I think you have hit on the crux of the matter. There are some new features in JSTL, such as the whole expression language thing, but generally JSTL seems to be a merging together of various taglibs with varying levels of similarity.
So why is it there? Think of it as there being an acceptance that some of the Jakarta taglibs are a good thing. This being so, a JSR to standardise these so that you can always expect them to exist and to raise their importance in the whole JSP architecture of J2EE is what I believe has happened. The JSTL is a specification of a taglib that I imagine every web container will support at one time or another. At some point, I would expect Tomcat to come bundled with the JSTL you are currently using. Websphere may write their own, or just reuse the Jakarta one. There are many other taglibs out there which are similar to the Jakarta ones, so part of it is also to provide a nice standard so that programmers and designers can work with them more easily. The questions tend to focus on two areas. 1) Expression language issues. This is a new thing and people often have problems with this. 2) Differences between JSTL and an existing Jakarta taglib. The sql tags seem to be the most common. I think it will be interesting to see what happens with the 1.1 taglibs that do the same thing as the JSTL. When we're all on 1.2 containers, will these taglibs deprecate or stay. Are their authors pushing to get functional compatibility with JSTL? [I believe so], that is, make the JSTL spec as good as their taglib. Users of JSTL? Is this easy to tell? When a designer is using a JSP, do they tend to do so without having a developer handling the setting up of it and any posts to the mailing list. I might be being unfair, but my definition of designer does not include someone who installs and admins Tomcat, and there are few web companies using JSP on a small scale through a hosting company. So I would think that even if designers are using JSP, we'lll mainly see developers here. The best things about JSTL to me is that it provides a standard way to write a taglib. I hope that all Jakarta taglibs will follow its lead in clearly defining TagSupport extensions and offering a 'var' attribute in every tag. Hen [I'm not linked with the JSTL by the way, these are independent, from the sidelines views] On Thu, 25 Apr 2002 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Hi, > > I am just wondering. since the jstl was anounnced > more and more question are asked about session/array/object/result > sets,iterrator etc.. > > who is using jstl? (programers or web-designers)? > and why? > I understand struts(MVC). but I realy have no clue why to use something > like jstl and why it's on the list. isn't jstl a remake of moost of the > jakarta taglibs and should thoose questions belong on this list? > can somebody help me understand please? > > greets > > -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
