----- Original Message ----- From: "Anatoli Krassavine" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Tapestry-Developer" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, September 23, 2002 7:33 AM Subject: [Tapestry-developer] Random thought: Why so few subscribers?
> Hello Howard, > > Do not measure the popularity of Tapestry > by the mailing list membership. It is a wrong > metrics. It is simpler then that. > > I have been using Tapestry for a long time and > have been reading this mailing list daily even before > that. Nevertheless, I have only subscribed this > Friday. Why? I am not a big fan of mailing lists > and do prefer to read/search posts in a nice web > interface. And Tapestry documentation is unusually > good. I've been working backwards from the downloads. I figure each step (download, to examining it, to using it) is an order-of-magnitude drop. 6000 downloads is 600 examiners is 60 hard-core users. That's a start. That the mailing list is close to triple that (170 or so) seems about right. > > I know many developers with the > same attitude. I strongly suspect this to be a > situation in Tapestry developers community. > Consider the people using Tapestry... We are front-end > guys... We like to use GUIs instead of flat e-mails. > If one wants to see a big subscription to a mailing > list, he should consider writing drivers, :-). If I had proper sponsorship, which would literally be a dedicated machine somewhere, I would love to crank out some demo apps that would also be used for community building ... Tapestry bulletin board, etc. > > So why have I subscribed? Because I got scared that > you might lose interest and step down from > Tapestry for all the wrong reasons. I really > need Tapestry well and healthy and moving > forward. I'm into Tapestry for the long haul. > > On what to do for quicker Tapestry adoption... > > 1) Better and more comprehensive instroductory > tutorial is a must. I know that the existing > tutotial is already better them most other > similar tools, but Tapestry needs much more. > One of the problem with the current tutorial is > that it is written by people who are experts in > Tapestry - so they tend to skip basics and go > directly to complex stuff. More beginner-level > tutorials must be supplied. More higher-level > architectural description is required. I'm taking a step back and letting some new developers (led by Neil Clayton) tackle a new and better Tutorial. I'll review it when its close to done. > > Tapestry is a beautiful, powerful system, > but the initial learning curve is very steep - > it is very hard to switch your mind if you already > used JSPs extensively. I consider myself an > experienced software architect (14 years and > counting), but I spent a month tinkering > in frustration with Tapestry. I could see how > powerful it was, but could not build a good > picture of the system operations in my mind. > Then suddenly I got a flash and suddenly everything > got very clear and straightforward - and after that > web development never been easier. The current master documentation, Developer's Guide, is good but not great. It was written in fits and starts over a long time and has succumbed to entropy. I may be starting a for-real, in-print Tapestry book in the next few weeks and hope to have a downloadable version (HTML / PDF) to replace the dev guide. > > ----------------------------------- > > 2) Some integration with JSPs is a must. Various > JSP frameworkd has accumulated a tremendous amount > of functionality and legacy codebase. One cannot > expect people to ditch all this and switch to > another system, no matter how good this system is. > A smoother staged conversion path should be provided > instead. This will be the major plan for 2.3. I'm working on test suites right now since I need to gut and replace the basic rendering pipeline for Tapestry and I want real test suites in place before I do something that drastic. > > ----------------------------------- > > 3) People should be encouraged to contribute > components to Tapestry as Third-party library. > The power of Tapestry is its component-oriented > architecture and there is no better way to > advertise it then by showing tons of third-party > libraries based on Tapestry. This is ongoing, Mind Bridge has contributed a complex Table component. Luis Neves has ported most of Pet Shop to Tapestry. There will be a Tapestry 2.2 release fairly soon. I encourage everyone to jump on the bandwagon and support Tapestry in whatever forum they find (such as TheServerSide.com and JavaLobby.org). > > Cheers, > Toly > > > Had a discussion last night about Tapestry's > > > popularity and the ratio of downloads (over 6000 > > last month) against subscribers to this list. > > It's a bit confusing ... there's only about > > 140 on the mailing list. How many people are > > downloading Tapestry and putting it aside? > > > Things just don't add up. If 5000 people > > downloaded Tapestry 2.0 and weren't interested, > > then did a different 6000 people download 2.1? > > Or did the same folks download 2.0 and 2.1, > > but aren't interested enough to subscribe to > > this mailing list? > > > I joked it was because the Tapestry documentation > > is just so good, but what's really going on? > > > What are your thoughts? > > > Howard > > > __________________________________________________ > Do You Yahoo!? > Everything you'll ever need on one web page > from News and Sport to Email and Music Charts > http://uk.my.yahoo.com > > > ------------------------------------------------------- > This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek > Welcome to geek heaven. > http://thinkgeek.com/sf > _______________________________________________ > Tapestry-developer mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tapestry-developer > ------------------------------------------------------- This sf.net email is sponsored by:ThinkGeek Welcome to geek heaven. http://thinkgeek.com/sf _______________________________________________ Tapestry-developer mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/tapestry-developer
