Working our way through the list of known defects. They’re posted in JIRA at Codehaus and consist of small problems or ones that occur infrequently.
Previous post on fixing a defect with font handling was one of these. Now have closed PLATYPUS-64 and PLATYPUS-61, which both had to do with line spacing after a code listing and a bullet list, respectively.
Once the defects have been taken care of, it’s likely that we’ll release v. 0.2.4 as a bug-fix update of 0.2.2.
The changes to fix font handling in v. 0.2.2 led to two small defects that are fixed now. Both of them related to how the iText library handles font registration. I think/hope/pray that the font issues can be laid to rest now, once and for all. (PLATYPUS-62 in JIRA)
v. 0.2.2 has been released. It’s available for download along with docs and source code here.
New features include:
* URLs — you can add clickable URLs to your documents. These can be raw URLs or they can be hidden under cover text.
* Code and Listings — you can easily specify in-line code as well as code listings. Code in listings can optionally have numbered lines, and the lines can be numbered every 1,2, 3, etc. lines—as you tastes dictate.
* Bullet lists — Bullet lists can be nested and the bullet character for each list is user-selectable.
* Save and restore current format — if you switch formats frequently, you can save (and later restore) the current format with a single command.
* Many more symbols and special characters have been added.
* Better Linux support. Files and configuration directories are now Linux friendly.
* HTML output (preliminary release of this plug-in)
A show-stopper bug (PLATYPUS-42) finally bit the dust. It involved how Platypus loaded fonts into the iText library. The result was that every so often, the wrong variant of the typeface would be used (such as italics, rather than bold). This was finally fixed and it appears all font loading is working correctly.
Atul is doing a lot of work to get the HTML plugin to generate XHTML that passes the W3C validator with no errors.
This format refinement will help in using the same plugin as the basis of the eBook plugin.
It’s posted here. Please let us know if you run into any difficulties. We hope to have the final version out in 30 days.
Thanks!
Doing the last things necessary to get v. 0.2.2 RC1 out the door in the next few days.
Now working on testing and documentation.
Expecting to release an RC1 version shortly.
Implementation of bullet lists complete—they’re nestable and the user can select the bullet character for each list). PLATYPUS-44 on JIRA.
Only need to write a few more unit tests.
Implemented an unordered bullet list with (so far) a fixed bulled character of “-” and an indent of 1/4”. To do: Correct processing of embedded bullet lists; allow bullet character to be specified. Eventually, enable specification of width of indent.
Lists are started by the [list] command and terminated by the [-list] command. Each item in the list is terminated by a [] marker. So:
The four cardinal directions are:
[list]north[]
south[]
east[]
west[]
[-list]
When done, should have nestable bulleted lists with user-specifiable bullet character in PDF.
PDF plugin can now print clickable raw URLs and URLs with cover text. More testing needed, but initial test passed successfully.
Long talk among contributors, deciding what features to include in the sprint to May 31. Feature addition will be done during this sprint.
Then, till June 15th bug testing and fixing, followed by release of RC1 on June 15th.
Expect to ship finalized release on 30 June. List of features:
http://docs.codehaus.org/display/PLATYPUS/Upcoming+Features+in+v.+0.2.2
All new features and to-do items added to JIRA.
Comments on feature selection welcome!
Seamless upgrade—added the lib, made the changes to build.xml, and deleted the old lib. All tests and the CI build worked immediately. Sometimes, I really like automation!
The goal of the upgrade is to see whether it resolves some of the problems I’ve been running into with fonts in the PDF plugin. Testing over the next few days will clarify this.
Basic implementation now done. Fully documented in the user guide.
Have to squash a couple of bugs (that have been entered into JIRA) and write unit tests. Hoping I can finish this completely this week, and so close out this feature for v. 0.2.2.
