DeeKnow’s Grotto

For the last couple of weeks I've been working evenings mostly on a software project that I'll ultimately be using for a number of things at work, but also importantly I hope will be useful to others in the open-source community, and tonight I finally released an Alpha version of it to its SourceForge homepage. Here's some of the diatribe that accompanies the release..

XApperator is an Perl based open source MVC-like lightweight application controller framework which uses XML to store individual application's configuration, functionality availability, behaviour and UI messages, uses XSLT to transform simple application XML data structures into vanilla web interfaces for editing and administration, and optionally renders data/content out to a static publishing point using XSLT for eventual web serving and end-user consumption

I've been using and evangelising open-source tools now for many years, so I'm not sure why its taken me so long to get my arse into gear and actually contribute something back to the community, but better late than never I guess. Feels kinda good to have finally launched the thing. Of course now I have to thicken up my skin for the innevitable community critique :)

BTW: the cool little Bi-plane piccie is courtesy of talented GIMP artiste and fellow open-source advocate Jamie, who knocked it up in a ludicrously short period of time after I commisioned him to generate a logo for the price of his lunch at the Eastie this Friday. God bless him, I wish I had 10% of the talent

10:59:52 PM