Hi Stefano, On Wed, 23 Feb 2005 17:01:41 +0100, Stefano Mazzocchi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Paul Russell wrote: > > So, let me know what you think! Am I mad? Is this a bad/good idea? > > What have I missed? Is this something we should take further, or just > > a distraction? > Paul, > > first of all, I thank you deeply for having taken the time to write > this, there is a lot of thinking and you can tell, there is a lot of > good thinking and elegant design.. there is only one problem: > YAGNI
Thanks for the positives :) Fair enough - had a feeling that might be how you'd feel! There were some reasons for the ideas, related to some of the feelings I've had for a long time about Cocoon, but you're right in a way -- a lot of them are about tidying up compromises we've made en route. Sometimes I think that's a necessary step though, if a product is going to survive. > You are proposing design abstractions to solve problems I don't feel we > have. Branching pipelines? you gotta be kidding. block++? we can't even > get the real one implemented! Just one thing: By Block++, I meant 'I like the idea of blocks', not that I was proposing something over and above blocks. I don't think I've said anything there which is more capable than the currently proposed 'real blocks' infrastructure, have I? Maybe I've misunderstood -- still suffering from a bit of lack of time to keep up with the mailing list, despite GMail's help ;) > We some problems on the table, real, painful... and you propose > solutions to things that nobody really think they are a problem. Not me > at least. I think you will add a huge burden of abstraction for very > little functional benefit. I might entirely wrong, but it feels like a > 2.0 syndrome: there is no incrementality and no plan to get there, no > requirements, just a whiteboard cleanup of all the little compromises > that have been made over time... and the goal is elegance, not simplicity. You're right. The goal is elegance. Are you saying that you think doing a 'fresh job' of Cocoon 2 was a mistake? I'm surprised to hear that -- I still believe it was the only way to do it at the time. You're absolutely right about the lack of migration path. What I'm spelling out here is a vision -- after all, it is a random thought. There are some things we could do to make a migration path, but most of these are for us (e.g. providing Adaptors to wrap up existing transformers etc.), not the users. The reason for this is simple: What I'm discussing here is a fundamentally different way of doing things -- the sitemap tooling approach for a start is 'just different'. It's difficult to see how to make that kind of change incrementally. > Been there, done that. I'm sorry, it doesn't work, don't count me in, > I'm interested in solving real problems in the simplest possible way, > even if they end up feeling hacky at times. > The last thing that cocoon needs is a redesign. Yep, I respect that, and totally understand what you mean about a re-design -- by definition, it would take resource from the existing Cocoon work, which is clearly important. Anyway, thanks for the feedback! Paul
