We have moved!

A lot has been happening with the development of ICE lately, one being we have a new location for the blog at http://ice.usq.edu.au/blog. We have made the move for development reasons and we are still in the process of configuring the site however, new posts will be at the new location from now, including posts for:

1. Cycle notes
2. Release notes
3. New features
4. Demos
5. and more.
   

ICE 1.2.4 has been released

ICE 1.2.4 is now available for download. As this is a minor release changes include mostly bug fixes however there are some new features including support for the Atom Publishing Protocol.

You can download the latest version via the ICE website from http://ice.usq.edu.au/instructions/downloads.htm.

Changes/features include:

• Superscript and subscript character formatting rendered as sup and sub XHTML elements.

• Main rendering improvements to conform with W3C Strict XHTML 1.0:

  • Content nested within definition lists are contained within dd element.

  • Target attribute on links have been replaced with javascript, i.e. for links that are set to open in a new window.

  • Center and right aligned tables use only CSS.

• Improved control over image alignment in the HTML within paragraphs.

• “links as endnotes” feature added as a document option in the file manger (available for OpenOffice.org and Word documents).

• Basic implementation of the Atom Publishing Protocol (HTML only - no objects). There is a simple demo of this here, to enable this feature add the following line to your .site/site.py file:

  
  

  addFunction(func=publishThis, position=16, postRequired=True, label="Atom Pub", title="Publish this using AtomPub")

Bug fixes include:

• If the li1p style is not in a list it renders with bullet decoration in the HTML.

• Repair documents feature fails if the template doesn't contain the ICE styles menu.

• Footnote and endnote numbers are not within the same paragraph as the text in the HTML.

more information

ICE-RS cycle notes for the cycle ending 2007-10-04

• Summary
• Overview of completed tasks
  • Components
• Outstanding tasks
• Overview of new tasks
  • Components
  • About the cycle notes
  • More information

Summary

In the previous cycle we added command line options for the next major release (previously 1.3 now 2.0), we started work on adding ATOM feeds and fixed up the word processor toolbars. As with the previous cycle this next cycle we will be working on the requirements for the next major release. Features for version 2.0 of ICE have been locked down in preparation for the Alpha release before the IDEA workshop in October, details listed under new tasks. It's important to note this cycle is rather ambitious and not all tasks are expected to be completed.

Predicted work units: 90

Overview of completed tasks

Components

Administration

• IDEA 2007 conference preparation – workshop outlined

• Dissemination (demos)

  • ATOM publishing

  • ICE template updates

Application

• Endnote render option in the ICE file manager

• ICE 1.3 release

  • Annotations interface updates

  • Search interface updates

  • ICE as an executable with parameters

  • ATOM feeds for ICE

Bugs

• Book rendering performance bottle neck – work in progress

• Investigate OOo bug with MathType using OOo 2.3 – OOo 2.3 works much better with MathType

Templates

• standalone 'Save as HTML' using the ICE exe from OOo – proof concept done

• Add APP to OOo extension using the ICE exe – proof of concept done

Outstanding tasks

• ICE 1.2.4 release with ATOM Publishing Protocol (APP) – waiting on internal feedback from testing.

• Image/object support for APP from ICE – not complete as we have no way of testing

Overview of new tasks

Components

Administration

• IDEA 2007

  • ICE workshop package material

  • Poster for booth

  • Presentation

• ICE 1.2.4 release for Windows and OS X with ATOM Publishing Protocol (APP)

Application

• Restructure code for 2.0 release.

• Search

  • queries to run over tag, paths and content

  • results to contain first paragraph

• Tags

  • user specific tags

  • all tags

• Annotations

  • close

  • re-open

  • hide/show closed annotations

• Installations

  • ICE to set the OOo port

  • Mac installer package

  • New windows installer

    • Add ICE to windows path

    • license etc

• Server version

  • tighten security

  • Add parameter to ICE executable to run as a server

• API/Converter

  • Post file for conversion and return HTML index result

  • Post file for conversion publishing with ATOM

• Strict XHTML rendering

  • Replace link with targets attribute with javascript

  • Replace align attribute for table with CSS

  • Nested definition lists to be in dd element not the dl

• Interface update for the file manager and browser toolbar

Bugs

• Finish off changes to work around OOo indexing bug with MathType for Books

Templates

• Add HTML converter dialog window using the ICE exe

• Add ATOMPub dialog window using the ICE exe

About the cycle notes

The cycle notes are used to summarize the outcomes of the completed cycle and provide stake-holders with an overview of the tasks for the next cycle. They are also used to raise any issues for discussion and provide other information for those who are unable to attend the meetings. Specific information on tasks to be completed are available in the ticketing system, see below.

More information

http://ice.usq.edu.au/trac/roadmap

View archived cycle notes

Modified: Sep 26, 2007

A demo of Blogging from Word using ICE

For those who have reading the ICE blog you would know about how we got ICE to work as a command line app, or in other words, as a service rather then just an application. I have taken this one step further by creating the binary version of ICE that takes parameters for rendering and publishing. By adding a macro in to my Word (that's Word 2003) I have been able to publish directly from the word processor to Blogger (the same can be done for OOo).

This has not yet been added to the toolbar as it was merely some playing around on my part to work out any issues, but is coming soon.

Here is a recoding of what what the process maybe like.

A demo of list numbering restarting in ICE toolbar

A special thanks to Ian Barnes for his feedback about the ICE toolbar. Since the last announcement in August we have made quite a few minor but tricky updates, and thanks to Samuel Knipe we have implemented some of the changes from the feedback received. The most useful recent fix is the fact that if a new list is created that the numbering is restarted.

As most avid word processor users would know if you use style based lists the numbering will keep continuing unless you manually restart it. In Word this is a particular problem as restart/continuing can also affect other lists, we have fixed this and made it easier to correct numbering when the word processor get it wrong.

Changes/fixes for the ICE toolbar

Both OpenOffice.org and Word toolbars

1. list numbering is restarted if a new list is created (see demo below)

2. Short cut for list to restart/continue numbering (esc + r)

3. paragraph (p) demotes to blockquote (bq1)

4. Fixed numbering not turning off if on lists that are not li1

5. Fixed demote/promote failing on i-code

OpenOffice.org toolbar

1. List styles are created when applied if they don't exist

2. When generated heading sizes are relative to h1

Word toolbar

1. Installs if downloaded as .doc or .dot

2. Installs into users startup directory

Give it a go, you can download the toolbars from the ice site. and as always feedback is much appreciate.

A demo of lists restarting in Word

Here is a demo of the list numbering, a word of warning I am talking but you may need to turn your sound up as the recording volume is a bit low.

A speak peak at the command line version of ICE

Today Ron, Oliver and I (mainly Ron) implemented a command line version of ICE and while we were at it we also added support to use the ATOM Publishing Protocol I demoed the other day.

The first demo is of the the command line ICE renderer that takes an OpenOffice.org or Word document and generates the HTML and PDF. A user wouldn't necessarily run it as a command line but what the demo shows is that you will soon be able to use ICE as a service.

View the command line ICE demo

The second demo is a combination of the command line HTML render with command line ATOM publishing into Blogger. Note Blogger is purely used for a demo, you will be able to publish to any other location provided it supports ATOM publishing.

View the ATOM Publishing demo

The next step is to add an interface to the ICE toolbar so that you can render your Word or OpenOffice.org document into clean XHTML and publish it using ATOM directly to your Blog or institutional repository. This can all be done from the comfort of your word processor.

Publish to Blogger from ICE: A look at how you can publish using the APP from ICE

In a soon to be released update of ICE you will be able to publish using the ATOM Publishing Protocol (APP) to blogger and other systems that support the APP. I (Daniel) have already been using ICE to publish directly into the developers blog and will be from now on. At the moment it only publishes HTML (no media resources), but you'll find that Blogger and other weblog services are also limited to this, for now at least.

As mentioned in the last cycle notes using the APP opens up huge potential for us to publish to institutional repositories more easily for the ICE-RS project. We have already started working on a command line version of ICE that when plugged into our ICE toolbar means you be able to publish directly from your word processor (Word, OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice) to your blog, or your local repository without all the overheads normally required with ICE. Best of all it will be nice clean and light weight XHTML with bonus PDF.

You can view a demo of how I published the ICE-RS cycle notes here.

If you are interested in finding out more please feel free to contact us