I just added node API to HyperEstraier perl bindings. It's my first real project in C++, so be kind to it :-)
All changes are available at Subversion repository and if I didn't do something stupid it will be included in upstream version, I hope. Next step: add node API to pgestraier...

Search::Estraier will be perl API to Hyper Estraier. It's written using excellent Inline::C

Grand plan is to use pgestraier from PostgreSQL to query Estraier index and Search::Estraier to create index. This would allow to combine structured data in RDBMS with semi-structured data in full text index. Additional normalized tables can be created using materialized views in PostgreSQL, and if all goes well, it will be part of WebPAC version 2 which will be universal hybrid (structured/full text) storage.

Update: I had good luck to find already working perl bindings for Hyper Estraier at MATSUNO Tokuhiro blog. Thanks a lot! So, work on Search::Estraier is suspended.

With latest changes going into swish-e CVS repository, swish-e doesn't segfaults any more when used with --enable-incremental option. That is great news, and enables me to continue working on SWISH::Split module, so here is first release (local, not on CPAN yet).

Did you ever needed group chat in ICQ? I did. Thanks to great Net::OSCAR it was a joy to write (but, it took me quite some time to find Net::OSCAR in the first place).

On unrelated note, I started forbidding comments on my blog. Sorry about that, but I don't have time to change blogging software now, and amount of junk that I receive in comments is several times higher than real comments. So, if you have a comment, feel free to send me e-mail at dpavlin(at)rot13(dot)org.

Well, it's released. Module which used to be called IsisDB is now Biblio::Isis. It also includes part of CDS/ISIS manual about file format which might be useful even if you don't plan to use this module.

This module was my first journey into decoding file formats (well, not exactly first, but first which had to be released to public). I did a good thing and asked nice people at perl4lib to test it first. And guess what? It didn't work on Mac OS X. I should have known better than to use perl's unpack with l if I wanted cross-platform compatibility. But, over-presence of Linux boxes with x86 processors produced strange problem for me: PowerPC which powers Mac is little-endian while all boxes which I have access to are big-endian. Hum, what to do?

Few weeks ago, I stumbled upon PearPC. Together with OpenDarwin it's a great platform (and little-endian :-) to test your code on BSD-based Unix which runs totally different than your local Linux box. Thanks to all hard working developers from both project for that.
Have in mind that PearPC is really slow. Something like 68k-based Mac. However, for simple perl development it's fast enough. And it solved my problem. Highly recommended.

I'm working currently on two perl modules which will be very useful in next
version of WebPAC:

• IsisDB - perl-only alternative to OpenIsis perl bindings which are depreciated (at it seems)
• Swish::Split - experimental module to enable indexing from perl using swish-e. It uses experimental incremental mode which is available in swish-e for a while, but it still has some problems.

Since my network at home doesn't work (you just have to live wireless!), I
won't blog much for the rest of this year. On the bright side, there isn't
much days left in this year anyway...