TideSDK

Desktop App development for Mac, Windows and Linux. HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3 plus the power of Python, Ruby or PHP when you need it.

Logo Competition

A New Brand

As we are starting afresh with the Titanium Desktop project, we need a few items to get us going. Firstly, the development team got together and decided on the ‘TideSDK’ (see minutes of the meeting here). The next step is on the agenda is the logo, this we be used in the application, on the website, any future mailings & stationary.

What better place to get involved in a community driven project than designing a logo! The competition will run from 23 March 2012 00:01 to 23 April 2012 23:59, any submission between this time will be put to a public vote by the community on the 16th April 2012 & from those results, a final three will be chosen. On the 25 April 2012 the development team will choose a winning entry! Please see the rules below:

Terms & conditions

  • The contest will run from 23 March 2012 00:01 (GMT) to 23 April 2012 23:59 (GMT)
  • By submitting an entry to the contest, you agree to the competition rules;
    • All submissions MUST be sent to admin[at]tidesdk[dot].org;
    • The competition is open to all;
    • Multiple submissions are encouraged;
    • Only 1 community/public vote allowed by IP address;
    • The design must be in a scalable vector format;
    • The development team will analyze the final 3 entries based on quality, design and overall community appeal;
    • The winner will be decided by the development team exclusively;
    • The judging period will be on 25 April 2012 (after the competition ends);
    • The winner be relinquish all rights of the design & hand them over to the community project lead;
    • The winner will be notified by email & public announced in the TideSDK blog;
    • All questions should be directed at admin[at]tidesdk[dot]org

20th March 2012 Minutes

Tide SDK Leadership Group Meeting

2 dev teams: We are going to split into 2 development teams temporarily

  • Team 1 will continue on with Ti Desktop, fixing bugs in the source code and trying to update WebKit for OSX/Mac to the new version (on the Ti Desktop repo currently under TideSDK Github, please ask Sharry for connection details)
  • Team 2 will look at the possibility of creating a new architecture based around a CommonJS/Chromium/Node solution. We will give this a set amount of discovery time before meeting again and discussing whether it’s both possible and feasible, and of course, whether based on our findings it is the right path forward. Russell – you and I can discuss offline what a reasonable time frame is as I don’t know your schedule but do know mine is currently manic.

The split was basically along these lines:

  • Team 1: Burak, Diogo, Piotr. Additionally, Dan and Sharry will start documenting and Sharry will continue on with the website maintenance and posting blog items, etc.
  • Team 2: Russell, Boydlee will look into the Node / CEF solution

  • Both: David would like to be across both teams. Dan and Sharry will also be across both teams where they can.

  • We’ll put the call out there on the website and the Google group for other devs to help out as well, but these will be the go-to people for questions regarding implementation and direction.

Download Minutes PDF (~70K)

Leadership Team Survey Results

Survey Results

Here is the results of the survey - we collected 69 responses and they are quite interesting and varied. In particular, there seems to be 2 camps; those who want the product to be a sandboxed “web server” of sorts, able to run PHP, Ruby, etc, and those who prefer a JavaScript approach with the removal of these excess languages. From what I gather, it also seems a lot of people have no idea exactly what the existing capabilities of Ti Desktop already are.

Download

Survey Results PDF (~217K)

The questions asked were:

  1. A number of potential names have been put forward for the new “Titanium Desktop”. Below are some of the most popular suggestions. Pick one.
  2. How important to you is the continued inclusion of server side languages (Python, Ruby, PHP)? If important, please explain why.
  3. Would you prefer to see a more “javascript-based” approach to Ti Desktop, similar to that employed by the Titanium Mobile SDK?
  4. Would you prefer to see WebKit replaced by Chrome Embedded (Chromium)?
  5. What technologies do you want to see integrated into any future Ti Desktop product?
  6. Would you like to see Ti Desktop become more extensible via the use of external, native modules?
  7. What do you feel are the most important goals we shouldtry to achieve in the short term?
  8. What do you feel are the most important goals we should try to achieve in the long term?
  9. Please provide any more details regarding project direction, management, or anything at all that you want.

Visual Results

A number of potential names have been put forward for the new “Titanium Desktop”. Pick one:

alt-text

How important to you is the continued inclusion of server side languages (Python, Ruby, PHP)? If important, please explain why.

alt-text

Would you prefer to see a more “javascript-based” approach to Ti Desktop, similar to that employed by the Titanium Mobile SDK?

alt-text

5th March 2012 Minutes

Tide SDK Leadership Group Meeting - Agenda

Project Name

  • Discussions were made around the name of the project, and the group. “Tide” was the clear winner from the survey of names suggested by the community. After some deliberation and decisions revolving around other similar project names on the web and how we could differentiate ourselves - plus a check on domain availability - it was decided and agreed by majority that the new name of the product and group would be called “Tide SDK”.
  • As agreed by the group, all correspondence and documentation will refer to the product by its full name of “Tide SDK”. In speech, conversation etc, this can also referred to as “Tide”.
  • Sharry Stowell purchased and is holding for the group the domains “tidesdk.org” and “tidesdk.com”. Our main domain will be the .ORG. The .COM will be redirected to the .ORG.
  • Our group logo will be created as part of our initial interaction with the community. We will open a competition for the best logo. Details TBC.

Website Development & Community Co-ordinator

  • Sharry Stowell nominated. All seconded

Project Management Requirements

  • All code to be stored in a GitHub Open Source account. Sharry will organize this account.
  • Group decided on Atlassian, which includes project management plus Jira, etc. Used by a lot of open source groups. Sharry to organize - we will try to get a free account as we are an open source group.
  • OSQA decided upon as the open source Q&A system, which is similar to Appcelerator’s and will hopefully ease the transition of existing Q&A from that site to ours.

Server side languages & Project Architecture

  • Group is divided on the continued inclusion or removal of SS languages.
  • The biggest bone of contention for not including them is that some developers rely on them for their current projects. According to Kevin, based on off-the-cuff knowledge, the amount of users actually using these packages is fairly small.
  • Alternatively, as a group most feel we do not have the capacity to support 4x languages - JavaScript, Python, PHP & Ruby.
  • A suggested middle ground was keeping Python support only.
  • Another suggestion was that external language support (re: Python) should be made as an extension and kept out of the product core.
  • Suggestions were made about the implementation of Node.JS as a core piece of the project. Node.JS would allow us to have a built-in framework for native extensions in C/C++, plus has a large community and a bunch of existing extensions we can leverage. It has a large set of built in API’s we wouldn’t have to rewrite (e.g. file system). It has a built in package manager. Most of the group seems in favour of Node.JS with a bit of exploring.

Moving To Chromium (Chrome Embedded) or Keeping Webkit

  • Generally considered a good idea from an administration standpoint. The more bits we can “black box” then the more time we have to focus on core code.
  • As Kevin pointed out, one of Appcelerator’s biggest headaches wascontinually needing to upgrade and package the custom WebKit build with Titanium Desktop.
  • In saying, we need to first test Chrome Embed

Architecture Submissions

  • The group is divided along some lines of architecture, and the system as a whole needs to have some serious thought.
  • On that note, it was decided and agreed that everyone in the group who has firm ideas about architecture should document, with diagrams wherever possible, their ideas of how to architect the whole solution.
  • These submissions are to be made to the group and we will make further decisions based on them when we meet next.

Licencing

  • There is some licencing section of the Ti Studio licence that may interfere with the Apache licences that govern the rest of the existing Ti Desktop et al codebase.
  • David is to email the highlighted sections of the licence agreements in question to Boydlee and I will interface with Appcelerator directly to get them amended or get us an exception.

Date of the Next Meeting

  • Monday, 12th of March. 2012

Download Minutes PDF (~70K)