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List:       osc-announce
Subject:    [OSC-ANNOUNCE] [REPORTS] Issue #35: April 17, 2004
From:       Harald Ponce de Leon <hpdl () oscommerce ! com>
Date:       2004-04-17 13:51:34
Message-ID: 20040417135134.1144.qmail () qs392 ! pair ! com
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By Harald Ponce de Leon

April 17, 2004

Discussions regarding this progress report can be found here:

http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?showtopicˆ572

Success Of The New Support Site
Summary Report Of The Meeting In Amsterdam
Service Modules - All Of The Features, None Of The Bloat
Weight Classes
Decimal Points and Thousands Separator
Forum Category Changes
2.2 Milestone 3 Progress Report

Success Of The New Support Site

The completion of the first phase of the new support site has been a success! Thanks \
to all that provided feedback, criticism, and suggestions on further improving the \
site.

We're looking forward to presenting parts of the second phase in the coming weeks \
ahead!

Summary Report Of The Meeting In Amsterdam

A summary report of the meeting in Amsterdam has been posted on the forums, and can \
be read here:

http://forums.oscommerce.com/index.php?showtopicy141&st &#entry339899

Service Modules - All Of The Features, None Of The Bloat

Service modules have been introduced to the Catalog, which moves related logic found \
in application_top.php into modules, where each module represents a certain feature \
that can be enabled and disabled similar to how Payment and Shipping modules have \
been implemented.

Such modules include the following features:

* GZip output compression
* Search engine friendly urls
* Breadcrumb navigation path
* Debugging possibilities, and more..

The benefits of having a modular implementation include:

* restoration of application_top.php to its true self
* optimize performance and page execution times by
  - removing unused configuration parameters when a certain feature has been disabled \
                (eg, debugging, banners, ..)
  - removing unnecessary database queries when a certain fearture has been disabled \
                (eg, specials, whos online, ..)
* possibility of integrating contributions without touching core source files

The first phase of the service module implementation has been complete, where each \
module contains a start() function that would normally be executed in \
application_top.php, and a stop() function that would normally be executed in \
application_bottom.php.

A simple "depends"  and "preceeds" relationship between each module exists to help \
prioritize the execution of the module. For example, the Language and Currency \
service modules depends on the Session module, and the Search Engine Friendly URLs \
module preceeds the Session module.

The second phase of the implementation involves having certain service modules \
execute every X minutes instead of each page request to again improve overall \
performance.

Related workboard entry:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/workboard,73

Weight Classes

A new weight class has been implemented into both Catalog and Administration Tool \
solutions to display a weight value using the selected languages locale, and to pass \
a total unit value to a shipping module gateway when different weight units are to be \
ordered. For example, products weighing  500 grams and 1.5 kilograms would send \
either 2000 grams or 2 kilograms to the shipping module gateway.

The relationship between each weight unit can be set via the Administration Tool as \
"rules", and is now possible to assign a weight class to a product.

Related workboard entry:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/workboard,44

Decimal Points and Thousands Separator

The decimal point and thousands separator value has been moved from the currency \
level to the language level, to allow numeric values such as currency values and \
weight values to be shown correctly with the selected languages locale.

This adds the ability to show the Euro currency correctly for each language, where, \
for example, in Ireland the decimal point is '.' and the thousands separator is ',', \
whereas in Germany the opposite is used, with the decimal point being ',' and the \
thousands separator being '.'.

Forum Category Changes

The structure of the forum categories have been changed, with the "Features" and \
"Suggestions and Proposals" forum channels being merged to form "Features and \
Suggestions", and the addition of new forum channels to discuss Payment, Shipping, \
and Order Total modules under a new "osCommerce Modules" forum category.

2.2 Milestone 3 Progress Report

Big steps in finalizing the 2.2 Milestone 3 release have been taken with the new \
class implementations and further modular API changes - there is still some work to \
complete as can be seen on the Development Workboard, which will hopefully see the \
remaining entries to be closed in the coming weeks ahead.

A slight change in the Milestone path has been made, with the merging of the Catalog \
and Administration Tool to be realized for the Milestone 3 release instead of the \
Milestone 4 release. This is due to the new classes being implemented throughout the \
Catalog solution, and the pending standards updates to be made for the Administration \
Tool.

This leaves the Milestone 4 release for contributions that are to be integrated into \
the core codebase, before reaching a final 2.2 version.

The Development Workboard can be seen here:

http://www.oscommerce.com/community/workboard
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