For years Midgard application development has been constrained by the fact that most of the programming work has had to be made through a browser window. Now there is a solution through WebDAV.

Earlier usage of better editors has been possible through two slightly hacky solutions:

• PHPmole is a nice IDE for PHP. However, it is written using the PHP-GTK toolkit, making it difficult to install
• The other solution was synchronizing code snippets to filesystem using the Aegir FileSync AddOn. However, this didn't work for creating new snippets in the file space

But yesterday I wrote a new Midgard WebDAV Server class, initially with only snippet editing support. With this system the Midgard snippet library space can be exposed as a network filesystem, or a Web Folder in Windows. This means that the code snippets can be managed completely with all the regular editors and IDEs.

Here's how browsing the /net/nemein MidCOM component space looks like on my OS X box:

The WebDAV Server class can be found from src/php-libs/webdav directory of the Midgard CVS repository. It requires PHP 4.3+ and the PEAR HTTP_WebDAV_Server package. To use it, create an active and authenticated page with empty style and the following content:

<?php mgd_include_snippet("/MidgardDav/Server"); ?>

Since this seems to work quite well (although tested only on Mac), we wanted to see how we could improve our development work using WebDAV. The first solution that came to mind was using the ultra-cool collaborative editor SubEthaEdit. With it we can easily see what the others in the Nemein team are doing, and get comments and review done. It really makes pair programming much more efficient.

As I write this I'm sitting in a WiFi-capable cafe, hacking on some components together with Kaukola. Here's how it looks (we were adding a new feature to the de.linkm.taviewer component):

The lines with blue background have been last edited by me, and the ones with pink background by Kaukola.

Quick instructions for setting up name-based virtual webhosting on your local OS X box.

Attention, this post is in German language.

Nach meiner Anreise gestern startete heute Morgen um 9:30 die PHP World, im Rahmen des Internet World Kongress am Rande der Systems. Nach der soeben beendeten Keynote von Zeev Suraski erwarten uns nun weitere interessante Vorträge rund um PHP:

• Suchmaschinenoptimierung trotz/mit PHP
• Web Services und PHP - ein Widerspruch?!
• PHP für High-End-Anwendungen
• (Un)sichere PHP-Seiten
• Datenbank-Abstraktionslayer in PHP

Gehalten werden diese natürlich von bekannten Persönlichkeiten der PHP Community, wie Stephan Schmidt und Lukas Smith. Nicht zu vergessen, mein eigener Vortrag "PEAR von A-Z", welcher der vorletzte an diesem Tag sein wird. In diesem Sinne nur ein kurzer Überblick über den Kongress und die Empfehlung an alle "Nicht-Teilnehmer" in diesem Jahr, dieses Event im nächsten Jahr nicht auszulassen.

Together with other partners Florian Müller of MySQL is leading a new initiative against software patents . Visit the site and read why software patents are a bad idea and how you can help . The site is also available in other languages: German , Spanish , French , Dutch and more.

Or, "how __call() bit me in the ass" -- and an apology.

For those who were still trying to download my RSS feed from this URL:

http://www.coggeshall.org/rss.php

I finally noticed you and have setup a redirect to the proper location:

http://blog.coggeshall.org/rss.php

Please update your readers if you are still pointing to the new locations. I'll keep the redirect in place but the new URL is where all the action is at. Thanks!

So, while this vim posting is nice, it clearly hasn't caused me to blog more. Since I can't think of much interesting to posit about at the moment, I'd like to take the easy way out and have you generate some content! What do you think PHP is missing in PHP5? The question is intentionally open-ended (i.e. missing features, process, extensions, etc.). Don't feel the need to be gentle.

[update - comments re-enabled. DOH!]

I'm published! :-) My article about YaWiki is in the new issue of  International PHP Magazine (released today). Everybody go out and buy a copy.

Some month ago I implemented a PHP script [1] to handle images that I integrated into the "Manage" respectively "Edit" menu in Wordpress. The script allows images located in a certain directory to be rotated, resized and cropped. The cropping is based on a library provided by Walter Zorn, whom I mentioned earlier this year already. A PHP script building a cropping interface around that library can be found at amunts.com [3]. The script discussed here is an updated version (added cropping) of what I posted in March [4]. Use it or leave it! ;-)

[1] http://www.circle.ch/php/files/edit-images.phps
[2] http://www.walterzorn.com/dragdrop/dragdrop_e.htm
[3] http://php.amnuts.com/index.php?do=view&id=12
[4] http://www.circle.ch/blog/p1371.html

So recently I made time to maintain what was becoming a large digital mess inside of my computer at home. Although as one might expect my Redhat 8 installation was in perfect condition and operating just fine, the Windows XP installation I had for a dual-boot was all but completely shot. Since I installed Windows after Linux, and I figured it was time for a clean sweep anyway I just went ahead and nuked the entire computer (minus archive partitions) and re-installed fresh.

After installing Windows 2000 I did two things:

1) Downloaded Firefox to replace Internet Explorer

2) Went straight to Windows Update to fix all of the security holes they've found so far in the operating system.

One of the upgrades that Microsoft provides is of course for the vast quantity of security holes in their Internet Explorer browser (Service Pack 1). Although the download and installation went smoothly, upon reboot Windows 2000 was completely unstable. First off, I couldn't even get the system to boot without blue-screening about some sort of kernel-level uncaught exception, then once I got it to finally boot the scripting engine which powers so much of Windows was shot to the point where I could barely get IE to uninstall.

Needless to say, this is a perfect example of how an architecture which attempts to be everything to everyone is a really bad idea. That service pack should have never crashed the entire computer. However, it's a likely scenario when you tie critical system components like the kernel directly into things like a web browser as our good friends at Microsoft did when they attempted to side-step their legal troubles. Regardless of whatever stupid reason possessed them to do it, when upgrading your browser can take down your kernel there is an obvious and significant flaw in the architecture -- one that once again reaffirms my loyality to alternatives.

My advice? Do what almost 20% of all internet users are doing now and go download Mozilla firefox. I promise you installing it will never bring down your kernel, isn't prone to system-threatening security holes, and best of all just works.