Masterview announce - Feb 2007 - MasterView rails-optimized (x)html friendly template engine - Release 0.3.2

MasterView is a rails-optimized (x)html friendly template engine plugin that
provides another option to the existing rails view templates (rhtml and
rxml). The main idea is to provide a template engine that would provide all
the power of layouts, partials, and rails helpers but still be
editable/styleable in a WYSIWYG editor. It was also a major goal that the
syntax of these attribute directives be very similar to rails helpers so
that one could intuitively start using MasterView with little learning curve
other than knowing rails. MasterView was inspired by Amrita, Kwartz,
Tapestry, Zope/PHP TAL, Liquid, and Web Objects but designed with a fresh
approach and specifically targetted for rails users.

Releae 0.3.2 is primarily a maintenance release to fix a minor
incompatibility with Rails 1.2.2 which was causing a blank screen on a view
compile error rather than the normal debug output. Also there was a defect
in the parameter parsing when using multiple parameters that was corrected.
Finally the authorization mechanism for accessing the MasterView admin pages
was made customizable by allowing a user configurable module to be used.
Tested with Rails 1.2.2

Release 0.3.1 was a maintenance release addressing an issue with ruby
1.8.5(wrong number of arguments 1 for 2 during scaffold generation),
fixing a
problem with the deprecated/directive_base used for custom directives,
updating a few out of date docs, and accomodating a change to the API of the
Rails 1.2 generator.

Release 0.3.0 was a major release for MasterView with an emphasis on
refactoring and simplifying the API for building directives. A DSL syntax
was chosen to greatly simplify the creation of directives to both help the
core team with directive development as to also enable developers to create
their own custom directives easily. MasterView has been constructed to allow
directives to be shared amongst the community and this refactoring will
enable custom development. To further enhance sharing and prevent
collisions, this release introduces custom namespaces to the directives
allowing users to create their own namespaces to prevent conflict.
Namespaces as well as many other metadata about directives can now be
configured at both the app-level and installation-level providing
flexibility.


Video
A short video which demos the basic operation is available at
http://masterview.org/videos/demo_short.html<http://masterview.org/videos/masterview_quick_start.html>

Screenshots and illustrations
http://masterview.org/media_list.html

MasterView is released under MIT open source licensing.

Main site: http://masterview.org/
Rubyforge Project site: http://rubyforge.org/projects/masterview


Goals

   - Create/extend a template engine for rails that would be XHTML
   friendly and thus could be edited/styled with a WYSIWYG HTML editor even
   late in development without breaking template.
   - Keep it simple. DRY. No extra config files, simple syntax with ruby
   flavor.
   - Design it specifically for ruby and rails. Use the full power and
   not be limited in its capabilities over what can be done with ERb (rhtml)
   - Work nicely with layouts, partials, and rails html helpers.
   - Reduce complexity, work with existing rails code, no extra view
   logic or hashes than what is used by ERb (rhtml). Scaffold generate initial
   templates or work from existing html prototype. Make scaffolds nicely styled
   and easily useable for production with minor changes.
   - Reduce the numbers of files, simplifying editing. Define partials
   and layouts naturallyl right in the template, no need to go to another file.

   - Preview in browser without running an app. Allow for dummy data in
   the template so that the page can be viewed and styled independently of the
   application.
   - Performance equal to ERb (rhtml)


Release Notes:

== Recent changes (Release 0.3.2 - Maintenance release plus custom admin
auth)
This release addresses a compatibility problem with Rails 1.2 where a view
syntax error would not display the normal debug output but instead displayed
only a blank screen. Also fixed a parsing problem with multiple parameters
in some directives. Added the ability to use custom mixin for authorization
to MasterView admin screens. Changed the MasterView generator to use
request, flash, and params rather than deprecated @request, @flash, and
@params. Tested with Rails 1.2.2

== Recent changes (Release 0.3.1 - Maintenance release
This release addresses an issue with ruby 1.8.5, fixes a problem with the
deprecated/directive_base used for custom directives, updates a few out of
date docs, and accomodates a change to the API of the Rails 1.2 generator


== Recent changes (Release 0.3.0 - Major update - refactoring of directive
API (for developing directives)
The directive API for creating directives has been refactored and
simplified. This will enable directives to be developed more easily by both
core developers and MasterView users. The end goal is to make it extremely
simple for anyone to create their own custom directives and to share those
with the community, and thus the project can live and grow into many
specialty areas. The directive API refactoring is one more step towards
those goals.

The old directive_base.rb which provided the API for directives has been
deprecated and moved to deprecated/directive_base.rb, MasterViewdevelopers
which have developed custom directives should upgrade those directives to
the new API as soon as possible. During the transition period one can use
the original API by requiring the deprecated/directive_base.rb file and
changing their directive to inherit from DirectiveBaseOld rather than
DirectiveBase.


== Recent changes (Release 0.2.5)
Fix AdminPage compatibility with Rails 1.1.5+ which uses safe_load_paths to
find controllers
Fix rake mv:view_rhtml RHTML=foo/_bar.rhtml was not able to find partials



Visit the online documentation page at http://masterview.org/ for
screenshots, illustrations, complete installation and usage information.

We would love to hear your feedback and ideas around this project! Visit the
rubyforge project <http://rubyforge.org/projects/masterview> to join the
users mailing list or to add yourself to the announce list to receive future
announcements. Check out the
video<http://masterview.org/videos/demo_short.html>to see
MasterView in action!

Thanks for your time!!


MasterView Development Team
Jeff Barczewski and Deb Lewis
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