Karim Yaici has published the results of his Open Source CMS Survey he conducted in the realm of his dissertation.
via OSCOM participants mailinglist
Category Content Management
Into the Future of Web-based Content Editing
This is the promissing future of Web-based content editing of XML documents: Bitflux has released an alpha preview release of their next generation Bitfluxeditor.
Bitfluxeditor in Linux Magazine
Being one of the most innovative OSS projects in my eyes, the Bitfluxeditor is final gaining more and more attention. As Christian Stocker, the creator of the Bitfluxeditor, wrote, the Linux Magazine published a report on the XML WYSIWYG editor. Unfortunately, it’s not available online, which would be nice to gain even more awareness for this nice tool.
UKUUG: Dasher: An information efficient text entry and control system
There’s not a lot to write about the Dasher project that Matthew presented – instead, you have to see it! Check out the Dasher project homepage. This animated GIF demonstrates how Dasher works and how it provides a completely different way of writing text. It’s so cool, that the audience applauded after Matthew’s first demonstration of the software during his talk 🙂
Thesis 4: Make Content Networking a Commodity!
Inspired by Jon “Maddog” Hall’s statement at this year’s UKUUG conference that the network is built into Linux I asked myself: why is the network not built into any open source CMS as it is with Linux? Why is it so hard to connect them? Why are they still monolithic blocks of content management?
Obviously, developers of OSS CMS have not yet learned the lesson that Linux tells them: make networking a commodity! Yes, of course, we all do Web services now, yes SOAP or XML-RPC. Yes, there are RSS feeds, trackbacks, pingbacks. Good! A good start, especially in the Weblog community. Unfortunately, the quest for interoperability is as well just at its beginnings. Can we learn from the times when networking was built into Linux? Maybe it’s worth taking a look back at the discussions that evolved in the *nix community.
I will keep an eye on that in the realm of the CONESYS project.
Open Source Xopus's Dead?
Lon announced that he will close the mailinglist for the Open Source version of Xopus, a WYSIWYG XML editor. Also, an initiative to start again development on OS Xopus did not seem to find any contributors. So it seems like OS Xopus is dead.
On the other hand, Bitfluxeditor Next Generation is well ahead and with the PHP documentation group in favour of using Bitfluxeditor NG, a growing developer community might emerge around this Open Source WYSIWYG XML editor.
Lon’s mail to the list (excerpt):
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 10:06:10 +0200
Subject:RE: [xopus] Re: Xopus proposal
[snip]
I propose to close this mailing list down as it has lost it’s original
meaning and as long as there is no open source activity for the Xopus
project.
If there are no serious objections I will stop this mailing list.
[snip]
OSCOM 4 Goes Japan
Roger sorts out facts to let OSCOM 4 happen in Tokyo.
Free CMS Sites for Non Profits
eGenius, zDev Corporation, the Zope and Plone communities are collaborating in building 12 free powerful Plone CMS sites over 12 months for non-profit organizations in early formation, is international, and with broad reach. The development is organized as a sprint. [1]
[1] http://flatiron.egenius.com/pipermail/nyzug/2003-June/000188.html
The Next Round of WYSIWYG XML Editing?
The development of two promising Open Source browser-based WYSIWYG XML editors come to the next round:
Giuseppe Bonelli is looking for developers joining him to (re-)start development [1] of the Xopus [2] Open Source version. This is a WYSIWYG XML editor based on MS Internet Explorer.
I am awaiting a profound rewrite of Bitfluxeditor [3], a Mozilla-based WYSIWYG XML editor, which hopefully might happen in the foreseeable future. This rewrite is called BXE-NG (Bitfluxeditor Next Generation) and might be based on Mozile [4]. See the threads in the BXE mailinglist for more infos. [5].
[1] http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xopus/message/380
[2] http://xopus.org
[3] http://www.bitfluxeditor.org/
[4] http://www.zzoss.com/weblog/index.php?m=200304#48
[5] http://lists.bitflux.ch/pipermail/bx-editor-dev/2003-February/thread.html
Interop and Unified Content
The Java Specification Request 170 [1], which defines a uniform application programming interface (API) for access to content repositories, might be a way to go for Open Source Content Management interoperability [2]?
Some analysts say that “June 2003 will see a reshuffling in the content management industry with final adoption of the Java Specification Request 170 (JSR 170) standard” because it addresses the main problem of CMS:
” Web applications such as Web sites, portals, shops or catalogues interact with content. These are held in content repositories, which are generally part of a content management system. The e-business sector has been faced with major challenges, because each CMS manufacturer uses its own repository API. It is not easy to exchange applications (for example, a database conforming to SQL), so integrators are forced to master various APIs, work with different application developers such as portal manufacturers, and adapt their products to a very wide range of APIs. This situation is not satisfactory for customers either – once you’ve decided on a content management system, it’s not easy to change your mind.” [3]
[1] http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=170&showPrint
[2] http://blog.bitflux.ch/p625.html
[3] http://www.serverworldmagazine.com/monthly/2003/01/java.shtml
Sandro Groganz 
