RSF 0.7.3M3 in repositories - client rendering progress and server fixes

[Antranig Basman]

A milestone release of the upcoming RSF 0.7.3 is now available in the
CARET Maven 2 Development repository at http://www2.caret.cam.ac.uk/maven2dev/
as well as the Sakai CARET Maven 1 repository at https://www2.caret.cam.ac.uk/maven/
(check the http://www2.caret.cam.ac.uk/rsfwiki/Wiki.jsp?page=TrunkCode ) page
for more pointers.
 
See the 0.7.3M1 announcement at
http://fluidproject.org/pipermail/fluid-work/2008-March/001542.html
for general details on the features and goals of the 0.7.3 release.

This release is mainly devoted to bugfixes - for a progress JIRA view go
along to http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk/jira/browse/RSF/fixforversion/10160

The notable progress of the previous milestone 0.7.3M2 include:

- Implementation of the majority of the Fluid/RSF client-side rendering engine, 
  which is capable of rendering the majority of familiar components including
  UIOutput, UIInput, UIBoundBoolean, UIVerbatim, UIInitBlock and UISelect as
  well as UIJointContainer for multi-template rendering.
- Implementation of "duck compression" enabling the renderer to work in a 
  "typeless" manner, largely on pure JSON-ish data.

On the server, notable JIRAs resolved are

http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk/jira/browse/RSF-77 - id relations are now automatically
preserved whilst rewriting templates, making it far easier to write accessible
markup (the cumberson UILabelTargetDecorator) is now deprecated. This features
will shortly be available in the client-side renderer also.

http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk/jira/browse/RSF-68 - RSF was designed from the 
ground up to ever prevent raw exceptions being sent into the host, however
an important requirement has emerged to surface these. In this release it
is now possible to assemble a Spring configuration in which a selected
set of exceptions are sent into the (Sakai) Portal layer directly.

http://www.caret.cam.ac.uk/jira/browse/RSF-108 - Support for rendering
the <optgroup> tag in selection controls. This will also be shortly ported
to the client-side.

There is also a large and still rapidly growing bank of framework test
cases or "micro-apps".


Enthusiastic users are requested to update to this release and report any
issues. As you can see from the JIRA list, the list of issues for the final
0.7.3 release is nearly complete, and we expect a release candidate and
final 0.7.3 release before the end of the month in time for Paris. The
boring "fixup" out of the way, the ground will be cleared for the 
"ease of use" and "fun" release 0.8, intended to be the final significant
RSF functional update on the server side.

The client-side renderer is still in somewhat "experimental" mode, and 
still does not function correctly in IE. However this will also be brought
into shape and usable for Paris.

Enjoy,
Antranig.