This thread is intended to discuss the SimpleTags and if we go forward with them or not.
These are what I think are the advantages of creating a new tag set 1) It separates the UI logic into a light weight component model (Behaviors) in the same way JSF did, in fact rendering itself is also separate. 2) It cleanly issolates itself from the Servlet and PageFlow dependencies 3) It offers a significantly cleaner base implimentation from which we can add AJAX and other tag features 4) It is based on the JSP Simple tags and provides a single base class 5) It can be adopted as a UI layer in Velocity and possible Spring WebFlow or Clarity There are a bunch of disadvantages 1) It's a new tag library and we already have a good library (from the users perspective) 2) We would have to move forward all of the tags (Databinding, Templates, Tree, etc) 3) The upgrade is straight forward, but not "perfect". Some features like JavaScript and Error reporting work differently, in a well formed document, they work the same. There are a number of issues unresolved: 1) Should the Tag API match 100% (better for upgrade) or do we cleanup the API (remove some of the struts like support from Form for example)? 2) Do we simply deprecate the old tag library or keep it alive for simple enhancements and bug fixes while adding new features like AJAX to the new tag library? Thoughts?
