Gentlemen,
can we agree on the following?
1. The compliance page must be able to handle multiple FOP versions.
2. Which versions are shown at any point in time and how they are called
will be decided on a case by case basis. Currently we are talking only
about the last official release (0.20.5) and the current work in
progress (1.0dev, 0.9pr, ...) but down the track versions may be added
or removed at a frequency we don't know yet.
From my perspective, as I have put my hand up to do this, this raises
two issues.
a) What is the appropriate visual design for the compliance page to
achieve 1.?
Two proposals have been made:
i) Maintain the current 3 column layout of
<Version>
Basic | Extended | Complete
and replicate
<Version 1> <Version 2>
Basic | Extended | Complete | Basic | Extended | Complete
This solution allows to quickly see by scanning down a column if a
particular version is conformant at a particular level. However, it
doesn't scale very well. Even with two versions only it will be very
"squished" on the screen. Adding more than 2 will most likely be
looking fairly awkward.
ii) Change the layout to a single column per version and indicate in a
single separate column at which conformance level a particular FO
object or property "lives" (For a sample see the XSL-FO Object Support
Table at http://www.arcus.com.au/fop/compliance.html). This solution
scales better as it is more compact but it is harder to see if a
particular version is conformant at a particular level.
b) What is the appropriate technical solution to achieve 2.?
i) Manually edit the HTML
ii) Use some WYSIWYG tool which can produce Forrest compliant output
(OpenOffice was suggested)
iii) Revive the generation of the page from XML input (does someone have
the original compliance.xml file - I can't find it in SVN?)
I am happy to investigate and implement (if needed) the technical
solution but I would like to get FOP committer feedback on the look &
feel of the page as this is part of the projects public face.
Cheers
Manuel
On Mon, 1 Aug 2005 10:44 pm, Chris Bowditch wrote:
> The Web Maestro wrote:
> > On Aug 1, 2005, at 2:58 AM, Chris Bowditch wrote:
> >> I don't think adding/removing releases from the compliance page is
> >> something we plan on doing frequently. A side by side comparsion
> >> is only required now because the Trunk code is a complete
> >> re-write.
> >>
> >> Once the trunk code has stablized and its being used in
> >> production, everything relating to the maintanance branch can
> >> probably be removed from the website. When further releases are
> >> made from the Trunk, it will simply be a matter of updating the
> >> compliance page to reflect what the latest release supports.
> >>
> >> Chris
> >
> > Actually, I think we'll probably leave the 0.20.5 release online
> > (although, we haven't discussed this yet). One thing about 0.20.5
> > and previous versions is that, presumably, they support more
> > systems than the one about to be released. IIRC, 0.9/1.0dev will
> > require Java 1.4 or 1.5, neither of which are supported by AIX 4.1
> > (JRE 1.3 max). For this reason, it makes sense (to me) to at least
> > maintain a comparison page (if we don't leave that
> > maintenance-branch info on the FOP Compliance Page).
>
> Clay - 0.9pr will support JDK 1.3. I have long been arguging the need
> to maintain support for it. I believe Jeremias applied a patch
> recently to fix the issues with building 0.9pr on 1.3. So it should
> be okay now?
>
> So I don't think 0.20.5 will have any advantage once 0.9 has become
> stable. Hence why I think we should stop promoting it once 0.9 is
> thorouhly tested and in production.
>
> Chris
