PHP Forrest

[Christian Grobmeier <gr...@gmail.com>]

Hi all,

after digging into Apache Forrest, I introduced it to my project
and immediatly it has been grown to our documentation system.
We generated forrest-xml out of annotated Java Code and all were happy,
except that some people didn't feel comfortable with handlng the complexity
of forrest. The developers first were afraid of the tons of features forrest
brought with it.
Sometimes i had to implement own formats for very special documentation
cases.

However at the end I think Forrest has very good ideas and concepts but two
drawbacks:

1) its complex and one cannot start immediatly if you want a bit more than
just writing content. Even implementing your own design can bring you some
pain in the ass.
2) its java and i can only use it for projects which have an own server
running, the rights to install it and so on. If I want to get the content
from outside my company I have to open a port or rent a root server.

This brought me to the conclusion that I need a lightweight Forrest. Means:
less features but easier and an easy installation.
I have stolen the great ideas of cocoon and forrest and wrote something
similar in PHP.

I call it PIWI and you can check it out here: http://code.google.com/p/piwi/

 Its not complete yet and a very early state, but you can generate piwi xml
from different sources, and transform piwi-xml (similar to document-v2.0) to
HTML. Of course there is a site.xml.
At the moment there is no session handling (needed for localization)  and no
form-handling, but we plan to implement this
beginning in september. A cache would also be nice.

Currently we develop at Google Code but I was curious about if the Forrest
project or some developers here are interested in this
implementation. I know there are not to much php folks at apache, but maybe
PHP-Forrest would be a good start. If there is
interest, I am willing to contribute that project and can imagine that the
Forrest Project may be a good umbrella for that code.

Best regards,
Chris.

Re: PHP Forrest

["Chr. Grobmeier" <gr...@possessed.de>]

>
>
>> 1) its complex and one cannot start immediatly if you want a bit more than
>> just writing content. Even implementing your own design can bring you some
>> pain in the ass.
>> 2) its java and i can only use it for projects which have an own server
>> running, the rights to install it and so on. If I want to get the content
>> from outside my company I have to open a port or rent a root server.
>>
>
> If this is project documentation, do you need dynamic mode? The static
> documentation can be hosted anywhere.
> Thanks for sharing your use case.
>
>
we have started to do static docs, but the site was big and it needed lots
of time. As a result
we have done 'forrest run' and made a cronjob which has checked out from svn
on a regular basis.
This way we always had the current docs online immediatly.

Re: PHP Forrest

[Brian M Dube <bd...@apache.org>]

Christian Grobmeier wrote:
> However at the end I think Forrest has very good ideas and concepts but two
> drawbacks:
> 
> 1) its complex and one cannot start immediatly if you want a bit more than
> just writing content. Even implementing your own design can bring you some
> pain in the ass.
> 2) its java and i can only use it for projects which have an own server
> running, the rights to install it and so on. If I want to get the content
> from outside my company I have to open a port or rent a root server.

If this is project documentation, do you need dynamic mode? The static 
documentation can be hosted anywhere.

Thanks for sharing your use case.

Brian

Re: PHP Forrest

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

Christian Grobmeier wrote:
>     There has, in the past, been some interest in a "lightweight"
>     forrest. However, I suspect for you to gather interest here it would
>     have to reuse much of what is going on in the Forrest world, i.e. be
>     able to use existing plugins (or at least substantial parts of
>     them). Certainly that would be the case for me.
> 
> 
> Interesting point.  I would have to figure out how that would work. In 
> fact, due to the scripting engines in Java,
> it would be possible to integrate a Java-Forrest with PIWI. One could 
> use the old Java-Plugins, while using PIWI then.
> PIWI could be used as a forrest plugin or standalone.

That doesn't sound lightweight. You just added a layer of complexity for 
all existing users without adding any real benefit (that I can see at 
present).

>     I'd also be concerned about the apparant lack of static generation
>     in PIWI - this is a main feature of Forrest.
> 
> 
> That's true. Here could also help the Forrest-Piwi plugin mentioned 
> above, or a Java-Crawler which also uses PIWI. Java is great for that 
> stuff meanwhile and the resin php implementation works very good. I am 
> not sure about the license stuff here.

There is a standalone crawler (Droids) being developed in Apache labs. 
Another solution would be to use wget, but that is not an ideal solution.

>     However, your proposal is interesting, it's just impossible for me
>     to say whether *I* would be interested because your site does not
>     provide enough information about what it can and cannot do. Putting
>     together a sample site demonstrating all the features would be good.
> 
> 
> I will put such a site together, with more documentation and then come 
> back to this list. If some of you are interested in trying out: after 
> downloading and putting the code into a php5 host a sample site is 
> allready configured.

That would be good. Keep us informed of your progress.

Ross

Re: PHP Forrest

[Christian Grobmeier <gr...@gmail.com>]

Hi,


> Some of the issues you raise were what prompted me to experiment with
> Forrest 2. I created a simple prototype of Forrest 2 a long time ago,
> however, I've since moved onto other things (Apache Sling provides much of
> what I, personally, need). This was intended to simplify the use of Forrest
> whilst retaining the flexibility of the plugin framework.
>

actually i have checked out Forrest 2 and this gave me the idea to program
it in PHP.

There has, in the past, been some interest in a "lightweight" forrest.
> However, I suspect for you to gather interest here it would have to reuse
> much of what is going on in the Forrest world, i.e. be able to use existing
> plugins (or at least substantial parts of them). Certainly that would be the
> case for me.
>

Interesting point.  I would have to figure out how that would work. In fact,
due to the scripting engines in Java,
it would be possible to integrate a Java-Forrest with PIWI. One could use
the old Java-Plugins, while using PIWI then.
PIWI could be used as a forrest plugin or standalone.

The fact that you are using "piwi-xml" is a concern. Forrest is trying to
> move to a subset of XHTML2, it is highly unlikely that we would go the route
> of another non-standard format.
>

I missed the discussion about moving to XHTML i guess. I think you have good
reasons for this and will lookup the old discussions about this. I may
choose XHTML2 too.


> I'd also be concerned about the apparant lack of static generation in PIWI
> - this is a main feature of Forrest.
>

That's true. Here could also help the Forrest-Piwi plugin mentioned above,
or a Java-Crawler which also uses PIWI. Java is great for that stuff
meanwhile and the resin php implementation works very good. I am not sure
about the license stuff here.


> However, your proposal is interesting, it's just impossible for me to say
> whether *I* would be interested because your site does not provide enough
> information about what it can and cannot do. Putting together a sample site
> demonstrating all the features would be good.
>

I will put such a site together, with more documentation and then come back
to this list. If some of you are interested in trying out: after downloading
and putting the code into a php5 host a sample site is allready configured.

thanks for your interest!
Chris.





>
> Ross
>

Re: PHP Forrest

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

Christian Grobmeier wrote:

> This brought me to the conclusion that I need a lightweight Forrest. 
> Means: less features but easier and an easy installation.
> I have stolen the great ideas of cocoon and forrest and wrote something 
> similar in PHP.
> 
> I call it PIWI and you can check it out here: http://code.google.com/p/piwi/
> 
>  Its not complete yet and a very early state, but you can generate piwi 
> xml from different sources, and transform piwi-xml (similar to 
> document-v2.0) to HTML. Of course there is a site.xml.
> At the moment there is no session handling (needed for localization)  
> and no form-handling, but we plan to implement this
> beginning in september. A cache would also be nice.

Some of the issues you raise were what prompted me to experiment with 
Forrest 2. I created a simple prototype of Forrest 2 a long time ago, 
however, I've since moved onto other things (Apache Sling provides much 
of what I, personally, need). This was intended to simplify the use of 
Forrest whilst retaining the flexibility of the plugin framework.

There has, in the past, been some interest in a "lightweight" forrest. 
However, I suspect for you to gather interest here it would have to 
reuse much of what is going on in the Forrest world, i.e. be able to use 
existing plugins (or at least substantial parts of them). Certainly that 
would be the case for me.

The fact that you are using "piwi-xml" is a concern. Forrest is trying 
to move to a subset of XHTML2, it is highly unlikely that we would go 
the route of another non-standard format.

I'd also be concerned about the apparant lack of static generation in 
PIWI - this is a main feature of Forrest.

However, your proposal is interesting, it's just impossible for me to 
say whether *I* would be interested because your site does not provide 
enough information about what it can and cannot do. Putting together a 
sample site demonstrating all the features would be good.

Ross