PotentialBatikUpgrade
Potential Batik Upgrade
Abstract
This document describes potential upgrade of Batik used in Visualweb.
Current Status
Currently there is used modified part of Batik version 1.5.1, i.e. the DOM and CSS modules. There are two modules which depend on this kind of library: designer/markup and designer/cssengine. The designer/markup module provides DOM implementation in order to satisfy Batik CSSEngine to be able parse the styles. The designer/cssengine is visualweb enhancement/implementation of the Batik CSS engine and also value managers.
Changes in new versions of Batik
There were made changes in the DOM and CSS modules of Batik from version 1.5.1 to version 1.6 and 1.7. The summary doesn't inform about huge performance improvements. However there seems to be made a lot of changes in the source structure.
Potential Update
The update would be larger one. It would require reimplementation of both designer/markup and designer/cssengine modules, because the Batik internal source structure changes are significant. For example the base CSSEngine class looks different, and it is not possible to directly subclass it. I.e. the effort to upgrade to the newer versions would require implementation of the designer/markup and designer/cssengine modules from scratch.
Summary
The upgrade would be useful (like with any other upgrade). The drawback is that it would be very expensive, the problems are the modifications of the Batik code, and heavy subclassing of those sources. From the point of view of current time table (Feb 2008) of 6.1 plan, this change doesn't seem to be feasible.
