[daisy] [GSoC] applying for the development of a .NET library for Daisy

[Cyberchand]

Hi,

thank you for all your remarks. I'm going to respond briefly to them 
here, and I'm working at the same time on an new version (which will be 
published tonight) of my proposal (at the right place now, 
http://cocoondev.org/daisyscratchpad/g5/394-cd.html).

> in general there seems to be some conditional wording in your proposal
> that makes it a bit vague on what you're actually committing yourself to
> 
> I understand of course this is just a first shot, and a more detailed
> plan of attack will need to be built, but don't let some polite way of
> wording make us think you don't have an opinion or clue :-)

All right, in fact the first version of my proposal had been written to 
raise some ideas about a .Net implementation of the Java API, and 
especially to raise feedbacks from the list. Now that I have some, it 
helps me a lot to do a more precise proposal ;)

> * how and when are you planning to learn DaisyCMS (have you discovered
> the +300 page manual yet? how much of it is read and known? where do you
> (think you will) need help to understand? how to organize that? have you
> built from source/installed and tested the current Daisy?)

I have already read a large part of the documentation available on the 
Daisy website (especially the pages in the "Repository server" category 
: the basics about documents, ACL, query language, and the Java and HTTP 
programming interfaces). I also spent some time on the javadoc.
I already downloaded the source code thanks to svn, but I didn't try to 
compile it yet nor to do some tests with the API. It would be the first 
part of my job actually :) (and it won't take more than two days).
So, I have a good idea of how Daisy is working, and I do not need more 
to begin the work. My knowledge of the actual Daisy implementation will 
increase while I will be working on it. It's the way I work. :o)

> * how much time do you think you need to really just do the groundwork
> of making the remote API implementation available in C# (do you really
> think there is going to be time any/all of the suggested clients?)

I should have precised this in my "first shot" : the different ideas I 
gave (Windows GUI, ASP.NET implementation) were nothing more than 
"possible ideas", and I actually didn't plan to really work on them. It 
was just there to give some concrete applications of what my work would 
be used for on the future. The primary goal of my work would be to 
provide a .NET library (basically, DLL files) which would provide 
different .NET classes designed to manipulate a Daisy repository without 
pain. Thanks to these DLL, the development of a project like an ASP.NET 
wiki, a MS Office plugin, or whatever, will be much more easier than 
with manipulating complex HTTP/XML requests and responses.
[i have used the conditionnal here because my plan changed a bit after 
certain of your remarks below - you will see what I mean at the end of 
the mail :o) ]

> * I didn't know about the Language Conversion tool (is it free/open?)
> and it looks like a viable and direct way towards solving the issue.
> However my personal idea would have been to rather provide some wsdl
> like description for our rest based API and let the standard wsdl
> interpretation and code generatrion stuff take it from there. (I admit I
> haven't thought this through, I'm sharing my naive thoughts, your
> comments and insight is appreciated)

I think it is indeed a good idea to provide a web services oriented 
interface. It may be easier to use for a client. For now, a non-Java 
user must write the HTTP request to retrieve a document/make a 
search/whatever with a syntax defined by Daisy, while a Java-user has 
access to a Java-API whose job is to basically convert Java-code into 
the right HTTP request (or am I wrong?). If we could provide web 
services, a client could use the language of his choice to communicate 
very easily with the Daisy repository server.
So I think that idea is better than converting all the java code into 
C#, because in the latter case, we would have to maintain the C# code 
updated in real time, which would take a lot of time.

In brief, here is a new strategy which may be more efficient (as usual, 
I will accept feedback with pleasure :o) :
- make the precise list of the functions that will be published in web 
services, and which will be usable by clients almost as easily as usual 
functions,
- use a java library to effectivly publish the web services (Axis for 
example),
- then, write a .NET library that will encapsulate the dialog with the 
web services. That step is not absolutly necessary, but it may be useful 
to users who do not want to know how to use web services.

For the first step, I will need to do it with the help of the Daisy 
community. It is the Daisy users who, after all, can tell which 
functions may be the more practical to use.

I am going to precise that in the second version of my proposal.

Regards,

Cyrille

	

	
		
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