Antonio Petrelli wrote:
2009/1/23 Nicolas LE BAS <[email protected]>:
Are
you trying to say that you're the reason for Tiles being a PITA ?
No kidding now: I'm not sure I agree on this PITA matter. Can you develop on
this ?
What I meant is that Tiles configuration through parameters is a PITA,
not Tiles itself.
There are too many parameters. I see the parameter-based configuration
(call it XML configuration as in Struts, or declarative configuration
as in Spring) a PITA because it does not allow refactoring, it's hard
to maintain when something changes, it's hard to validate at compile
time.
This is because with Tiles 2.1.x I developed a way to use pure Java
configuration.
I'm afraid there has been a misunderstanding.
From your statement above, and from this page
(http://tiles.apache.org/framework/tutorial/configuration.html#Pure_Java_configuration)
I understand that the PITA is to have to put stuff in web.xml.
I agree with that. Deployment descriptors in JavaEE generally lack
modularity and expressiveness. But then, there are lots of widely used
technologies which are worst than tiles on this matter.
Concerning the ability to declare Tiles Definitions in a single place
(XML files like tiles-def.xml), outside the main java/jsp code, I
believe that's the best thing in tiles.
IMHO it eliminates the need for heavy refactoring, it's easily read,
understood and maintained.
I agree it's sensitive to typos though, and I can't validate it at
compile time (or better: edit time). I have to wait until server
startup, and a tool like Spring IDE would be most welcome.
Nick
