last changed $Date: 2003/11/24 19:57:54 $
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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

development and general questions/discussion happens on the mir-coders mailing
list: mir-coders at lists.indymedia.org

for archives or to subscribe:

http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mir-coders

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 infrastructure to allow easy low-level
  customization of Mir.