Lenya learning curve

[André Velle <an...@broadpark.no>]

Does anyone have any experience on the learning curve for Lenya? The target
audience are experienced java developers with reasonable xml skills. Some
have a little cocoon experience.

Regards,
André Velle


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Re: Lenya learning curve

[Michael Wechner <mi...@wyona.com>]

jplejacq@quoininc.com wrote:

>
>>is your experience related to the older version of Lenya/Cocoon
>>or are refering to the current version (1.2rc2 resp. CVS head)?
>>    
>>
>
>Older version.  My next task is to upgrade to the CVS head.  At that
>point, I should be able to contribute to improving the
>documentation.
>  
>

cool :)


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Re: Lenya learning curve

[jp...@quoininc.com]

On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, Michael Wechner wrote:

> jplejacq@quoininc.com wrote:
>
> >On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, [iso-8859-1] Andr? Velle wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > I am also using older versions of both cocoon and Lenya.
> >
> >
> >
> >I've found Lenya much more difficult mainly due to the lack of
> >documentation of the architecture and its implementation.
> >
>
> is your experience related to the older version of Lenya/Cocoon
> or are refering to the current version (1.2rc2 resp. CVS head)?

Older version.  My next task is to upgrade to the CVS head.  At that
point, I should be able to contribute to improving the
documentation.

-- 
JP




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Re: Lenya learning curve

[Michael Wechner <mi...@wyona.com>]

jplejacq@quoininc.com wrote:

>On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, [iso-8859-1] Andr? Velle wrote:
>
>  
>
> I am also using older versions of both cocoon and Lenya.
>
>
>
>I've found Lenya much more difficult mainly due to the lack of
>documentation of the architecture and its implementation. 
>

is your experience related to the older version of Lenya/Cocoon
or are refering to the current version (1.2rc2 resp. CVS head)?

Michi


> Some of
>the architecture doesn't strike me as particularly intuitive.  I've
>also found numerous bugs that I've had to code around.  I'm
>confident that all these issues will be resolved in the long run but
>you may want to consider this when starting.  Also remember that
>Lenya is doing a lot more than cocoon such as authentication and
>version control.  I'd double the time estimates that I made for
>cocoon for Lenya.
>
>A whole other consideration is the browser based editor.  I've
>dabbled just enough to know that this will be painful.  The basic
>problem is the editors I've used up to now have numerous problems.
>I'm expecting to have to modify the code.  They are not
>out-of-the-box solutions yet.
>
>Just to be clear, I think cocoon/Lenya have problems but they are
>the best platform currently available.  I'm committed to improving
>both once I'm competent to contribute.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
>  
>


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Re: Lenya learning curve

[jp...@quoininc.com]

On Wed, 4 Feb 2004, [iso-8859-1] Andr� Velle wrote:

> Does anyone have any experience on the learning curve for Lenya? The target
> audience are experienced java developers with reasonable xml skills. Some
> have a little cocoon experience.

I just recently went through the learning curve.  I fit the profile
you mention with the one addition that I had built a C++ system
similar to Cocoon's XML transformation pipelines and Lenya's site
tree.  I am also using older versions of both cocoon and Lenya.

Cocoon is fairly straight forward to understand thanks to several
reasonable books and the online user documentation.  Getting a basic
site up is quick.  However, if you want to modify on of the provided
functionality, it becomes much more difficult.  Cocoon's
architecture is heavily layered and the architecture documentation
is poor.  A good debugger that allows you to step through through
the code is helpful here.  An example is the XHTML serializer.
I've attempted to modify it since the provided serializer outputs
invalid code and includes the full text of the DTD.  I've been
unable to determine how to do this.  You should also consider that a
number of cocoon specific "languages" such as XSP may be used (after
learning)  as well as a number of standard languages/API such as
XSLT, XML, Java, Javascript, SAX, DOM.  I myself have decided to
limit myself to strictly XML, Java, and DOM. If you can devote
focused time, 3 weeks is sufficient for basic usage of cocoon.
Substantially more time will be required to really understand all
the features.

I've found Lenya much more difficult mainly due to the lack of
documentation of the architecture and its implementation.  Some of
the architecture doesn't strike me as particularly intuitive.  I've
also found numerous bugs that I've had to code around.  I'm
confident that all these issues will be resolved in the long run but
you may want to consider this when starting.  Also remember that
Lenya is doing a lot more than cocoon such as authentication and
version control.  I'd double the time estimates that I made for
cocoon for Lenya.

A whole other consideration is the browser based editor.  I've
dabbled just enough to know that this will be painful.  The basic
problem is the editors I've used up to now have numerous problems.
I'm expecting to have to modify the code.  They are not
out-of-the-box solutions yet.

Just to be clear, I think cocoon/Lenya have problems but they are
the best platform currently available.  I'm committed to improving
both once I'm competent to contribute.

 Hope this helps.

-- 
Jean Pierre
Quoin Inc



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