Open melodie goes GWT

After very long thoughts about what technology to use to build the interface of Open melodie, we decided to use GWT. Reasons are quite easy to understand : we all wish to have a rich interface, with many features like the MAVI has. Going Flash would have raised problems, especialy on the long term maintenance. I'm not sure using plain JS libraries, like Dojo, Scriptaculous, Prototype and the like doesnt make a lot of sense to me, considering what you can do in GWT, with Smart GWT or Ext GWT on your side. So this is what we decided. 

I have already rewrote the transport layer, to use it as is in the GWT layer. Now I need to write a GWT server layer. I would like it to implement the EJB-interface layer, that should be renamed to something like Server-interface, since it will be implemented in both the GWT layer, and the EJB layer. Being able to organize things like that seems really cool to me !

Expect a 0.2 release in january 09 with all this in it. 

Open melodie in Softpedia

Thanks to the folks in Softpedia for bringing Open melodie to their site. Just one minor thing : they tagged it as a Linux project. Since the code in Java, you can run it on Windows without any problem. 

Link : http://linux.softpedia.com/get/System/Archiving/Open-Melodie-43505.shtml

First Open melodie release

I just released the first version of Open melodie on Sourceforge, you can check it here : http://openmelodie.sourceforge.net. Right now it's under GPL licence, once the project reaches something that pleases me, it might go more industry-friendly. The version is 0.1, but dont be fooled by that low number. The core platform has already been heavily tested. There are still many bugs to fix, many things to improve here and there, but we're on the right tracks. 

So after one year of work, what is there in this release ? Well, nearly eveything. 

In fact, the MAVI could be transported on the Open melodie platform right now. All we need is some more funding and  / or manpower to do that. 

I still need to add one important feature, that allows one to precisely specify what can be displayed and what wont be displayed out of an item file. This is a feature we add in the MAVI, at a very late stage, but that is important to have. 

What is on the roadmap now ? 

Apart from that feature, the next big step will be to put the core features in a interface. This interface is already under development, the design looks nice already, although it's not finished. GWT will most probably be used to build it, so we'll be able to have advanced graphics and user experience, just as in the MAVI, without having to write Flash code. 

Once this is done, we'll be able to host our first projects. The MAVI of course, several other projects from the College de France, and some others (I hope). This will be the first part of the activity on the platform. 

The development of the core platform will continue, I want to intergrate features like RSS announcements, XML interfacing with OAI-PMH harvesters, and collaborative work features that will be needed by team projects. 

I will let you know how things will be going on.