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 The Joint Knowledge Development and Distribution Capability (JKDDC) Launches the Joint Knowledge Online (JKO) PortalThe Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Initiative is proud to inform the ADL Community of the completion of a major milestone in Transforming DoD Training. On Monday, April 30, 2007, the Joint Knowledge Development and Distribution Capability (JKDDC) will launch the Joint Knowledge Online (JKO) Portal. With this launch, DoD, NATO, multinational and interagency users can access the JKO enterprise portal. Additionally, JKO is integrated with and can be accessed through Defense Knowledge Online (DKO). JKO includes the latest Advanced Distributed Learning technologies including the JFCOM Joint Warfighting Center learning management system (LMS). SCORM 2004 2nd Edition Certification ClosesWith the milestone release of SCORM 2004 3rd Edition more than six months ago, ADL marked a notable stabilization point in SCORM. SCORM 2004 3rd Edition is more robust, complete and mature than the SCORM 2004 2nd Edition, in that it corrects issues, resolves ambiguities dealing with interoperability and incorporates changes based on accredited standards. Since its release, ADL has witnessed successful adoption of this new edition and has provided updated software tools to support its implementation. As the new baseline standard for SCORM, ADL continues to recommend that the ADL Community migrate to the SCORM 2004 3rd Edition. Consistent with this recommendation, the ADL Certification Testing Centers will no longer be offering certification testing for SCORM 2004 2nd Edition products starting May 1, 2007. ADL Web site UpgradeThe Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Team will be conducting system maintenance on its public Web resources beginning April 20, 2007 and lasting through May 1, 2007. These upgrades will ensure that the ADL Community is provided with the best support possible. We appreciate your patience and understanding while we make these important changes. If you have questions or comments about the scheduled upgrade effort, please direct them to help@jointadlcolab.org. ADL Releases SCORM 2004 3rd Edition Content Examples UpdatesThe Advanced Distributed Learning (ADL) Technical Team announces the release of the SCORM 2004 3rd Edition Version 1.1 Content Examples. These content examples are illustrations of SCORM 2004 3rd Edition conformant content that demonstrates concepts of SCORM content in the areas of design, development and implementation. In this release, the content examples were verified to work with Microsoft® Vista and Internet Explorer 7. Minor updates were also made to the content examples based on community feedback and input. For more detailed information about these updates, please refer to the specific content example ReadMe. ADL Releases Updates to SCORM 2004 3rd Edition SoftwareThe ADL Technical Team announces the release of the following SCORM 2004 3rd Edition products: Issue 10899: Incorrect Description of the <deliveryControls> ElementThe SCORM 2004 3rd Edition Content Aggregation Model contains an incorrect narrative description of the Element. Issue 11023: Contradictory Requirement for Processing an adl.nav.requestThe SCORM 2004 3rd Edition Sequencing and Navigation document contains language that is not accurate with the processing of an adl.nav.request data model element. The document does not consistently describe this processing behavior. Issue 11188: Sample Run-Time Environment doesn't check for illegal reserved characters in URI values during validation.The Sample Run-Time Environment (RTE) does not check for illegal reserved characters in URI values in an imsmanifest.xml file during validation. As a result, packages with manifests containing non-encoded accented characters or blank spaces incorrectly pass validation The Sample RTE will be modified to correctly check for non-encoded reserved characters in URI values of a manifest and display an appropriate error message when they exist. Issue 10815: The Sample Run-Time Environment incorrectly processing cmi.exit equal to "logout"The SCORM 2004 3rd Edition Sample Run-Time Environment (RTE) does not recognize when a SCO sets cmi.exit equal to logout and then ends its attempt. Instead of ending the current attempt on the Activity Tree by processing an Exit All Navigation Request, as defined in the SCORM 2004 3rd Edition Conformance Requirements, the Sample RTE processes any pending Navigation Request invoked by the learner via the LMS User Interface or indicated by the SCO via the SCORM Navigation Data Model. Issue 10783: Internal Walk-off-the-Tree BehaviorThe SCORM 2004 3rd Edition Sample Run-Time Environment (RTE) does not correctly process Continue Sequencing Requests that would cause the Sequencing Request tree traversal to walk-off-the-tree. In cases where processing a Continue Sequencing Request fails to identify an activity for deliver due to encountering a Sequencing Control Mode Flow equal False cluster or a disabled activity, the Sample RTE displays the BLOCKED interstitial page instead of processing an Exit All Navigation Request as defined in the sequencing pseudo-code (SCORM SN Book, Appendix C).
SMIL 3.0 Advances Standard for Synchronized Multimedia2008-12-01: Today W3C announced a new standard to make it easier to author interactive multimedia presentations. Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL 3.0) allows video, audio, images, text, and hypertext links to be combined into interactive presentations, with fine-grain control of layout and timing. "The importance of SMIL 3.0 is that it contains a set of user-requested features that provide exciting new functionality, while retaining all the advantages of a declarative (that is, without scripting) approach to building a multimedia presentation," said Dick Bulterman, chair of the Synchronized Multimedia Working Group, which published the specification. Read the full press release, testimonials, and learn more about the Synchronized Multimedia Activity. (Permalink) Eleven Publications Related to OWL 22008-12-02: The OWL Working Group published eleven documents today relating to the OWL 2 Web Ontology Language. OWL 2 extends OWL, a core standard of the Semantic Web, adding new features that users have requested and that software providers are prepared to implement. Six of these documents are last call drafts, indicating the Working Group believes the technical work in those areas is done. The documents are: W3C Talks in December2008-12-01: Browse W3C presentations and events also available as an RSS channel. (Permalink) Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 Fifth Edition Is a W3C Recommendation2008-11-26: The XML Core Working Group has published the W3C Recommendation of Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fifth Edition). This fifth edition of the widely deployed standard XML incorporates corrections to errata found in previous versions. In particular, one correction relaxes the restrictions on element and attribute names, thereby providing in XML 1.0 the major end user benefit currently achievable only by using XML 1.1. As a consequence, many possible documents that were not well-formed according to previous editions of this specification are now well-formed, and previously invalid documents using the newly-allowed name characters in, for example, ID attributes, are now valid. XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink) W3C Invites Implementations of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language2008-11-26: The XML Processing Model Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendation of XProc: An XML Pipeline Language. This specification describes the syntax and semantics of XProc, a language for describing operations to be performed on XML documents. A pipeline consists of steps. Like pipelines, steps take zero or more XML documents as their inputs and produce zero or more XML documents as their outputs. The inputs of a step come from the web, from the pipeline document, from the inputs to the pipeline itself, or from the outputs of other steps in the pipeline. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink) Workshop in Mozambique Continues W3C Focus on Mobile Technologies in Fostering Development2008-11-25: W3C announced a Workshop on Africa Perspective on the Role of Mobile Technologies in Fostering Social and Economic Development, April 1-2 2009, in Maputo, Mozambique. Participants will explore ways to fulfill the potential of mobile phones as a platform for deploying development-oriented ICT services towards the poorest segments of populations in developing countries, with an emphasis on the African context. The Workshop is open to the public; learn how to participate. You may also become a Workshop Sponsor to help support the participation of those with expertise who might not otherwise be able to attend due to travel or other costs. The Workshop is hosted by the Ministry of Science and Technology of the Government of Mozambique and is organized as part of the Digital World Forum project (European Union's FP7). Read the press release and learn more about W3C's Mobile Web Initiative (MWI).(Permalink) W3C Invites Implementations of Service Modeling Language, Version 1.1 and Service Modeling Language Interchange Format Version 1.12008-11-25: The Service Modeling Language Working Group invites implementation of the Candidate Recommendations of Service Modeling Language, Version 1.1 and Service Modeling Language Interchange Format Version 1.1. The former defines the Service Modeling Language, Version 1.1 (SML) used to model complex services and systems, including their structure, constraints, policies, and best practices. The latter defines the interchange format for SML 1.1 models. This format identifies the model being interchanged, distinguishes between model definition documents and model instance documents, and defines the binding of rule documents with other documents in the interchange model. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink) Last Call: W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD): Component Designators2008-11-25: The XML Schema Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of W3C XML Schema Definition Language (XSD): Component Designators. XML Schema: Component Designators defines a scheme for identifying XML Schema components as specified by XML Schema Part 1: Structures and XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes. Comments are welcome through 19 January. Learn more about the Extensible Markup Language (XML) Activity. (Permalink) Incubator Group Report: Elements of an EmotionML 1.02008-11-25: The Emotion Markup Language Incubator Group published their final report. As the web is becoming ubiquitous, interactive, and multimodal, technology needs to deal increasingly with human factors, including emotions. The report provides elements for an Emotion Markup Language striking a balance between scientific well-foundedness and practical applicability. The language is conceived as a "plug-in" language suitable for use in three different areas: (1) manual annotation of data; (2) automatic recognition of emotion-related states from user behaviour; and (3) generation of emotion-related system behaviour. This publication is part of the Incubator Activity, a forum where W3C Members can innovate and experiment. This work is not on the W3C standards track. (Permalink) Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0: Updated Working Draft2008-11-24: The Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines Working Group has published an updated Working Draft of the Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) 2.0. ATAG defines how authoring tools should help Web developers produce Web content that is accessible and conforms to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. ATAG also defines how to make authoring tools accessible so that people with disabilities can use them. Read the invitation to review the ATAG 2.0 Working Draft and about the Web Accessibility Initiative.(Permalink) Last Call: SOAP over Java Message Service 1.02008-11-21: The SOAP-JMS Binding Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of SOAP over Java Message Service 1.0. This document specifies how SOAP should bind to a messaging system that supports the Java Message Service (JMS). The specification helps to ensure interoperability between the implementations of different Web services vendors. It should also enable customers to implement their own Web services for part of their infrastructure, and to have this interoperate with vendor provided Web services. Comments are welcome through 13 January. Learn more about the Web Services Activity.(Permalink) Call for Review: Element Traversal Specification Proposed Recommendation2008-11-19: The Web Applications Working Group has published the Proposed Recommendation of Element Traversal Specification. This specification defines the ElementTraversal interface, which allows script navigation of the elements of a DOM tree, excluding all other nodes in the DOM, such as text nodes. It also provides an attribute to expose the number of child elements of an element. It is intended to provide a more convenient alternative to existing DOM navigation interfaces, with a low implementation footprint. Comments are welcome through 15 December. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.(Permalink) Call for Review: Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Tiny 1.2 Specification Proposed Recommendation2008-11-19: The SVG Working Group has published the Proposed Recommendation of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Tiny 1.2 Specification.This specification defines the features and syntax for Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Tiny, Version 1.2, a language for describing two-dimensional vector and mixed vector/raster graphics in XML. The specification enables the creation of graphical content, from static images to animations to interactive Web applications. SVG 1.2 Tiny is a profile of SVG intended for implementation on a range of devices, from cell phones and PDAs to desktop and laptop computers, and thus includes a subset of the features included in SVG 1.1 Full, along with new features to extend the capabilities of SVG. Comments are welcome through 15 December.(Permalink) Four POWDER Documents published; three Last Call Drafts2008-11-17: The Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) Working Group published four Working Drafts today. The purpose of the Protocol for Web Description Resources (POWDER) is to provide a means for individuals or organizations to describe a group of resources through the publication of machine-readable metadata. XML Signature Best Practices First Public Draft2008-11-17: The XML Security Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of XML Signature Best Practices. This document collects best practices for implementors and users of the XML Signature specification. Most of these best practices are related to improving security and mitigating attacks, yet others are for best practices in the practical use of XML Signature, such as signing XML that doesn't use namespaces, for example. Learn more about the Security Activity.(Permalink) Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0 Draft Published2008-11-17: The Math Working Group has published a Working Draft of Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0, which defines the Mathematical Markup Language, or MathML. MathML is an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text. Learn more about the Math Activity.(Permalink) W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0 Updated2008-11-17: The Mobile Web Best Practices Working Group has published an update of Working Draft of W3C mobileOK Scheme 1.0. The document provides an overview of how the mobileOK specification helps ensure that content is suitable for use on very basic mobile devices. Learn more about the Mobile Web Initiative Activity.(Permalink) W3C Publishes XML Signature Best Practices First Public Draft2008-11-14: The XML Security Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of XML Signature Best Practices. The XML Signature specification offers powerful and flexible mechanisms to support a variety of use cases. This flexibility has the downside of increasing the number of possible attacks. One countermeasure to the increased number of threats is to follow best practices, including a simplification of the use of XML Signature where possible. This document outlines best practices noted by the XML Security Specifications Maintenance Working Group, the XML Security Working Group, and other ideas cited at the Workshop on Next Steps for XML Security. While most of these best practices are related to improving security and mitigating attacks, yet others are for best practices in the practical use of XML Signature, such as signing XML that doesn't use namespaces. Learn more about the Security Activity.(Permalink) Last Call: Selectors API2008-11-14: The Web Applications Working Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Selectors API. Selectors, which are widely used in CSS, are patterns that match against elements in a tree structure. The Selectors API specification defines methods for retrieving Element nodes from the DOM by matching against a group of selectors. It is often desirable to perform DOM operations on a specific set of elements in a document. These methods simplify the process of acquiring specific elements, especially compared with the more verbose techniques defined and used in the past. Comments are welcome through 12 December. Learn more about the Rich Web Client Activity.(Permalink)
PHP 4.4.9 released!The PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.4.9. It continues to improve the security and the stability of the 4.4 branch and all users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to it as soon as possible. This release wraps up all the outstanding patches for the PHP 4.4 series, and is therefore the last PHP 4.4 release.Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 4.4.9:Updated PCRE to version 7.7.Fixed overflow in memnstr().Fixed crash in imageloadfont when an invalid font is given.Fixed open_basedir handling issue in the curl extension.Fixed mbstring.func_overload set in .htaccess becomes global. For a full list of changes in PHP 4.4.9, see the ChangeLog. PHP 5.3 alpha1 released!The PHP development team is proud to announce the first alpha release of the upcoming minor version update of PHP. Windows binaries will be available starting with alpha2 (intermediate snapshots available at snaps.php.net). The new version PHP 5.3 is expected to improve stability and performance as well as add new language syntax and extensions. Several new features have already been documented in the official documentation, others are listed on the wiki in preparation of getting documented. Please also review the NEWS file.THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT PREVIEW - DO NOT USE IT IN PRODUCTION!The purpose of this alpha release is to encourage users to not only actively participate in identifying bugs, but also in ensuring that all new features or necessary backwards compatibility breaks are noted in the documentation. Please report any findings to the QA mailinglist or the bug tracker.There have been a great number of other additions and improvements, but here is a short overview of the most important changes:Namespaces (documentation maybe out dated)Late static binding and __callStaticLambda functions and closuresAddition of the intl, phar (phar is scheduled for some more work a head of alpha2), fileinfo and sqlite3 extensionsOptional cyclic garbage collectionOptional support for the MySQLnd replacement driver for libmysqlWindows older than Windows 2000 (Windows 98, NT4, etc.) are not supported anymore (details)New syntax features like NOWDOC, limited GOTO, ternary short cut "?:"Several under the hood changes also require in depth testing with existing applications to ensure that any backwards compatibility breaks are minimized. This is especially important for users that require the undocumented Zend engine multibyte support.The current release plan states that there will be alpha/beta/RC releases in 2-3 week intervals with an expected stable release of PHP 5.3 between mid September and mid October of 2008. TestFest 2008 wrap-upOverall 158 tests have been submitted as part of TestFest 2008 since the launch of the TestFest submission site by 30 different people from people all over the world. Actually this is not counting the various submissions by existing core developers, who also took this opportunity to add some more tests. This has actually increased total test coverage for ext/reflection, ext/dom and ext/exif by about 10% each. While the organization of the TestFest was a bit adhoc, there were numerous TestFest events in local user groups. So the number of people exposed to the PHP test framework is much greater. Hopefully this will lead to more people submitting bug reports with an accompanying phpt test file!Our top submitter Felix De Vliegher has actually committed his last submissions himself since, based on the high quality of his submissions, he has been granted commit rights to the PHP repository. We have not heard back from all participants, but we encourage everybody to blog about their experience and provide us with feedback on how to improve future events.Now better late than never, here are the 10 winners of the promised elePHPant raffle sponsored by Nexen. Note that Felix asked me not to include him in the raffle, since he is already herding quite a number of elePHPants at home.Eric StewartHåvard EideMarc VeldmanMichelangelo van DamRein VeltRob YoungSami GreenburySebastian DeutschSebastian SchürmannStefan KoopmanschapWe will provide Nexen with the email addresses of the winners, so that they can arrange to get the elePHPants shipped. Also for those people wondering, you can continue to submit tests on the TestFest submission site. A bit thank you to all participants and TestFest organizers! Without the countless people that helped organize local events, implement the infrastructure and submissions reviewers, the TestFest would have obviously not worked out as well as it has. We will surely do similar events in the future based on the big success of TestFest 2008. Manual restructure and license changeA few weeks ago the manual was restructured to improve navigation and make room for per-extension chapters and usage examples along with improved documentation for object oriented extensions. The most noticable changes are the function reference, predefined variables, context options and parameters and predefined exceptions manual pages, for which we would really appreciate feedback on. The upcomming PHP5.3 release introduces several major features such as namespaces, closures, late static bindings, internationalization functions, INI sections, and Phar among others. We would really appreciate any and all help we can get improving the documentation. In related news, the manual was relicensed recently and is now covered by the CreativeCommons Attribution license. PHP 5.2.6 ReleasedThe PHP development team would like to announce the immediateavailability of PHP 5.2.6. This release focuses on improving the stability ofthe PHP 5.2.x branch with over 120 bug fixes, several of which are security related.All users of PHP are encouraged to upgrade to this release. Further details about the PHP 5.2.6 release can be found in the release announcement for 5.2.6, the full list of changes is available in the ChangeLog for PHP 5.Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 5.2.6:Fixed possible stack buffer overflow in the FastCGI SAPI identified by Andrei Nigmatulin.Fixed integer overflow in printf() identified by Maksymilian Aciemowicz.Fixed security issue detailed in CVE-2008-0599 identified by Ryan Permeh.Fixed a safe_mode bypass in cURL identified by Maksymilian Arciemowicz.Properly address incomplete multibyte chars inside escapeshellcmd() identified by Stefan Esser.Upgraded bundled PCRE to version 7.6Update (May 6th): The Windows installers were missing the XSL and IMAP extensions.Update (May 3rd): The Windows archives were missing the XSL and IMAP extensions. Google Summer of Code: php.net studentsThe PHP team is once again proud to participate in the Google Summer of Code. Ten students will "flip bits instead of burgers" this summer: Zend LLVM Extension by Joonas Govenius, mentored by Nuno LopesPHP Optimizer by Samuel Graham Kelly IV, mentored by Derick RethansPhD (PHP Docbook) Project by Rudy Nappée, mentored by Hannes MagnussonReplace auto* with CMake by Alejandro Leiva Rojas, mentored by Pierre A. Joyegsoc:2008 - XDebug by Chung-Yang Lee, mentored by David CoallierRewrite the run-tests.php script by Cesar Montedonico, mentored by Travis SwicegoodPHP Bindings for Cairo by Akshat Gupta, mentored by Anant NarayananAlgorithm Optimizations by Michal Dziemianko, mentored by Scott MacVicarPECL, Website Improvements by Barry Carlyon, mentored by Helgi Þormar ÞorbjörnssonImplement Unicode into PHP 6 by Henrique do Nascimento Angelo, mentored by Scott MacVicarUpdate (May 11th): Unfortunately Nicholas Sloan had to drop out of the program, but he will be replaced by Rudy Nappée working on the same application. TestFest 2008The PHP-QA team would like to announce the TestFest for the month of May 2008. The TestFest is an event that aims at improving the code coverage of the test suite for the PHP language itself. As part of this event, local User Groups (UG) are invited to join the TestFest. These UGs can meet physically or come together virtually. The point however is that people network to learn together. Aside from being an opportunity for all of you to make friends with like minded people in your (virtual) community, it also will hopefully reduce the work load for the PHP.net mentors.All it takes is someone to organize a UG to spearhead the event and to get others involved in writing phpt tests. The submissions will then be reviewed by members of php.net before getting included in the official test suite. Please visit the TestFest homepage to get additional details on the TestFest on how to get involved, either as a UG or by setting up the necessary infrastructure. Google Summer of Code 2008Once again we are glad to announce that we have been accepted to be a Google Summer of Code project. See our program for this year's GSoC.We would like to take this opportunity to say thanks to Google Inc. for this privilege to participate once again, and would like to invite everyone to look at our list of ideas: http://wiki.php.net/gsoc/2008. Students are of course more than welcome to come up with their own ideas for their proposals and we will consider each and every application that we will receive.So once again, thanks to everyone who is involved in this magnificent journey and we hope to see many of you great students and open source passionate join us in our most enjoyable Google Summer of Code projects. PHP 4.4.8 ReleasedThe PHP development team would like to announce the immediate availability of PHP 4.4.8. It continues to improve the security and the stability of the 4.4 branch and all users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to it as soon as possible. This release wraps up all the outstanding patches for the PHP 4.4 series, and is therefore the last normal PHP 4.4 release. If necessary, releases to address security issues could be made until 2008-08-08. Security Enhancements and Fixes in PHP 4.4.8:Improved fix for MOPB-02-2007.Fixed an integer overflow inside chunk_split(). Identified by Gerhard Wagner.Fixed integer overlow in str[c]spn().Fixed regression in glob when open_basedir is on introduced by #41655 fix.Fixed money_format() not to accept multiple %i or %n tokens.Added "max_input_nesting_level" php.ini option to limit nesting level of input variables. Fix for MOPB-03-2007.Fixed INFILE LOCAL option handling with MySQL - now not allowed when open_basedir or safe_mode is active.Fixed session.save_path and error_log values to be checked against open_basedir and safe_mode (CVE-2007-3378). For a full list of changes in PHP 4.4.8, see the ChangeLog. |
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