Great PHP editor, SWM update, another new blogging tool, and an Integration Research update:
I got to the point with my SWM PHP development where I couldn’t just use the PHP error messages to track down my bugs. I was getting overwhelmed. I needed a PHP IDE. I found PHPEdit, created, apparently, by a bunch of Russians. Man those guys can code. Anyway, for a pre-1.0 release it works pretty good. Highlights code very nicely and lets me step through my code, which is all I needed. Also has a nice outline view of your project, listing files, then classes, then functions, allowing you to navigate easily through complicated applications (which, I guess, SWM just became, in my eyes). It’s also decent for HTML and JS editing. Couple things I can’t figure out how to customize, but they’re minor.
I am in the process of re-writing SWM in OO (object-oriented {programming}). Right now it is only semi-OO. Monday I went to add yet another feature and broke some stuff and said to myself, “Self, you need to back up and re-do some of this.” So that is what I’ve been doing since yesterday. Today I realized it’s going to be a couple more days, so I went and fixed the “old” SWM, and now I’m continuing to update with that. It is great motivation to be running the app on danielsjourney, since if I break it or stop mid-feature-add, I can’t update.
Yesterday I had a major brain dump concerning SWM, and have updated my notes about the SWM release schedule and features appropriately. V1.0 of SWM will run locally on your desktop, as a desktop application, and you will publish to your server from there (very much like Radio, if you are familar with that product). The brunt of the work will be done by PHP in a browser-interface, but that interface will be integrated into the desktop app. Considering all this I have a new beta release date of just before our move to Bosnia. (That way my beta testers will have a couple weeks to break it, and by the time we’re settled in Sarajevo I can get started on a full release.) Might be able to push up a beta release, work out bugs (I’m hoping for not many, considering I use it already), and do a full release by that date as well, we’ll see.
Also yesterday I saw a new blogging tool that is about to come out that is the closest thing to SWM I’ve seen yet. It runs on your webserver off of a database (I can only assume mySQL), but otherwise looks like a similar interface simplicity, up to two categories, comments (something I haven’t worked into the architecture yet, although I have it in the back of my mind), etc. It is also written in PHP, as far as I can tell. Check it out–Textpattern from Textism.
I’m also almost completely decided to put SWM under IR, making the whole project non-profit and for the purpose of the greater good. It will be provided free of charge to artists in the “IR network” (basically just means you’ve filled out a form on the IR website, something I plan on getting up there soon), and any profits from sales to other individuals (btw, the price is going to be low-low-low) and organizations will (obviously) go to IR. IR will contract with developers and support techs. Pure technology development was always going to be a part of what IR did, now we’re just bringing it up to equal with the art production and consumer education pieces. SWM wasn’t going to be a bank for anybody, anyway. :)
Towards these goals, I tweaked the IR section of this site yesterday as well. To be ready to “be official,” both with the IRS and the general public (and nonprofit community), you need to have everything pretty much laid out, and in my mind that includes graphics, etc. So I very quickly created an IR graphic. I like it a lot, but right away thought, “This could have already been done.” So I’m sending out a request, email me on three extremes: 1. if you’ve seen this logo, or something very similar, somewhere else before. 2. if you really hate it. or 3. if you really like it.