I know the discussion on whether to use Forrest or Maven to generate the Struts website was a few weeks back, but unfortunately, at the time, I was too busy to participate. I'd like to lay out a case for Forrest, not to insist Struts uses it, but rather to make sure the decision is made with all the available information.
In short, Forrest offers these benefits over Maven's website generation: - Multiple output formats including PDF and HTML - SVG to PNG rendering - Built for handling and aggregating multiple XML sources like RRS (soon wiki and Docbook) - Power and features of Cocoon including charting, web services integration, scripting support, etc. Further, deciding between Forrest and Maven isn't an either/or situation. There exists a Forrest plugin for Maven and it would be easy to integrate Maven's reports into a Forrest site build. To me, the key feature of Forrest is the first one listed, multiple outputs. This is especially useful for documentation as PDF is much better than HTML for printing for the many users that like hard copies. Finally, Forrest content is built to be presented in not only multiple output formats, but multiple skins. To demonstrate this, I've quickly redone the Struts site into Forrest format (which is very similiar to the current format thanks to the xhtml work of late). I've only converted the menu and the main page, which should be sufficient. Please note, this examples are not polished and only serve to demonstrate the skinability of Forrest. Krysalis style: http://www.twdata.org/dakine/site/ Avalon/Tigris style: http://www.twdata.org/dakine/site1/ Forrest/XML Apache style: http://www.twdata.org/dakine/site2/ If we did decide to go with Forrest, I'm willing to convert the old site over and help handle any integration. I'm most definately not an expert at Forrest, but am familiar with Cocoon and thankfully, Forrest is pretty easy. Don --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
