Derek, you've elucidated what I'm sure is a recurring tension for many cocoon users. I really identify with you. My group has been using Cocoon for a little over a year now to publish a huge set of XML content, translated and localized for several languages. Cocoon has been an excellent choice for such a project. But if I wanted to take it further, like if I were to develop a "real" web application like you describe, I know I could do it with Cocoon, but the path is definitely not so clear. Suddenly Cocoon feels stretched, out of place, and less elegant. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe Cocoon is just perfect for such applications. I would like to think so, but I certainly haven't seen examples, and the existing documentation feels pretty thin.
Brent, please indulge me by answering these questions:
What documentation exactly?
What sort of documentation are you looking for?
What would help you find the information that you need?
I'm not trying to be confrontational at all, I'm really curious about these defficiencies, and I'd like to see through the eyes of a true user.
I think that Cocoon *is* on a cutting edge. It is altogether a very different design paradigm, and it is still feeling its way. I am quite confident that the basic elegance of Cocoon's pipeline/component approach is here to stay. I'd also put my money on Flow and continuations. Beyond that, some of these other pieces will succeed and others won't.
A big part of the equation is documentation. The wiki and docs for sitemap design, components, and design patterns are all good. The newer pieces are understandably less documented. Like a lot of things, open source documentation is a bootstrapping process: better documentation on a component means that more people will learn to use it, which means more users, which eventually means more experts, which then translates to even better documentation. So new components with little documentation take a while to get going. And without good documentation, it's hard for most potential users to determine a tool's viability.
Again, what are the new pieces that you are referring to? I have to agree with you about good docs being essential to a tool.
Also, please see http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=Cocoon215TOC, and feel free to add or change stuff you think that needs to be there, or restructured.
-Brent
Regards,
Tony
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