Hi Will
Please allow me to add some words. I have commented your both points.
Let me though start with some "philosophical" thoughts.
The very first thing you have to think of, is what you want to do with
the CMS. If you want to do a simple, few pages, website, you will want a
"static" tool with many predefined features. But if you want to develop
a content centric, many tousand pages big, web application, then you
will decide for "dynamic" CMS, which leaves all options open. Magnolia
is such a tool. And the JSR 170 compliant repository allows to create
content centric (rather than a functional) webapplications. Furthermore,
Java allows you to develop re-usable and easy to maintain code.
Do you play chess? Web development is a little like playing chess. You
learn the rules in about an hour. The rules are well documented (like
Magnolia's "Quickstart" document). As "autodidact" you can maybe beat
your friends and get to some good club level. But if you want to earn
money with chess, than you have to win tournaments. So think for a
moment, what you would have to do to win tournaments.
It's very similar with Webapplications. The documentation is just one
part. You need experience, experience through many webapps, through
training and through friends who help you understand the world of
professional web applications.
(Will Scheidegger) wrote:
On 27.12.2005, at 09:26, Alexandru Popescu wrote:
#: (Will Scheidegger) changed the world a bit at a time by saying
on 12/27/2005 9:41 AM :#
On 26.12.2005, at 20:21, Alexandru Popescu wrote:
#: (Will Scheidegger) changed the world a bit at a time by
saying on 12/26/2005 7:20 PM :#
On 25.12.2005, at 23:56, Alexandru Popescu wrote:
[...] But somebody needs to start contributing modules back to
the project ;-). A good start would probably be a forum
module, or something in this direction. From this type of
module, everybody would be able to see how to develop a module
and what are the requirements but also the benefits of using JCR.
Exactly. It does not even have to be a specific or even useful
module, but it should demonstrate how extending Magnolia that
way can be done.
And one shouldn't have to shell out $6000 or something to be
allowed to contribute ;-)
Not sure what do you mean by this. Can you further explain?
Sure. As you have pointed out yourself in this thread, the
documentation that would show developers how to extend Magnolia is
missing. Every time I've asked about it, I got the answer "You'll
need to become a partner" and "Visit a developer training".
-Will
What about self investigation? It is an open source project, so that
we get access to the source code and also the public documentation
is good to show the first steps. I've been able to build some
advanced dialogs just by investigating the existing ones and digging
in the code.
Self investigation is fine. I have no problem with that. And in fact
we will extend Magnolia that way.
I've got two problems how ever that are related to that:
1. Someone who has actually helped develop Magnolia told me, that
trying to understand how the tree view is set up for instance is near
impossible without the help of someone very familiar to the code. So
if everyone who wants to extend Magnolia has to invest so much in
self investigation, it's no wonder that OpenCMS has so many more
features.
You may not believe it, but the Magnolia navigation is the easiest you
can imagine! The reason is, that the underlaying JSR 170 compliant
repository is already hierarchical. All you have to do is iterate
through the structure using the one appropriate method. Then you wrap
the result within some css styles. It's so easy, it does not make sense
to write a "module"! If you take a function driven CMS (with a
database), you need to define functions to find child-pages, etc. In
this case it makes sense to write a navigation module!
2. I don't think it's fair when you don't provide the needed
documentation so that you can charge everyone for training and
partner programs and at the same time tell everyone how much work you
have developing the open source code.
Hmh, see, you get Magnolia for free and you get "Quickstart" as a
"rules" documentation. But if you want to "play tournaments", it really
makes sense to invest $2850 into an according developer training. It's a
very small amount compared to a commercial CMS.
But enough of that. Fact is that almost every other decedent CMS has
many more features. Fact is that Magnolia has the best UI I've seen
so far. Fact is that this great UI comes at a high price: A very
steep learning curve for developers trying to extend it. And fact is
also that Magnolia would be much further if the right kind of
documentation would be available and if the developers who would like
to help take Magnolia to the next level could do that more easily.
Sorry, Will, but I clearly do not agree. For us developers, who create
complexe and dynamic Web applications, it's the best CMS available. It's
very easy to use (believe me!) and the JSR 170 compliant repository is
THE feature! A Magnolia Web app is scalable, fully dynamic and easy (so
inexpensive) to maintain. So it matches all the features Fortune 500
companies require!
Again, Will, it really makes a lot of sense to invest $2850 in a 4 day
developer training. The benefit you get out of it (understanding
Magnolia AND especially the JSR 170 repository) will be tremendous!
We had that discussion before on this list. I don't think we'll need
to elaborate once more. Let's rather use the time to have ourselves
happy holidays.
Right, and thanks. If I can be of any additional help, please contact me
offline (giancarlo at xumak dot com).
I wish you freaky holidays too!
/giancarlo
Will
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