> I'm somewhat curious when the Struts committers might be willing to > make a conscious choice for a Struts 2.x architecture. > > While I'm personally going to continue to support the 1.3.x changes > for evolution of existing apps, and use of the Struts-Faces > integration library with it, I believe that Struts will become > gradually less relevant for new application development unless it > adopts JSF strongly; and it would be a shame to have to *compete* with > Struts instead of *being* Struts. >
I guess this would depend on one's view of JSF and where it's headed. I'm interested in trying to use JSF in the next release of my project at work, but I have some serious concerns about the current spec (1.1). One concern is with the limitation surrounding dynamic includes. This is a huge deal for us as we use Tiles all over the place to help with our layouts. Tiles is great and I'd hate to give it up just so JSF is happy. I'm not thrilled about the work-around either (using f:verbatim tags everywhere). The other problem I discovered recently is with the "id" attribute being determined by JSF (in the standard components.) We have tons of javascipt that use the getElementById() method which won't work without changes. Again there is a workaround (http://www.jsftutorials.com/proxyTag.html) but this seems like a lot of extra code that shouldn't be necessary. My understanding is that the first issue may be addressed in the 1.2 spec (although its still missing from the latest draft.) I didn't see anything on the second issue but I might have missed it. I understand why these two problems are going to be hard to solve . I want to emphasize that I think JSF looks very promising and I appreciate all of the hard work that went into it. But I think that issues like these need to be addressed before programmers like myself can fully embrace JSF. Maybe these concerns only affect me, but judging from the postings I have been reading, it seems I am not alone. I would agree that Struts without JSF could become less relevant, but only once JSF becomes widely adopted. Right now I don't know any developers who are using JSF in their applications. I'm sure there are some people who are using JSF but I doubt it even approaches the level of developers using Struts. Of course, the same could be said about Struts a few years ago. I think a key to Struts rapid acceptance was its rapid evolution. The open source nature of Struts made it easier for people who had issues with it, to make improvements. With JSF, all we can do is submit something to the expert group and sit back and wait. IMO this will slow the adoption of JSF. I understand why JSF is within the JCP, but I think this is one of the negative results of that decision. I guess this means that IMO, I think Struts 1.3 would be relevant for quite a while yet. I'd hate to see all of (or the bulk of) the development effort shift to Struts 2.0 at this point because of what I foresee as a very slow evolution and adoption of JSF. On the other hand, I could see why Craig wants to keep pusing with the Shale stuff because that will take time to develop and evolve itself. I guess I just see the JSF evolution itself as being the critical part missing from an all-out effort on Struts 2.0/Shale. Just my 2 cents. Thanks again for the hard work on JSF. I'm continuing to experiment with it and can't wait to use it. Eventually I will have to dig into your Shale stuff as well. > Craig sean --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
