Hi, Anjo,
On Aug 22, 2006, at 8:12 PM, Anjo Krank wrote:
Hi Jerry,
I'll try to answer this really long post, even though it's full of
words like "trepidation" (eech!) and it's totally late here.
Aw, c'mon, Anjo, just Google for it, you can find lots of
definitions. Do you expect me to write documentation for every word I
use in these messages? I use 'em, that's good enough for me. :-)
It's totally late here, now, too. But since you stayed up to answer
me, I'm pleased to return the favor.
Am 23.08.2006 um 00:59 schrieb Jerry W. Walker:
I'm now (finally) using Project Wonder primarily because a client
wants AJAX features and PR seems to provide them in WO in a better
integrated fashion than I'm likely to find anywhere else. Having
said all of that, I'm still going to complain (criticize), but
before that starts any flames, please read to the end where I will
offer my support.
The Ajax stuff can be had without the rest. You'll need to copy the
relevant code from ERXSession (savePage and the transaction
records), but that's about it.
Also, as you didn't quite hatch yesterday, I doubt that PW is
really for you. I'd guess that your private frameworks from the
last 10 years will certainly match what we have.
Watchit, young'un!
Unfortunately, after having left a company last December, my
contributions to those (copyrighted) frameworks are probably no
longer available for my current commercial efforts. This serves as an
even stronger motivation for me to contribute to open sourced
frameworks.
* lack of easy access to documentation
Which means what? JDs can be easily had inside of Eclipse (all
XCode users, well...)
JDs inside of Eclipse (or even Xcode for that matter) already presume
that the developer has made a sufficient commitment to trying these
frameworks that he/she has downloaded the PW source code and has
given Eclipse (or Xcode or IDEA) access to the frameworks. This only
occurs after the developer has decided that he/she wants PW bad
enough to make that effort. Granted, some are more willing to explore
than others, but there willingness to explore seldom correlates to
their need for the frameworks.
My concern, and the effort that I would like to contribute, is to
make PW more accessible to developers who haven't made that
commitment. I want to provide the random WO developer with the kind
of documentation (and ease of access) that will first answer his/her
up front questions (what IS this thing? Do I want it? Do I need it?
What impact will it have on my current environment? How do I make it
happen?) to his/her more detailed questions (If I go with PW, how do
I have to change my logging configuration? How do I display request/
response headers and contents for deeper debugging? If something goes
wrong in my production app and the exception is thrown in a PW
framework, how do I debug it?)
* trepidation that some unknown way of doing things in PW will
conflict with the way they're being done at the moment in a
project built without PW.
Again: whuzzat?
Grief! Haven't you ever heard of Google? I googled on it and got
lots of answers:
http://www.answers.com/topic/trepidation
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/trepidation
http://en.thinkexist.com/dictionary/meaning/trepidation/
and, of course, you could just go to your hand Mac OS X dictionary.
I learned these techniques over the web from some Krank in Germany. :-)
We try to fix and enable a ton of things in a rather transparent
manner, meaning when you don't do anything, you should be ok.
However, the more advanced your code base is, the less this might
work and the more likely things will break.
Which is why I think that Bill Bumgarner was totally wrong last
year: Wonder *is* exactly for beginners. You may have problems, or
you may not understand 5% or it. But it contains 99% of what you
will build for yourself if left on your own, only that it works.
The stuff we do is in parts very much different from - say - the
GVC support frameworks. In particular the localization, xml and
configuration support needs to do things that inherently clash with
others. This is not exactly open to debate. I for my part spent a
ton of time at logic united to integrate what we have here to what
Wonder provides and it wasn't pretty, but that is simply the way it
is. So, well... tough.
I'm offering to document some of this, not to advocate a new
architecture. I'm sure we will see some things quite differently
(documentation, for instance) but I think you will find my
contributions valuable as time progresses. (I hope so).
The project in which I'm integrating PW is not yet in production,
so item two is not yet a major issue. It has been a show stopper a
few times in the past.
Item one is the issue the everyone has been most vocal about and
remains the biggest issue with me.
David (Holt), you added David Teran's comments to the Wonder/
Quickstart page and that is very helpful. However, even more
helpful would be a convenient way of getting at the documentation,
particularly the JavaDocs, if one is not using Eclipse.
I said it before in nicer terms, but: I don't give a hoot for
people not using Eclipse. They will go the way of the Dodo in very
short time (IDEA users: I think you have the same means to access
JDs as other more advanced IDEs, if not, I don't really know why
you'd use it).
When you use Eclipse, you have a source.jar for all the frameworks
that will provide you with all the JD that is there. If you're not
using Eclipse, I shed a tear for you, but that's about it.
Yeah, I've shed a few about that myself after hearing the rumors from
WWDC bouncing around. At least this is one thing that you and Chuck
agree on.
* a prepackaged (maybe zipped) set of the javadocs available for
downloading
The reason for this (and the lack of current JD on the WebSite) is
because the guy that did the JD builds didn't integrate them with
the rest of the dist builds. I only do this every 24 month, so if
you miss this, you are welcome to take a look as you are just as
well qualified as me. Send the command line to Mike.
* a pre-existing script to build them independently of Eclipse
See above.
I think that Mike Schrag solved that problem for me in a separate
message, but it's too late here (on the east coast of the US) for me
to want to try it anymore tonight (but thanks, Mike).
they will save me that time and effort and make PW even more
available to the newbies (like me) who haven't yet bought into
Eclipse. The easy answer, of course, is for me to just take the
Eclipses plunge, but I already took it (over a year ago) and was
dissatisfied. I won't take it again until I have more time than I
do right now, since it also comes with an expensive learning curve.
Look: I really believe that you are a total WO crack and all.
Heh, guess I fooled you.
But XCode is D*E*A*D. I just don't know how to spell this out in
more clear terms, but you'll do yourself a favor if you either come
to terms with WOLips, switch to IDEA or switch to Tapestry. I'll
gladly give you and your people a course in WOLips (inquire for
terms, I got rave reviews!) but there is no way in hell I'll spend
one second on providing support for XCode users. This would be
wasted time all around.
All right, so what would you charge to come to New York City to offer
a public class in WOLips? I might be able to get you a venue if we
round up enough interested participants. You're welcome to answer
that offline if you would prefer.
Who knows, we might put you on a teaching tour of the US if you don't
watch your WO Lips.
The XCode projects we have are only there to get WOBuilder and the
WO apps to find their development resources. You are most likely
not even able to build them.
It also bothers me that even when I go to the wiki pages on Wonder
referenced by Anjo, click on the link to the most basic framework
(ERExtensions) and scan the list, that of the 120 odd classes
named there, only one of them is documented in the wiki. And that
documentation is an overview comprising the following:
"ERXArrayUtilities provides convenience methods and tools
for manipulating NSArrays."
followed by a an uncommented list of NSArray.setOperatorForKey
messages. Although I know what setOperatorForKey does and though
some of those operators look downright exciting, that is
insufficient documentation for the most basic of PW frameworks.
It's a wiki! Mike has taken the effort to add all the class names
there (I'm not sure why, but what the heck). So it's certainly not
up to us to actually write down that stuff you can find in the
javadocs and the code.
So now that I've gotten the rant out of my system, I will try to
offer one to two hours per day for the next several days (years)
to supplement the PW ERExtensions JavaDocs and the ERExtensions
wiki page if anyone on the PW team will offer me support for my
doing so.
I'm not sure - strike that - I'm totally sure it's not a good idea
to duplicate docs. And Wonder isn't too shabby in regards to
javadoc. Max had taken the time to document all the core stuff and
I fixed up all the component things. Heck, we even have a doclet
that displays the bindings in javadoc, in a much better way than
this crappy "synopsis" thing that others seem to favor.
Heh, I really like those "synopsis" things when they're done well. I
hope to do a few of them well. I would also like to see that doclet.
How do I get hold of it? Is it part of Project Wonder?
I'm totally glad whenever someone comes forth and likes to make
Wonder more accessible for others. So I can give you commit privs,
help you out and all.
Great! I will be committing only to documentation for a while,
perhaps code later. Can't wait to work with you.
I have no real idea what is needed. We have about 1500 classes and
1188 components. Of these, alone 310 components and 669 classes in
the core frameworks.
Perhaps I have a better idea of what's needed because I need it. In
any case, I'm sure it will be a great learning experience for me. I'm
also hoping that I won't be doing this on my own.
But as a beginner, you really need to understand nothing except use
ERXApp, ERXEC and ERXSession. These alone will relieve you of
deadlocks, error reporting and fix you up for XHTML.
Then I'd look at the Properties files and the ERX*Utilities, in
particular the array operators. Then, maybe ERXGenericRecord, with
the willXXX and didXXX stuff and then you are pretty much on your
own. I don't have the first idea what you need and I don't really
care. I know that the stuff I committed so far is useful to *me*
and quite a few other folks, but neither I nor anyone else will
take the time and explain it for every use case.
That was already very helpful.
IMO, you shouldn't either, as I think the names of the classes are
for the most far good enough to give everyone the idea what they do
and by now people should *know* that for most of their problems
there is a solution in Wonder and I think we can expect them to
simply take a look.
We expect people to look in google before posting a question, too,
don't we?
So, has Google completely replaced RTFM? I want there to be a FM
before I ever suggest that to someone.
Apache is open source. Apache was created by developers for
developers. As I understand it, much like Project Wonder, it started
out mostly as patches to the NCSA HTTPd 1.3 (web server). Today, it's
hard to envision the web without it.
Its documentation is excellent. I would like to see Project Wonder
take a similar direction. I'll see if I can help us get there.
Cheers, Anjo
PS: what really would be nice would be some ComponentElementTrous
clone, but given the sheer amount of components and combinations,
that's proably not in the cards.
All right, now you've got me. What's a ComponentElementTrous and how
does one clone one? (Yes, I googled... no help).
I'm looking forward to a mutually profitable effort. Thanks for the
help you've given me (and all of us) already. I hope to get more.
Regards,
Jerry
PS I'll try really hard to not use "trepidation" in any of the
documentation I create.
--
__ Jerry W. Walker,
WebObjects Developer/Instructor for High Performance Industrial
Strength Internet Enabled Systems
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
203 278-4085 office
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