> -----Original Message----- > From: Andrew C. Oliver [mailto:acoliver@;apache.org] > Sent: 20 October 2002 19:03 > To: Vincent Massol > Cc: 'Jakarta General List' > Subject: RE: Is Cactus successful (was RE: [PROPOSAL] Tapestry joins > Jakarta) > > > > > I'm sorry to have insulted you. I was only trying to help. Based on > > > what you said, the observations I'd had from where I work and what I'd > > > observed. If my observations were incorrect I apologize. > > > > Hey, your observations may be right and I appreciate your help! ;-) > > > > My strong reaction was probably due more to the tone of your email. > > Saying to someone: "you have failed to provide ..." is not a very nice > > thing to say. Saying, "maybe you should try to work more on the > > marketing side" is softer! :-). My turn to apologize if my reaction was > > too strong ;-) > > > > Ahh... word connotation. I need a Jon page.. . I suck at finding the > right way of saying things in email. I'm told I'm abrasive in email, > but not in person. The funny thing is I say the same things... They > just come off differently. Maybe its my facial expressions or tone of > voice... (though my wife always misinterprets my facial expressions) > > > Ok I want to be positive and try to see if there's anything I can do to > > improve the overall Cactus community. You say Cactus might be missing > > some marketing muscles. I would like to believe that. From the > > information in my email do you still think there's more the Cactus team > > could do? > > > > Release more often, announce the releases. While you may have had > articles published, I've never actually seen one. (I've seen them on > Maven, Tomcat, Velocity, Struts to no end, Cocoon, Struts). I found the > best approach to this is to spam magazines and complain that they > haven't covered it. Find and article on say JUnit and write the author > "but you haven't written on web app testing with cactus!" > > Some people do the JUG tour. >
The discussion I had started was not about how to grow Cactus user base. We are very happy with that (well beyond my expectations actually and progressing steadily) but more on how to grow the committer's base. Of course growing the number of people who knows about Cactus may have an effect on the number of committers but I am not so sure about that (that's not my observations so far). My belief is that Cactus is too much viewed as a finished product: - it works - it has nice documentation - it has a nice build process - it has a quite responsive mailing list (a bit less lately as I have slightly less time with Maven/other stuff and I'm trying to see if others jump in when I don't answer 30 seconds after the question has been posted ;-). It seems to be working! I have the feeling Cactus is getting more ML participation ...). - steady releases (9 versions/releases in 16 months, 1 stable releases/4 months). It is indeed a finished product but there are still so many interesting things to do to make it even way better ... ;-) (documented on the todo/goal page). > > You said the persons in your team were pondering about using Cactus. > > That means they already know about it. So marketing is good! Maybe > > documentation need to be improved? > > > > No not on my team.. . Just people I know at work ;-) > > If I had a need for cactus at the moment the documentation doesn't look > too bad. It isn't but needs reorganization to prevent misreadings like the one you mention below ... :-) > > > FYI, we have actually started working on the Cactus front-end (Maven > > plugin, Eclipse plugin, standalone testing application, Ant tasks, etc) > > which should make it easier to use (this was one weak-point noted by the > > users - the entry barrier). > > > > Ahh. i actually use Centipede and haven't figured out what eclipse > wants from me (I want CVS + compilation...it gives me either or). Let's not go there... Ok just a little then... Personally I don't want compilation, which Eclipse gives me ;-) (I'm talking about dynamic compilation). I want to know right away the result of a change I make to a class across all my project, I want to know right away if I've broken any coding convention as I type (using checkstyle for example), I want to know the code impacted by my Aspects (AOP/AspectJ), if I make a change deep in the directory structure, I want it to be surfaced so that I know what is not committed, etc. If you can resist, try not to answer this as it will lead to another OT thread ;-) (you've started!). > > The biggest turnoff for me was this: > > " > This will work with Internet Explorer as the XSL transformation is > performed on the client side (i.e by the browser). I'm not sure about > other browsers. > " > > IE doesn't work well under Linux. Plus I like mozilla better and even > use it when I have to use Winblows. Do you want to participate? Feel free to send a patch to perform XSLT transformation on the server side! More seriously, this is not a Cactus feature, it's a browser feature. The document was pointing out that without modifying Cactus you could get the XML transformed to HTML by simply having an XSL stylesheet in the directory where the XML is. Now, one of the goal is to make this XML->HTML transformation a feature. Hence your patch ;-). The only problem is that I named this tutorial Tomcat Howto and with the fame of Tomcat, everybody is looking at that page, which is a really small add-on that has been added lately to the doc but which is not part of Cactus core. BTW, doing a quick search revealed (http://www.webreference.com/xml/column58/): " A full XSL-T (XSL transformation) processor named TransforMiix, also available stand-alone, is built into Mozilla. XML documents can be transformed using XSLT, as has been championed by Internet Explorer 5. TransforMiix does not support the draft versions of XSLT prematurely released by Microsoft, so if you want to deploy to both make sure you use XSLT 1.0, not 0.9. " If you try it and tell me it works I will update the doc and add that it works in Mozilla X ! ;-) -Vincent > > -Andy > > > Thanks > > -Vincent > > > > > > > > -Andy > > > > > > -- > > > http://www.superlinksoftware.com - software solutions for business > > > http://jakarta.apache.org/poi - Excel/Word/OLE 2 Compound Document in > > > Java > > > http://krysalis.sourceforge.net/centipede - the best build/project > > > structure > > > a guy/gal could have! - Make Ant simple on complex > > > Projects! > > > The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to > > > vote. > > > -Ambassador Kosh > > > > > > > > > -- > > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: > > <mailto:general-unsubscribe@;jakarta.apache.org> > > > For additional commands, e-mail: > > <mailto:general-help@;jakarta.apache.org> > > > > > -- > http://www.superlinksoftware.com - software solutions for business > http://jakarta.apache.org/poi - Excel/Word/OLE 2 Compound Document in > Java > http://krysalis.sourceforge.net/centipede - the best build/project > structure > a guy/gal could have! - Make Ant simple on complex > Projects! > The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to > vote. > -Ambassador Kosh -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:general-unsubscribe@;jakarta.apache.org> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:general-help@;jakarta.apache.org>
