Separation of concerns?

[Andrew Watt <an...@andrewwatt.com>]

I have a (multi-part) question about the suggested "separation of concerns" 
that it is proposed that Cocoon achieves.

I would like to ask how Cocoon is being used in a production environment, 
specifically how does separation of roles work out. Does it actually work 
in practice? How easy is it in production settings to find "graphics 
designers" who are also fluent in XSLT?

Aren't such bi-skilled people essential to achieve the implementation of 
the "style" concern? Or, in practice, are "real" designers and "real" XSLT 
coders working together on the XSLT stylesheets?

I guess that the suspicion that is lurking at the back of my mind is that 
the "confusion of concerns" (to coin a phrase) is, to some extent, being 
shuffled off into the "style" box. Of course, that may be a signficant 
improvement over other workflows.

I can see pretty clearly the cleanness of the current approach for 
programmers/administrators ... designers don't touch the content nor the 
sitemaps ... but I do have slight doubts about the cleanness of the style 
concern. Or maybe my doubt is about the realisticness of finding graphics 
designers comfortable to code in XSLT.

I notice, too, that style is little mentioned in the online documentation 
and doesn't appear as a term in the index of the Langham/Ziegeler book. 
That makes me wonder if others either have doubts too about the style 
concern or, perhaps, haven't looked (yet?) in a detailed way at how this 
will work.

I wonder if what has mostly been happening up to now is XSLT-coders 
dabbling with design? :)

I would be interested in any stories about the reactions of "pure" graphics 
designers in a production setting when first faced with the Cocoon approach 
and how they and, I suspect, XSLT-programmer colleagues actually worked out 
a practical workflow.

Andrew Watt


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Re: Separation of concerns?

["Emmanuil Batsis (Manos)" <mb...@humanmarkup.org>]

Hi Andrew,

Andrew Watt wrote:

> I wonder if what has mostly been happening up to now is XSLT-coders 
> dabbling with design? :)


Yup.

> I would be interested in any stories about the reactions of "pure" 
> graphics designers in a production setting when first faced with the 
> Cocoon approach and how they and, I suspect, XSLT-programmer 
> colleagues actually worked out a practical workflow.


What we do here is:

 - Designers build HTML, WML etc prototypes.

 - Programmers modify the prototypes to be XHTML+CSS compliant. Usually, 
the prototypes are enhanched during this stage (designers are very bad 
when it comes to download time, accesibility, usability etc. They give 
you huge images that can be replaced with much smaller versions 
manipulated with CSS). Many images are removed completely, using some 
common background image and real text. This is the most tricky stage and 
talented people are importand; I'm talking about programmers opening 
Gimp, editing images and code at the same time...

 - Programmers translate the prototypes to XSLT.

IMHO, the only reason we need designers is for not eating up even more 
time from people that can code. Plus we always feed designers to the 
marketing dpt ;-)

In general, I've been a designer, a programmer and whatever. I think the 
most valuable people are the ones that can wear many hats, thus able to 
coordinate the work of different people. Design tools suck and we only 
use them for prototyping.

If it counts to anything, I believe Cocoon will help a lot in delivering 
different content from the same data. Doing that with 
JSP/PHP/ASP/whatever prooves to be a pain in large projects.

Manos


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Re: Separation of concerns?

[Andy Lewis <aj...@ascii27.net>]

I have found it a great advantage to have someone who is a developer, not a designer, work with
the designer to create the XSLT to produce a particular design. Most designers struggle with
dynamic components and web-related efficiency concerns. The developer and designer working
together usually produces a good rendition of the design, but adapted in a way that makes sense.
Never let a pure designer produce your templates.
> I have a (multi-part) question about the suggested "separation of concerns"  that it is
> proposed that Cocoon achieves.
>
> I would like to ask how Cocoon is being used in a production environment,  specifically how
> does separation of roles work out. Does it actually work  in practice? How easy is it in
> production settings to find "graphics  designers" who are also fluent in XSLT?
>
> Aren't such bi-skilled people essential to achieve the implementation of  the "style" concern?
> Or, in practice, are "real" designers and "real" XSLT  coders working together on the XSLT
> stylesheets?
>
> I guess that the suspicion that is lurking at the back of my mind is that  the "confusion of
> concerns" (to coin a phrase) is, to some extent, being  shuffled off into the "style" box. Of
> course, that may be a signficant  improvement over other workflows.
>
> I can see pretty clearly the cleanness of the current approach for  programmers/administrators
> ... designers don't touch the content nor the  sitemaps ... but I do have slight doubts about
> the cleanness of the style  concern. Or maybe my doubt is about the realisticness of finding
> graphics  designers comfortable to code in XSLT.
>
> I notice, too, that style is little mentioned in the online documentation  and doesn't appear
> as a term in the index of the Langham/Ziegeler book.  That makes me wonder if others either
> have doubts too about the style  concern or, perhaps, haven't looked (yet?) in a detailed way
> at how this  will work.
>
> I wonder if what has mostly been happening up to now is XSLT-coders  dabbling with design? :)
>
> I would be interested in any stories about the reactions of "pure" graphics  designers in a
> production setting when first faced with the Cocoon approach  and how they and, I suspect,
> XSLT-programmer colleagues actually worked out  a practical workflow.
>
> Andrew Watt
>
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please check that your
> question  has not already been answered in the FAQ before posting.
> <http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/faq/index.html>
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail:     <co...@xml.apache.org> For additional commands,
> e-mail:   <co...@xml.apache.org>


-- 
"The heights of genius are only measurable by the depths of stupidity."



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