EOL for ReadiumJS

Introduction

As of September 2018, the Readium Chrome app is still available in the Google Chrome store but the changes to Google's security policies have severely curtailed its functionality. As a result, Readium has ceased to invest new development resources in the Chrome app. Worse, this has also led to little work on the CloudReader other than fixing critical bugs. Finally, we (primarily EvidentPoint) have begun work on "Readium Web" which comprises saving the essential bits of the ReadiumJS stack and adding interfaces, cleaning up library management, etc.

As a result, the time has come to formally "end of life" the Chrome app. The goals of this effort would be:

• Freeze the existing ReadiumJS stack
• Create the new "Readium Web" stack
• Document the process
• Set up continuous builds and testing for the new browser-based app
• Prepare communications about the whole set of activities
• Communicate what we are doing as clearly as possible both through
  • readium.org
  • the Readium app in the Chrome store
  • various readme and wiki pages throughout the Readium github site

To be clear, there are effectively two major phases to this effort:

• locking down the existing repos and communicating to our users of the Chrome app and the CloudReader that no further work will be done on them
• actually developing the new Readium browser-based app

The latter will clearly take some time while the former is the critical aspect that we need to complete ASAP.

Timing

There are two parameters controlling the timing of the EOL.

• Preparation of the communication (readium.org, Chrome store)
• Verification that the desktop app (Readium Desktop) is ready, at least at a Beta level

Preparation of the communication is (presumably) one of the tasks of the communication task force.

Verification of the desktop app will require a fair amount of testing across a number of platforms. Hopefully, we can leverage our intern volunteers from the HiTek school. Ric will prepare a plan for this (already underway, as of 2 August).

Depending on how quickly we can generate the communication and validate the app, it seems reasonable to implement the EOL by the end of September.

Update

The release of 0.31 is now scheduled for 20 September. All of the work is done, we are just testing. One new feature is that every time the library view is refreshed the app puts up a model dialog that states:

“As Google has deprecated Chrome apps, this app is longer actively supported, and will no longer be updated after the September 2018 release (0.31). A list of other apps that are powered by Readium can be found at Readium.org"

New Repos

We will need four new repos corresponding to readium-js, readium-js-viewer, shared-js and cfi-js. One approach would be to pattern them of the existing names and the "r2" prefix used elsewhere. Thus:

R1 Name	Readium-Web Name
readium-js-viewer	r2-js-viewer
readium-js	r2-js
readium-shared-js	r2-shared-js
readium-cfi-js	r2-cfi-js

Each of these repos will be a clone of the existing repo, then modified by

• removing all code, build-scripts, resources, etc. related to the Chrome app
• adding new interfaces and APIs as appropriate
• modifying and/or adding tests in order to enable functional testing (e.g. continuous build processes such as on Travis)