Hi there, FOP is my first introduction to open source software having been "on the other side" before. XML has allowed me to jump...enough about me... I am working for a major bank in Switzerland looking into using this technology...in my bones I feel that FOP (or in some other guise) is going to be VERY big. And the need is there already. For me it bridges the gap between web presentation and mass printing. I am focusing on the mass print end for now. The thing that I find amazing about FOP is that the big vendors dont 'appear' to be doing anything with this...which I cant believe... FOP is great. FOP should be in production. Who decides when ? Daryl Just a FOP user, Switzerland. -----Original Message----- From: Arved.37 [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Freitag, 8. Juni 2001 02:34 To: fop-dev Subject: One Committer's Views on FOP; Informal State of the Union Address Hi, all I get the feeling that there is some uncertainty about who is doing what with FOP, and where it might be headed. So I'd like to address some of those concerns, real or imagined. I can only speak for myself, not for any of the other committers or developers. Number one, it's important to understand the status of FOP, and to understand the role of developers and committers. Like any other Apache project (XML or Jakarta or httpd or whatever), people become involved by submitting patches or making other contributions. This makes them developers. People who have been contributing long enough, often enough, and have had their contributions accepted (more on this in a bit) are qualified to become committers. Existing committers must consider each candidate entirely on their merits - there are no quotas, and no nominating procedure, and if you think you ought to be a committer then we have to consider your case in good faith. We try to be as transparent and fair about this as we can. Committers have an obligation to guide the project, FOP in this case. That means that we do exercise some judgment as it pertains to the suitability of code: does it work, and does it fit within the guiding software vision that we (the committers) are in fact tasked to maintain. But we cannot reject submissions on a whim, and we are obliged to make an effort to ensure that non-committers are given equal access to the CVS repository, in terms of getting good-quality code into the codebase. FOP was originally written by one man - James Tauber, who gave the codebase to XML Apache when that project first started up. The current software is still strongly shaped by his original architectural and design decisions - many of them have had some excellent longevity, others are causing us some grief. This is not to criticize James - IMO he wrote a fine piece of software and it's up to us others to continue on with it. FOP is somewhat of an odd duck among Apache projects insofar as almost all (if not all) of the committers and developers are "real" volunteers, that is, we all have real jobs, and FOP ain't it. There are no companies contributing bodies to this project _under the auspices of this project_; there have been some code contributions but that is not the same thing. It may look like FOP is dead in the water at the moment, although a few hardy committers and developers are chugging away. :-) [Let me hasten to add that I am not currently one of the committers who is getting a whole lot done on FOP.] I think it would be fair to say that in the big scheme of things - where is FOP in terms of being a processor that reliably and robustly processes FO that conforms to the full Extended XSL feature set - FOP has a long way to go. And in terms of what needs to be done, if I can say this without detracting from some excellent work that has been done this year, yes, in the big scheme of things we _have_ been sort of dead in the water this year. Right now I think all the FOP committers are just very busy. In fact, I know they are. I spend most of my time wrt FOP trying to answer some email and trying to commit people's code. If I can put in a special plea about the latter, can you all please strive to submit patches that you have tested (i.e. you know that they work cleanly when fed to "patch") and that are diffs against very recent CVS? Because I am not joking when I say that I currently squeeze out maybe 5 hours a week for doing FOP - one patch consisting of 3 or 5 files that I end up having to hand-patch can eat up half of that time. That means 2 or 3 hours that I am not spending on other matters pertaining to FOP, which I'll touch on now. I don't want to sound like I'm whining - I'm not - that is simply the way things are. What would _I_ like to be doing more of? It's been happening in the background for a few months now, but when Karen Lease and I get the chance we have been working on an architectural/high-level redesign of FOP. Why are we doing this? If you have looked at the code anytime in the past 6 months or more you probably found it increasingly hard to follow, too complex, too interdependent, and too difficult to modify. All true. The original core design of FOP is basically on its last legs, and has been for quite a while. We are trying to fix that. I hope that once that is done we can move forward expeditiously. In the interim, we are (for the most part) trying to not waste time doing work on code that is going in the garbage after the redesign anyway. This weekend I plan to take uncommitted patches from Seshadri GK (aka FOP-Support) and fold them in; one patch is a combined effort between the 2 of us that makes images inline again. Shortly after that, depending on what all the committers want, we will very likely see a FOP-0.19 release. The purpose of this is entirely to have a FOP that keeps people marginally happy for a while. After that I suspect we will see no more releases for a few months as we basically tear FOP down and build it back up. I continue to be very enthusiastic about this project. We have some very good developers contributing expertise to FOP. FOP is going through a slow period and some growing pains, but it is not going away. I hope this addresses some concerns and answers some questions. Again, I stress that this is just one committer's opinion, and I hope we hear from others. I'll also extend an invitation to anyone out there who is teetering on the brink that if you wish to participate feel free. There are no obstacles here, except those that occur because we are stretched for time. Thanks for your patience so far. Regards, Arved Sandstrom Fairly Senior Software Type e-plicity (http://www.e-plicity.com) Wireless * B2B * J2EE * XML --- Halifax, Nova Scotia --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
