And so, reading between and among the lines below... the clear
need for "starter" packs aimed at new users (why do we call them
newbies??) with differing needs and backgrounds. Each pack can
be listed along with its target audience and expected knowledge.
Comes back to Robert's whole point in the beginning - make it
easy for someone to get started with something simple (the hook)
and then reel in them with the full package (the line) - its not a
case of "either or" ... but "first" and "then"!
>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 27/01/2003 08:17:28 >>>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hunsberger, Peter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 12:43 PM
> To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> Subject: RE: Cocoon is complex, but worth it! Some Answers to your
> dilemma
>
>
> > For what it's worth, I walked through the steps for building the minimal
> war he was looking for on > Saturday, sent him the binary war (5 meg) and
> posted the steps on the wiki. He's already written a > first custom
> generator that connects to his ejbs and seems much happier now. He's
> started to refer > to cocoon as "we"! :) Some of that happened
> off list, so
> I thought it worth sending in a quick
> > update.
>
> Yes, I saw that. I'm only now catching up with the 280 e-mails I had this
> morning: that's what I get for being off-line all weekend; new
> baby girl at
> home, who has time for computers :-)
I can imagine! My wife is looking at me strange after spending all weekend
writing some of those 280! Congratulations on the new baby girl by the way.
>
> > I do agree, Peter that many people will not see a need right
> away to strip
> things out, but a great > point that Robert made is that the flip side of
> keeping the expanse of possibilities visible to a
> > new user is that it's quite difficult to figure out what's essential and
> what's not: especially for > the ejb world where logic and data access are
> already well encapsulated.
>
> Really the biggest issue for me as a new Cocoon users was the sitemap; you
> get told to look at the sitemap since everything is controlled by the
> sitemap. Then, once you look at the sitemap you wonder what the
> heck is ALL
> this stuff? A WAR packed full of tons of JARS I can ignore, but Cocoon
> isn't going to do me much good unless I can comprehend the sitemap.
>
> The flip side top this is that if you have a minimal sitemap then there is
> no good way to learn the features of Cocoon incrementally. Once
> you've got
> things working with Cocoon what is going to make you look at other Coccon
> components to see if you can extend things with Cocoon instead of
> re-inventing the wheel? You spend a bit of time looking, but there is so
> much to look at it's often easier to just incrementally add to
> your own code
> one bit at a time. Next thing you know you've reinvented the Castor
> transformer (or whatever)...
I agree. My feeling (and I think Robert to a degree) is that the benefit of
the minimal build with an almost empty sitemap is only alongside something
else that shows
the full range of possibilities. I'm not sure that something else should
always be the sitemap - the docs may be a better place but am not sure if
they have kept up with the info
in the sitemap.
Geoff
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Please check that your question has not already been answered in the
> FAQ before posting. <http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/faq/index.html>
>
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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>
>
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>>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 27/01/2003 08:17:28 >>>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Hunsberger, Peter [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
> Sent: Monday, January 27, 2003 12:43 PM
> To: '[EMAIL PROTECTED]'
> Subject: RE: Cocoon is complex, but worth it! Some Answers to your
> dilemma
>
>
> > For what it's worth, I walked through the steps for building the minimal
> war he was looking for on > Saturday, sent him the binary war (5 meg) and
> posted the steps on the wiki. He's already written a > first custom
> generator that connects to his ejbs and seems much happier now. He's
> started to refer > to cocoon as "we"! :) Some of that happened
> off list, so
> I thought it worth sending in a quick
> > update.
>
> Yes, I saw that. I'm only now catching up with the 280 e-mails I had this
> morning: that's what I get for being off-line all weekend; new
> baby girl at
> home, who has time for computers :-)
I can imagine! My wife is looking at me strange after spending all weekend
writing some of those 280! Congratulations on the new baby girl by the way.
>
> > I do agree, Peter that many people will not see a need right
> away to strip
> things out, but a great > point that Robert made is that the flip side of
> keeping the expanse of possibilities visible to a
> > new user is that it's quite difficult to figure out what's essential and
> what's not: especially for > the ejb world where logic and data access are
> already well encapsulated.
>
> Really the biggest issue for me as a new Cocoon users was the sitemap; you
> get told to look at the sitemap since everything is controlled by the
> sitemap. Then, once you look at the sitemap you wonder what the
> heck is ALL
> this stuff? A WAR packed full of tons of JARS I can ignore, but Cocoon
> isn't going to do me much good unless I can comprehend the sitemap.
>
> The flip side top this is that if you have a minimal sitemap then there is
> no good way to learn the features of Cocoon incrementally. Once
> you've got
> things working with Cocoon what is going to make you look at other Coccon
> components to see if you can extend things with Cocoon instead of
> re-inventing the wheel? You spend a bit of time looking, but there is so
> much to look at it's often easier to just incrementally add to
> your own code
> one bit at a time. Next thing you know you've reinvented the Castor
> transformer (or whatever)...
I agree. My feeling (and I think Robert to a degree) is that the benefit of
the minimal build with an almost empty sitemap is only alongside something
else that shows
the full range of possibilities. I'm not sure that something else should
always be the sitemap - the docs may be a better place but am not sure if
they have kept up with the info
in the sitemap.
Geoff
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Please check that your question has not already been answered in the
> FAQ before posting. <http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/faq/index.html>
>
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> For additional commands, e-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>
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FAQ before posting. <http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/faq/index.html>
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