[Blocks] Propsal: Block descriptions

[Tony Collen <tc...@neuagency.com>]

First off, I'd like to congratulate Stefano on the awesome work he's done
with reworking the build system.

I've been poking around, and so far I've been very impressed.

Now that blocks are "live", I'd like to propose something very small and
simple:  For each block, we put a simple file, called perhaps "about.xml"
(in document-1.1 format) which would be a very short description
explaining what each block does.

I would liken it to when someone installs Redhat or Debian, and there is a
short 1 or 2 paragraph/sentence description of what each package supplies.
For instance, blocks/lucene/ could have something like this:

-=-
Provides SearchGenerator, LuceneIndexTransformer, and required components
for the Lucene indexing system.  Jakarta Lucene is a high-performance,
full-featured text search engine written entirely in Java. It is a
technology suitable for nearly any application that requires full-text
search, especially cross-platform.
-=-

So basically, a quick blurb about what exactly is provided, and possibly a
futher blurb about any technologies that are included.  This could also
help newbies^H^H^H^H^H^H^H newcomers know exactly what they're getting
when they build cocoon.

I could envision a GUI build system using the about.xml files for each
block to display what each block actually does, and then a user could
select a checkbox based on that description.  Or maybe not. Just blabbing
my mouth off :)


Have a good weekend everybody,

Tony