[Seaside] catching up (part I)

[Avi Bryant]

Hi all,

As promised last week, I've started to attack the backlog of  
contributions that have come in over the last month or so.  The first  
thing I've done is to post a Seaside2.6a2-avi.1 version to  
SqueakSource, which includes a number of small fixes and  
enhancements.  They are:

- Fix Color>>hex (lr)
- Refactor the ValidationDecoration to look for a specific  
notification (cds)
- Fix anchorWithPopupUrl:extent:do: (lr and mjr)
- Add extra classes to input elements with their type (lr)
- Reseed the random number generator used for IDs on image startup (al)
- #labelAfter:input: (dc)
- #urlForAction:andPath: (lr)
- change values from WAInspector (pmm)
- add year nav to MiniCalendar (al)
- add a large #hash value to StateHolder (lr)
- ensure that URL paths start with a / (lr)
- Fix validation of DateSelector
- Notify entry points when they're removed from the Dispatcher
- Unregister all sessions when clearing the Registry

Some of these have less obvious motivations than others; the  
reseeding of the random number generator, for example, is necessary  
when running multiple copies of the same image in a load balanced  
setup so that they don't end up using the same sequence of IDs for  
sessions and static resources.  The #hash addition to StateHolder is  
a performance optimization that works around problems with large  
identity dictionaries in Squeak.  If anyone wants more detail on the  
others, let me know.

The large group of contributions I haven't yet addressed is that  
dealing with XmlHttpRequest.  Frankly, I'm a bit overwhelmed by all  
of the changes, many of them conflicting, that have come in for that  
code.  I also feel that it's likely to keep changing at a high rate -  
certainly higher than most of the rest of the framework.  To help us  
manage that, I propose splitting it into a separate package, and I've  
done that for 2.6a2.  All of the "liveRequest" code is now in a  
SeasideAsync package, kept in the same repository.  I would very much  
appreciate it if anyone with changes or extensions to that code -  
whether or not they were previously published in the Seaside package  
- would, at the least, commit corresponding new versions of  
SeasideAsync, so that we can do some focused merging and discussion.

The third thing I plan to do is to look over the major external  
packages related to Seaside for overrides and extensions that might  
be better rolled into the main release.  The packages I plan to look  
at are:

- SeasideTesting
- Magritte
- ShoreComponents
- Bicephale

If there are others you want to call my attention to, please do.

Cheers,
Avi