Sorry for the off-topic post...
So...
Because a number of people have expressed an interest in the framework
but have commented that it seems complex from the documentation I've
written, I've decided that the suggestion of a "quickstart" is a good
idea. I've taken the Model Glue quick-start as an example for format
(things like, approximate amount of content per example) and have
removed the couple of entries which obviously don't have (or need) a
correlation in the onTap framework, such as "Installation" (you put it
in any web-accessible directory and it works -- this just went into
readme.txt).
I'm reading through the remainder of the quickstart guide for Model
Glue now to try and get some idea of what programming tasks really
need to be covered in the onTap framework's quickstart guide and I
have to admit, I'm a little bit stumped. There are a handful which
have obvious correlations to onTap such as "use one view in another
view", however a larger number of them are very specific to
traditional OO-MVC frameworks like Mach-II and MG where events are
coordinated via an XML config dialect ("Create a New Event-Handler" or
"Mapping Results to More Events"). The onTap framework on the other
hand is agnostic toward your use of OO -- you can write an OO app or
you can write a procedural app, the framework doesn't care which you
choose.
If I ignore the vocal complaints of OO enthusiasts that I'm misusing
their lingo, I can draw correlations between some of these traditional
OO techniques and some of the techniques of the onTap framework. In
this way "Create an Event Handler" translates to "Create a Process" or
possibly "Create a Page" (although technically a page is what receives
the result of that process to display in the browser). There are two
problems with this.
1) I have to choose between using the OO lingo (which isn't what the
rest of the onTap documentation uses) or using the onTap lingo (which
will be unfamiliar to OO enthusiasts or those who've taken an interest
in recent OO frameworks).
2) The language itself leaves something to be desired for newcomers...
This is a problem with the onTap framework as much as it is with other
frameworks. A new person who's not familiar with OO and OO frameworks
doesn't want to know how to "create an event handler", because they
don't know what an event handler is or why they should care. A new
person wants to know how to build a web page/site/application. To that
end, I'm thinking it might be better to describe more pragmatic tasks
and then work backward to explain how those tasks are accomplished.
So that being said, this is my current list of thoughts for the
quickstart (in no particular order):
- Create a Page ("Hello World"/Event-Handler) (the existing hello
world tutorial actually has a fair amount of fat that can be cut out)
- Combine Two Views (not sure if this is the best title - MG describes
it as "Use One View in Another")
- Create / Configure a DSN (the framework can manage multiples)
- Access a Database (select, insert, update, delete - not sure if
these should be individual entries or a single entry)
- Building A Form / Getting User Input (and connecting it to a
database update)
- Using Multiple Processes (this is similar to mg/mach-ii having
multiple events executing in a single request)
- Development / Production Mode (this is in the MG guide)
- Debugging Trace (also in MG)
- Handling Exceptions (this is in MG, not sure if people want it in
the quickstart)
What I'd like to know mostly is a) is this a good list to start with
and b) does anyone else have any suggestions of specific tasks they
think I should cover?
s. isaac dealey 954.522.6080
new epoch : isn't it time for a change?
add features without fixtures with
the onTap open source framework
http://www.fusiontap.com
http://coldfusion.sys-con.com/author/4806Dealey.htm
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