<Glazblog/>

A NASA spokesman said they "could have sent crew members outside the orbiter with instructions for patching the ship's damaged wing using whatever materials they could find on board". McGyver, the nation needs you. Don't forget your swiss knife, your 10cms of rope and chewing-gums.

Bork bork bork.

• Dave Murray: thanks for s/Gaelic/Welsh/
• Bjarne Mathiesen: yes, thanks for the hints, I am not a mac buddy...
• Emmanuel Clément: la page sur Composer++ disait bien de créer un nouveau profil
• Tom Malcomson: not at all
• Steve Swanson: thanks for MathML xpi link
• Biju: Composer++ page moved to a faster site
• Hisham El-Emam: no, a standlone Composer should still allow XPI downloads and the core editor is still part of the GRE anyway
• Gregor Rosenauer: no, the current Mozilla installer does not allow to install only Composer
• Erik Huelsmann: well, we are not trying to compete with the super-power of MSFT's notepad
• Markus Jung: at this time, allow to edit PHP-specific processing instructions is not on the radar. I think we have more urgent stuff first.
• Andreas Schamberger: Composer Extension Central should, imho, contain docs on how to extend the editor, API reference, XPI examples, an index of composer-specific extensions, ...
• DU: no, I disagree. When an element is absolutely positioned, it is movable using the mouse. It's then in the "unpinned" state. An element in the normal flow of the document is not movable and is "pinned".
• Alex Vincent: it's easy, just draw a bad C|Net journalist's attention and done And please, YES, please make a Composer Inspector!!!!
• Michael Kolmodin: see answer to Makus Jung above.
• Ang Yuit: not sure we cn do something about tbody. Sorry but having tbody here is conformant to HTML 4.01 spec and this is more a bug of the browsers you listed than a problem on our side. We doing a standards compliant editor and will never comply to all browser quirks/bugs.
• Simon Males: wassup down under ?-)
• Tuncer M. Ayaz: agreed, we should have Print Preview in Composer too.
• Chris Chabot: excellent question indeed. I have a little problem with the GRE... Let me explain and please don't understand that as "we're not going to use it". Size is a major problem for the GRE. An editor needs extensions that a browser does not need, an editor has probably less security restrictions than a browser, and some security checks added to the browser are blocking factors for the editor (I think specifically of some CSS OM security checks). It's still a bit unclear what means "standalone" for Composer. Sorry, that's all I can say for the moment. Embeddability is for sure very important so we will probably have to find a balance between features and GRE constraints...
• Bill Creswell: making Composer standalone has no impact on the "rich" textarea editing that was known under name "Midas".
• Rahim Virani: thanks for the message.
• David D. Huff Jr: see answer to Makus Jung above.
• Integration (etcint@XXXXl.net): you said "About 1000 teachers in our district use it to create web pages". WOW!!!
• Juan Alonso Hernández: composer only.
• Erwan Loisant: no, sorry. Composer is not a tool for super-geeks and we are not going to make a front-end for LaTeX... As you said, it would be very disturbing for average users. About assigning "styles" to elements, I'm working on it right now.
• Minh Nguyễn: yes, absolutely. Thanks.
• Paul Festa: don't try to interview me again.
• Simon Willison: yes, unfortunately, your ideal content editor is not made for the masses...
• Henri Sivonen: I know you don't like the style attribute. Sorry, but I, we, disagree with you.
• infidel: XUL editing requires a very good XML+CSS editor first, and then a lot really a lot of UI.
• Chris Casciano: we just want a good free wysiwyg standard-compliant extensible editor
• Emannuel Clément: Tidy ? Hmmmm. Let me think about it. Not sure.
• all the people who offered to help on XUL/JS extensions: stay tuned, I will write some docs on how to extend easily Composer and make downloadable XPIs for it. Thanks for proposing your help!

Mat

The Glazoucam is back, now attached to my linux box, up and running 24 hours per day.

I just can't believe people are detecting MSIE using selectors like

* html div

because this shit of MSIE is the only one accepting to select div elements here. Of course, html has no ancestor and no element at all should match that selector.

ok, try it. But you'll end up disliking a bit more this crazy world, you've been warned.

Mercredi matin dernier, la grève des transports a visiblement été reconduite, il faut que je prenne ma moto pour me rendre au boulot. Après moultes péripéties, j'arrive enfin sur Neuilly, où sont les bureaux de Netscape. Passage piéton. Une blonde s'engage presque sous ma roue. Je la regarde, scié. et je dis "Bonjour Anne". Anne Guillaumin. Enfin c'était son nom de jeune fille en tous cas. Quand je suis arrivé en classe de seconde, j'ai eu l'immense surprise d'apprendre qu'il y avait quelqu'un d'encore plus jeune que moi, de huit jours je crois, dans la classe. C'était Anne. Depuis le bac, je l'ai croisé trois fois. Une fois en boîte de nuit dans un bled des îles Canaries, une fois sur le parvis de la Défense quand Netscape était là-bas, et mercredi matin. Elle n'a pas changé du tout en 22 ans, c'est à peine croyable. Elle a pris à peine deux rides et demi au coin des yeux, perdu un peu de poids, et affiche toujours ce désintérêt de ce qui n'est pas de son clan qui est la vraie marque NAP, et que j'ai tant abhorré à l'Ecole Bilingue au cours de ma terminale.

Et puis cela a continué, je viens de passer une bonne demie heure à jouer à un jeu que j'avais oublié. Un jeu qui se trouvait dans le bistro dans lequel mon vieux pote Olivier et moi déjeunions chaque midi et dans lequel on potachait le bac/bossait les devoirs. Arkanoïd.... Nom de Zeus. Arkanoïd!!! Déjà rien que le nom me replonge dans des tonnes de souvenirs. Mais alors Arkanoïd en DHTML, fonctionnant sur Mozilla et IE, ça m'en bouche un coin!! Olivier Cojot qui nous écrasait à Defender, le Germinal, le Zola, Rabany (r.i.p.), Foulon, Gressot, Pauline Curien ("moi, à part le cul, rien..." fut son discours introductif), les Ackah-Miezan et Valenza. Le labo photo. La belle Catherine Leclere-Bessonnet. La classe de TC. Et donc aussi Anne Guillaumin.

Thanks to Neil Rashbrook, who wrote the code, and Sam Latchman, who designed the icons, here is a first screenshot of Composer's toolbar with Forms.

glazou2000 (17:35:42): hello
glazou2000 (17:36:07): this is Daniel Glazman, you tried to interview me about
                       Mozilla Composer
paulfesta (17:36:11):  hi!
paulfesta (17:36:15):  sorry I missed you!
glazou2000 (17:36:18): right
paulfesta (17:36:21):  how are things in la belle france
glazou2000 (17:36:30): but you published incorrect facts because you did not wait
paulfesta (17:36:35):  what was wrong?
glazou2000 (17:36:49): and transformed my personal opinions into decisions about
                       the future of Mozilla
paulfesta (17:36:58):  in what way?
glazou2000 (17:37:34): exactly what I said; I mentioned in my blog personal ideas,
                       and in your article you turned them into the directions
                       that Composer is going to follow
glazou2000 (17:37:58): plus the fact that Mozilla.org is _not_ AOL's open-source group
glazou2000 (17:38:48): plus you are mixing Mozilla and Netscape
paulfesta (17:38:58):  if you can point to specific facts that need to be corrected,
                       i will be happy to do so
glazou2000 (17:39:04): easy
glazou2000 (17:39:07): see my blog
glazou2000 (17:39:47): http://daniel.glazman.free.fr/weblog/newarchive/2003_05_04_glazblogarc.html#s94075728
paulfesta (17:40:26):  ok I'll check it out. thanks!
paulfesta (17:44:46):  read your blog--again, if there is a specific fact in the
                       story that you think should be corrected, please let me knwo
                       what it is. 
glazou2000 (17:45:16): you don't see what has to be corrected yourself ?
paulfesta (17:45:44):  no. your blog is more emotional than clear, if you don't mind
                       my saying so
glazou2000 (17:46:36): well, not really. It took more time to write it than the 1/2 hour
                       you allowed me to answer to your interview request.
glazou2000 (17:47:21): anyway
glazou2000 has signed off

1. First Mac OSX build released.
2. New windows build posted: merge with trunk done, Classic theme now working.

Apparently, this introductory paragraph is needed for some really bad journalists working at C|Net: DISCLAIMER, the current post represents only my personal opinions and should not interpreted as the direction that Composer will necessarily take. It's just how **I** feel.

As I wrote a few days ago, I think that Composer should move Forms support from the Debug menu to another more standard menu entry. Neil Rashbrook did a superb job about Forms, writing very nice XUL and allowing very friendly editing of HTML forms. Now, I think we should

• check in last patch attached to bug 45495 into the trunk for 1.5a
• move the "forms" submenu from "Debug" menu to "Insert" menu
• add a new icon button to Composer's primary toolbar. Such a button would allow to insert a form and edit form and form controls properties. For those who may say that the primary toolbar is already full, I answer first that a "Form and Form controls" button seems to me much more important than a "H.Line" button, and second that the toolbar is customizable in the Prefs anyway...

All comments and opinions welcome at daniel at glazman dot org

Patch against the trunk attached today to bug 137092

As I said in this recent blog entry, you'll be able to find HERE binary packages of Composer including support for absolute positioning. I hope you'll find it as pleasant to use as I do.

(Thanks MozillaZine) To get the application to run, you may have to copy the files msvcr70.dll and msvcp70.dll to the folder into which you installed Composer++ (these files may already be on your system; search for them before downloading).

MozillaZine, MozillaNews, Asa Dotzler

A beer festival, dancing, he must be following a pretty girl

I worked a lot today and only glanced at the article. Back at home, I read it slowly. It deserves comments:

When Mozilla.org announced plans last month to focus development resources on separate browser and mail applications, a pioneering Web authoring tool called Composer was left a software orphan.

But a contributor to Mozilla, Netscape's open-source development group, plans to rescue Composer from its current limbo.

Mozilla is not Netscape's OSS development group. And the name is Mozilla.org. And Composer is not in limbo.

"If you read (the) last Mozilla.org staff meeting's minutes, you know that I proposed myself to maintain Composer," Daniel Glazman, a Mozilla contributor and Netscape software engineer based in Saint-German en Laye, France, wrote in his Web log. "I did that because I do care about this product, and because I do think it has a great potential."

Very kind of him to mention the place where I live instead of the place where I work, and link my CV/Resume instead of the blog posting where I write about Composer.

Composer's potential may indeed be great, but its recent past has been less than good.

Less than good ? Hum. This is a less than journalistic comment. The nearly TWO HUNDRED emails I received in the two days after MozillaZine article just show that some large companies and groups use Composer on a daily basis. That a lot of people find it super-easy to use and producing markup much nicer than the other editors it can be compared too.

Although Composer was one of the earliest mass market applications for Web authoring and survives as a component of the free download Netscape 7, it has fallen by the wayside as Microsoft FrontPage has taken over the low end of the market for Web authoring tools and Macromedia Dreamweaver has dominated the high end.

Survives in Netscape 7 ? And not in Mozilla ?!?!? Oh, and comparing Composer and Dreamweaver is like comparing a 125cc scooter and a 3.0L SUV.

Last month, when Mozilla announced it would scrap its unwieldy, feature-packed browser for a leaner version called Phoenix, it simultaneously announced plans to develop the Netscape mail client along with Phoenix, under the name Minotaur. (Both those names were abandoned because of trademark conflicts.)

He is so mixing Mozilla and Netscape it is pathetic.

Three other Mozilla components--the date book, Calendar; the instant messenger, Chatzilla; and Composer--were put on the back burner, albeit with assurances that they wouldn't be going the way of Collabra and Netcaster, other applications once bundled with Netscape under the Communicator suite that no longer exist under Mozilla.

On the black burner ?!? Uh. Does he read english ?

"We're not sure yet how they'll evolve--whether they'll become standalone toolkit applications...or popular add-ons to Phoenix," read the road map. "But we're committed to supporting them to the fullest extent required by their owners, including providing daily and milestone builds of them for community testing and feedback." Minutes from an April 28 Mozilla staff meeting where Glazman volunteered to take ownership--an open-source development term indicating authority over a project--indicated that Composer would live on as an extension to the new Mozilla browser rather than a standalone application.

The minutes mention "probably", and quote no decision about it. This is far from fair to summarize the Minutes like he did above.

Glazman has other plans, however.

No!!! I have other opinions, that's all. I expressed my opinions, and since I am not the Master of the Universe, I will try to convince my colleagues that my opinion is a good one. I may succeed. Or fail. We'll see. We'll probably reach a consensus and I will live with it.

"We should make a standalone Composer," Glazman wrote in his blog. "One should be able to install and use a content editor based on (Mozilla's browser engine) Gecko without having to install the corresponding browser. It's not an easy task, but it's mandatory."

This is so taken out of the context. In the intro of my posting, I said that I was listing my thoughts about the future of Composer. Not my decisions.

Glazman and Mozilla could not immediately be reached for comment.

And that is the topping on the cake, as we say in French...

Festa's article was published onZDNet May 8, 2003, 5:49 AM PT. He tried to reach me by email during the wednesday/thursday night (night in Europe, I mean). I got his mail at 1:10am Paris local time the 8th! And he knew I live in France, since he even quoted it in his article. His mail said "I saw your blog entry about reviving Composer as a standalone product. Any chance I could interview you in the next 1/2 hour for a story this PM?". Come on.... OF COURSE I could not be reached for comment.

I mailed him back the 8th at 3:53am local time (I could not sleep), so exactly 2:43 hours after HIS mail, SO about at 7pm the 7th PT !!! I said precisely "Thursday the 8th of May is a legal holiday here in France and I will stay away from my computer all day. You can catch me at the office on friday, european business hours.".

He did not wait, did not dare telling me he released an article quoting me, did not dare calling me back since.

It was soooooo urgent to announce to the World that Composer is still alive? A friend of mine calls that Journalistic Cystitis. Good night.

Mat, Asa Dotzler, Chris Blizzard

A new draftof XHTML 2.0 is out. First comment: I can't believe my eyes that XHTML 2.0, a draft published by W3C, has still no DTD conformant to the XML specification published by W3C, still no Schema conformant to the XML Schema specification published by W3C, but has a RELAX NG definition conformant to a spec published at OASIS...

Alors ça, c'est la meilleure de l'année! Infogrames => ATARI !

Quote from W3C home page: "Ten XQuery, XSLT, and XPath Working Drafts Published". *sigh*

Hmmmmmm

If you are a male and if you drive in Paris these days, you can't miss the Sanex ad. Wow. Super-sexy! But don't forget to watch the road too.