ritrovare vecchi amici che hanno una passione in comune.

Si parte!

Già alla cena pre-conference l'accoglienza è stata incredibile.
Aaron aveva un posto buono a fianco a lui e subito i gruppi si sono mescolati: italiani, americani, polacchi, francesi, tedeschi, olandesi.

Tutti li' a parlare di tutto. C'era quello mi chiedeva di amberjack, quello che si ricordava di un piatto italiano e voleva la ricetta, quello che ti racconta che si è finalmente preso una spider e ne è così orgoglioso.

Tutto come se fossimo vecchi compagni di scuola che hanno condiviso qualcosa di particolare e prezioso.

Spesso si dice:

plone il cms, plone il framework, ma soprattutto plone la comunità

La solita retorica, trita retorica, dell'open source, vero? beh, magari no.

Se ne sei fuori, o meglio se ne vuoi stare fuori, sei libero di vederla così, ma così non è. Frequento e ho frequentato in passato altre comunità (i partner ibm, i lug, l'xpug) e nonostante abbia incotnrato alti livelli di eccellenza, questa community è quella più coinvolgente, appassionante, e professionalmente energizzante.

ZEA

Il gruppo ZEA si è riunito dopo diverso tempo in una riunione live. Ho potuto conoscere di persona e di scambiare opinioni con Matt, Russ, Kit e Jean Paul, che conoscevo solo in modo marginale, ma anche di rivedere vecchi amici come Xavier e Godefroid. E' stato utile, credo che il gruppo sia oggi più compatto e propositivo.

Plone Italia

Il riaggregarsi del gruppo italiano è stato allo stesso modo entusiasmante.

Ognuno aveva la sua idea, il suo modo di vedere le cose. E si è discusso, preso in considerazione le varie tesi.

Quello che ne è venuto fuori lo potete o lo avete letto sulla ML, ma il punto interessante, ancora una volta, non è stato solo il risultato finale.

Il confronto, il discutere, il mettere in dubbio quello che è il tuo piccolo mondo di fronte agli altri è un modo estremamente appagante di crescere. E ti rendi conto che dopo 12 anni di lavoro e non so quanti di informatica, non sei ancora arrivato. C'è sempre qualcuno che ha qualcosa di nuovo da raccontarti un punto di vista diverso, e cresci.

collective.amberjack

Poi c'è stata la mia personalissima ciliegina sulla torta: collective.amberjack.

Ho potuto presentarlo in un talk ufficiale, ho "guidato" uno sprint e raccontato a tutti gli sprinter gli avanzamenti del lavoro fatto.
Messa giù così ha un che di vagamente autocelebrativo e presuntuoso. E sicuramente una parte di me è decisamente soddisfatta dell'interesse che ne è uscito. Il punto però è un altro.

Perdersi nella comunità

Ho sempre visto tutti coloro che contribuivano come una specie di esseri con capacità tecniche, qualità personali di livello superiore.

Il che in parte è anche vero. Quello che è, però, ancora più vero non sono le capacità tecniche, ma la voglia di proporsi e di perseverare.

In fondo quello che è cambiato in me rispetto alle precedenti conference è stato il voler mettere sul piatto quello che so fare, tanto o poco non importa. La comunità ha apprezzato ed evidenziato. Poi, magari, amberjack sarà stata anche un buona idea, ma in ogni caso è stato l'impegno che ha fatto la differenza.

E' la differenza che passa tra lo stare nell'ombra e sfruttare l'open source, come molti purtroppo fanno, e il fondersi nella comunità: più dai, più ti impegni, più avrai in cambio in termini di credibilità, riconoscenza, amicizia!

Ritorno a casa

Alla fine del viaggio la lezione imparata è che tutta la retorica dell'open source, del fatto che tutti possono contribuire, che è la community che segna la strada è niente di più che la realtà.

Non ci si può, però, limitare a raccontarla (alle conferenze, ai linux day, in post sui blog), occorre declinarla in azioni, in codice, in attività, in quello che sai fare.

Allora? che pensi di proporre alla prossima ploneconf?

We have organized a small amberjack sprint. There was a lot of things to-do and only 5 sprinters: vincentfretin (online from France), fdelia, massimo, mirna and amleczko (all directly from Ferrara).

Beneath you can find summary of the sprint:

This is a report of the work made today
we just refer to the issue that were in today's worklist

put tours in a pipeline:
 - Add a link to the first tour in the first page of the second one, so a user
   who selects the second one directly will be able to takethe first one first,
   since you need to create the MyFolder folder first.
 - The whole Amberjack should manage branches like "if you are not logged in,
   then, log in".
 - At the end of a tour, add a link to the next tutorial.

We decided to have preconditions that has to added to a step (macrostep).
For example:
isAnonymous
isAuthenticated
etc.

there is already a initial implementation (amleczko).
completed - there are two basic validators: isAnonymous and isAuthenticated
when a precondition is not met a warning "the step is not visible"
is displayed. next, we should disable the step and all the followers.

we need to choose and implement a good strategy to define dependencies between
tours


 - Check the entered texts: check if the texts entered in the fields are the
   ones we expected. If not we may have problems with ids (in the url) and with
   the xcontent. Otherwise, let both url and xcontent be function of what the
   user entered.
  
we decided that before submitting we have a ajax call that checks if
all the mandatory things has been done by the user.
to be done.


 - collective.jqueryui. actually we have a js file in core/skins. it contains
   both jquery.ui and jquery.ui.draggable.
   we could remove the jquery.ui stuff and leave only a file ui.draggable.js.
   unluckly, collective.js.jquery + ui.draggable.js doesn't work (raise a js error)
  
Vincent Fretin, both complete this ticket and created two different profiles
for plone3.2 and plone>=3.3
  
 - Write tests for meta directives, tour_manager...

Andrew Mleczko and federica d'elia wrote a couple of tests and also refactored the
code see:
http://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/collective.amberjack.core/trunk/docs/HISTORY.txt


 - Add an option to the Unified Installer
 - Add a run-profile option to plone.recipe.unifiedinstaller to run additional
   profiles when the Plone Site is created
  
to be done
  
 - Tours: (massimo azzolini e mirna bagnolatti)
  Tour 5: Format a page using the visual editor
  Tour 6.1: Create internal links
  Tour 6.2: Create external links
  to be completed

  Tour 7: Upload an image
  completed, but cannot show the last "all done" step since the url is
  function of the name of the image uploaded. we need a fix [1]

  Tour 8: Insert image on a page
  completed, but cannot correctly save. when submitting the form the stuff
  inside kupu is not saved. [2]
 
  Tour 9: Upload and link to a File
  completed, with the same problems as above:
  1. the file obj's url is function of the name of the file itself. [1]
  2. cannot save the kupu stuff [2]
 
  Tour 10: Using the Contents tab
  the main problem is that we have the same page, but we want to move on
  many different tour steps. see [1]
 
  Tour 12: Create a static text portlet
  almost finished. problems:
  1. click on Save button show the alert "are you sure you want to leave..." [2]
 
 
Some open issues

 - [1] Provide a better way to manage the progression of the steps: too often
   path + xpath/xcontent do not suffice.
   Use the step position number 1/5, 2/5 etc.
to be done
  
 - [2] all the submit buttons (form.button.save & co) have problems if just
   "submitting", maybe we have to say that we are clicking on that button.
   we cannot either click() on it since it opens the alert window
   "are you sure you want to leave..."

to be investigated