On 5/22/07, Reinhard Poetz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Derek Hohls wrote:
> Reinhard
>
> I have been "with" Cocoon since the late '90s and as will continue
> to use it unless forced otherwise... but is it really fair to say
> that Cocoon is "easy to use" unless it (one day?) gets better
> docs.
Compared with JSF and Struts Cocoon is very different. This means that you have
to learn to think in Cocoon (btw, the same is true for frameworks like Tapestry
or Wicket). Without good documentation it is very difficult to learn this way of
thinking and hence my reasoning that we need better docs.
Additionally, Cocoon 2.0 and 2.1 are huge frameworks and give you the impression
that you have to learn everything before you can even start. It is also
difficult to start your own Cocoon project and integrate it into your
development process, to configure it for different deployment environments and
to modularize it. Cocoon 2.2 will solve these problems and IMHO 2.2 will become
competitive again.
Furtunatly Cocoon 2.2 isn't far anymore (the release of the first release
candidate should happen next week) and some of us are working on a relaunch of
the Cocoon website which will come together with a major overhaul of our
documentation. Then we will see if our diagnosis concerning the technical
problems and my assessment of the importance of documentation was correct.
FWIW, "more" documentation won't necessarily help Cocoon I think.
Cocoon suffers, if you can call it that, from just being different as
you say. That means that if the intent is to bring new people to
Cocoon - which I assume is the purpose of portraying it as easy to use
- then the type of documentation that's necessary is different.
Cocoon docs need to:
o) Bridge the gap between what people currently know/are comfortable
with (e.g. typical MVC - s2/spring mvc).
o) Make the case why the technical approach is better/more elegant [in
all or certain situations].
o) Close the sell with some ultra-simple examples. (e.g. one or more
simple war's that can be dropped on tomcat to demonstrate its
elegance).
Anyway, just some quick thoughts from a distance...
--tim
> I know this a FAC (frequently occurring complaint) - and
> if I ever come into an IT fortune such as Mark Shuttleworth's
> this will be the first area I will invest in!
You're welcome :-)
--
Reinhard Pötz Independent Consultant, Trainer & (IT)-Coach
{Software Engineering, Open Source, Web Applications, Apache Cocoon}
web(log): http://www.poetz.cc
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