21 December 2010
Infrae is pleased to announce the final release of Silva 2.3. This
release contains a gamut of new features for users, system
administrators, and developers. The most important changes for users are
support for mobile skins based on browser detection, and a robust
reference management system that preserves links between resources.
System administrators should note that Silva now supports WSGI servers
and this is the recommended way to run it. Developers will enjoy a more
consistent API and vastly improved testing infrastructure.
Silva for mobile devices:
Silva integrates with Mobi, a middleware suite for detecting mobile
devices. Mobi reads the user agent header in requests and categorizes it
into one of three device types, then passes the category along. The
silva.core.layout system then chooses the best presentation for the device.
For more in-depth information on Mobi have a look at the technical site:
http://mobi.infrae.com/.
User features:
* A reference system management has been implemented. In a Silva
Document (and in Silva News Network items), images and linked objects
can be connected using references. Those images and links are not broken
when referenced objects are moved or renamed.
* Content cannot be deleted if it is the target of a reference. This
prevents having broken links in documents. Silva Links, Silva Ghost
Folders, Silva Ghosts, Silva Indexers and Silva Find also use the same
reference mechanism. Managers have the option to break references if needed.
* On Images and Files, it is possible to see in which documents are
referencing them. With this feature, it is also possible to identify
site unused images and files.
* The XML import/export has been improved, removing many bugs (export of
acquired metadata for instance). It’s been extended to preserve proper
references on import independent of the import and export location. One
cannot export content objects that have a reference target outside of
the export tree.
* The forms editor has been removed from Silva Documents. However the
underlying XML is still accessible for managers.
* Many SMI screens have been refactored, removing a lot of back button bugs.
Extension User features:
* Silva News Network has been refactored with improved calendaring
functionality.
* Silva Forum has been refactored and has new subscription and captcha
features.
* Silva Find, Silva Poll and Silva OAI have been refactored to work with
Silva 2.3 and its requirements.
* A new extension silva.security.overview have been written to provide
an overview of who has security access where in the Silva site.
* A new extension silva.security.logging has been written to log
detailed user actions.
Sysadmin features:
* Silva supports WSGI servers. It is now the recommended way to run
Silva. You can use Paster or Apache’s mod_wsgi.
* With the WSGI support, error logs hae been improved. They give provide
more information which helps facilitate debugging of production bugs.
* HTTP headers for GET and HEAD requests have been optimized in order to
improve caching with Squid and other reverse proxies.
* Silva now uses PAS for authentication by default. This makes it easier
to connect Silva to third party authentication systems like Active
Directory, LDAP, Raduis, SQL. You no longer need to write custom code
for this.
* The 2.3 release uses Python 2.6 and Zope 2.12. It won’t work with
Python 2.4 or any previous version of Zope.
Developer features:
* The z3c.form and zope.formlib components have been replaced by zeam.form.
* The reference system silva.core.references is reusable in any Silva
extension.
* The SMI uses silva.core.layout and can be themed with a CSS of your
choice.
* The subscription feature has been refactored into an extension
silva.app.subscriptions. It’s been built to be usable by any Silva
extension (an extension can send any message it wishes to a list of
subscribed people).
* Zope Events have been added to much existing Silva functionality. This
lets you plugin your extensions to the publication and security sub-systems.
* Various code optimizations have been fine tuned.
* A new test setup system makes testing easier.
* Many tests have been added, cleaned, refactored and improved.
Removed products:
* The old SilvaLayout product is no longer distributed by default (the
so-called Legacy Layout is still supported, but not installed by default).
* The XMLWidgets components have been removed.
Developer documentation:
The http://docs.infrae.com/ site has been improved with extensive
documentation.
Installation:
Silva 2.3 should be installed using buildout or using Paster and
selecting the ‘simple-instance’ distribution. For more information on
the Silva installation procedure see:
http://docs.infrae.com/silva/2.3/buildout.html
Contact:
FMI contact Sylvain Viollon, info at infrae com, +31 10 243 7051.
