Re: New doc format and organization

17 Oct 2000 16:09:46 -0000 


When I said there were problems with using a navigation frame, I was
thinking of having a dynamic expanding and colapsing table of contents,
rather than a static one.  From what I've seen so far, the problems often
come down to browser support for JavaScript and DHTML.

Given that the titles in the TOC are fairly short, we can probably get away
with having the static nav in a left hand frame and having the content in
the right, minus the embedded navigation.  It would look cleaner and remove
the navigation maintenance problems.

Glenn McAllister
Software Developer. IBM Toronto Lab, (416) 448-3805
"An approximate answer to the right question is better than the
right answer to the wrong question." - John W. Tukey


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Subject:  Re: New doc format and organization

I have mixed feelings about this....

Reasons FOR it:

  a. maintenance of any one topic is easier since
     you only have to update a file or two...
  b. focus on one topic at a time is nice,
     especially if this is done as frames (see below)

Reasons against it:

  a. Can't search the document.
  b. Can't print the whole document
     at one shot.

However, if we get the docs to an automated
creation point, we should do both the frame
version and the single long version for
searching/printing...


Cosmetic - it would be nicer if the "index.html"
was in a left hand frame for navigation, and
the right hand pane contained the information.
Glenn said there were issues across browsers, but
I don't know what they are....

I just did a quick test by creating this frame set:

<HTML>
<FRAMESET FRAMEBORDER=1 FRAMESPACING=2 cols="20%,80%">
  <FRAME src="index.html" name="left">
  <FRAME src="intro.htm" name="right">
</FRAMESET>
</HTML>

Then, I edited "index.html" to have target=right
in all the hrefs, i.e.:

  <dt>1.0 <a href="intro.htm" target=right>Introduction</a></dt>
  <dt>2.0 <a href="getting_ant.htm" target=right>Getting Ant</a></dt>
  <dt>3.0 <a href="system_requirements.htm" target=right>Determining
system requirements</a></dt>
  <dt>4.0 <a href="building_ant.htm" target=right>Building Ant</a></dt>

I tested this with Netscape 5.7 and IE 5.0 on NT, and it
looked fine. Whenever you click on a link in the left
hand frame, the content appears in the right hand
side. I edited a few "next" and "previous" links to
be correct, and verified that they move within the
right hand frame correctly.

Only "big" change I see is that the list of contributors
looks odd in the left hand navigation pane, so I moved
it to "intro.htm".


It all looked fine to me. Not sure why this can't be part
of the 1.2 release. I've attached the modified files if
you'd like to try them out. Just unzip Glenn's file,
extract the attachments into the same place, and
start with "frames.html" rather than "index.html"...

Glenn McAllister wrote:
>
> Hello all.
>
> I've been working over the docs a bit to reorganize them.  The current
> format of one bit index.html file is getting too unwieldy.  The next
> logical step is to use framesets with some sort of navigation pane.
> Unfortunately, I don't have time to build one that will work across
> multiple browsers before our ship date.
Title: Introduction

Ant User Manual

written by

Version 1.2 - 2000/10/13

Ant User Manual
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Introduction

Ant is a Java based build tool. In theory it is kind of like make without make's wrinkles.

Why?

Why another build tool when there is already make, gnumake, nmake, jam, and others? Because all of those tools have limitations that its original author couldn't live with when developing software across multiple platforms. Make like tools are inherently shell based. They evaluate a set of dependencies and then execute commands not unlike what you would issue on a shell. This means that you can easily extend these tools by using or writing any program for the OS that you are working on. However, this also means that you limit yourself to the OS, or at least the OS type such as Unix, that you are working on.

Makefiles are inherently evil as well. Anybody who has worked on them for any time has run into the dreaded tab problem. "Is my command not executing because I have a space in front of my tab!!!" said the original author of Ant way too many times. Tools like Jam took care of this to a great degree, but still use yet another format to use and remember.

Ant is different. Instead a model where it is extended with shell based commands, it is extended using Java classes. Instead of writing shell commands, the configuration files are XML based calling out a target tree where various tasks get executed. Each task is run by an object which implements a particular Task interface.

Granted, this removes some of the expressive power that is inherent by being able to construct a shell command such as `find . -name foo -exec rm {}` but it gives you the ability to be cross platform. To work anywhere and everywhere. And hey, if you really need to execute a shell command, Ant has an exec rule that allows different commands to be executed based on the OS that it is executing on.

Prev Home Next
Table of Contents Getting Ant
Title: Ant

Table of Contents

1.0 Introduction
2.0 Getting Ant
3.0 Determining system requirements
4.0 Building Ant
5.0 Installing Ant
6.0 Running Ant
7.0 Writing a simple buildfile
7.1 Projects
7.2 Targets
7.3 Tasks
7.4 Properties
7.5 Example
9.0 Using directory based tasks
8.1 PatternSet
8.2 FileSet
9.0 Using advanced features
9.1 Token filters
9.2 PATH and CLASSPATH
9.3 Command line arguments
9.4 References
10.0 Using the built in tasks
10.1 Ant
10.2 AntCall
10.3 AntStructure
10.4 Available
10.5 Chmod
10.6 Copy
10.7 Copydir
10.8 Copyfile
10.9 Cvs
10.10 Delete
10.11 Deltree
10.12 Echo
10.13 Exec
10.14 ExecOn
10.15 Fail
10.16 Filter
10.17 FixCRLF
10.18 GenKey
10.19 Get
10.20 GUnzip
10.21 GZip
10.22 Jar
10.23 Java
10.24 Javac
10.25 Javadoc
10.26 Mail
10.27 Mkdir
10.28 Move
10.29 Patch
10.30 Property
10.31 Rename
10.32 Replace
10.33 Rmic
10.34 SignJar
10.35 Sql
10.36 Style
10.37 Tar
10.38 Taskdef
10.39 Touch
10.40 Tstamp
10.41 Unjar
10.42 Untar
10.43 Unwar
10.44 Unzip
10.45 Uptodate
10.46 War
10.47 Zip
11.0 Using the optional tasks
11.1 Cab
11.2 FTP
11.3 JavaCC
11.4 Jlink
11.5 JUnit
11.6 Native2Ascii
11.7 NetRexxC
11.8 Perforce
11.9 RenameExtensions
11.10 Script
11.12 VssGet
11.13 EJB Tasks
12.0 Understanding build events
13.0 Writing your own task
14.0 Getting the FAQ, DTD, and other external resources
15.0 Feedback
A.0 License

 

Copyright � 2000 Apache Software Foundation. All rights Reserved.

<FRAMESET FRAMEBORDER=1 FRAMESPACING=2 cols="20%,80%">
  <FRAME src="index.html" name="left">
  <FRAME src="intro.htm" name="right">
</FRAMESET>

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