The big picture [was: I'm getting some exceptions, too:]

[Christian Egli <ch...@wyona.com>]

"aba-net" <in...@ab-a.net> writes:

> we tried every publication, the bitflux editor didn't work in most cases.

For the last few months we have been focusing on improving the core
infrastructure and have mainly been using this in the UniCMS
publication. It is not quite complete yet but I think it's fair to say
that this will be not only a working, but also a very good
publication.

Also there is the next generation of the bitflux editor which is
integrated in the UniCMS publication.

Meanwhile the other publications (possibly with the exception of the
blog) have suffered some bit rot (nobody has had time to work on it)
and since we have never released Lenya 1.0 users find it difficult to
find a stable release of Lenya (as CVS is still evolving). The UniCMS
publication should be finished, tested and documented by the end of
October.

AFAIK we have agreed with the customer that the UniCMS publication
will be freely available (Gregor has mentioned where you can get
it). As it is a customer project we developed it on the Wyona CVS
server as opposed to the Apache CVS. However I suppose once it is done
we could replace the Unipublic publication (in Apache CVS) by the
UniCMS publication (ATM in Wyona CVS).

Basically IMHO one of the problems is that we are trying to do too
many things at the same time given the number of developers we are. We
have too many publications which are not well maintained and this
hurts our public perception. One of the things to alleviate this will
hopefully be the removal of XOpus and the old bitflux editor (which
are not maintained anymore).

As I said before we have been focusing on the core and the UniCMS
publication. What we have not done is work on a very end-user-style
simple installation. This seems to be one of the big beefs the people
on this list seem to have. As our customers pay us for installation
this has not been a major focus so far.

So, to conclude, I'd say that IMHO the end of the tunnel is in sight
with the completion of the UniCMS publication. We will have a lot of
advanced features and will have the time to integrate them in the
existing publications (e.g. the default publication). My wish would be
to have fewer publications but to have these "just work". One of the
tasks on the TODO list will be to have a very easy installation
procedure. As we are mostly developers (which are used to command
line, etc.) we would appreciate some help from end users.

HTH

-- 
Christian Egli       christian.egli@wyona.com   +41 1 272 9161
                     Wyona AG, Hardstrasse 219, CH-8005 Zurich
Open Source CMS      http://www.wyona.org http://www.wyona.com 

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Re: The big picture [was: I'm getting some exceptions, too:]

[al...@OWAL.co.uk]

christian.egli@wyona.com wrote:
> Basically IMHO one of the problems is that we are trying to do too
> many things at the same time given the number of developers we are. We
> have too many publications which are not well maintained and this
> hurts our public perception. 

This seems to me to be the core of the problem and it is good that you recognise it. 
 
> As I said before we have been focusing on the core and the UniCMS
> publication. What we have not done is work on a very end-user-style
> simple installation. This seems to be one of the big beefs the people
> on this list seem to have. As our customers pay us for installation
> this has not been a major focus so far.

Yep - I see how this has happened but it is perhaps one of the reasons why
Lenya should remain in the "incubator" stage for now because it still is
primarily used by just a few paying customers rather than the general
open source public. 

I am really pleased to see this post as it suggests that we may have soon
one really good publication (UniCMS) from which we can base our own CMS
setups. 

Having several broken CMS setups as examples was worse than useless. 

Keep up the good work folks and lets see the UniCMS working and in public. 
Then perhaps we can organise an effort of non @wyona.org people to help 
package the whole system up for a proper public release.


 
> So, to conclude, I'd say that IMHO the end of the tunnel is in sight
> with the completion of the UniCMS publication. We will have a lot of
> advanced features and will have the time to integrate them in the
> existing publications (e.g. the default publication). My wish would be
> to have fewer publications but to have these "just work". One of the
> tasks on the TODO list will be to have a very easy installation
> procedure. As we are mostly developers (which are used to command
> line, etc.) we would appreciate some help from end users.

(Just thought it worth repeating.)

For the record I am busy with a client who has a massive professional CMS
but they are going to need a simple "CMS" for use by a single team. 
If we can get to the stage where I can drop a WAR into Tomcat and have it work
that would be great.

Alex McLintock



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Re: The big picture [was: I'm getting some exceptions, too:]

[al...@owal.co.uk]

Christian wrote:
> > and the UniCMS
> > publication.  What we have not done is work on a very end-user-style
> > simple installation. This seems to be one of the big beefs the people
> > on this list seem to have. As our customers pay us for installation
> > this has not been a major focus so far.

andreas@apache.org wrote:
> Does someone know how to implement this? Maybe we could take a look
> at the installer used by Tomcat. Has anyone worked with such a tool?

In case anyone is interested in the commercial aspects of Open Source
I am frequently asked whether I can "build rpms" or similar systems
for installing OSS onto linux/Solaris systems.

If anyone is looking for an area to specialise in this might be a good one.
OSS is crying out for people to make installation easier.

Alex


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Re: The big picture [was: I'm getting some exceptions, too:]

[Andreas Hartmann <an...@apache.org>]

Christian Egli wrote:

> AFAIK we have agreed with the customer that the UniCMS publication
> will be freely available (Gregor has mentioned where you can get
> it). As it is a customer project we developed it on the Wyona CVS
> server as opposed to the Apache CVS. However I suppose once it is done
> we could replace the Unipublic publication (in Apache CVS) by the
> UniCMS publication (ATM in Wyona CVS).

IMHO this will lead to the same situation as it is with Unipublic
today. UniCMS is quite huge and will become hard to maintain very
soon. I would at least recommend to write web tests that cover the
complete functionality before adding it to the Lenya CVS. Maybe we
can even remove some features (e.g., cut/copy/paste).

> Basically IMHO one of the problems is that we are trying to do too
> many things at the same time given the number of developers we are. We
> have too many publications which are not well maintained and this
> hurts our public perception.

Very much agreed. Of course, we can't please everyone. But it is
understandable that people are disappointed when menu items produce
exceptions. I'd rather hear a question like "Why don't you have this
or that feature?" than "This feature causes exception XYZ!".
Some of us want to see lots of features (like me with the Forrest
publication template ...), but I'm afraid this requires a bigger
developer community. I think we should rather concentrate on
creating a solid ground work to build features on.

> As I said before we have been focusing on the core

Which is the way to go IMHO.

> and the UniCMS
> publication.  What we have not done is work on a very end-user-style
> simple installation. This seems to be one of the big beefs the people
> on this list seem to have. As our customers pay us for installation
> this has not been a major focus so far.

Does someone know how to implement this? Maybe we could take a look
at the installer used by Tomcat. Has anyone worked with such a tool?

Andreas



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Re: The big picture [was: I'm getting some exceptions, too:]

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

Christian Egli wrote:
> "aba-net" <in...@ab-a.net> writes:
> 

<snip />

> 
> Also there is the next generation of the bitflux editor which is
> integrated in the UniCMS publication.

btw, I have integrated it into the "blog" publication before I 
integrated it into any other publication and I am currently integrating 
it into the "default" publication.

I am doing this, because in order to keep things generic, things need to 
be tested with several sample publications, which are working 
differently and are independent from each other.

I know it's a challenge to keep the Lenya Core independent, but it's 
definitely worth it. Else we can stop developing Lenya today and tell 
people to pick any other Open Source CMS out there. There are plenty ;-)

It is also *very* important that the Lenya sample publications are 
"representing" the best of the Lenya Core. Which means that if somebody
is doing changes on the core, then *all* the sample publications need to 
be tested (as stated many times before, anteater or any other webtesting 
framework would be great for this)


> 
> Meanwhile the other publications (possibly with the exception of the
> blog) have suffered some bit rot (nobody has had time to work on it)

Well, I have been working on them. Beside the blog, I have also been 
updating the OSCOM publication and I am currently updating the default 
publication.

Thanks

Michael







-- 
Michael Wechner
Wyona Ltd.  -   Open Source Content Management   -   Apache Lenya
http://www.wyona.com              http://cocoon.apache.org/lenya/
michael.wechner@wyona.com                        michi@apache.org


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