On Tue, 30 Sep 2003, Robert Leland wrote: <snip /> > I prefer Maven because it provides builds, testing, QA tools, and site > generation in one tool. > The repository of binaries makes building a distribution or maven > enabled site as easy as typeing, > 'maven' for new users. > Changing the look/skin is straight forward, though as I say below I > wouldn't invest alot of time > tweaking it.
When you say one tool, you mean Maven plus any plugins that you need to do what you want, like generate PDF. Since there is a Forrest plugin for Maven, you still get all the "ease of use" of Maven. > My main question to the items below is 'which of these features would we > use for the struts site' > > >In short, Forrest offers these benefits over Maven's website generation: > > > > - Multiple output formats including PDF and HTML > > > > > Maven has been doing this for a while now.. If you mean the PDF plugin, it seems from its page that all it does is create one PDF of the whole site. Can you create PDF's of each page, sections containing multiple pages? Its hard to evaluate the PDF plugin as its documention is really lacking. > > - SVG to PNG rendering > > - Built for handling and aggregating multiple XML sources like RRS (soon > >wiki and Docbook) > > > > > Maven currently handles RRS, Docbook, and a few other formats, including > the ability to take a > preexisting framed html like JavaDoc and take it apart and assemble it > again with a .maven wrapper. > What's the wiki thing, and why do you think that would be usefull ?. The Wiki support currently in Forrest, albeit under construction, supports the parsing of Wiki text files for rendering. This allows the Wiki information to be ran through the XML pipeline, most likely to end up as a PDF. The ability to create PDF's out of wiki text would make wiki information more useful, IMO. > Could you give an example how multiple XML sources > would be aggregated and used as a single source. How is this capability > an advantage for > the struts web site. For example, currently, we have quite a few Struts extensions, example applications, and related frameworks that I feel Struts could do a better job of encouraging. Instead of requiring an extension developer to submit a patch to bugzilla to change a description or add their project to the page, why not have a page that aggregates extension project's RSS announcing new releases into a news-type page. Giving extension projects more exposure will generate more interest in finding ways to make Struts better. Look what it did for Maven :) > > - Power and features of Cocoon including charting, web services > >integration, scripting support, etc. > > > > > Charting is nice. What types of charting do we get for free or almost > free that would help > with our site. I believe Maven can provide charts about bugs reports, While I mentioned these as nice features to have available, I wouldn't mind have a page of graphs and statistics showing downloads, new bugs, percentage of bugs as enhancements, number of bugs to go before the next release, etc. In my experience, people love the concept of a "dashboard" and what better way to get people more interested in fixing bugs? > which I don't EVEN want to see ;-). How does web services/scripting fit > into our needs? The ability to embed small BSF-compatible scripts in the documentation build process is a nice way to make something that would be more complex using Ant/Jelly easy. Especially useful in something like the statistics I mentioned earlier. > > >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. > > > > > > I am assuming this plugin uses the maven xml doc files and generates > forrest docs ? No, just as the xdoc plugin generates html from xdocs, the Forrest plugin would generate a site from Forrest docs. As hinted to earlier, it can easily integrate into any generated documentation we'd like to keep from Maven. > > >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. > > > > > Maven does this. Again, I didn't see a way to do more than just generate one PDF for the whole site, but of course, I could be wrong. > >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. > > > > > We only need one look, though I don't like the default Maven look, but > not enough bothering changing it. > We may customize it but we won't be changing it dynamically. I only included these links to show how output-independant Forrest was as it was asked in an earlier discussion if Forrest docs had to look like the Forrest website. Forrest is built off of Cocoon, which IMO, is a mature, powerful, and proven content publishing system. I admit I don't know that much about Maven, so perhaps it can provide some the features I see unique to Forrest. While I can't speak authoratively on Maven, I can say, in my experience, Forrest is very easy to work with and very powerful. Since Cocoon is under the hood, I know it is built on a mature foundation and can be extended to just about anything we'd want to do with it. Don --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
