On 29 Nov 2008, at 00:56, Brian M Dube wrote:
I'd like to spend some time on a proof of concept version of Forrest without Cocoon, whether that's whiteboard/forrest2 or a new approach. One of the requirements, or at least functional tests, that has already been mentioned with respect to forrest2 is that the seed site must function correctly. I think this implies that current style plugins need to be supported.
That really depends on your use case. The majority of work in the plugins is the XSLT, so reuse of part of the plugins would probably be acceptable. However, those plugins are based on XDoc and we have been intending to go to XHTML2 for a very long time and Forrest2 would be the sensible time to do that.
So, I'd say there is no need for it to be compatible with existing plugins. I would say that it should be compatible with the important part of Forrest. That is, existing sites should work without modification - or a tool be provided for conversion.
To support current plugins requires sitemap and locationmap implementations that don't depend on Cocoon.
My original motivation for the Forrest2 experiments was to remove the complexity of the sitemap (an expressive language for web apps, not applicable to a publishing framework) and further enhance the ideas in the locationmap (decoupling of source and target data).
For me Forrest 2 should not be constrained by Forrest 1.
It looks difficult, but not impossible, to extract sitemap support from the Cocoon source. Is this the way to go?
Not for what I did with Forrest2 in whiteboard. I can't answer for your own use case.
Speaking personally, if your work went the sitemap route I would probably not be engaged by it. That's not to say it is a bad idea - just that if it doesn't solve the configuration complexities of the current system I'm not sure what utility it would have for me.
However, have you looked at the Cocoon 3 work? From what (little) I know of this it is a simplified Cocoon.
Implement support for sites and plugins as they exist now, and use a new format for new development?
See above.
What are the other requirements to move away from Cocoon?
My motivations can be found in the archives, e.g. http://markmail.org/message/dxy3qrsw4jyw26rd
Is there community interest to move away from Cocoon?
My Forrest2 proposal was never about moving away from Cocoon. It was about removing the need for a monolithic web framework for creating an XML publishing framework. My Forrest 2 design was all about allowing people who need to leverage Cocoon (or any other framework) in a Forrest content object - but not forcing them to do so.
Do I still think this is a good idea? Yes I do - see my RT thread linked above.
Will I work on it. Quite possibly. I don't find the time to work with Forrest these days - it doesn't match my needs anymore, but I still need an XML publishing framework that is something like Forrest (but allows more flexibility). There is, to my knowledge, no suitable alternative.
Ross Ross
