Hi folks Firstly, please feel free to call me Murray (or Muz if you like to be informal). Being referred to as the author makes me feel like I don't belong....and I do.
I guessed that there would be a volley of responses to my email but I want to make Craig feel special because he didn't get all defensive in his answer - I appreciated that Craig. I also want to thank Dakota who assumed (correctly) that I did know what I was talking about. I've been in IT for 25 years and been through the mill of Pascal, Basic, C, Assembler (IBM/370), Easytrieve Plus, dBase, Java, Smalltalk, Javascript/DHTML and a myriad of proprietary programming languages (I'm sure you understand what I mean). In 1998 I wrote my own HTML pre-processor - at that time there was little knowledge of anything called JSP or ASP. I have been using this technology for nearly 7 years. Interestingly my HTML preprocessor included simple functions like if-else-endif, nested includes, substitution tokens and a simple syntax that was consistent across the products - stuff I miss in Struts. I also wrote the reference manual for using the preprocessor. It was however proprietary and not feasable as an open source product. I have since sold this technology to a company and decided rather than writing another one I would hook up with a open source community project, and along came Struts. I do understand the need to change technology every few years. I have been using Struts 1.2.7 for just 3 months and am concerned that I should be now looking to learn JSF/Shale. I know you will agree that changing technology after 3 months is not ideal, however when I started I wasn't aware that Struts had been around for 5 years already. I'm also picking up indications that these sub-projects (Shale, JSF, Ti, Tiles, etc) may become part of the Struts package one day - this is a good thing. I am very happy to contribute towards the development of Struts (since Craig invited me) however I'm still kinda new so I might not be much use for a while. So, here I am sticking up my virtual hand and asking "what would you like me to do?" as a volunteer does. Some of the responses we have had indicate that 'committers' are making direction decisions rather than the PMC. The role of the PMC is to control the project. It sounds from some responses that our 'committers' (some not all) have their own agendas and this is being accepted by the PMC. As a volunteer (contributor) I should be doing what the PMC ask me to, otherwise they aren't "in control" and I'm not really a volunteer. SUMMARY -------------- Maybe my view is a little altruistic or idealistic. I would like to see the PMC take control of the project and assign those tasks identified below (by Craig) to the volunteer developers that work on this project. Craig, if there is anything from your list you feel I could have a go at, please send it my way. Kind regards mc PS "Voting feet stuck perfectly where mouth is!" - attrib: me, just now On 10 Sep 2005 at 9:05, Craig McClanahan wrote: > On 9/10/05, Frank W. Zammetti <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > Craig McClanahan wrote: > > > I hope you'll find my comments useful in furthering this kind of > > discussion. > > > But I'm starting from a different place than you ... I personally think > > it > > > is a waste of time to improve the tools and documentation support for a > > five > > > year old architecture that is definitely showing its age. > > > > Craig, I've heard you make this statement a couple of times... can you > > go into some detail on where and how Struts is "showing its age"? > > > Here's a couple of things that (had we known then what we know now) would > very likely be different -- and areas where I think improvements would be > helpful: > > * Actions as stateless singletons, instead of per-request instances > > * Form beans (should have done it the way WebWork does) > > * Extensibility of request processor (getting fixed in 1.3) > > * Action chaining is messed up. > > * Decorating actions (a la Spring MVC or WebWork or Tapestry) is missing > > * Expression language syntax (based on BeanUtils) is way too limited > > * Totally dependent on Servlet API objects, making (a) unit tests hard, > and (b) implementations on portlet difficult > > * Key functional areas (such as Tiles and Validator) can be > pretty obtuse to configure > > * No model of user interface components -- just hard coded HTML rendering > > None of these things are totally unusable -- but they all need improvement. > > Craig > FOCUS Computing Mob: 0415 24 26 24 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.focus-computing.com.au -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Anti-Virus. Version: 7.0.344 / Virus Database: 267.10.20/95 - Release Date: 9/09/2005 --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
