[xwiki-devs] [VOTE] Remove the xwiki-core captcha plugin and add $captchaservice VelocityContextInitializer

I am adding a new captcha component, it uses jcaptcha-2.0-alpha1 and supports image captchas and sound captchas (freetts jars must be added for sound captcha support) There is a captcha plugin in xwiki-core which makes the core depend on jcaptcha-all-1.0-RC3. jcaptcha-all-1.0-RC3 causes conflicts when getting classes from jcaptcha-2.0. The plugin in querstion: http://svn.xwiki.org/svnroot/xwiki/platform/core/trunk/xwiki-core/src/main/… Here's my +1 for removing it entirely, breaking backward compatibility, lightening xwiki-core, and making the core no longer depend on jcaptcha. You may review a patch for removing the plugin here: http://jira.xwiki.org/jira/secure/attachment/16508/XWIKI-4779-removeJcaptch… To provide velocity access to the captcha component for checking the results of the captcha, I would like to add a VelocityContextInitializer which will add a binding called $captchaservice which will provide 3 methods: /** * If this is false, the captcha system will still work. * It is for velocity scripts to determine whether captchas are needed. * * @return Is the captcha service enabled in the configuration. */ boolean isEnabled() /** @return a List of the names of all registered classes implementing {@link org.xwiki.captcha.CaptchaVerifier}. */ public List<String> listCaptchaNames() /** * Get a {@link org.xwiki.captcha.CaptchaVerifier} from the service. * * @param captchaName The name of the type of captcha, use {@link #listCaptchaNames()} for a list * @return A captcha object which can be used to check a specific answer for a given challange * @throws Exception If the named captcha doesn't exist. */ public CaptchaVerifier getCaptchaVerifier(String captchaName) throws Exception I realize throwing an Exception to velocity always results in a stack trace but I see it as the lesser evil to returning a non-functional CaptchaVerifier which always returns false. Also I see no use case where the name of the captcha is not given in hardcoded velocity so this Exception is only for the velocity developers. Here's my +1 for adding this as well. Caleb James DeLisle