Use case: Forrest or Cocoon?

[Brian M Dube <br...@gmail.com>]

The message below describes my experience with Forrest 0.7.

Over the past few months I've been working to convert a site--built by 
someone else with Dreamweaver--to Forrest. Lately I find myself 
revisiting the question of what the goal really is. I initially chose 
Forrest over Cocoon because I misunderstood that Cocoon is used only as 
a servlet (similar to Forrest's dynamic mode as in 'forrest run') and 
this is not easily accomplished in our current hosting environment. I 
now see that Cocoon offers several methods to achieve offline or static 
generation of content. My question then is what do I gain by using Forrest?

This question surely depends on the use case, so I will try to describe 
that now. My goal is to separate content from presentation. The current 
material is a nightmare to maintain when you have to dig through 
presentational markup to find the content you need to edit. This is the 
same reason that a new global layout or look to the site is no trivial 
task. I chose Forrest thinking that I could use the content of the old 
site and format it as XML of some sort, and then use stylesheets to 
render the site as it appears now--the difference being that it would be 
much easier to maintain. So far, with a custom skin, this is working. I 
can reproduce the site in Forrest with my custom skin and life goes on. 
But I have to wonder if I'm on the right track.

To summarize my use case, I maintain a site that is a real mess. Layout 
is accomplished with tables and other presentational markup that was 
already deprecated when the site was designed. Do I gain anything by 
using Forrest rather than Cocoon directly?

Thank you,
Brian

Re: Use case: Forrest or Cocoon?

[Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>]

Michael Conneen wrote:
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> 
> Brian,
> 
> Interesting question.   You COULD natively do in Cocoon what Forrest 
> does for you.. but.. that is what Forrest does!     To me, Forrest is 
> an XML standards based documentation framework built upon Cocoon.   
> There are are numerous plugins (pdf, png, forms, etc.) that you can 
> simply plug in and use within the Forrest framework.  If you want to 
> render the site statically, then create your source (either by editing 
> the raw XML.. or.. more likely having other utilities generate it for 
> you) and then task Forrest to generate it for you.. or you can have it 
> dynamically generated from the Cocoon based Forrest Webapp.
> 
> So.. in short.. it depends on your needs.  From what you described, it 
> sounds as if you are certainly on the right track.

This is a very good overview.

Forrest is closer to what the original Cocoon was,an XML publishing 
engine. Cocoon has evolved into a complete web framework.

Since Forrest has a tighter focus, it is much simpler to set up and use. 
It is kind of a "simple cocoon" that only includes the Cocoon 
functionality to publish content.

Generally speaking, if you do not want to create dynamic content then 
use Forrest. If you need dynamic content use Cocoon.

However, since Forrest is itself a Cocoon application, it is possible to 
migrate from a Forrest site to a Cocoon application as your project 
requirements change. This will become increasingly easy as the Cocoon 
blocks implementation matures.

Ross

Re: Use case: Forrest or Cocoon?

[Michael Conneen <mc...@infointegrators.com>]

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Hash: SHA1

Brian,

Interesting question.   You COULD natively do in Cocoon what Forrest 
does for you.. but.. that is what Forrest does!     To me, Forrest is 
an XML standards based documentation framework built upon Cocoon.   
There are are numerous plugins (pdf, png, forms, etc.) that you can 
simply plug in and use within the Forrest framework.  If you want to 
render the site statically, then create your source (either by editing 
the raw XML.. or.. more likely having other utilities generate it for 
you) and then task Forrest to generate it for you.. or you can have it 
dynamically generated from the Cocoon based Forrest Webapp.

So.. in short.. it depends on your needs.  From what you described, it 
sounds as if you are certainly on the right track.


Kind Regards,

Michael L. Conneen
Information Integrators, Inc.
http://www.infointegrators.com
PGP Key: http://mconneen.infointegrators.net/mconneen.asc
On Mar 10, 2006, at 23:55, Brian M Dube wrote:

> The message below describes my experience with Forrest 0.7.
>
> Over the past few months I've been working to convert a site--built by 
> someone else with Dreamweaver--to Forrest. Lately I find myself 
> revisiting the question of what the goal really is. I initially chose 
> Forrest over Cocoon because I misunderstood that Cocoon is used only 
> as a servlet (similar to Forrest's dynamic mode as in 'forrest run') 
> and this is not easily accomplished in our current hosting 
> environment. I now see that Cocoon offers several methods to achieve 
> offline or static generation of content. My question then is what do I 
> gain by using Forrest?
>
> This question surely depends on the use case, so I will try to 
> describe that now. My goal is to separate content from presentation. 
> The current material is a nightmare to maintain when you have to dig 
> through presentational markup to find the content you need to edit. 
> This is the same reason that a new global layout or look to the site 
> is no trivial task. I chose Forrest thinking that I could use the 
> content of the old site and format it as XML of some sort, and then 
> use stylesheets to render the site as it appears now--the difference 
> being that it would be much easier to maintain. So far, with a custom 
> skin, this is working. I can reproduce the site in Forrest with my 
> custom skin and life goes on. But I have to wonder if I'm on the right 
> track.
>
> To summarize my use case, I maintain a site that is a real mess. 
> Layout is accomplished with tables and other presentational markup 
> that was already deprecated when the site was designed. Do I gain 
> anything by using Forrest rather than Cocoon directly?
>
> Thank you,
> Brian
>


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