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Wagn 1.8 - architecture of the future
Wagn 1.0 was a pioneering web app. Wagn 2.0 will be a pioneering web app and web platform.
The current release (Wagn 1.8) gets us considerably closer. To name a few highlights:
- uses Rails 3 - the latest and greatest.
- supports Ruby 1.9 (1.8.7 still works)
- new file and image handling is more secure, flexible, and re-usable
- new settings editor is much crisper and easier to understand
- Almost 50 tickets resolved: new features, bug fixes, performance enhancements, etc.
This release includes more resolved tickets and more commits than any prior Wagn release, and yet the codebase is actually smaller than ever.
Wagn 1.7 - Access Rules
With every new release, Wagn adds not just more power, but also more harmony. Wagn 1.7 brings new power and harmony to our permissions system.
Before Wagn 1.7, Wagn's permissions were all stored outside of cards in a special permission table - now permissions are stored in cards as rules. What does all this harmony buy you?
- Easier management. Our old permissions table stored separate permissions settings for every single card. Since our rules system allows for much more elegant expression of broad patterns, it is now far easier to see and manage your permissions. As an example, imagine you have 1000 user cards that can only be seen by "anyone signed in", and you want to change them so they can be seen by "anyone". In the old system, this would require going to the options tab of 1000 cards. Now this just requires one edit.
- Better interface. Because permissions are now rules, all the new improvements to our rules interface will make it easier to create and edit permissions configurations.
- More flexible assignments. Before, permissions could only be assigned to Roles, or groups of users. Permissions can now be assigned to any combination of Roles and Users that you might want.
- Searching. Since permissions are now in cards, you can now access them through the Wagn Query Language (WQL).
- Simpler API. Now you can create and edit permissions rules through the standard card API.
- Customizability. Because permissions are now managed through cards, you can tweak their editors and other views with our packs API.
Wagn 1.6 - bundles and packs
As of Wagn 1.6, developers can extend Wagn without forking its code by creating a "pack".
"Packs" are ways to extend Wagn's functionality. In the long term, we envision that a "pack" may refer to several things:
- "modularized" code that can easily be added or subtracted
- a "tradeable" group of configuration cards
- a combination of the above
Wagn 1.5+3 - simple wagneering improvements
Wagn 1.5.3 is a collection of small, simple improvements for Wagneers, including:
- a "url" views
- smoother handling of the *home card
- bug fixes for "*type plus right" sets
- *options settings can be Pointers (not just Searches)
- add +*count to any search to return the number of results
- add +*creator to any card to see who created it
- add +*created to a user's card to see cards he/she created
Translating Wagn into other languages
We'd like people to be able to use Wagn in languages other than English. Some of the text you see in Wagn's interface is in the code, and we are beginning to document that so that we can move cue text to editable cards. But a surprising amount of Wagn's interface is already in cards. New Wagns currently draw all of their default cards from a Wagn called "en" (for English), and it will be fairly straightforward to add an option for new Wagns to draw their default cards from a different Wagn.
So the idea is to set up a Wagn for each new language, with a list of translatable cards, and instructions on what exactly needs translating. That list will look something like this:
{Note: this is just a local copy of the real thing, which is on en. Since some of these lists are generated by ...
To join the conversation on this, or to just let us know that you'd like to translate Wagn into another language, see internationalization. (This has also been posted to the Wagneers mailing list.)