How is the cocoon object model set up?

[Berin Loritsch]

I submitted bug COCOON-1816 because the cocoon object model was not set 
up in a way that I expected.  It cost hours of lost productivity only to 
find out I have to bounce my processing for a static page (with a couple 
variable pieces) through a flowscript just to access cocoon.request.  To 
me that is an example of something that can be fixed to improve the 
perceived simplicity of the system.  It seems unreasonable to require 
Flowscript first for a largely static page--nothing has to be set up, I 
just need to get a bit of information from the request object.

I believe the cocoon object model is a great selling point--as long as 
it is set up consistently and available to all sitemap components 
without forcing one component to be executed before another.  Not all 
problems require flowscript.

Is the COM strictly tied to the flowscript engine?  Is there any way we 
can safely and simply extract that out?