You are viewing a plain text version of this content. The canonical link for it is here.
Posted to dev@velocity.apache.org by jc...@locus.apache.org on 2000/12/13 02:48:33 UTC
cvs commit: jakarta-velocity/xdocs anakia.xml
jcastura 00/12/12 17:48:32
Modified: xdocs anakia.xml
Log:
Jon - can you please review for accuracy before HTML docs are re-generated?
Revision Changes Path
1.5 +46 -50 jakarta-velocity/xdocs/anakia.xml
Index: anakia.xml
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/cvs/jakarta-velocity/xdocs/anakia.xml,v
retrieving revision 1.4
retrieving revision 1.5
diff -u -r1.4 -r1.5
--- anakia.xml 2000/11/27 01:17:38 1.4
+++ anakia.xml 2000/12/13 01:48:31 1.5
@@ -14,69 +14,65 @@
<s1 title="What Is Anakia?">
<p>
- Anakia is an alternative to using Ant's <style> task as well as using
- <link href="http://xml.apache.org/xalan/">XSL</link> to process your XML
- files. In summary, Anakia is an XML transformation tool that uses <link
+ Essentially an XML transformation tool, Anakia uses <link
href="http://www.jdom.org">JDOM</link> and <link
- href="http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity">Velocity</link> to transform your
- XML documents into whatever you like.
+ href="http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity">Velocity</link> to transform
+ XML documents into the format of your choice. It provides an alternative to
+ using Ant's <style> task and
+ <link href="http://xml.apache.org/xalan/">XSL</link> to process XML
+ files.
</p>
<p>
- The benefit of using Anakia over XSL is that it is potentially easier to
- learn while still maintaining a similar functionality level. Instead of
- learning cryptic <xsl:> tags, all you need to know is how to use the
- provided Context objects, JDOM and Velocity's simple directives. Anakia also
- seems to perform much faster than Xalan's XSL processor at creating pages
+ Anakia is potentially easier to learn than XSL, but it maintains
+ a similar level of functionality. Learning cryptic <xsl:>
+ tags is unnecessary; you only need to know how to use the
+ provided Context objects, JDOM, and Velocity's simple directives. Anakia
+ seems to perform much faster than Xalan's XSL processor at creating pages.
(23 pages are generated in 7-8 seconds on a PIII 500mhz running Win98 and
JDK 1.3 with client Hotspot. A similar system using Ant's <style> task
- took 14-15 seconds. A nearly 2x speed improvement.).
+ took 14-15 seconds -- nearly a 2x speed improvement.)
</p>
<p>
- In the end, Anakia is intended as a replacement for Stylebook which was
- originally used to generate simple static websites where all the pages have
- the same look and feel. This is great for documentation websites as well as
- for project websites like what we have on jakarta.apache.org. Therefore some
- of the "extra" functionality that XSL provides is not being
- provided here.
+ Anakia -- intended to replace Stylebook, which was
+ originally used to generate simple, static web sites in which all pages had
+ the same look and feel -- is great for documentation/project web sites,
+ such as the sites on jakarta.apache.org. As it is more targetted to a specific
+ purpose, it does not provide some of XSL's "extra" functionality.
</p>
<p>
- We suggest that you take a look at the jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia directory
- for an example of how to get started with Anakia. It really is quite simple to use.
+ The example in the jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia directory
+ provides a good introduction to Anakia. You should find it quite simple to use.
</p>
<p>
- The basic usage premise of Anakia is that a Context is created, the .vsl
- page is executed (using Velocity) with the Context. Within the Context
- contains a JDOM Document object of your .xml page as well as (optionally) a
- JDOM Document object of your project.xml page. You can then navigate your
- .xml file and pull information out of it by simply executing methods on the
- JDOM Document object.
+ Anakia creates a Context, which contains a JDOM Document object of the
+ .xml page, as well as an (optional) JDOM Document object of your project.xml
+ page. The .vsl page is executed (using Velocity) with the Context. You can then
+ navigate your .xml file and pull information out of it by simply executing methods
+ on the JDOM Document object.
</p>
</s1>
<s1 title="Installation/Example">
<p>
- As mentioned earlier, take a look at the jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia directory.
- In order to use those examples, you will need to first build Velocity by following
- these <link href="install.html">directions</link>.
+ Before reviewing the jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia directory,
+ you must <link href="install.html">build Velocity</link>.
</p>
<p>
- Once you have built Velocity, then you can cd into the jakarta-
- velocity/examples/anakia/build directory and run ./build.sh. If you are on
- the Windows platform, then you should install <link
- href="http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/">Cygwin</link> so that shell scripts
- will work on your PC as well.
+ After building Velocity, <code>cd</code> into the jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia/build
+ directory and run <code>./build.sh</code>. (Shell scripts will work on
+ the Windows platform if you install <link
+ href="http://sources.redhat.com/cygwin/">Cygwin</link>.)
</p>
<p>
- The output of running the ./build.sh script will be placed into the
- jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia/docs/ directory. You can look at the HTML files
- in there and view the results of the execution.
+ Output from the build.sh script, in this case HTML files, is placed into the
+ jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia/docs/ directory.
</p>
<p>
The jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia/xdocs/ directory has all of the .xml
- source code. In the stylesheets directory within the xdocs directory is the
- .vsl file. This is where most of the magic happens and a basic understanding
- of <link href="user-guide.html">Velocity Template Language</link> and JDOM
- is needed to understand how this file works.
+ source code. The xdocs/stylesheets directory contains the
+ .vsl file, in which most of the magic happens. Understanding
+ <link href="user-guide.html">Velocity Template Language</link> and JDOM
+ is necessary to understand how the .vsl file works.
</p>
</s1>
@@ -142,7 +138,7 @@
</tr>
<tr>
<td>extension</td>
- <td>The extension that is appended to the end of your .xml file. For example,
+ <td>This is the extension that is appended to the end of your .xml file. For example,
with an extension of ".html", index.xml would be converted into index.html.
By default, the extension is .html.
</td>
@@ -158,7 +154,7 @@
<td>projectFile</td>
<td>This is the path to a "project" file. This file is an XML file
that can be used as a "navigation" file. If you have used Stylebook
- or Struts system for generation of the website documentation, you
+ or Struts system for generation of the web site documentation, you
will understand the purpose of this file. <strong>It is an optional
task argument.</strong> If you look at the Anakia example in the
jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia directory, you can see the project.xml
@@ -180,10 +176,10 @@
<td>This turns on or off the ability to check the last modified date on files
in order to determine whether or not they need to be re-rendered or not.
The value of this attribute can be "true, false, yes, no". By
- default, it is true meaning that the last modified date should be checked
- and if the original .xml file, project file or .vsl file have not changed,
- then don't process the page. This speeds up processing quite a bit because
- pages that have not changed will not get processed again.</td>
+ default, it is true, meaning that the last modified date should be checked
+ and if the original .xml file, project file, or .vsl file have not changed,
+ then don't process the page. This accelerates processing because
+ pages that have not changed will not get reprocessed.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>velocityPropertiesFile</td>
@@ -277,16 +273,16 @@
</p>
<p>
The name <link
- href="http://www.kabalarians.com/female/anakia.htm">Anakia</link> is just a
- cool name that I think fits this project quite nicely; "The name of Anakia
+ href="http://www.kabalarians.com/female/anakia.htm">Anakia</link> is a
+ cool name that I think fits this project quite nicely. "The name of Anakia
has given you the desire for creative, artistic or musical expression in an
original way. You strive to be different and have the self-confidence to
implement your ideas because you have the perseverance necessary to see
something through, despite obstacles."
</p>
<p>
- Further help and assistance was provided by Jason van Zyl, Geir Magnusson Jr.,
- and the XPath support was added by Bob McWhirter.
+ Further help and assistance was provided by Jason van Zyl and Geir Magnusson Jr.
+ XPath support was added by Bob McWhirter.
</p>
</s1>