-last changed $Date: 2002/12/08 07:05:56 $
+last changed $Date: 2002/12/24 01:45:54 $
-----------------------------------------
-Mir is an Open-Source content managment system, designed to run an
-indymedia(type) website. Besides powering several indymedia sites, a number of
-progessive organizations use Mir customized for their own needs. Mir aims to
-provide sophisticated functionality, for example, complete multi-lingual content
-production, editing, administration, and presentation, while retaining the
-ability to be run on less than top of the line hardware through extensive static
-caching.
+GENERAL INFO
+============
+
+Mir is an Open-Source java servlet based content managment system, designed to
+run an indymedia(type) website. Besides powering several indymedia sites, a
+number of progessive organizations use Mir customized for their own needs. Mir
+aims to provide sophisticated functionality, for example, complete
+multi-lingual content production, editing, administration, and presentation,
+while retaining the ability to be run on less than top of the line hardware
+through extensive static caching.
+
+Mir uses technologies such as Apache Tomcat and the Freemarker template engine.
more info at: http://mir.indymedia.org
mailing list for cvs commits:
http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/Mir-cvs
+
+LICENSING
+=========
+
+Mir is licensed under the GNU GPL.
+
+FEATURES
+========
+
+* Static publishing: Mir produces static HTML files for easy mirroring and so
+ that the site can be viewed without creating a high load on servers. No fancy
+ caching mechanisms are necessary. The presentation and production are
+ completely independent from each other.
+* Very configurable (see the config.properties file)
+* Written in Java using standard servlet API and popular tools like those from
+ the Apache Jakarta project (http://jakarta.apache.org)
+* Uses the Freemarker template engine to allow easy modification of
+ site design without programming knowledge.
+* Structured Object oriented 4 layer design. Servlet modules, Entity/Database
+ (the persistance layer), Media handlers (an abstraction layer for
+ manipulating different media formats) and the Producer layer (for creating
+ the static html pages). see doc/CODESTRUCTURE for more details.
+* The persistance layer uses the poolman package for caching Database
+ connections.
+* Entity object caching is integrated into the persistance layer.
+* Meta-data/Database schema and classification based on the Dublic Core
+ standard. Media folders, topics, features.
+* supports displaying the dynamic part of the site in multiple languages using
+ the Java Locale/language bundle standard (.properties files). Bundles exist
+ for spanish, english, dutch, quechua, turkish, german and aymara. The
+ upcoming 1.1 version (in CVS) supports producing the static site in several
+ languages.
+* Media abstraction layer to cleanly and easily handle/add different Media
+ formats like mp3, realmedia, video, etc.. uses mime-types to map to the
+ correct handler
+* Supports categorization into topics and media folders (eg. different folders
+ for different events), features, breaking news, newswire, etc..
+* Production of xml RDF syndication. e.g for the indymedia global newswire.
+* Powerful and rich admin/editor interface with features like the ability to
+ change the event date of an article, multiple ways to search.. help and much
+ more.
+* Ability to edit some static site files such as CSS, html include files
+ through a basic web based text editor.
+* Filtering of uploaded articles to remove unwanted HTML tags.
+* Can output articles into PDF (upcoming 1.1 version has better text wrapping
+ support).
+* Search via HTdig index of static files. (upcoming 1.1 CVS version uses
+ integrated Jakarta Lucene for indexing the static files.)
+* Automatic thumbnail generation using Java Advanced Imaging (JAI). (1.1 will
+ probably use Jmagick)
+
+In the upcoming 1.1 release
+===========================
+
+* completely rewrite of the producer layer. Runs in it's own thread.
+ Configurable via an XML file to dynamically choose the structure the site
+ should take, what should be archived...
+* Introduction of the Localization infracstructure to allow easy low-level
+ customization of Mir.
+