--- "Craig R. McClanahan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Snipped out the questions to be responded do.
>
> On Tue, 13 Mar 2001, Morgan Delagrange wrote:
>
> >
> > --- "Craig R. McClanahan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> > > From the viewpoint of Struts developers,
> however, it
> > > would be MUCH more
> > > painful to have to go through two transitions
> > > (Struts --> Taglibs -->
> > > Standard). If I can hide the transition to
> Taglibs
> > > behind the existing
> > > struts-xxxxx.tld files (so that user pages don't
> > > have to be modified), I'm
> > > OK with that. If I need to force users through
> two
> > > conversions, then I'm
> > > not going to be in favor of the proposed
> migration.
> >
> > I think I agree. It's probably better for the
> Struts
> > taglibs to remain in their current location (if
> there
> > are no objections). Maybe Taglibs will work on
> its
> > own set of tags, if it seems appopriate.
> >
>
> I don't see a problem with that, although it is
> certainly feasible to play
> with tag libraries from both sources. The taglibs
> JDBC tags, the
> xsl:apply tag, and Pierre's new transformer tags
> proposal should all play
> very nicely with Struts.
Ah hah, I didn't mean that "Taglibs will only work
with Taglibs, and Struts with Struts." Sorry, I
wasn't clear. I meant, maybe Taglibs will create its
own alternative to Struts' logic and the bean tags.
It may be an opportunity for innovation. I have some
ideas for if, else, while, for, etc. type
functionality that might be more difficult to retrofit
onto an existing tag library that to implement in a
new tag library. However, it's extremely difficult
for me to judge until I have at least _some_
information on the design of "Foundation". I'm
concerned that it might be so far along that I will
have trouble experimenting with my ideas.
BTW, I'm glad that the JDBC tags and Struts are
dovetailing nicely. I tried to adhere to the emerging
pattern for the "id" tag attribute, which is very cool
and encourages interoperation. Since I'm about to
test out Struts tag libraries in my current project, I
guess I'll be getting first-hand knowledge.
> > [snip]
> > (And, of course,
> > Struts has features that Taglibs would not be able
> to
> > implement outside the framework.) I'm very
> interested
> > to see if the "Foundation" taglib moves closer to
> or
> > further away from Struts. If it becomes even more
> > similar, perhaps it is not even necessary. Of
> course,
> > this is assuming that the Foundation tag libraries
> can
> > stand on their own.
> >
>
> I may have missed some context here -- what's the
> "Foundation" taglib?
Here's a condensed history of the Foundation taglib.
Several months ago, when I contributed the Application
and Page tag libraries, I proposed that we launch an
effort to refactor App, Page, Session and Request into
a single combined tag library, somewhat similar to the
Struts approach (which I was not aware of at the
time). Glenn responded that he had already started
work on a tag library that was like "Struts on
steroids". :)
I was excited about it but went a few months without
seeing any code. I pinged Glenn a few times, but he
didn't appear to be working on it anymore. So, last
week I checked in a skeleton of a tag library I called
"Scopes" that was intended to be the start of the
refactoring I had proposed a while back. But Glenn
responded that he was indeed still working on his tag
library, which he now calls "Foundation", and that
he'll check something in by April Fools' Day. So I'm
back to waiting. Apparently he's already completed
some 50 tags, but for some reason he is reticent to
check them in. :(
I launched this thread when I started work on
"Scopes", because I was interested in people's
opinions of the Struts approach vs. the Taglibs
approach. And here we are. From your comments, I'm
wondering if the tag libraries are more compatible
than I had first supposed.
> > [snip]
> > However, I remain a little suspicious of using tag
> > libraries coupled to frameworks when I'm not using
> the
> > framework itself. There are no guarantees that
> future
> > releases won't tighten the coupling, essentially
> > making the tag library useless outside the
> framework.
> >
>
> Originally, all of the Struts tags were in a single
> tag library, and this
> suspicion was pretty reasonable. One of the reasons
> we broke them out as
> we did (bean and logic particularly) was to create
> libraries that could
> potentially stand alone, and could be proposed to
> JSR-052 as one possible
> basis for standard tags covering these functional
> areas.
>
> Future plans for both the bean and logic libraries
> include some
> interesting innovations (such as making them smart
> enough to extract
> properties directly from JDBC RowSet or XML DOM
> objects, as well as trees
> of JavaBeans). This will actually increase the
> usefulness of these tags
> in conjunction with things like the JDBC taglibs.
>
> Things that are dependent on the framework will be
> explicitly separated
> into separate libraries, as the html tags are now.
That's good to hear.
> > The Struts tag libraries don't seem to have any
> > support for init parameters, is that right? Is
> that
> > an oversight? If so, I would definitely consider
> > contributing an update, if Struts turns out to be
> > useful for me.
> >
>
> I haven't ever felt the need for initialization
> parameters for the tags
> themselves (although the controller servlet has lots
> of them if you are
> using the framework). What kinds of use cases are
> you thinking of where
> these would be handy?
I've worked on some relatively configuration-rich web
applications that use init parameters to toggle
features on and off. For example, I might include
blocks that do/don't execute based on the value of (or
the existence of) an init parameter. If I understand
the Struts syntax correctly:
<equal initParameter="cachingEnabled" value="true">
...
</equal>
<equal initParameter="cachingEnabled" value="false">
...
</equal>
- Morgan
=====
Morgan Delagrange
Britannica.com
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Auctions - Buy the things you want at great prices.
http://auctions.yahoo.com/
