openDias

New Project Website

2012-01-08T15:09:00.002Z

The new openDias project portal website has been uploaded.
Check it out : http://opendias.essentialcollections.co.uk/

Release 0.7 out for testing

2012-01-01T13:15:00.000Z

All open issues for the 0.7 branch have now been closed and I've tagged the codebase (0.7.2).
Testers are giving the new release a thrashing, so the full public release will be cut shortly.

Becoming more structured

2011-11-30T13:06:00.000Z

Since moving over to Github, I've been impressed with the way a project can be organised and managed.
Using these tools, I've scheduled up the next few releases [milestones] and attached functionality [issues] to each.
So as it stands, were going to the 0.7 release towards the end of the year. With just a handful of ui-bugs one planned new functional item (improve the doc list page), I think this should be achievable.

Improve the code quality

2011-11-11T14:06:00.000Z

With more people using opendias it's getting more attention. Therefor I think it's time to clean up some of those really shonkey bits of code that I've wanted to get back to since - the beginning of time.
I've started using 'splint' but it looks to be a bit out of date and I'm thinking it's not the best use of time to work around these problems.
Moved onto using 'cppcheck' which feels a lot more solid.
Anyway, I've made a bunch of changes using these tools, which hopefully will make the codebase easier to maintain going forward.

Move of Project home.

2011-11-04T14:19:00.000Z

We've move the main code store over to github.com and will be moving other project services away from sourceforge.net shortly.
This move it to improve the quality of the user experience while new and current users are getting information or help on openDIAS.

Revamped Tag selection

2011-10-25T21:55:00.000+01:00

One of the areas that has been bugging me for some time is the way tags are used on documents. So I've changed the mechanism to use the tag-input jquery plugin. Much better.

Removed glib dependency

2011-10-21T18:27:00.000+01:00

I've taken the plunge and replaced all the functionality that we were using from glib (hasing and date functions) with standard methods. Thankfully, it was not as much of a pain that I thought it would be, so the conversion went quicker than expected.

With the saved time, I've implemented one of the first 'project ideas' - the action required flag. This will be available in the next release.

openDIAS API now available.

2011-10-02T14:06:00.000+01:00

In preparation for the next release, I've tidied up the backend/frontend XML interface, and generated an API document.
Check it out at: http://essentialcollections.co.uk/openDIAS/api.shtml

Any Ideas?

2011-09-10T13:59:00.000+01:00

Well, since the last release, there has been a number of ideas being fed back. To keep a track of these and get some idea on how useful they could be, I've started a 'Ideas submission and Voting' page on the Google Moderator site.
Feel free to add an idea or vote on ideas that you think would be useful for the openDIAS project.

Let's Package this up.

2011-05-12T17:49:00.000+01:00

I'm quite happy with the 0.6 release so far. Some minor issues have been
founhd and corrected. The big thing now is getting this application
properly packaged up and accepted by the big linux distro repositories.

So, a review of the build process, required libs, autoconf/build/etc,
has been done and better 'build from souce' instructions written,
including the list of dependency libs required and how to installed them
(using apt and yum). This should make addoption much easier.

Ohh, I've also taken this oppertunity to change over sf.net source control
of opendias to GTI. This is a big win, as I've been using git for some
time and converting/sending updates via the two systems is not something
I'd recommend. Anyway, everything is now on git and cvs has been retired,
whcih can only be a good thing.

All this has been released as version 0.6.4.1, and is available now
from http://sourceforge.net/projects/opendias

If anyone has any knowladge/experience of packaging source for .deb
and/or .rpm; experience of getting package sucessfuly accepted into the
big repositories; then do let me know, you help / input would be greatly
appresiated.

Public release 0.6

2011-03-12T13:12:00.003Z

The official 0.6 release has been uploaded to sourceforge.net, and can be downloaded here.

Out or bata testing

2011-01-08T21:52:00.004Z

I feel comfortable enough with this as a product to send this out to my testing group.
Lets see what comes back. If you want to be part of this beta testing, do let me know.

Still going

2010-10-17T19:59:00.003+01:00

Just a quick note to say, I'm still going with this. Lots of scope creep and much re-designs/re-works. But the end is in sight.

... and relax

2010-05-22T14:23:00.017+01:00

OK, that was even easier than I thought!
The application is now migrated and looking very nice! (well a lot better than the client based app).
Along the way, I've thought of a number of things I want/need to do, that was not listed in the brief analysis.

Add security access layers; so that user or locations get abilities to: view/add/modify/etc..... docs
Make server requests follow a common API, so that someone else can implement a frontend.
Addition/migration of the regression testing

I'm gonna have a bash at these now.

A change is as good as a rest

2010-05-12T17:46:00.000+01:00

So, after a review of the architecture and some experimentations, it was decided that a desktop app was not cutting the mustard. The only options to fulfill all the needs, and make for a better user experience was: a web-app.

A server application that interfaced to the database, connected to scanning devices (via sane or sane-net) and provides a soap based communication interface for querying and manipulating the data/ triggering events (scans).
Then, a simple set of HTML pages with a rich layer of Javascript over the top. This web interface, will send AJAX calls to the backend and update/present the data as required.

The experiments will be merged into HEAD.

The big move to the web

2010-04-13T14:14:00.021+01:00

It's become clear that a client application does not fulfill the requirements fully. Were missing the ability for several users to participate in the document store. The solution is simple, move to a client/server architecture.
At first glance this sounds a large undertaking, and in many ways it is. The benefits however ready do justify it. In terms of implementation there are three elements:

Move client functionality from GTK onto a web frontend, most probably static pages with AJAX driven content.
Add a webserver to the main body of the application.
Migrate the 'glue' that runs the app, from one mechanism to the other.

So, with no major barriers, lets go....

Regression Tests

2009-05-25T13:10:00.004+01:00

As previously discussed, I've spent quite a bit of time going over all the code to determine if it's really needed and how it fits into the rest of the product. As you can imagine this was quite a bit of work. Therefor, to make this process easier for the next time (each time any development is done) I have created a regression test tool.

this tool does three things:

Run several different user activities - repeatedly, and ensures the app behaves as expected.
Check the memory usage (looks for memory leaks, invalid references, etc...) against each test.
Performs a code coverage analysis across all the tests.

Therefor by running this we will be able to prove that all activities use all the code and do not leave any leaks, while maintaining required functionality.

I know this has put back the release of the re-factored code-base, but I think this is essential going forward in producing a stable and robust product.

Fill in the gaps

2009-03-09T21:34:00.003Z

So, what's been going on for the last 8 months - I hear you ask.

Well the answer is simple - taking a break from the project!
I've found that stepping back for a while can really help focus
on what's important. So for 6 months I did nothing, not even use
the product.

But don't think for one minute that the project is dead! There
has been a lot of work over the past two months. These could be
categorise into three areas:

Finding and fixing bugs;
Fixing the broken UI;
Adding important missing functionality.

Numbers 2 and 3 are relatively straight forward and generally
limited in scope (as any new functionality is reserved for the
next round of development).

The time consuming part, has been "finding and fixing" and I've
approached it in two ways: UAT & code review.

By UAT, I mean just using the product as an everyday end user.
This can often raise issues that may be glaringly obvious, but a
programmer would not address. It is this which has lead to the
small changes in UI and those 'important missing functionality'.
But it also found some other bugs.

The 'code review', has been the majority of the work. Each line
has been analysed and tested in isolation and together with the
whole product. Revealing some interesting issues, from the
mundane memory leaks to the exotic crashes under some obscure
circumstances.

The aim then? Well simply to bullet proof this version, to give
ourselves a solid foundation to build upon for future
developments, but that's a different blog post. For now, I'm going
to get this release finalised and out. Then drum up some feedback
and see if we can't get some extra resources (reviewers/ testers/
developers/ translators) on board.

I'll post back soon, so check again. Cheers.

Catch up

2009-03-01T18:08:00.006Z

So then, a quick update on the story so far and where we are with things.

openDias started in around Apr 2008 as a project that I've been wanting a solution for, for a long time. I finally got around to starting and ended up posting three or four releases in the space of a month.

The development team consists of me only, at the mo. It's a new project so have been concentrating on the bones rather than getting everything nailed down. Having said that, this (nailing down and fleshing out) is most definitely the phase I'm currently in. This accounts for the lack of a code posting/ release for several months.

There has been a whole load of development going on in the background, (to add the flesh and polish) which will be released soon - real soon. Expect updates over the next few weeks on the lead up to this release keeping you updated on what's coming and were things are going.

Anyone that wants to contribute can do so, send in your patches or if you would like a more involved part, let me know and I can assign some functionality to you.

Introduction

2009-03-01T14:32:00.005Z

There has been a lot of improvements and changes going on in the background lately, but nothing has been posted for download for quite some time.
So, I thought it would be good to keep the interested up-2-date with this blog.

openDias is an opensource project to create a document scanning and archive system for the home.

Check out openDias homepage or sourceforge project for more details.