Release Notes for PIA Release 2.1

Release 2.1.1 was the first stable release of the PIA. We intend to keep incompatible changes to the tag language and configuration files to a minimum after this point, so as to provide a stable base on which to build applications. We do expect to add new language features and new applications -- these include, in the former category, support for XML Namespaces, and in the latter, a complete small-office form-handling package.

Subscribe to PIA-announce@RiSource.org to be notified of new releases. Copies of the PIA can be obtained from our web site, http//www.RiSource.org/PIA.

Release Announcements

Release 2.1.6

Changes since 2.1.5

  1. The remaining instances of ``Ricoh Silicon Valley'' have been changed to ``Ricoh Innovations, Inc.'', mainly in the LICENSE and in the various copyright notices. The license version number has been changed from 1.0 to 1.0a to reflect the name change.
  2. The port of portions of the PIA to C, and in particular the document-processing engine, has become a SourceForge project and can be found at sourceforge.net/projects/cpia/ , with a project home page at cpia.sourceforge.net.

Release 2.1.5

Changes since 2.1.4

  1. The main change is that the name ``Ricoh Silicon Valley'' and the domain rsv.ricoh.com now belong to the manufacturing subsidiary of the company where the PIA team works: Ricoh Innovations, Inc. The corresponding domain is rii.ricoh.com.
  2. All e-mail addresses, web links, and documentation have been changed. Some copyright notices have been updated, some (e.g. in boilerplate files like HEADER.html and generated Makefiles) have been removed. License verbiage has been left alone for the moment.
  3. There have been many bug fixes and improvements in Woad. It now includes a cross-reference index, and does a pretty good job of marking up any code or script file, not just XML or HTML.

Release 2.1.4

Changes since 2.1.3

  1. /Apps/ added. Unlike /Agents/, which primarily contains agents meant to run under a desktop PIA proxy, /Apps/ contains code for what amount to stand-alone applications.
  2. Woad is the first such application. It is intended to provide a web-based collaborative development environment, mainly (though not exclusively) for web-based applications. As shipped, it gives you a view of the PIA source tree as a demonstration, but it's really intended for use with any web application. See the Quick Start page for setup information. (Here if you're viewing this online on a PIA).

    It must be noted that Woad is not complete yet; this is essentially a preview release. However, it still works pretty well as a source-code browser for the PIA and other web-based applications.

Release 2.1.3

Changes since 2.1.2

  1. Directory index (with non-frame and frame versions) added. If you're using Netscape6, you should also take a look at /Samples/browser/mozilla
  2. Compiled with the following jar files in CLASSPATH:
  3. A number of broken links and unbound entities in the XHTML code have been fixed.

Issues

  1. org.risource.dom.ToDocument is untested, but at least it compiles.

Release 2.1.2

Changes since 2.1.1

  1. The Servlet interface is working. It is now possible to add a PIA-based application to any Servlet engine.
  2. The tsdoc tagset has been improved, and is now the default tagset for viewing tagset files through the browser (makes sense, doesn't it?).
  3. All of the HEADER.html files have been updated and their top-level headings improved to give a smoother tree-browsing experience.

Release 2.1.1

Release 2.1.1 is the first stable release of the PIA (Platform for Information Applications). Several non-trivial applications have been implemented using the PIA, and at Release 2.1 it is considered ``ready for prime time''.

From this point, we expect that any changes made to the PIA, and especially to the tag language, will take the form of incremental improvements: we intend for 2.1.1 to provide a stable base for applications. We expect that any changes in the tag language after this point will be made in such a way as not to affect existing applications.

It is possible that noticable changes may be made in the tree structure of the documentation and sample applications. Given the PIA's flexible site-structuring mechanism, any such changes should be easy to work around.

Issues

There are a few ``issues'' with 2.1.1, mainly functionality which we hoped would be present.

  1. No support for XML namespaces. This is currently the biggest hole in the PIA. We expect to add namespace support in the near future, but will continue to support XML without namespaces because many other XML applications (not just the PIA!) still do not support them, either. This includes the DOM 1.0 and SAX 1.0 API's, which can be expected to remain in widespread use for some time.
  2. No support for servlets and SAX.
  3. No support for DTD's. Our parser still does not properly handle the internal subset of the DTD.
  4. Links to javadoc-generated class documentation are broken, especially in the API manual.
  5. In addition, a small number of tags are unimplemented (for example, <URL>), and some ``xml-style'' attributes (see item 1 below) are unimplemented or undocumented. Applications written using the current tagsets will, however, continue to function.

Changes since 2.0.8

  1. Language cleanup:
  2. Improvements to tsdoc tagset.

Previous Release

Release 2.0 was the previous release series.

Release 2.0.9 was, essentially, the ``beta'' version of 2.1 -- it is unlikely that anything other than bug fixes will have been done in the interim. If you have been using earlier versions of the PIA, you should at least look at the changes introduced since 2.0.6; 2.0.7 and to a lesser extent 2.0.8 introduced significant changes.

Copyright © 1999-2000 Ricoh Innovations, Inc.
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