Hi Jose, Just a couple XMLUI tips (I'll let others fill in their own experiences/opinions as well).
First, if you choose to go with the XMLUI, you actually may not need to do as many Aspect changes as you may think. Generally speaking, XMLUI Aspects are used to *add or remove* content to/from the DRI XML structure. However, if the content you want already exists in the DRI, you should be able to reorganize it in the final HTML using your own XMLUI Theme. So, simply put: * XMLUI Aspects are used to add/remove content (that will be displayed in final HTML) to/from DRI * XMLUI Themes are used to format/reorganize the content in the DRI so that it is displayed in the appropriate location on your webpage (this is done via a combination of XSLT and CSS). As a basic example, you can look at the default Mirage theme on the Demo site : http://demo.dspace.org/xmlui/ Notice that the "Search DSpace" box appears in the upper right, essentially in a right menu area that form the "options". However, if you look at the underlying DRI XML: http://demo.dspace.org/xmlui/?XML you will notice that the Search Box info actually appears in the <body> section of the DRI (look for the <div> with id='aspect.discovery.SiteViewer.div.front-page-search'), while all the other browse options appear under the <options> section of the DRI. So, in the Mirage theme, the Search box has been made to "appear" as though it is in the sidebar/options, when in fact its content in DRI is actually in the <body> section. Bringing this back to your DeepBlue site's style -- since the Browse and Search info you need is already in the DRI, you likely shouldn't need to change the structure of the DRI. Rather you may be able to create a custom Theme (XSLT & CSS) which causes the Browse By info to be up at the top near your logo, and the Search Box in the upper right. It's also worth noting that XMLUI has a similar idea of a "Header" and "Footer". Each Theme can define its own "buildHeader" and "buildFooter" XSLT template which actually generates the Header/Footer content across the entire site. This is similar to the header/footer JSP files, but obviously in this case it's all done via XSLT (which translates the DRI to XHTML). There are some good XMLUI Introductory/Customization Guides up on our wiki that hopefully should help you get started with some of this (and better understand Aspects vs Themes -- in most cases a new Aspect is not needed unless you are truly adding new features/content): https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/DSpaceResources#DSpaceResources-Guides There are also various XMLUI How To Guides (including one on customizing Header/Footer): https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/XMLUI+How+To+Guides I'll let others fill in their thoughts/opinions around XMLUI vs JSPUI. I just wanted to point out some ways that you could do similar things via the XMLUI. - Tim On 10/17/2011 1:54 PM, Blanco, Jose wrote: > I am looking into what it would take to convert our jspui interface into a > manakin instance. Way back ( perhaps about 5 years ago ), we took the jspui > interface and made it our own. In doing this we moved things around, for > example, we have the browsing choices that normally appear on the left of the > page show up on the header, and also the search box. I was just looking at > how I would go about doing this in the xmlui world and my guess is that I'd > have to change the aspect code to generate new more granular XML of the stuff > that appears on the left, which I think presently is clumped-up together as > "options", this way I can put the browsing stuff close to the logo and the > searching stuff towards the right of the header. Then I have to change the > theme code to handle this new DRI. Take a look at what we have now: > > http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/ > > I believe that in the jspui interface this is easier to change than in the > xmlui interface because you just need to edit the header jsp file to include > this and remove it from the jsp file that displays it on the left. I can see > that if you are interested in keeping the location of elements as they are in > the xmlui display why perhaps xmlui would be a better interface, but what > about when you are trying to move elements around as I am, it seems like then > you have a lot more code to modify than you would in the jspui interface. > > The reason we are thinking of moving over to xmlui are the following: > > 1. We have a need to have certain collections in our instance that look very > different from others, and xmlui facilitates this. In jspui I'd have to add > some hardcoded exception code, which could get a bit messy, but after looking > at what I need to do to the xmlui interface, I think it would be less > complicated. > > 2. Dspace is moving away from jspui, and therefore we want to make sure we > don't get stuck using an interface that may become obsolete. Is this true? > > I know that a lot of institutions use the xmlui interface, and I wonder what > kind of changes to the out-of-the-box manakin themes they've made. Could > someone tell me about their experience? > > I've also heard about how much better xmlui is than jspui, and I'm wondering > in what sense? What makes you like one more than the other? > > Thank you for your thoughts. > > Jose > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a > definitive record of customers, application performance, security > threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes > sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. > http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct > _______________________________________________ > DSpace-tech mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dspace-tech ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ All the data continuously generated in your IT infrastructure contains a definitive record of customers, application performance, security threats, fraudulent activity and more. Splunk takes this data and makes sense of it. Business sense. IT sense. Common sense. http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-oct _______________________________________________ DSpace-tech mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/dspace-tech
