summer code

long time since the last post…and lot’s of things are happening.
first of all, we have , finally, our website up and running on care2x.org, we just finished importing the wiki from sf.net to care2x.org/wiki. we know it has some old info, but always useful..hope we’ll have some time soon to update it.
another very important thing that is happening and some might have noticed from the emails on the devlist, the source code is going under a major changesets which will end with some highly interesting things like complete modular structure, language handled by gettext and help moved to the wiki.

as a last thing, this will be the last article of the blog on this url, the blog will be moved to care2x.org/blog

Filed under: c3x, General, New Directions, care2x care2x.org floss

A defence of rational, systems-thinking approach to handling complex problems

Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto: How To Get Things Right (…) proposes “checklists” as a functional tool to deal with the limitations of human knowledge and the possibility of making mistakes in the face of complex problems. Using stories from construction management, airline piloting and disaster management, and surgery, he shows how checklists can be used to break down complex tasks into simpler steps, thus helping prevent expensive mistakes. The author delves further into two kinds of lists (Do-Confirm or Read-Do) using a story from how the airline manufacturing industry writes their “user manuals”.

Filed under: c3x, New Directions, checklists, complexity, healthcare, reviews

Hip-Hop for PHP or a New Beat in Town

HipHop for PHP isn’t technically a compiler itself. Rather it is a source code transformer. HipHop programmatically transforms your PHP source code into highly optimized C++ and then uses g++ to compile it. HipHop executes the source code in a semantically equivalent manner and sacrifices some rarely used features ‚Äì such as eval() ‚Äì in exchange for improved performance. HipHop includes a code transformer, a reimplementation of PHP’s runtime system, and a rewrite of many common PHP Extensions to take advantage of these performance optimizations.

(…)

We have also developed HPHPi, which is an experimental interpreter designed for development. When using HPHPi you don’t need to compile your PHP source code before running it. It’s helped us catch bugs in HipHop itself and provides engineers a way to use HipHop without changing how they write PHP.

Well! It seems that it is here!

Filed under: General, c3x, care2x, compiler, facebook, floss, GPL, php

New JIT PHP Compiler

It seems that Facebook is working on a new PHP compiler that will fasten a lot how PHP runs on servers. This would be of major importance — if it becames FL/OSS — to big projects like Care2x.

Most of Care2x code does not change so often so it will be really neat if it was compiled hence, as Crowley said, “A JIT (Just In Time) compiler compiles frequently-executed portions of the program to machine code for speed while maintaining the flexibility of interpreted code” and this will dramatically improve Care2x usability in high demand environments like urgency units.

Of course, we already have APC, Memcache and eAccelerator and Facebook uses for quite some time APC but I too think that this could be a neat enhancement to those and a new option to choose from is always good. And better if it is released under some sort of truly Free and Open Source License.

Filed under: c3x, New Directions, compiler, facebook, floss, php

New tool

I activated IdeaTorrent for Care2x wishing to concentrate the community development ideas in one place. Hope you use it. It’s HERE. Thanks!

UPDATED: Sourceforge’s IdeiaTorrent doesn’t allow me to approve any new idea so it is useless. Already issued a ticket and hope they reply ASAP. So, don’t use it until further notice.

Filed under: c3x, New Directions, c2x, care2x, development, ideas, sourceforge, sucks

UI Changes

One of the most important things on refactoring Care2x is on changing a few big bottlenecks it still has:

1. It has a very ugly interface almost impossible to change
2. UX and Usability is still a big issue
3. Huge load of uncessary data
4. Unclear steps in some places which turn it prune to error
5. Unusable main menu with all in that turns productive work almost impossible

Filed under: c3x, New Directions, accessibility, ajax, bottlenecks, css, framework, jquery, popup, ui, usabilitty, ux

I’m on board!

Not with much time but I hope to contribute to the space too. Thanks to Gjergj for inviting me.

Filed under: General

Care2x Video

thanks goes to : http://www.sti.ch/

Filed under: General

The (short) video history of Care2x

Filed under: General

Online demo version

Finally online the last version of care2x, 2.6 beta 1.
you can find it here : http://care2002.sourceforge.net/demo/

login with
user name : demodemo
password : demodemo

If you find any bugs you are welcomed to submit them here : http://apps.sourceforge.net/trac/care2002/

Filed under: General, 2.6