Hello Daniel,
Thanks for your extremely edifying response. As with Stefano, will it
be ok to cite some of your comments in this report? I may not cite you
literally, but I need to credit you if I do. Would that be ok?
The report will be published on Techwatch:
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/index.cfm?name=techwatch_home
On 26 May 2005, at 13:34, Daniel Fagerstrom wrote:
<snip>
4. The user can chose between following a number of different wizard
like tutorials, e.g.: Minimal Cocoon app, documentation site
(Forrest), portal, CMS site (Lenya or Daisy), Spring based webapp etc.
In this step the needed blocks (including the specific
tutorial/wizard) will be dowloaded, installed and started. A user
block skeleton will be created. It should be noted that the created
user block is much simpler than what is needed today. It is a
directory with a description of what blocks the block depends on
(wiring.xml and the Manifest file), a near to empty sitemap and that
is all.
</snip>
As I read from your May 20th OSGi proposal, the core and block jars are
managed within the OSGi framework, is this correct? Meaning that the
directory a potential user is presented with is minimal because of
this?
5. The user start to develop the new application from the skeleton one
and have at all times a working app that can be used from the browser.
I think polymorphic extension will be a key mechanism for making it
easy for users to develop new apps.
<snip>
Also components from the extended block can be overrided.
Could you explain how?
6. The new block contain some new and intersting stuff that is not
available before. After a number of refactorings it consists of a
number of blocks that are reusable and solves well defined concerns.
Now the user puts the blocks in a new project in Sourceforge (or
cocoondev.org etc).
That's a v cool thought. Do you envision that at this point, a user who
finds the reusable blocks in the Sourceforge project, could download
them and run them as they are? Meaning, would they contain Cocoon's
core, or as you explain further, would it only contain the parts of the
Cocoon core it needs? Might it instead contain only the meta info
needed to downloaded needed core and non-core components during
install?
Are you guys thinking of a central Cocoon OSGi repository all these
externally developed block-built apps would rely on?
I would assume that we will have an Cocoon Eclipse starting kit distro
as well. With IDE support, the user can get much more support and
guiding in the above described process. The Lepido crew will hopefully
give a view on that.
From http://www.eclipse.org/proposals/eclipse-lepido/ :
"To this effect, there will be a Cocoon project setup wizard, that will
allow the user to choose the blocks that are to be included in the
project, also allowing also further modification of the selected blocks
during the project lifetime."
Do people here think (Sylvain?) that use of the AXE editors for the
conf files might mean, that during the setup process for a typical app
(say a portal), dependency resolutions would get solved (by download)
while the user interacts with the form? As in 'oh I'll need some CMS
functionalitiy, too'?
WDYT?
I think it sounds great, and I thank you very much for your time.
Cheers,
David
--
David Plans Casal, Director of Research, Luminas Internet Applications
Tel: +44 (0)870 741 6658 Fax: +44 (0)700 598 1135
Web: www.luminas.co.uk Orixo alliance: http://www.orixo.com/
