Reptile
(an OpenPrivacy project)

Guidelines

The following are guidelines that all developers must follow when working on Reptile:

• Keep installation as simple as possible. It is important that we remember that Reptile is a user application and needs to be simple to install and work with.
• All content should represented as abstracted XML and presented/generated via XSL. The only exception to this rule should be user documentation. It is acceptable to keep user documentation as HTML if it is in a format which does not use browser specific code and is portable across even low level devices such as those which can render HTML 3.2.
• High level of Reputation integration. Reptile needs to fully utilize Sierra reputation objects (if you don't know what this means you should check out Sierra). It is important that we embrace Sierra and add features that really utilize Reputations.
• Keep code portable. It is important that Reptile runs on as many Operating Systems as possible.
  • Don't use absolute paths.
  • Try to use resource: URLs as much as possible so that we load any necessary resources via jar files instead of directly for the file system.
  • Use Java system properties for finding information such as tmpdir (java.io.tmpdir), etc
• Document code frequently so that all features are thoroughly documented and we don't have any functionality that isn't exposed via the website.
• Use CVS often so that developers can keep synchronized with each other.
• Reptile should be designed around modularity. All additional functionality should be added so that it can be modified easily.
• Don't worry too much about CPU utilization. Reptile is a P2P application which means we are sitting on 1Ghz machines that don't do anything else besides word processing. If you have to waste CPU in order to provide an elegant design, go ahead and do it.
  • The multi-phase XSLT is a good example of using CPU to provide an elegant design. This wastes CPU but it allows us to manage XML in an obvious and logical manner.
• Use the bug tracking system as much as possible. Currently this is Bugzilla
• Don't use the words 'uri' or 'url' in any XML or Java code. These can be confusing. Instead use 'identifier' or 'location'.