The most of the work of this week was focused on the license switch (from GPL2 to AGPL3), that forced me to a mass commit today changing the header of all P4A files. Actually I was hoping to receive more feedback on the new license model post but anyway we feel that AGPL3 is the right choice for P4A.

Due to the new license we added a link in the footer zone: you’ve to set the target of the link using a new constant (P4A_APPLICATION_SOURCE_DOWNLOAD_URL).

The other big part of the work was rebuilding all the CSS from scratch, I changed all the class names and id to be more consistent and we’ve a new class added to the template’s body which identifies the browser thus to little tricks is now much more friendly. A great work was done on jQuery plugins too, removing some old ones and adding new and lighter ones.

I think that next week could be a nice goal to release the first 3.0 alpha, be sure to check it out!

Here you’ve the raw changelog:

- P4A_Field::setError() methods now fires a redesign event for the field
- jQuery::UI::datepicker was updated to 3.3
- jQuery::interface was removed
- jQuery::jqModal was removed
- a simple javascript trick was implemented to avoid concurrent clicks on the interface
- jQuery::bgiframe plugin was added and implemented (only for ie6) for tooltips and system messages
- P4A is now released under AFFERO GPL 3
- P4A_Label::setType(), getType(), setValue() and getValue() methods were removed ’cause unused
- P4A_Widget::addCSSClass() and getCSSClasses() methods were added
- tooltip HTML/javascript was rewritten to be simpler
- P4A_Box::setHTML() and getHTML() methods were added
- P4A_Box::setValue() and getValue() methods were marked as deprecated
- all widgets now use the composeStringClass() method, which now use the getCSSClasses() method
- CSS hacks for internet explorer were removed cause not needed anymore
- jQuery was updated to 1.2.3
- P4A_Table has no more container div thus can be styled much more efficently
- P4A_Field::setDefaultVisualizationProperties() method was removed
- P4A_Field::getVisualizedDataType() method was added and called during getAsString(), used to generate the data_type CSS class
- masks and widgets templates were renamed to “.php”
- P4A::isAjaxEnabled() method was removed
- P4A::isGecko(), isOpera, isSafari() and getBrowser() methods were added
- masks templates now add a class to the body (p4a_browser_ie, p4a_browser_gecko, p4a_browser_opera, p4a_browser_safari, p4a_browser_handheld) depending on brower
- P4A_Navigation_Bar buttons names were changed to be a bit better
- handheld CSS/Javascript management was changed, now we outputs all CSS/Javascript plus a basic handheld CSS
- P4A_Table’s action cols CSS now handles images much better
- thumbnails cache was enabled (stored in P4A_UPLOADS_TMP_DIR with “cache_” prefix)
- P4A_APPLICATION_SOURCE_DOWNLOAD_URL constant was added, you’ve to set it for every project, it must point to somewhere users can download the source code of the application
- default template now has a “download source code” link in the footer
- if P4A_APPLICATION_SOURCE_DOWNLOAD_URL is not set, the “download source” link on the default template will take user to an error page showing the right to receive the source code

Now P4A 2 is released under GPL 2, why? Because we think that when you use free software you have to give back something. GPL 2 was actually chosen because the developer using P4A would not have to publish the source code to the public audience, but only give the full source to his customer (and release it under GPL 2 too).

We all know that GPL 2 is not the right license for network based software, because it only talks about software distribution, something like “when you give the software to your customer, you’ve to give the source code too”. Here comes the problem, developers never give their software to the customer, but install it on a server, thus they actually don’t have to give the source code to the customer because they didn’t give him the binary code… This is a way to bypass the GPL license and do closed source software.

That’s why we need a new license, everyone should respect the same rules and the same ideals.

P4A 3 will be released under the AFFERO GPL 3

Why AFFERO GPL 3?

• Free Software Foundation says this is the right license for network based applications
• It’s a GPL 3 plus a note that gives every user of the application the right to download the full source code

What about commercial software?
We know someone may not want to release his source code thus we’re thinking about releasing P4A 3 also under a commercial license. The commercial release would be sold for a small fee (see “pricing ideas”) that will be used to continue and improve the development of P4A itself.

Will the commercial release be different/better than the open source one?
Absolutely not! Both version will always be identical!

What would you buy?

• the right to release your software under a license you choose (open source or proprietary)
• the right to remove P4A credits from your applications
• the right to have free P4A updates for 1 year
• the right to create unlimited applications, used by unlimited users and published on unlimited websites and unlimited servers

Pricing idea:
100 Eur + VAT for every developer involved in the process of creating a commercial software based on P4A.
Example: if 2 analysts and 3 developers work together on a commercial software based on P4A, than you should buy 3 licenses.

Commercial license limitations

• you won’t have the right to transfer the license to anyone (neither who will buy your software)
• the license you’ll chose for your software won’t be transferred to P4A itself, which will act as a library in that case
• you won’t have the right to release P4A itself under a different license
• you won’t have the right to fork P4A itself

Note that this is not the real license, it’s just a draft idea, please let me have your feedback about that!

This is one on the biggest commit ever done in the world :-) There are a lot of changes “under the hood”, please read the changelog because it’s really important for you to know what is changed.

I’m really in hurry thus this digest is not as beautiful as I would but…

One of the most important thing is the new field validation infrastructure, you can simply do a $field->addValidator(new P4A_Validate_GreaterThan(5)) and you’ll know that your field won’t be valid until its value won’t be greater than 5. We’ve a lot of validators ’cause we subclass every Zend_Validate class (we need to subclass because Zend_Validate doesn’t support translatable error messages). P4A_Mask::saveRow() now automatically validates every field highlights the errors on the mask.

Another important point is that I rewrote the popup management, now we don’t have 2 masks opened at the same time (this has a few engineering problems) and opening a popup will cause a complete redesign of the mask (solving some other jquery related bugs we had). Wait, popup management is not complete, we already have new ideas to bring the ajax experience to a new level but I need time to write code…

oh how I would need time…

Here’s the changelog:

- PEAR::Net_Useragent_Detect was updated to 2.4.0
- P4A_Object, P4A_Widget and P4A_Data_Source are now declared as abstract
- the “eval” call within P4A_Object::actionHandler() method was changed to a call_user_func_array which seems to be faster
- all “function &function_name” declarations were changed to “function function_name”, removing the & symbol
- many ‘&’ symbols were removed cause of the new PHP5 reference management
- P4A_Table and P4A_DB_Navigator were php5ized
- P4A_Table_Col::setFormatted() and unsetFormatted() methods were removed, use isFormatted(null/true/false) instead
- P4A_Table_Col::setFormat() and unsetFormat() methods were removed
- P4A_Table_Col now has the “onformat” event that can be triggered to do custom format operations (same as P4A_Field)
- P4A_DB_Source::getFieldName() method was removed
- P4A_Data_Field::getSchemaTableField() method was added, it will return “schema.table.field”
- P4A_Data_Field::setReadOnly() method was removed, use isReadOnly(null/true/false)
- P4A_Quote_SQL_Value() global function was added
- a bug with P4A_DB was fixed to allow sqlite to work the right way with sequences
- PEAR repository was removed
- PEAR::validate module was renamed to pear_validate.php and moved to p4a/libraries/ directory
- PEAR::Net_Useragent_Detect module was renamed to pear_net_useragent_detect.php and moved to p4a/libraries/ directory
- P4A_Mkdir_Recursive() global function was added to P4A standard library
- All System::mkdir calls were changed to use the new P4A_Mkdir_Recursive() function
- a bunch of unuseful referenced were removed from core helpers
- GetId3 library was updated to 2.0.0b4 (which is php5 only), helper apps for windows servers were removed, they’ve to be installed in the system path thus we cannot ship them with p4a package ’cause they would be unuseful
- P4A_Field::setType(’image’) now causes a fatal error, image is not a recognized type anymore, always use file, it will render images/video/audio preview if it’s possible
- P4A_DEFAULT_ERROR_REPORTING, P4A_EXTENDED_ERROR_REPORTING, P4A_MINIMAL_ERROR_REPORTING constants were added
- P4A now sets error_reporting to P4A_MINIMAL_ERROR_REPORTING before using getid3() and then restore the error_reporting to the previous value
- P4A_Validate and PEAR::Validate classes were removed
- P4A_Field::addValidator() method was added, you can pass it Zend_Validate_* obejects
- P4A_Field::isValid() method was added to check if the validators chain is respected or not
- P4A_Base_Mask::setRequiredField() method now relies on Zend_Validator_NotEmpty
- P4A_Base_Mask::checkRequiredFields() method was renamed to validateFields() and now checks all validators chains for all fields and not only required fields
- all javascripts were refactored
- javascript/css popup management was reworked
- P4A_Base_Mask::setRequiredField(), validateFields(), warning(), error() and info() methods were moved to P4A_Mask
- P4A_Validate_Alnum, P4A_Validate_Alpha, P4A_Validate_Between, P4A_Validate_Ccnum, P4A_Validate_Date, P4A_Validate_Digits, P4A_Validate_EmailAddress, P4A_Validate_Float, P4A_Validate_GreaterThan, P4A_Validate_Hex,
P4A_Validate_Hostname, P4A_Validate_InArray, P4A_Validate_Int, P4A_Validate_Ip, P4A_Validate_LessThan, P4A_Validate_NotEmpty, P4A_Validate_Regex and P4A_Validate_StringLength classes were added.
These classes rely on Zend_Validate_* classes but we need them to allow translation of error messages
- P4A::isPopupOpened() and getFocusedObjectId() methods are now marked as deprecated
- popup system was completely rewritten
- when generating image thumbnails now we pass by the application’s index file instead of directly linking phpthumb
- phpThumb was updated to 1.7.8
- jQuery::form was updated to 2.0.3
- ajax upload was enabled again
- a bug with getID3 was solved, now we catch the exception triggered when file is not recognized and simply go on
- YAHOO YUI CSS reset was added
- P4A_Mask::validateFields() method is now automatically called by P4A_Mask::saveRow()
- P4A_Table::setTitle() and getTitle() methods were removed, use setLabel() and getLabel() instead

Hi to all and welcome to the P4A 3 commit digest of this week :-)

Let’s start saying that I worked a lot porting to PHP5 all P4A core objects and widgets (the only one left behind is the db_navigator, I’ll work on it soon) so now we finally have a full PHP5 code, I still need to work on strict validation but most of the work is done. Having a full PHP5 code raised some bugs, cause we sometimes used to access to private variables from outside an object and this is not possible anymore, so I’ve added a few methods and patched some code, now everything is a lot more clean. I also fixed some small graphical issues with P4A_Buttons within toolbars. I also worked a bit on making P4A work with oracle, we’re almost there :) Then I added a new and improved version of P4A_Base_Mask (which uses system messages instead of P4A_Messages) to the core and ported the products_catalogue application to it, doing that made me remove a lot of code, all now is clean and much more readable. I also put a definitive fix to the addslashes issue, we add some getSQLvalue() methods within P4A, now they use the “double single quote” instead of addslashes, this is the right SQL behaviour and anyway addslashes has been marked deprecated within PHP.

These were a few things I wanted to point out, now let’s take a look at the changelog:

- P4A::init() method was removed
- helpers, P4A_Box, P4A_Object, P4A_Button, P4A_Collection, P4A_Field, P4A_Array_Source, P4A_DB_Source, P4A_Widget, P4A_Mask, P4A, P4A_Frame, P4A_Fieldset, P4A_Label, P4A_Line, P4A_Link, P4A_Menu, P4A_Menu_Item and P4A_Canvas were php5ized
- P4A_Widget::composeStringClassStyle() was rewritten and renamed to composeStringClass()
- P4A_Toolbar default size is now 32
- P4A_Button now inherits height from toolbar (just done via CSS)
- P4A_Mask::setIcon() now supports a path to an image instead of the icon name
- P4A_Fieldset::setTitle() and getTitle() methods were removed cause deprecated, use setLabel() and getLabel() instead
- P4A::getPopupMask() and getPopupMaskName() methods were added
- P4A_Mask::getFocusedObjectId() method was added
- P4A_Link::setLabel() method was removed ’cause inherited from P4A_Widget
- P4A_Menu_Item::setAccessKey() and getAccessKey() methods were removed ’cause inherited from P4A_Widget
- P4A_Table::addToolbar() and newToolbar() methods were removed ’cause not implemented
- P4A_Table::addNavigationBar() method was removed
- P4A_Menu_Item::setIcon() now supports a path to an image instead of the icon name
- P4A_Sheet was removed ’cause had too many performance issues and it should be rewritten
- FCKEditor was updated to 2.5.1
- “oracle” was renamed to “oci” within P4A_DB to reflect PDO naming
- P4A_DB_Source::setSchema() and getSchema() methods were added
- some minor bugfixes to P4A_DB_Source were applied in order to make oracle work
- P4A_Generate_Default_Label() global function now turns the original label lowercase before applying the default rules, this is due for databases which returns uppercase field names
- a new version of P4A_Base_Mask was added to the core
- “products catalogue” sample app was ported to P4A_Base_Mask
- sample_en, sample_it and sample_i18n applications were removed
- some minor enhancements were made to products_catalogue sample
- P4A_Widget::intercept() and implementMethod() methods now automatically call the addAction() method when the event is recognized as a browser event
- P4A_Data_Field::getSQLValue() and getSQLNewValue() now returns data quoted with “double single quote” instead using addslashes (which is deprecated and not working for oracle)
- P4A_Object::dropIntercept() method was removed
- P4A_Object::dropMethod() method was added
- P4A_Object::destroy() method now does not unset the variable from parent but sets it to null
- a bug with P4A_Object::destroy() was solved, it happened when destroying an object directly stored in the $p4a object

Now, my TODO is getting thinner and, if I’ll have time, we could have a sort of preview release in a few weeks, anyway:

- implement application level translations
- port products_catalogue to the new translation system
- change p4a_table_col image handling, we’ve to pass by index.php and not phpthumb.php
- implement p4a_table::addCheckboxCol
- p4a_table action col should also support html (for images)
- implement errors with exceptions
- redo the css
- check if p4a_validate can be ported to ZF, maybe drop p4a_validate, add a valitator to p4a_field, user could add a ZF validator object to the field
- php5ize db_navigator

as you can see, some things are new features, some others are tasks for the sample applications… this means we’ve almost completed our work also if I know I got to check other few things within the P4A 3 core programming. Anyway see you next week with a new digest :-)

First technical post on the new blog, as usual 10% of the code take 90% of work, for this commit I spent a lot of time trying to get a final solution for a cross browser message rendering issue (we wanted an icon with a text on the right, both vertically centered). I also unified the generated HTML code for buttons, P4A_Message and system messages. Then I moved my attention on a better pngfix routine for explorer 6, port some P4A elements to PHP 5 and clean up the API a bit (removing some methods with really weird names)

Here you have a screenshot of the new button with a long label (note that the accesskey is underlined):

and here you can see the new system message, with icons and long descriptions (you can’t see it but it has a nice fade-in fade-out effect):

Time for the raw changelog:

- P4A_DB_Source::setQuery() was rewritten and now it’s works again
- jQuery was updated to 1.2.2
- javascript code for P4A system messages was rewritten from scratch
- P4A_Message and P4A_Tab_Pane were php5ized
- P4A_Tab_Pane::setActivePage() method now returns the active page
- P4A_Tab_Pane::nextPage() method now returns the active page
- P4A_Message::setIcon() now supports a path to an image instead of the icon name
- P4A_Message and p4a->message HTML/CSS was unified
- jQuery UI datepicker CSS was reworked
- P4A_Generate_Widget_Layout_Table() global function was added to P4A’s standard library, this creates an HTML table (1row, 2cols) useful when you’ve to output an image on a col and a text on the other col
- HTML output for P4A_Message, P4A system messages and P4A_Button was rewritten using HTML tables because we need users to have the same browsing experience on all browsers
- P4A’s javascript PNG fix routine was dropped
- jQuery::iFixPng 1.7 was introduced
- P4A_THEMES_PATH and P4A_THEMES_DIR constants were dropped
- P4A_Field::noAllowNull() method was removed
- P4A_Field::allowNull() method now supports passing the “false” value to disable the feature
- P4A_Field::unsetUploadSubpath() method was removed, use setUploadSubpath(null) to disable the feature
- P4A_Field::unsetMaxThumbnailSize() method was removed, use setMaxThumbnailSize(null) to disable the feature
- P4A_Field::setRichTextareaToolbar(), getRichTextareaToolbar() and getRichTextareaToolbars() were removed because unsupported by fckeditor
- P4A_Field was php5ized

See you at the next digest :-)

Let’s start highlighting the most important parts of this huge commit:

• P4A system messages were introduced, now from everywhere in your application you can simply do p4a::singleton()->message(”this is a message”) and your text will be printed to the user with a nice floating panel that will disappear after a few seconds. Now you won’t have to instance P4A_Message anymore and you won’t have the scrolling effect hat P4A_Message has, your mask will remain in the same exact position and the messages will scroll down and disappear. This new feature allows you to output multiple messages, not only one, they’re managed as a queue and they also work during an ajax call.
• numbers/date formatting issue is finally over. Using P4A < 3 was very hard to create a custom formatter for numers and dates, now when P4A_Field is going to execute a format (or normalize) operation, the onFormat (or onNormalize) event is fired. When you want to do custom formatting/normalization simply intercept the new events and, within your interceptor method, return the formatted or normalized values.
• P4A now autodetecs the number of decimals from database and uses it within the formatting/normalizing routines by default
• cleaning is started, some methods/classes/files were dropped or renamed, we need to provide the best API possible, thus we’ve to clean out some old things are give anything the right name to let coders understand everything the easy way

And now the complete changelog for this commit:

- P4A_DB::setSelect() was removed
- P4A_DB_Source and P4A_Data_Source were php5ized
- P4A_DB_Source::__sleep() was turned into __wakeup()
- P4A_Data_Field::setSchema() and getSchema() methods were added
- P4A_DB_Source::getFieldName() now returns “schema.table.field” and can accept “schema.table.field” as a param
- P4A_DB::getLikeOperator() and setLikeOperator() methods were dropped, they were not flexible enough to handle all DB insensitive “like” syntax
- P4A_DB::getCaseInsensitiveLikeSQL() method was added
- P4A_Field::setFormat(), unsetFormat(), cleanNewValue() methods were removed
- P4A_Object::actionHandler() methods now supports unlimited params instead of only one
- P4A_Field now triggers onFormat and onNormalize events you can intercept to do custom format/normalize (your method must return the formatted/normalized value)
- P4A_Field::unformat() method was renamed to normalize()
- P4A_Field::getUnformattedNewValue() was renamed to getNormalizedNewValue()
- P4A_Data_Field::setNumOfDecimals() and getNumOfDecimals() methods were added
- P4A_Field::createDataField() methods now automatically calls P4A_Data_Field::setNumOfDecimals() setting the number of decimals detected from the DB structure
- P4A_I18N::format() method now has a third param “num_of_decimals”, used only if type is float or decimal
- P4A_Field::format() method now uses the P4A_Data_Field->getNumOfDecimals() to automatically format numbers the most coherent way
- P4A::message() method was added, you can use it to print out messages to users without having to instance any P4A_Message
- P4A::getMessages() method was added to read and clean the messages queue
- P4A::getMessages() method is now used to print out messages to users in a nice way
- P4A_Field::setFormatted() and unsetFormatted() methods were removed, now you can use only isFormatted(true/false)
- P4A_Field::getStringValue() method was removed
- P4A_Standard_Toolbar strange behaviour that automatically disables some buttons one certain conditions was removed
- P4A_Standard_Toolbar was renamed to P4A_Full_Toolbar
- P4A_AUTO_MAXLENGTH constant was removed because its feauture was troubleful
- P4A_Field::getAutoMaxLength() method was removed
- include.php file content was moved to p4a.php and include.php file was removed
- config.php file was renamed to constants.php, config makes users think they can change it but it should never be modified

My TODO list is changing so fast that I’m not goin’ to post it now, anyway we all know the most important tasks… :)
See you very soon!

The changelog for this release is really short:

- a bug with P4A_Label was fixed (”for” property was erroneous with radio and file P4A_Field)
- ajax file upload was disabled due to a strange bug we hope to solve with future releases of jQuery and its “form” module

but the file upload bug was really tricky.
Download P4A 2.2.3

Now that the new P4A 3 translation system is finished, I finally took some time to import all P4A 2.2 translations into our new and shining community localization system.

You can have a complete look at the translation status, fix possible translation errors for your language as well as adding your language here:
https://translations.launchpad.net/p4a/trunk/+pots/p4a

Now, we really want P4A to have the best translations possible but we need your help, translating is very easy and won’t take more than a few minutes. Thank you to everyone will help us delivering the most wonderful translations for your next generation web applications!

Situation 1:

You go to the supermarket and buy a new PC, you’ll find that the installed copy of Windows is perfectly localized in your language by default.

Situation 2:

You go to the Apple store and buy a new MAC, you’ll find that the installed copy of MAC OS is perfectly localized in your language by default.

Situation 3:

You download a copy of Ubuntu, burn it and boot it, select your language and… find that half of the system is in English and only a few things are in your language (this happens for Italian, maybe things can be worst with other languages).

What I want to say it’s quite obvious, if Linux vendors want to penetrate the newbies market, they must provide fully localized ISO images, there are no excuses. This is my point of view.

A lot of time ago, when I entered the UCK team, I wanted to build an ISO localization team, to build and deliver a full set of Ubuntu localized images. That part of the UCK project never came to life because of some problems but I still believe in its importance. Ubuntu team seemed to be quite regardless of this problem and our solution.

We (CreaLabs) continue to build and deliver the Ubuntu Italian ISO and I know there are a few other similar projects around the world but the point is that these kind of initiatives should become more officially endorsed by Ubuntu (or any other distro, problem is the same).

I talked a few time with the Ubuntu Italian Community but in all these years no page of the site links to our ISO image. Well… I’ve to say I’m a bit sad about that ’cause this seems to mean something like “we don’t care about that”.

Now, critics apart what can/should we do? If you agree with my point of view contact your distro (many of them have localized communities) and make them read this post, we just need to talk about the problem and we’ll find how to solve it. Having a fully localized Linux delivering infrastructure can only bring more users to our beloved OS.

I want to wish you a marry Christmas with a small update on P4A 3 development status. Here you have the changelog since last update:

- P4A_Image was removed
- P4A_Icon was renamed to P4A_Image
- P4A_Button::composeStringProperties() method was removed
- P4A_Image::setIcon() now supports a path to an image instead of the icon name
- P4A_Toolbar::enable() and disable() methods params were removed
- P4A_Toolbar::addLabel() method was renamed to addBox()
- P4A_Toolbar::setOrientation() method was removed because it was not implemented
- jQuery::dimensions plugin was updated to 1.2
- DHTMLCalendar by dynarch was dropped and replaced by jQuery::UI::datepicker 3.2
- P4A_Field::getAsDate() now it’s fully working with the jQuery::UI::datepicker with an additional ajax call to reformat the date
- P4A_DB::getLikeOperator() and setLikeOperator() methods were added, like operator (LIKE/ILIKE) is autodetected and it’s useful when you’re generating a query
- P4A_Field’s autocomplete was ported to P4A_DB::getLikeOperator() thus now it should work better with different databases (eg: postgreSQL)
- P4A_Widget::raise() method was removed
- P4A_I18N::getLocaleEngine() method was added to retrieve a copy of the Zend_Locale object
- standard.php library file was cleaned removing PHP4 functions
- P4A::getP4AJavascript() method was added, it will return a bunch of javascript code needed for P4A initialization
- jQuery::UI::datepicker was localized using Zend Framework data, no need to sync with datepicked localization files

and the updated TODO:

- check p4a_button sizes when we have a toolbar with buttons with icons and without icons
- implement application level translations
- port sample_i18n to the new translation system
- spread about the new translation system so users start translate
- check db_source for aliases
- try to detect the decimal format and use it during formatting
- check p4a_table ordering
- custom formatter for date/time/etc
- change p4a_table_col image handling, we’ve to pass by index.php and not phpthumb.php
- integrate p4a_base_mask in core and port samples to it
- auto addaction on intercept and implementmethod when the action is a browser action
- implement db_source::setquery, maybe separate db_sources?
- implement db_source::setZendSelect or something like that, maybe separate db_sources?
- implement p4a_table::addCheckboxCol
- p4a_table action col should also support html (for images)
- remove P4A_Toolbar::getAsString() method with its strange behaviour?
- generate datepicker “firstDay” telling which is the first day of the week (we’ve to wait for ZF fix about that)

Now let’s rest for a couple of days :) marry Christmas to everyone!