Developer's Corner

This page lists the projects currently under development by the GNU-Paperclips team and presents a list of projects we want to start or are starting.

Hopefully everyone reading this page will be filled with a burning desire to help us in our quest to make free software, and the GNU-Projects free software in particular, pre-eminent.
 

GNU-Paperclips: the GNU-Project Java Servlet Engine
Status: Servlet API 2.1 complete, moving to Servlet API 2.2 (proposed).
Download source for GNU-Paperclips
 

GNU-Weblook API: the GNU-Project Java Object Web Look and Feel API
Status: ongoing; some objects defined, HTML output near complete.
Download source for GNU-Weblook
More Info: follow this link for the Weblook API page.
 

GNU-Paperclips Security API: the API used by GNU-Paperclips to implement its security mechanisms
Status: ongoing; the basic API and a reference HTTP Basic Authentication implemntation exist, further work needed for LDAP and JDBC authenticators.
Download source for GNU-Security API.
More Info: follow this link for the Security API page.
 

GNU-SocketServer API: a Java API for building TCP servers (the basis of GNU-Paperclips)
Status: complete.
Download source for GNU-SocketServer API.
More Info: click here for the SocketServer API page.
 

GNU-RubberBands: a free Java SMTP server
Status: developmental; a server implementing some of the SMTP protocol has been built, further work is needed on the surrounding object framework. Work is also needed to fit in with the GNU-Project email system: smail.
Download source coming soon!
More Info: there will be a GNU-RubberBands page soon (we hope).
 
 

Projects in genesis

If you are interested in helping out with any of these please join the email list and talk to us. We really need some help for a lot of these projects, we want them to do well.
 

GNU Java File Cache
Summary: a caching system for files. The idea is that the an implemnetation of java.io.File could be used to obtain cached files, a special implementation of java.io.FileOutputStream could then be used to output the files. This would help with interpreted languages (eg: JavaScript) in JSP environments. It could also be used to improve static file serving in the GNU-Paperclips web server.
Priority: Medium
 

GNU-JSP Scheme Scripting
Summary: we hope to extend GNU-JSP so that developers can build JSP files with Scheme. We would also like to explore other avenues for building web pages with Scheme, probably using some sort of Servlets system underneath. We already have a couple of ideas, if you have more we'd love to hear about them, so get on the GNU-Paperclips email list and tell us.
Priority: HIGH
More Info: Scheme is the official GNU-Project extension language. There is a GNU Scheme to Java byte code compiler which will very likely be used in this project. It's called Kawa, you can read more about it here.
The project will also utilise GNU-JSP which has recently been updated to v1.0. You can find more info on GNUJSP here.
 

nGNUs Browser
Summary: a simple HTML/HTTP browser written in Java. The name translates as not a g-news browser (ie: this is an http browser). Bu we're not that sure about the name yet.
Priority: Medium.
More Info: we intend this to be the alternative for users that can't or don't want to use the best browsing environment around (what is that? GNU-Emacs of course!).
 

Servlets and smaller things that we need

Hopefully people will volunteer to take on these small items of work.
 

PUT Servlet
Summary: a Servlet to accept PUT files from an HTTP client. The PUT handlers are in the HttpServlet class by default but there is no handler (that we're aware of) for them right now.
Priority: HIGH
More Info: a PUT servlet should be able to accept whole file from an HTTP client. It should then provide an extensible system (Java API?) for storing the data. Actions that one might want to take on receiving a file over the web are: storing the file in a CVS repository, storing the file in a SQL database, storing the file in a cache (note the File Cache project above) or indexing the file.
 

PUT HTTP Client
Summary: a Java class that extends HttpURLConnection to allow data to be easily PUT to a server.
Priority: HIGH
More Info: this is obviously connected to the PUT Servlet work.

Free Servlet System

If you can help with any of these please let us know by joining the GNU-Paperclips email list.