Re: [IT] C2 Complexity Syndrome

[Paul Russell <pa...@luminas.co.uk>]

On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 06:48:28PM +0800, Niclas Hedhman wrote:
> I just want to Raise a Condition, that I believe exists, and is the
> greatest threat to Cocoon's long-term survival. As soon as C2 stablizes
> a little bit more, most of the effort must be put into "friendliness",
> perhaps in form of presets, wizards, tools, or whatever. I believe a
> higher-level of Configuration layer is needed, that can better be
> communicating with configuration tools and such.

I'd agree with that. I've been thinking a bit about this recently,
and two things spring to mind.

 1) can we set things up so that people don't have to touch
    the sitemap to use cocoon? A lot of what a lot of people
    will be doing is having a few XML documents and a few
    stylesheets to work with - having them edit a 277 (last
    time I counted the size of the one in the default webapp) 
    line configuration file to achieve this seems a little
    painful. One option would be to have a dramatically cut
    down sitemap syntax which people can use if they prefer
    - we could then (on the quiet) translate this into the
    full syntax which we already use on more complex sites.
    I guess this is a bit like the SiLLy logicsheet language
    which is in the works. I wonder if what Giacomo et al were
    talking about with being able to generate generators,
    transformers and sitemaps with the XSP engine would help
    here. (or does this all just make it even more complex).

 2) Do we need some kind of management tools to allow people
    to edit sitemaps? Could we create a GUI client to do that?
    How many of the sitemap features would we want to support
    with it? Some of them? All of them? Is anyone else interested
    in working to develop this tool? Should it be part of the
    main project, or elsewhere?

To borrow Niclas' phraseology, just my GBP0.20 ;)

Paul

-- 
Paul Russell                               <pa...@luminas.co.uk>
Technical Director,                   http://www.luminas.co.uk
Luminas Ltd.

Re: [IT] C2 Complexity Syndrome

[Peter Donald <do...@locus.apache.org>]

At 11:20  27/10/00 +0100, you wrote:
>On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 06:48:28PM +0800, Niclas Hedhman wrote:
>> I just want to Raise a Condition, that I believe exists, and is the
>> greatest threat to Cocoon's long-term survival. As soon as C2 stablizes
>> a little bit more, most of the effort must be put into "friendliness",
>> perhaps in form of presets, wizards, tools, or whatever. I believe a
>> higher-level of Configuration layer is needed, that can better be
>> communicating with configuration tools and such.

A similar thread has started on the Avalon list. While Avalon's
configuration requirements are much simpler atm I can see where both could
do with simplification.

>I'd agree with that. I've been thinking a bit about this recently,
>and two things spring to mind.
>
>
> 1) can we set things up so that people don't have to touch
>    the sitemap to use cocoon? A lot of what a lot of people
>    will be doing is having a few XML documents and a few
>    stylesheets to work with - having them edit a 277 (last
>    time I counted the size of the one in the default webapp) 
>    line configuration file to achieve this seems a little
>    painful. One option would be to have a dramatically cut
>    down sitemap syntax which people can use if they prefer
>    - we could then (on the quiet) translate this into the
>    full syntax which we already use on more complex sites.
>    I guess this is a bit like the SiLLy logicsheet language
>    which is in the works. I wonder if what Giacomo et al were
>    talking about with being able to generate generators,
>    transformers and sitemaps with the XSP engine would help
>    here. (or does this all just make it even more complex).

This is kinda similar to what I believe Berin has been trying to do with
reworking AValons proposal configuration engine (thou I could be wrong as I
am not sure i follow it all ;]). I believe this is the answer. Making it
simple for end user is a good thing (80-20 rule and all). I guess it is
just a matter of figurting out how to do it simply and powerfully ;)


Cheers,

Pete

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| "Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want |
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