Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
Tony In case you missed my other wandering thought pattern; its my strong feeling we need a SINGLEsection of the website - preferably one well-insulated from the ramblings on the other site which is "always under construction"that (including any formal guides) solely addresses ONLY the needs of newbiesand has ALL the documents AND faqs AND minimal downloads AND simple sitemaps etc inONE place - no obscure wikis/mailing list links. (Gee, we are working with a web publishing platform here - how hard can this be to put together *technically*??) The trick is writing good, clear, simple pages - and that's a matter of write - read - edit recycle until your target newbie - not your average developer/contributor - can make sense of it... Derek [EMAIL PROTECTED] 27/01/2003 06:29:12 In light of this ginormous thread, do we need more newbie guides togetting started with Cocoon? Obviously the CTWIG or whatever is out ofdate, so perhaps there's a demand for something like a Busy Developer'sGuide to getting started with Cocoon? I'd be more that willing to writestuff up that for direct inclusion with the Cocoon documentation that isdistributed with the releases.If so, I'll start writing up a Cocoon BDG (or even a series) in Document1.1 format.P.S. Docs team: Perhaps it's time to start assimilating Wiki content intothe distribution docs?Tony--Cocoon: Internet Glue (A Cocoon Weblog)http://manero.org/weblog/-Please check that your question has not already been answered in theFAQ before posting. http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/faq/index.htmlTo unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]-- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. "The CSIR exercises no editorial control over E-mail messages and/or attachments thereto/links referred to therein originating in the organisation and the views in this message/attachments thereto are therefore not necessarily those of the CSIR and/or its employees. The sender of this e-mail is, moreover, in terms of the CSIR's Conditions of Service, subject to compliance with the CSIR's internal E-mail and Internet Policy."
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
Tony In case you missed my other wandering thought pattern; its my strong feeling we need a SINGLEsection of the website - preferably one well-insulated from the ramblings on the other site which is "always under construction"that (including any formal guides) solely addresses ONLY the needs of newbiesand has ALL the documents AND faqs AND minimal downloads AND simple sitemaps etc inONE place - no obscure wikis/mailing list links. (Gee, we are working with a web publishing platform here - how hard can this be to put together *technically*??) The trick is writing good, clear, simple pages - and that's a matter of write - read - edit recycle until your target newbie - not your average developer/contributor - can make sense of it... Derek [EMAIL PROTECTED] 27/01/2003 06:29:12 In light of this ginormous thread, do we need more newbie guides togetting started with Cocoon? Obviously the CTWIG or whatever is out ofdate, so perhaps there's a demand for something like a Busy Developer'sGuide to getting started with Cocoon? I'd be more that willing to writestuff up that for direct inclusion with the Cocoon documentation that isdistributed with the releases.If so, I'll start writing up a Cocoon BDG (or even a series) in Document1.1 format.P.S. Docs team: Perhaps it's time to start assimilating Wiki content intothe distribution docs?Tony--Cocoon: Internet Glue (A Cocoon Weblog)http://manero.org/weblog/-Please check that your question has not already been answered in theFAQ before posting. http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/faq/index.htmlTo unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]-- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. "The CSIR exercises no editorial control over E-mail messages and/or attachments thereto/links referred to therein originating in the organisation and the views in this message/attachments thereto are therefore not necessarily those of the CSIR and/or its employees. The sender of this e-mail is, moreover, in terms of the CSIR's Conditions of Service, subject to compliance with the CSIR's internal E-mail and Internet Policy."
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
On Saturday 25 January 2003 21:05, Jeff Turner wrote: On Sat, Jan 25, 2003 at 06:22:10PM +0800, Niclas Hedhman wrote: In fact, I think Cocoon is so powerful, that it has kind of grown out of its servlet image. It should traverse to the next level (or two), and has its own deployment system. Collect your stuff (sitemap and all) into a JAR and hand it over. It is almost like that already, and should be a fairly easy addition to make, but the developer community is much more focused on additional features. http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=BlocksDefinition http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101603335007960w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101732982704553w=2 Implemented already?? or part of the upcoming 2.1? Niclas - 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]
RE: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
On Saturday 25 January 2003 21:05, Jeff Turner wrote: On Sat, Jan 25, 2003 at 06:22:10PM +0800, Niclas Hedhman wrote: In fact, I think Cocoon is so powerful, that it has kind of grown out of its servlet image. It should traverse to the next level (or two), and has its own deployment system. Collect your stuff (sitemap and all) into a JAR and hand it over. It is almost like that already, and should be a fairly easy addition to make, but the developer community is much more focused on additional features. http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=BlocksDefinition http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101603335007960w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101732982704553w=2 Implemented already?? or part of the upcoming 2.1? Niclas Upcoming. There is a beginning of blocks implementation in 2.1, but not nearly the full extent of the vision. At the moment, non-core code, documentation, and samples are becoming modularized into separate areas of the source tree, and the build system will include or exclude any of these based on build-time parameters. Features like remote download, adding blocks to already compiled cocoon, blocks exposing services, etc. are still in the works (and don't seem likely for even 2.1). What is there may not sound like much but it's already a big step forward in my view. Those involved in the development so far may wish to add to or correct that summary but I think it's pretty accurate. Geoff Howard - 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] - 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]
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
In light of this ginormous thread, do we need more newbie guides to getting started with Cocoon? Obviously the CTWIG or whatever is out of date, so perhaps there's a demand for something like a Busy Developer's Guide to getting started with Cocoon? I'd be more that willing to write stuff up that for direct inclusion with the Cocoon documentation that is distributed with the releases. If so, I'll start writing up a Cocoon BDG (or even a series) in Document 1.1 format. P.S. Docs team: Perhaps it's time to start assimilating Wiki content into the distribution docs? Tony -- Cocoon: Internet Glue (A Cocoon Weblog) http://manero.org/weblog/ - 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]
RE: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
Imho, yeah the CTWIG is helpful as a starting point for a newbie. The other tutorial that I thought that was helpful was from the www.cocooncenter.de topic auto-mount, except that it needs a litle change instead of WildcardURIMatcherFactory it should use WildcardURIMatcher on the sitemap.xmap. I believe galatea.com have listed the minimum jar files required to make up a working cocoon environment. It sure do take lots of efforts to know where these goodies resources are. Jeremy and Lajos Cocoon Developer's handbook is excellent for newbies (I am a newbie). Chapter 11 is very insightful covering the heart of Cocoon, sitemap.xmap. The other two books imho is more for framework designers and cocoon component developers. I did not get to read the two in depth but looking at the samples(as a newbie I like to see lots of working samples) I would say Jeremy Lajos is by far the friendliest. e nio --- Jeremy Aston [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There are good reasons why ctwig is hidden now, mainly because it fell out of step with documentation as that moved on. I have intended for sometime to update the stuff so that it can go back into the mainstream examples but it has had to drop down my priority list for various reasons. Having said that, IMHO there are a shed load of places (including the dist docs) that cover basic xml/xslt/xsp handling with Cocoon. So why is it that people feel Cocoon is too difficult to get into? Does ctwig still fill a gap? Could we have even more simple examples, wars etc that people can just pick up and use? I am personally very concerned that the perception is still of Cocoon as a difficult beast to get into. The recent threads on this are a kick up the backside for me as far as getting ctwig up to date goes but it would be nice to know that that is still what is needed. I promise to work on this in the very near future so let me know if you think anything else needs doing to make being a Cocoon newbie as welcoming a prospect as possible rgds Jeremy -Original Message- From: e nio [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 25 January 2003 07:22 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption? At one time there was the CTWIG as part of the samples I believed or maybe it was a link on the getting started documentation. Yes it would be nice for us newbies to start with that and get acquainted with cocoon. Anyhow here is the link from Jeremy's site: http://www.pigbite.co.uk/ctwig/blddocs/index.html And if you do a search on the humongous cocoon source, you'd find ctwig under documentation/xdocs/ctwig. enio __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com - 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] __ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com - 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] __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com - 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]
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
Robert Simmons wrote: Users tell me to go to wiki (which is down allot or just really slow) to find information but its like hunting for an needle in a haystack. This is worrying me. Is that the case? Has anyone experienced performance issues with http://wiki.cocoondev.org/ ? snip/ I guess I'm rambling a bit and I'm sorry. Its just frustrating to spend several hours on something and essentially get nowhere. Cocoon may be a powerful product, but it will never go mainstream in the web, imho, with its level of difficulty in understanding it. ... it seems like you are very opinionated, and should thus be a good contributor to the Cocoon Documentation effort. /Steven -- Steven Noelshttp://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source, Java XML Competence Support Center Read my weblog athttp://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/ stevenn at outerthought.orgstevenn at apache.org - 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]
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
On Saturday 25 January 2003 14:17, Robert Simmons wrote: That is the impression that I am getting and I'm curious as to feedback from list users. I bet you will ;o) So how could cocoon be of use to me and others like me? If I could build a war with simply any special classes I have (generators, etc) my XSL pages and a sitemap. Then I deploy that war and cocoon figures out how to wire things together. In general I agree that Cocoon is too feature-oriented and not at all user-oriented. If you know the product as the back of your hand, yes, you think everything is dirt easy, but it is overwhelming to get started. (The good news is that it is 10x better now than in the old days, when you needed ~10 additional downloads and installations.) In fact, I think Cocoon is so powerful, that it has kind of grown out of its servlet image. It should traverse to the next level (or two), and has its own deployment system. Collect your stuff (sitemap and all) into a JAR and hand it over. It is almost like that already, and should be a fairly easy addition to make, but the developer community is much more focused on additional features. Well, well... Niclas - 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]
RE: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
There are good reasons why ctwig is hidden now, mainly because it fell out of step with documentation as that moved on. I have intended for sometime to update the stuff so that it can go back into the mainstream examples but it has had to drop down my priority list for various reasons. Having said that, IMHO there are a shed load of places (including the dist docs) that cover basic xml/xslt/xsp handling with Cocoon. So why is it that people feel Cocoon is too difficult to get into? Does ctwig still fill a gap? Could we have even more simple examples, wars etc that people can just pick up and use? I am personally very concerned that the perception is still of Cocoon as a difficult beast to get into. The recent threads on this are a kick up the backside for me as far as getting ctwig up to date goes but it would be nice to know that that is still what is needed. I promise to work on this in the very near future so let me know if you think anything else needs doing to make being a Cocoon newbie as welcoming a prospect as possible rgds Jeremy -Original Message- From: e nio [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: 25 January 2003 07:22 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption? At one time there was the CTWIG as part of the samples I believed or maybe it was a link on the getting started documentation. Yes it would be nice for us newbies to start with that and get acquainted with cocoon. Anyhow here is the link from Jeremy's site: http://www.pigbite.co.uk/ctwig/blddocs/index.html And if you do a search on the humongous cocoon source, you'd find ctwig under documentation/xdocs/ctwig. enio __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com - 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] __ Do You Yahoo!? Everything you'll ever need on one web page from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts http://uk.my.yahoo.com - 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]
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
On Sat, Jan 25, 2003 at 06:22:10PM +0800, Niclas Hedhman wrote: On Saturday 25 January 2003 14:17, Robert Simmons wrote: That is the impression that I am getting and I'm curious as to feedback from list users. I bet you will ;o) So how could cocoon be of use to me and others like me? If I could build a war with simply any special classes I have (generators, etc) my XSL pages and a sitemap. Then I deploy that war and cocoon figures out how to wire things together. In general I agree that Cocoon is too feature-oriented and not at all user-oriented. If you know the product as the back of your hand, yes, you think everything is dirt easy, but it is overwhelming to get started. (The good news is that it is 10x better now than in the old days, when you needed ~10 additional downloads and installations.) In fact, I think Cocoon is so powerful, that it has kind of grown out of its servlet image. It should traverse to the next level (or two), and has its own deployment system. Collect your stuff (sitemap and all) into a JAR and hand it over. It is almost like that already, and should be a fairly easy addition to make, but the developer community is much more focused on additional features. http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=BlocksDefinition http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101603335007960w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101732982704553w=2 --Jeff Well, well... Niclas - 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]
RE: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
I think a practical and attainable suggestion that could come out of this would be to provide a minimal binary distribution along with the everything but the kitchen sink model. The suggestion for new people would be to download both, play with the kitchen sink, and then start developing their app on the stripped down version. Adding in the few things you need that aren't standard (with a full version to refer to for examples) is probably going to be easier for new users than digging through to determine what is not needed. And obviously some people don't want to have to build from source, which I understand. I don't build apache or tomcat from source unless I have to for some reason, and then I expect some complexity. -Original Message- From: Jeff Turner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 8:06 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption? So how could cocoon be of use to me and others like me? If I could build a war with simply any special classes I have (generators, etc) my XSL pages and a sitemap. Then I deploy that war and cocoon figures out how to wire things together. snip/ In general I agree that Cocoon is too feature-oriented and not at all user-oriented. If you know the product as the back of your hand, yes, you think everything is dirt easy, but it is overwhelming to get started. (The good news is that it is 10x better now than in the old days, when you needed ~10 additional downloads and installations.) In fact, I think Cocoon is so powerful, that it has kind of grown out of its servlet image. It should traverse to the next level (or two), and has its own deployment system. Collect your stuff (sitemap and all) into a JAR and hand it over. It is almost like that already, and should be a fairly easy addition to make, but the developer community is much more focused on additional features. http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=BlocksDefinition http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101603335007960w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101732982704553w=2 Of course blocks when finished should (and already do if you're willing to work from source dist) go a long way to helping identify and exclude unneeded pieces. 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]
RE: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
I think cocoon needs some thing like blank web application( if it does not already have, I am new to Coocon:) ). There is one in Struts. -Original Message- From: Steven Noels [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 6:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption? Jeff Turner wrote: http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=BlocksDefinition http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101603335007960w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101732982704553w=2 oh, but that is unfair since you are a Cocoon committer and you have easier access to such things... not! ;-) /Steven -- Steven Noelshttp://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source, Java XML Competence Support Center Read my weblog athttp://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/ stevenn at outerthought.orgstevenn at apache.org - 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] - 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]
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
I think you might already be there. Currently the concept of cocoon is a great one. I create a piepline and cocoon shunts it from a to b, applying the transforms and so on. Great development effort. Pardon the language but its a shitty user effort. Just look at one of your paragraphs in the linked archive. quote If we don't do this, not only Cocoon will get bigger and bigger (and start appearing more as a distribution of technologies, than a framework), but users will find it harder and harder to modify it for their specific needs. /quote And that is the crux of the problem. Whoever is heading the project seems a bit confused. People dont want to MODIFY cocoon. They want to USE cocoon. They want to install cocoon's mechanics, then drop in their pipelines and go. Cocoon is now trying to do all sorts of things that dont need to be done imho. The number of features is so staggering that gettign started is near impossible. But as I get more into the product, I find myself saying, petulantly, But I just wanted the pipeline! And that is all that I wanted. To have a pipeline. To be able to say to cocoon, Yeah, well ... in your pipeline whenever someone hits URL x, go to pipeline Z and run my custom class (which connects to ejbs and so on) and transform it with stylesheet Y and give it back to the user. But you arent understanding how cocoon works Robert! BINGO!! You hit it right there on the head. I dont want to understand how it works. As a user Im not interested. When reading the JBoss documentation, I skip over all the architecture stuff and the development stuff. As a user, this stuff is irrelevant to me. Object oriented programmign is supposed to guarantee to provide me with an interface and then implement some functionality. How? Who the hell cares? Im a user of it. My prime computing expertise is in the back end side of EJBs and issues that pertain to them. I want to USE cocoon, not develop on it. Possible solutions to this. 1) Rearchitect cocoon to implement some sort of deployment mechanism, such as COB. The problem here is that then you have to get that working with application servers and so on. The other problem is inertia. Gettign the masses of developers to learn a new-unstandardized deployment mechanism. 2) MERGE it with tomcat in the way JBoss has merged with tomcat. I download JBoss and they are like well tomcat is included. I say cool and drop in my wars and go. If cocoon had a basic mechanism install that could be installed into tomcat than the situation would be aleviated. Users of the product drop their wars into tomcat as normal with a sitemap file in the WEB-INF directory and their special generators an so on in the classes directory. Cocoon magically wires together the pipeline. No worrying about how to configure cocoon or what properties to give it or so on. Thats left to advanced users under the heading of customizing your install. At any rate I can see the learning curve for this product is steep. And cocoon is mainly going o suffer from people like me. People whoe would love to use it but dont have a month to blow trying to get a technology to work that is merely suppsed to be an EASY way to develop a polymorphic presentation layer. Lastly, flaming is not an option. These are the opinions from a newbie comming into cocoon. Readers of this list can flame all they want but that is just hiding from the very real problems. -- Robert - Original Message - From: Steven Noels [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 3:43 PM Subject: Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption? Jeff Turner wrote: http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=BlocksDefinition http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101603335007960w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101732982704553w=2 oh, but that is unfair since you are a Cocoon committer and you have easier access to such things... not! ;-) /Steven -- Steven Noelshttp://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source, Java XML Competence Support Center Read my weblog athttp://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/ stevenn at outerthought.orgstevenn at apache.org - 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] - 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]
RE: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
Alireza Fattahi dijo: I think cocoon needs some thing like blank web application( if it does not already have, I am new to Coocon:) ). There is one in Struts. please check: http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=Tutorials It will helps you to understand the USER philosophy behind this incredible web machine in less than 3 hours! (Sams does not publish a similar book! lol). And you will after that start to build your own web application. Best Regards, Antonio Gallardo -Original Message- From: Steven Noels [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 6:14 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption? Jeff Turner wrote: http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=BlocksDefinition http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101603335007960w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101732982704553w=2 oh, but that is unfair since you are a Cocoon committer and you have easier access to such things... not! ;-) /Steven -- Steven Noelshttp://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source, Java XML Competence Support Center Read my weblog athttp://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/ stevenn at outerthought.orgstevenn at apache.org - 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] - 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] - 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]
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
Well you are wrong. I know all of those and some of them QUITE well. And still getting cocoon going is a major hassle. Yes, I can deploy the distribution but I mean getting my own application going. Just a hello-world app. -- robert - Original Message - From: Gustavo Nalle Fernandes [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 5:56 PM Subject: RES: Cocoon is too complex for consumption? Cocoon is a powerfull _framework_ used to develop XML applications and not an out of the box product. As a framework, Cocoon architecture must be well understood in order provide extensions that satisfies a particular need. IMHO, Cocoon´s leaning curve is not steep, assuming that the -DEVELOPER- knows XML, XSL, Namespaces, DTD, SCHEMA, HTTP,Servlets and JAVA/OOP. -Mensagem original- De: Robert Simmons [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Enviada em: sábado, 25 de janeiro de 2003 14:13 Para: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Assunto: Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption? I think you might already be there. Currently the concept of cocoon is a great one. I create a piepline and cocoon shunts it from a to b, applying the transforms and so on. Great development effort. Pardon the language but its a shitty user effort. Just look at one of your paragraphs in the linked archive. quote If we don't do this, not only Cocoon will get bigger and bigger (and start appearing more as a distribution of technologies, than a framework), but users will find it harder and harder to modify it for their specific needs. /quote And that is the crux of the problem. Whoever is heading the project seems a bit confused. People dont want to MODIFY cocoon. They want to USE cocoon. They want to install cocoon's mechanics, then drop in their pipelines and go. Cocoon is now trying to do all sorts of things that dont need to be done imho. The number of features is so staggering that gettign started is near impossible. But as I get more into the product, I find myself saying, petulantly, But I just wanted the pipeline! And that is all that I wanted. To have a pipeline. To be able to say to cocoon, Yeah, well ... in your pipeline whenever someone hits URL x, go to pipeline Z and run my custom class (which connects to ejbs and so on) and transform it with stylesheet Y and give it back to the user. But you arent understanding how cocoon works Robert! BINGO!! You hit it right there on the head. I dont want to understand how it works. As a user Im not interested. When reading the JBoss documentation, I skip over all the architecture stuff and the development stuff. As a user, this stuff is irrelevant to me. Object oriented programmign is supposed to guarantee to provide me with an interface and then implement some functionality. How? Who the hell cares? Im a user of it. My prime computing expertise is in the back end side of EJBs and issues that pertain to them. I want to USE cocoon, not develop on it. Possible solutions to this. 1) Rearchitect cocoon to implement some sort of deployment mechanism, such as COB. The problem here is that then you have to get that working with application servers and so on. The other problem is inertia. Gettign the masses of developers to learn a new-unstandardized deployment mechanism. 2) MERGE it with tomcat in the way JBoss has merged with tomcat. I download JBoss and they are like well tomcat is included. I say cool and drop in my wars and go. If cocoon had a basic mechanism install that could be installed into tomcat than the situation would be aleviated. Users of the product drop their wars into tomcat as normal with a sitemap file in the WEB-INF directory and their special generators an so on in the classes directory. Cocoon magically wires together the pipeline. No worrying about how to configure cocoon or what properties to give it or so on. Thats left to advanced users under the heading of customizing your install. At any rate I can see the learning curve for this product is steep. And cocoon is mainly going o suffer from people like me. People whoe would love to use it but dont have a month to blow trying to get a technology to work that is merely suppsed to be an EASY way to develop a polymorphic presentation layer. Lastly, flaming is not an option. These are the opinions from a newbie comming into cocoon. Readers of this list can flame all they want but that is just hiding from the very real problems. -- Robert - Original Message - From: Steven Noels [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 3:43 PM Subject: Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption? Jeff Turner wrote: http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=BlocksDefinition http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101603335007960w=2 http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=xml-cocoon-devm=101732982704553w=2 oh, but that is unfair since you are a Cocoon committer and you have easier access
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
Robert Simmons wrote: Lastly, flaming is not an option. These are the opinions from a newbie comming into cocoon. Readers of this list can flame all they want but that is just hiding from the very real problems. Robert, I can only give you one advise: don't forget human beings are sitting behind these MUAs. Don't expect everything to be _your_ way the moment you arrive. (ditto for the Jakarta Forums idea). /Steven -- Steven Noelshttp://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source, Java XML Competence Support Center Read my weblog athttp://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/ stevenn at outerthought.orgstevenn at apache.org - 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]
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
I don't forget that. Nor do I expect everyone to adapt to my way. Not at all. However I know for a fact that I am not the only new user to cocoon having these issues. I can look at the mailing list archive a long way back and see people who have come, posted the same opinions and then subsequently never posted again. You may say fine they can go to hell. but if you are trying to make a technology not just be a little niche technology with a little tight club as members than you need to change this turnover. People should come into cocoon, see its power and rapidly get a hello world up and start running with it. Only through this can you save the technology from the heap where all the other failed ones went. The fact is that JSP continues to gather momentum and the era of XML-XSLT has all but been forgotten. To what do you attribute this? XML and XSLT and by extension cocoon has a very narrow window to get some serious press to make itself live. This window is passing by. Sitting there and saying those damn newbies don't know anything! might satisfy your sense of self but doesn't promote the technology. Similarly, replying to a mail such as mine and saying Don't expect everything to be _your_ way the moment you arrive, doesn't accomplish anything except getting people to say, ok fair enough, and heading for the door. In the end, cocoon has two choices. Adapt to the users or die. Its as simple as that. If you keep telling us to shut up for whining about how hard it is to get started, that's fine. The technology will die. If you ask me, the cocoon development effort should refocus itself from developing more features to getting the product in a state such as tomcat is in. A state where people say cocoon? Oh that's easy to use. getting hello-world to work is like a 10 minute affair. You only need to worry about all the fancy features if you need to use them, give it a shot. Right now, to the newbie, cocoon only inspires three words. Those are, What the hell? As for me, I don't screw with it any more. I have a book to write and publishing schedules to make and the book isn't even remotely about client side stuff and therefore anything not easy on the client side has to be off the shelf. -- Robert - Original Message - From: Steven Noels [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2003 7:03 PM Subject: Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption? Robert Simmons wrote: Lastly, flaming is not an option. These are the opinions from a newbie comming into cocoon. Readers of this list can flame all they want but that is just hiding from the very real problems. Robert, I can only give you one advise: don't forget human beings are sitting behind these MUAs. Don't expect everything to be _your_ way the moment you arrive. (ditto for the Jakarta Forums idea). /Steven -- Steven Noelshttp://outerthought.org/ Outerthought - Open Source, Java XML Competence Support Center Read my weblog athttp://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/ stevenn at outerthought.orgstevenn at apache.org - 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] - 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]
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
The fact is that JSP continues to gather momentum and the era of XML-XSLT has all but been forgotten. To what do you attribute this? XML and XSLT and by extension cocoon has a very narrow window to get some serious press to make itself live. This window is passing by. Funny that, I am kind booked out for most of the year with projects that need XSLT written for their applications. One of them is cleaning up the mess of having HTML and Java code in JSP nicely mixed up together. I don't write a line of Java myself but I have observed is that writting clean webapplications takes a fair bit of discipline that many developers don't have, or it is usually simply too hard for them; this how I always do it. If you ask me, the cocoon development effort should refocus itself from developing more features to getting the product in a state such as tomcat is in. A state where people say cocoon? Oh that's easy to use. getting hello-world to work is like a 10 minute affair. You only need to worry about all the fancy features if you need to use them, give it a shot. OK the Cocoon doco needs work and the amount of features well out number the amount of doco pages. But you can still get Hello World up in 10 minutes. Most of the installation problems appear to be typical for all sorts of Java applications: wrong, missing or conflicting jar files in various places.. Perry Molendijk - 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]
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
10 minutes ? Some 30 hours later I still haven't figured out what I need to go minimal. -- Robert - Original Message - From: Perry Molendijk [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, January 26, 2003 3:46 AM Subject: Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption? The fact is that JSP continues to gather momentum and the era of XML-XSLT has all but been forgotten. To what do you attribute this? XML and XSLT and by extension cocoon has a very narrow window to get some serious press to make itself live. This window is passing by. Funny that, I am kind booked out for most of the year with projects that need XSLT written for their applications. One of them is cleaning up the mess of having HTML and Java code in JSP nicely mixed up together. I don't write a line of Java myself but I have observed is that writting clean webapplications takes a fair bit of discipline that many developers don't have, or it is usually simply too hard for them; this how I always do it. If you ask me, the cocoon development effort should refocus itself from developing more features to getting the product in a state such as tomcat is in. A state where people say cocoon? Oh that's easy to use. getting hello-world to work is like a 10 minute affair. You only need to worry about all the fancy features if you need to use them, give it a shot. OK the Cocoon doco needs work and the amount of features well out number the amount of doco pages. But you can still get Hello World up in 10 minutes. Most of the installation problems appear to be typical for all sorts of Java applications: wrong, missing or conflicting jar files in various places.. Perry Molendijk - 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] - 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]
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
Robert Simmons wrote: GOOD! This is my idea of the right attitude. People seem to fail to realize that if I didn't see the potential of the product, I wouldn't bother wasting several hours of my time typing up very long emails on the subject. I can see that you do indeed care, but (for example) Slashdot is full of long messages from people who don't care about the livelihood of a particular project. This isn't you, I just couldn't resist making that point -- no offense intended. Your statement makes assumptions that we already know you as a person. I don't use slashdot for the very reason that its full of allot of backseat drivers. You will just have to trust me when I say my internl deadline clock is cringing at me wasting 2 days typing emails. 1) A deployment version with one jar containing all the required CORE libraries in that jar. This jar would contain avalon and excalibur and the rest but wouldn't bother to mention it. That would stop jar shock that the newbie encounters when popping open the web-inf/lib directory. I think my exact words were, Holy shit?!?!? What do I really need? If you consider a .war as an atomic unit, it's unnecessary. But it can seem intimidating, you're right. Then again, how often have you gone into the lib directories of JBoss or Tomcat? Those aren't exactly sparse. Never bothered to look loooking nope. Looks nasty. But then notice the Ive never bothered looking. Despite using JBoss for near 2 years now. In cocoon, I HAVE to look. On another note, it could well be argued that Cocoon is far more complex than Tomcat, so I'd be unsure whether this was a fair comparison. Cocoon actually seems to be straddling the line between servlet and container. I think many long-time users and the developers see that, but as a newbie, you see the servlet moniker and have unrealistic expectations. I don't actually think it's anyone's fault per se; it really is quite difficult to explain something that doesn't fit well into existing definitions or practices. Be that as it may, first impressions are first impressions. Peachy. But users dotn really care about what line its stradling. They care 1) does it work?. 2) is it scalable? 3) does it require you to be a developer to use it? 4) how fast can i get it running. Save the speaches about what lines its straddling for the developers and the people concerned about learning its architecture. The users dont care. 2) A single built war file with hello world. All it does is spit out hello world through a little XSLT template. That's it. This is where newbies want to start. Start small and work your way up. I believe there are folks working on that particular issue. It was asked for previously on the mailing lists (a skeleton sitemap in a relatively bare Cocoon instance) and there are many others that share your concern. It really isn't apathy that you see but a work in progress. There are some who may have taken your statements as indictments of their (volunteer) work when it's a known problem on the todo list. Hmm, I find it strange if this isnt just some ant work to accomplish. Why isnt it there? If it is truly such a time consuming task as to not have been provided yet (though critical) then you rather prove my point. If the devs dont have time to get this fired up, how the heck does someone who knows nothign about it stand a chance? 3) Componetize optional features. Give them separate configuration files and keep them separate. This is already well underway in the blocks concept. This is a relatively young endevour, so you would have to read the developer mailing list archives to get specific information. As a quick preview though, if you built a copy of Cocoon CVS and looked in the WEB-INF/lib directory of the .war file, you would see quite a few .jar files with block in the name. This is the beginnings of what you propose and is a work in progress. Good news there. 4) Change the distribution. You get either a minimal (which is required stuff +hello world) or medium (which contains some samples) or kitchen sink (the current distribution). Been proposed before and is on the todo list. Again .. if this isnt a small amount of work, somethign is seriously wrong. If it is a small amount of work and not a priority than you can see where newbies are comming from. Focusing on features is all well and good but if you dont get people to adopt the technology, you are hosed. You can bet Microsoft is examining cocoon right this mometn and trying to figure out if they can make an easy to use package that does the same thing. 5) Remove anywhere where cocoon user has to know about avalon or excalibur. Most of us don't much care. When we write a generator we want to implement an interface and say uhh, my generator is here with this class name and go with it. If I need to mount more than one jar, something is borked. Basically just facade all the entry points
Re: Cocoon is too complex for consumption?
At one time there was the CTWIG as part of the samples I believed or maybe it was a link on the getting started documentation. Yes it would be nice for us newbies to start with that and get acquainted with cocoon. Anyhow here is the link from Jeremy's site: http://www.pigbite.co.uk/ctwig/blddocs/index.html And if you do a search on the humongous cocoon source, you'd find ctwig under documentation/xdocs/ctwig. enio __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com - 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]
