Code / Appnel Solutions 

More Details on MT v4.1 "Boomer" and MTOS

Earlier today a lot of information was publicly disclosed on the ProNet conference call by Product Manager Byrne Reese as to the next release of Movable Type (MT) version 4.1 also known as “Boomer”, and MTOS, the open source GPL licensed version announced last June. What follows comes from the rough notes I took during the call with a bit of commentary from me.

• The first beta release of Boomer will be next week, the week of December 3rd.
• The beta test will be conducted publicly and in a fashion similar to MT 4.0’s release using movabletype.org as the hub. (NOTE: movabletype.com is the commercial product page.) They will make new ever improving releases each week until the final release.
• One difference is that support and discussion of the beta will be done using Community Solution (MTCS) powered forums on movabletype.org.
• Other differences include the availability of the code via an open subversion repository and a public bug tracking system. (Rumored to be FogBugz). Byrne mentioned that there are logistical issues to work out that may hold up the immediate availability of these Logistics. Byrne also mentioned that they will support private bug submissions for when a bug reporter does not want to disclose confidential information publicly.

Features

The following is a list of feature that were disclosed that will be found in the core (personal and MTOS) system.

• Performance enhancements. Six Apart is putting a stake in the ground, no release of MT will get slower going forward. In the past Six Apart has put a lot of effort into scalability, but they are now shifting their focus towards performance. This means things like better code segmentation and making the code easier to digest — in other words loading as little code as possible to execute a request.
• Compose screen “touch-ups” There were a number of edit/create entry and page interface improvements that were intended for MT 4 that didn’t make it in. They are now being included.
• The rich text editor introduced in MT4 is plugable. This will allow implementors to use the latest greatest WYSIWYG editor of their choice. Boomer will included a sample plugin of this type probably based on the FCKEditor.
• Better upgrade status message.
• Email templates can be modified using transformer hooks.
• rsync support returns to PublishQueue.
• A template tag for displaying content based-on on a users login status. This tag (mt:ifloggedin apparently) uses JavaScript. Byrne later noted that he see a lot of opportunity for plugin developers to create something more robust using PHP or other server side scripting.
• Template sets that appeared in MTCS are going core. There are plugin hooks that allow developers to extended these with their own sets. Byrne noted that choosing a template set is only at creation time. You currently cannot change a template set once a blog has been setup.
• MT now records a “blog type” attribute. Byrne reported that all blog will be inscribed with a type (for instance, gallery, forum, blog) in the system. This type can be used in plugin development to do things like conditionally display menu options based ont he blog type. For instance, a photo gallery blog may have a menu item like “Manage Galleries” instead of “Manage Categories.”
• MT template markup improvements to make it a “more complete programming environment.” The addition of for loops and else-if tags where mentioned as examples.
• The syntax highlighter will be improved and upgraded. One noted improvement was Safari (v3?) support.
• Inline tag documentation while edit template. Core and plugin tags can register a help URL that MT will use to generate a hyperlink to the all tags used in a template of easy access.
• hAtom support to the default templates. Support of the hAtom microformat makes support of a tool like Tumblr and quick link tools better by providing content to what is in the page. Byrne also mentioned that some search engines will use hAtom information for better search indexing.
• Extended MetaWeblog API support. getCategories support is one that is apparently missing from MT. (What about AtomPub?)
• Avatar support will move to the core from MTCS
• The mt:authors tag can filter by role.
• Plugin settings can be defined via a YAML file. (Hooray!!)
• Globally shared template modules.
• Editing assets is possible. This is not an API change, but a interface improvement.
• “Several hundred bugs fixed.”

One item that didn’t come up and hadn’t come to my mind till later was about plugin packaging. Anything new? Any updates?

Byrne reiterated that MTOS will contain all features of MT 4.0 and all mentioned above. MTOS will not be “crippleware.” They will not extract functionality.

Nightly builds of MTOS will be available through the subversion repository. A stable release of MTOS will be released when Boomer launches.

The commercial release details are not being released at this time. Byrne did mention that some MTCS & Enterprise Solution features may come into the commercial version. He also mentioned something about the release (of just commercial?) may slide into January.

The rest of the call was spent discussing some features callers were hoping for. Overall this all sounds very exciting and more goodness for the community.

UPDATE: Byrne has posted a Podcast of the actual call in the ProNet group on Vox.

Thanks for this Tim, very helpful notes. Its good to finally hear some Boomer details.

The note about "Performance enhancements" is very nice to hear, but to what extent will we those in Boomer? I was under the impression that the next version wouldn't have much code refactoring, etc.

Regarding the comment about the launch slipping to January, it seems overly aggressive to me to think a December release is even possible. The first half of December is certainly too early, and the second half is the holidays. I look forward to a mid-January release. ;)

Tim - thank you for a great round up. You have actually saved me a ton of time from having to write this up myself.

In order to set expectations around dates accordingly, we may have to push back the release of the beta by one week. We have in the past rushed released in which there were significant license changes, and we have learned that communicating these things right takes time and *care*. In deference to that we may have to push back a little bit.

The benefit of course will be a more stable beta when it launches, and time to get documentation together *before* the beta begins - something we have not been great at doing in the past, but something we were able to do with MTCS and with Boomer (given the extra time).

We will do our best to get things out next week though. We stand behind our commitment to make MTOS available in 2007. That is something there is absolutely no ambiguity on.

Again - thanks Tim for the excellent write up!

Byrne

@Mark - the performance enhancements have not been quantified yet. The once we have already checked in are additional database indexes only. They have shown to help installations with a large number of pages/entries a great deal.

We are also in the process of evaluating other possible performance enhancements - something the extra time does give us the opportunity to do.

As for code refactoring - there is none planned right now, but we reserve the right to change our minds. :) Specifically MT::App::CMS is a rather large module that could benefit both performance and memory consumption a great deal by splitting it up (it is over 20,000 lines long). This is something in particular that we could use the community's help with doing, if people are game.

Documentation for stylesheets - please!

Thanks for the additional info, Byrne.

This information is quite helpful. I was contemplating upgrading my large MT install to MT 4.01, but knowing that Boomer is expected in January, I think I will hold off until then.

@Lola: AMEN! I was just looking for that recently and have meant to broach the subject on ProNet list. (Thanks for the reminder.)

@Mark - I encourage you to upgrade now. It will only make the upgrade to Boomer easier, and it will give you the benefit of having MT4 in the short term.

Byrne: As for code refactoring - there is none planned right now,

Is refactoring here being used as a separate concept from (further) implementing the componentization plan?

Su: Is refactoring here being used as a separate concept from (further) implementing the componentization plan?

Perhaps - I prefer not to confuse code structure with architecture, if that makes any sense. It is possible that the refactoring of MT::App::CMS will give us an opportunity to achieve some architectural goals. However, those architectural goals are not the driving force behind the internal re-org of the code. The primary goal first is to achieve performance and operational benefits.

That being said, if there is a good opportunity to achieve other goals, we may seize it.

Said differently (if Byrne and I are thinking the same thing), refactoring isn't necessarily tied to architecture though the two can and often do overlap. If the code structure doesn't support the architecture you have a disconnect.

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