Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Curl web content generated by Seaside 2.9

Today I tackled getting Seaside 2.9 alpha 4 sufficiently decoupled from HTML/XHTML to generate web content of MIME type 'text/vnd.curl'.

The Seaside alpha was installed in a Squeak 3.10 Smalltak image using a MonticelloCeonfigurations map from the folks at seaside.st

It was really satisfying to see a Curl application open in my browser with Seaside running as my localhost.

Now to get a "headless" version that can run as a server-side process to be maintained remotely ... that will start at seasidehosting.st

Squeak MonticelloConfigurations mcm for Seaside 2.9

If you are like me and have not used an Monticello configuration file such as the mcm file to install Seaside 2.9 in Squeak, what you need to do is download the mcm file and place it in the package-cache directory of the Squeak you are going to run.

I tried using Monticello to create a package and then edit the script but PackageInfo is broken even in the LevelPlayingField (LPF) image that I built by running
HTTPSocket httpFileIn: 'ftp.squeak.org/3.11/scripts/LPF.st'
in a workspace.

Once the file is where a monticello tool can see it, even the Monticello Browser can be used to load it by doing Open on the package-cache which should appear at top of the panel on the right of the browser.

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Semantic Web group at developers.curl.com

There is now a Semantic Web group at developers.curl.com

The Curl programming language is a web content language with macros which can load code packages dynamically so there are lots of good things for keeping semantic markup orthogonal to presentation markup. Curl has multiple inheritance so we may have a mix-in class for those containers which carry semantic tags. Strings in Curl are treated as Visual objects for purposes of presentation but they are often held in wrappers such as {text some string content} and {paragraph some-variety-of-objects}. All that is required is that curly braces are balanced - note the lack of closing tags.

Now to see if we lean towards RDF or Topic Maps or can get our arms around both ... it's time to triple-down on all bets!