I agree very much with the direction you're heading in here. Although it's always pretty hard to estimate the quality and organization of the docs if you've already understood most thing about Cactus. :-)
I remember from the time when I was beginning to understand Cactus, and evaluating whether it'd be an appropriate solution for various scenarios, that a lot of documentation exists but isn't easy to find on the website. I think this is due to how everything is distributed among the various HOWTOs, and the scope of the HOWTOs isn't always clear from their title.
A better organized, probably more hierarchical structure (as you also imply with the entry image) would probably help a lot. We should also think about moving some things to the Wiki, for example the MockObjects vs InContainer page... which could/should more of an open community discussion than actual documentation.
Vincent Massol wrote:
Hi, In our effort to make Cactus simpler and simpler to use, I'd like to propose a new way to organise our web site. See attached what could become the front page image.The main difference with what exists is that the new site would be centered around user usage of Cactus rather than technical details on how Cactus works. For example, it would explain how to use the different front ends. Note that there is one special front end which is called "manual configuration" which will contain the current howtos related to configuration, classpath, etc. However, users using the Eclipse Plugin, the Servlet Test Runner, or any other front end do not need to understand all the technical details as the front end they are using will shield them from it (more or less depending on the front end - the Maven plugin for example shields everything, same for the Eclipse one). Thus, the main Cactus web site would be a page about the different possible usages of Cactus (the image would be clickable) with a left menu listing the different front ends. Note also the "Ant Generic scripts" front end. This is not the same as the current Ant scripts. ATM, the Ant scripts are *examples*, but they are not reusable *as is*. The idea is to make a new Cactus subproject (we need to find a name for it) that will provide completely reusable Ant scripts (they can be used as is). Internally, they will be used by our sample-servlet subproject and by our Eclise plugin subproject. They could also be used by the Maven plugin.
+1000
How does all this sound? What do you think?
Thanks
-Vincent
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