You are viewing a plain text version of this content. The canonical link for it is here.
Posted to user@velocity.apache.org by Dmitri Colebatch <di...@colebatch.com> on 2003/07/01 01:59:50 UTC
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing list
I dont know if the request to remove someone from the list on the grounds
indicated is "valid" or not, but I have to say, I wholeheartedly agree.
Most people (I hope) subscribed to this list, are here because they use
velocity, and they want to keep in touch with the project's uses, ask
questions, and hopefully help a few others out along the way. Mailing lists
comprised of these sort of people are very productive.
However, some people on this list appear to have no interest in answering
questions, and rather are simply offering alternative products. Imagine the
uproar if I offered a commercial templating project as a response to
enquiries about Velocity.
my 2c
cheers
dim
----- Original Message -----
From: "Jonathan Revusky" <jo...@revusky.com>
To: <ve...@jakarta.apache.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 7:39 AM
Subject: Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing
list
> Joshua Levy wrote:
> > I said this privately before, and now I'll say it publicly:
>
> Interesting. You never said it privately to me... :-)
>
> >
> > I think Jonathan Revusky (jon at revusky.com) should be banned
> > from the Velocity emailing lists, because I think his purpose
> > here is a "denial of service" type attack on the emailing list
> > itself.
>
> This is an interesting concept, Josh. A "denial of service" attack on an
> online community.
>
> Well... with a "denial of service" attack against a server, you flood
> the server with bogus requests and then, in an attempt to answer all the
> requests, the server gets bogged down and slows down to a crawl.
>
> Denial of service.
>
> But such a "denial of service" attack is based on the fact that the
> server (like any computer system in general) is basically a mindless
> automaton. It must (because that is how it is programmed) attempt to
> respond to all requests indiscriminately.
>
> However, an online community is made of up humans -- sentient beings.
> They can use their own judgment and discretion to decide what things
> they should respond to. And how to respond...
>
> So the analogy breaks down significantly, does it not? In effect, what
> you seem to be implying is that the people here are mindless automatons
> who must find some response to what I'm saying, and in attempting to
> respond to me, they waste cycles (and this is beyond their control
> seemingly) that would otherwise be devoted to helping other people -- by
> answering their questions and so on.
>
> Really, Josh, isn't this a rather strange view of things... ?
>
> > One of the huge advantages that velocity has is a large user
> > base, and a helpful and supportive emailing list.
>
> Well, it's true that Velocity still has a lot of users and typically,
> people like to help out. So if somebody posts a question and somebody
> else knows the answer, they'll answer it. That's all fine. Of course,
> it's not a particularly special feature of this community. You get on
> the mailing list for any reasonably well-known OSS product (FM included)
> and ask a reasonably simple question and you'll typically get a
> response. What is puzzling to me is the idea that I am somehow throwing
> a monkey in the works. It would seem that, according to you, my presence
> is preventing people from getting answers to their questions.
>
> By what mechanism?
>
> Moreover, has their been a flood of complaints on this score? For example:
>
> "I asked a question about Velocity usage and I never got an answer
> because everybody who would have answered was too busy flaming this
> Revusky bastard. Damn that Revusky!"
>
> or
>
> "Somebody asked a question and I would have helped the person out, but I
> couldn't, because that S.O.B. Revusky was forcing me to flame him! Damn
> that Revusky bastard!"
>
> > I think that
> > Jon posts here specificially to create flame wars which encourage
> > people to unsubscribe (due to short term volume spikes).
>
> It is probably true that the velocity-related mailing lists have lost
> subscribers over the past year. I can only speculate because I am not
> privy to the administrative list info. But one does get the feeling that
> there is less and less activity. However, I wonder whether you sincerely
> believe that this is my fault. It might simply be that people have come
> to realize that the project is rather dead, and have looked for
> alternatives, found them, and thus, unsubscribed from velocity-related
> lists, because they are simply not using Velocity any more.
>
> You know, really, it is very much in the normal course of things, that
> if a project is abandoned like this -- no new features, or even
> bug-fixes in a year or more -- that you will lose users. The product
> becomes less and less competitive with other things in the same space
> that are moving forward. Don't you think it sort of smells of
> scape-goat-ism this idea that I am to blame for any of this?
>
> Anyway, I think I should set certain matters clear. I do not post here
> in order to create flame wars. I post here primarily so as to inform
> people about FreeMarker. That may have its obnoxious side, but I don't
> really see any ethical or moral problem with it. The fact remains that
> Velocity owes most of its success to placement. Face it: Velocity is
> very very far from being the best technical solution in this application
> space. In fact, the project is largely abandoned, and the gap between it
> and things at the cutting edge is only widening.
>
> Still, a lot of people simply gravitate towards Jakarta tools (Velocity
> among others) because of their visibility and don't really investigate
> alternatives. It is similar to what happens with Microsoft products, for
> example. For that reason, I would see no particular problem with showing
> up on a Windows-oriented list and simply telling them quite calmly that
> many headaches that they deal with in Doze don't happen with Linux --
> frequent inexplicable crashes, and so on. Most of the people using
> Windows are using it simply because it's the "default" anyway. Windows
> has such a huge placement/marketing advantage, that it simply does not
> make sense to be very shy about informing people that there are
> alternatives in every available context. The Microsoft die-hards might
> flame me, but at the end of the day, what is the grievance? People may
> simply compare the two products on their merits and decide that the
> other product is actually better for their purposes. <shrug>
>
> > As a
> > side benefit (to him), new users who join during one of his
> > flame sessions will have more hassle getting help. (Ditto with
> > the archives.)
> >
> > If you look at his behavior over the last three years or so (since
> > I've been on the list), I think it is clear his is trying to create
> > as much havok as possible (without getting kicked off), and then
> > waiting a few weeks (or months), and doing it again.
>
> Okay, Josh. So the bottom line is that you want to shut me up. You want
> censorship. Okay, fine.
>
> But in the open-source world, free speech is the norm and censorship is
> an extreme, drastic measure. So there is an onus on you to make your
> case. And meanwhile, you are engaging in a certain amount of
> hand-waving. If you want to censor these horrible things I write here,
> then you should at least be able to point out some concrete examples of
> the kind of unacceptable material that I have posted that should be
> censored. You cannot really argue "Revusky is a bad guy, I don't like
> him, so let's censor him." (Well, you can argue that, but it's pretty
> lame...)
>
> So, Josh, could you please point out some of the most egregious examples
> of the material I have posted here that really gives you no recourse but
> censorship?
>
> Then maybe we can discuss this on a case-by-case basis and see what your
> point is. Frankly, I think it would be hard, at least from this post of
> yours, for a fair-minded observer to see what your point is. One would
> mostly infer something like: "This guy is saying stuff we don't like, so
> let's boot him."
>
> And that really doesn't give a good impression.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jonathan Revusky
> --
> lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
> FreeMarker-Velocity comparison page, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
>
> >
> > Joshua Levy
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing list
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
Jonathan wrote:
> I did unsubscribe at that moment when I said I was unsubscribing.
> In fact, I am not currently subscribed (though that is an excessively
> legalistic argument.) I use the gmane.org newsreader interface.
That Jonathan is not explicitly subscribed to the mailing list was
fairly obvious, so to borrow another favorite phrase, his act was
obviously 'dissembling', or 'to put on a false appearance', in regards
to the claim to be unsubscribing.
However, Jonathan's quote also specifically states that the mesg Sun, 05
May 2002 21:04:42 -0700 was his "last".
"__This is my last message__, I'm sending the unsubscribe message right
now along with this one. Good bye everybody." (emphasis mine)
http://www.mail-archive.com/velocity-user@jakarta.apache.org/msg06985.ht
ml
Clearly that conflicts with the truth since Jonathan continues to read
and reply, therefore his absolute claim, "And I only speak the truth."
is still proven untrue.
Jonathan wrote:
> Anyway, when I said that my posts were truthful, I meant my technical
> posts about the state of Velocity development.
Interesting "waffle". So we will note that Jonathan only claims that his
posts are only truthful conditionally, i.e. if they are technical.
Therefore, we should be wary of wholesale claims by Jonathan, ex: "my
posts are invariably truthful", as they may be untrue. ;-)
-Timo
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing
list
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Tim Colson wrote:
> Jonathan Revusky wrote:
>
>>And I only speak the truth.
>
>
> That is demonstrably untrue.
>
> On multiple occasions (I looked in the archives.) Jonathan wrote that
> either he would or was unsubscribing from the velocity list(s), and here
> is a specific archived mesg from Sunday, May 05 2002, where Jonathan
> specifically wrote,
>
> "__This is my last message__, I'm sending the unsubscribe message right
> now
> along with this one. Good bye everybody." (emphasis mine)
> http://www.mail-archive.com/velocity-user@jakarta.apache.org/msg06985.ht
> ml
>
I did unsubscribe at that moment when I said I was unsubscribing.
In fact, I am not currently subscribed (though that is an excessively
legalistic argument.) I use the gmane.org newsreader interface.
Anyway, when I said that my posts were truthful, I meant my technical
posts about the state of Velocity development. If anything I had said in
that regard was untruthful, I am quite sure that you (and/or others)
would pretty much immediately jump on it.
That was my point.
Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
FreeMarker-Velocity comparison page, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Tim Colson wrote:
> Jonathan wrote:
>
>>Yeah, you anticipated it. The template engine that cannot be
>>named does work the way you want.
>
> Not according to the FM documentation I read - FM does not throw an
> exception when an IF conditional contains anytyhing other than a boolean
> reference.
>
> So I assume Jonathan's suggested code modifications might change
> Velocity behaviour, but not as I described.
I initially did not grasp what you wanted, but then I reread it and told
you how to get the behavior you wanted. That was here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/velocity-dev%40jakarta.apache.org/msg07630.html
>
> Other kind readers, please do not conclude that Jonathan's post answered
> my question.
Conclude it. :-)
> He is simply getting in the way of me trying to learn more
> about how Velocity works.
<sigh>
*I* am getting in the way of your learning how Velocity works????
I can't even tell whether people are saying these things with a straight
face. Lack of face-to-face interpersonal cues in this medium.
You cannot be serious! C'mon...
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Velocity->FreeMarker template conversion tool,
http://freemarker.org/usCavalry.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Tim Colson wrote:
>>>Not according to the FM documentation I read - FM does not throw an
>>>exception when an IF conditional contains anytyhing other
>>
>>than a boolean reference.
>>
>>I don't know what documentation did you read, but
>>http://www.freemarker.org/docs/ref_directive_if.html clearly says "The
>>condition-s must evaluate to a boolean value, or else an
>>error will abort template processing".
>
>
> Attila -
>
> I did read that :-) And it is not what I want.
>
> I don't want an evaluated boolean expression... only a boolean
> reference.
>
> #if ($foo == $bleck) -> Bzzzt. Throws an error
> #if ($foo > $bleck ) -> Bzzzt. Throws an error
> #if ($foo) assuming foo is an instanceof Boolean, then this would be
> fine.
>
> Freemarker doesn't do that. Velocity doesn't do that.
> I must remind, I don't care how FM does or doesn't do it - this was and
> is a Velocity question. If I wanted to know how I could make FM do this,
> I will join the freemarker mailing lists.
>
> Thanks,
> Tim
I realized that was what you wanted after rereading the post. I told you
how to achieve that here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/velocity-dev%40jakarta.apache.org/msg07630.html
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Velocity->FreeMarker template conversion utility,
http://freemarker.org/usCavalry.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion
Posted by Daniel Dekany <dd...@freemail.hu>.
Friday, July 4, 2003, 11:12:11 AM, Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com> writes:
>
>>Still not ad-hominem. I attacked your idea, and explained why I thought
>>it was ill-advised.
>
> You wrote that it is necessary, to "keep your hand on your wallet"
Hey, don't cheat! That was in a different thread... the debated question
in this thread was if the concrete initial affair in this thread was ad
hominem or not... Not that it is interesting if it was or not -- it's
not a philosophy mailing list -- just if you debate then do it in
accordance with the rules.
> when being around on this list, which IMHO implies that you consider
> members of this list being thieves.
>
> This is, what I'd call "a personal attack". Worse, it's a perfidious
> below the belt attack. The fact that you didn't actually write it
> down but just implied it, doesn't make it better.
[snip]
I'm not inherently determined to protect Jonathan (even if I'm a FM
contrib.), but these are artificial reasonings. *Obviously*, nobody will
think that Vel. people are actually pickpockets, also *obviously*
Jonathan didn't meant it verbatim, it was cleanly just a nasty sarcastic
note. OK, its an ugly thing to say things like this (i.e. that they are
thrives), but you know, this is something like if I say you: "You
shit!". It's offending, but nobody will think that you are actually from
excrement. So, simply put, it's ridiculous if you start to prove, that I
have slandered you, that you are from excrement (while you are form
flesh), because I want to discredit you. Actually, "You shit!" just
means that "I hate you!". Frankly, I think that you are just playing
with the words, be trying to to win some rhetorical battle: it was NOT
ad hominem attack. It's cleanly an artificial thing to start to use this
affair to prove ad hominem attacks. Also, and most importantly, I don't
believe that anybody can *really* be offended on things like this...
it's a such pretending... you realize that "Phew... this guy is really
angry about us..." and that's all.
> Your continous sneering and putting out side blows in all directions
> simpy obliterate your possible technical arguments. Most people that I
> know don't listen to any valuable input if it is delivered in an
> obnoxious way like yours is.
>
> You think, that developers will put up with your ego, if your
> "technical" input is good. That's wrong. Developers simply will stop
> listening to you, no matter what improvements you propose. Because
> your arguments drown in a continous drone of ridicule.
The whole self-exciting flaming is full with the lack of frankness and
with pretending (especially on the Vel. side), senseless offences
(especially on Jonathan's side) and glowing dispute that has lost any of
its original points (on both side), and today it exists solely for
itself. It's a bloated sh*t. And the conclusion that J.R. is an utterly
terrible man, so he will drive you crazy if you are an FM
user/developer... is, as a matter of fact, mistaken.
> You seem to expect that everyone discusses only "technical"
> information and you're allowed to deliver your snide comments "from
> high" because of your conceived supremacy to us mere mortals.
>
> To me, who knew zilch about FreeMarker some weeks ago, the whole FM
> project now feels like "technical interesting, but the surrounding
> people have a serious problem towards anything Apache". Continous
> putting down of other projects isn't a good way to promote the
> superiority of your own project. It seems that there is some
Can you imagine that somebody puts down a project because he *really*
thinks that the project is technically inferior? And not because of some
religious or political reasons?
> desparation because an "abandoned, sub-standard" thing like Velocity
> has a much, much larger user base than FM, simply because it is "ASF".
(which is BTW, I strongly believe, true...)
> But putting it down won't help FreeMarker at all. This is, what you
> don't seem to grasp.
Kind of political question... but I also think it doesn't help FM.
> Jonathan, we _all_ have noticed that you're "much better at writing
> templating engines" than this group of developers (your words). You
> rubbed it in many times and at least I am now under the firm
> impression that your technical abilities go along with a serious ego
> problem. Which is bad, because the _only_ thing that stands beween me
> and testing out FreeMarker in a production environment is actually
> your ego and the prospect of having to work with people that have
> attitude problems like you if a problem crops up.
[snip]
It's mistaken. An important difference between Vel. and FM. community is
exactly that FM developers respect criticism more from the users. And
you will not be bashed just because you tell negative critics... well,
except if you say *utter* nonsense. If something is s*it, then you can
tell that that's s*it; nobody will be offended.
--
Best regards,
Daniel Dekany
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com> writes:
>
>
>>Still not ad-hominem. I attacked your idea, and explained why I thought
>>it was ill-advised.
>
>
> You wrote that it is necessary, to "keep your hand on your wallet"
> when being around on this list, which IMHO implies that you consider
> members of this list being thieves.
>
> This is, what I'd call "a personal attack". Worse, it's a perfidious
> below the belt attack. The fact that you didn't actually write it
> down but just implied it, doesn't make it better.
I feel it was quite appropriate. I was responding to a bunch of phony
drivel about how everybody loves me and wants to have a big group hug. I
sarcastically stated that it would be a partial hug in my case because I
wanted to keep one hand on my wallet. I was indicating that I perceived
extreme phoniness on the part of these people and that therefore I
didn't trust them any further than I could throw them.
>
> Your continous sneering and putting out side blows in all directions
> simpy obliterate your possible technical arguments. Most people that I
> know don't listen to any valuable input if it is delivered in an
> obnoxious way like yours is.
Now, this, for example is, just ad-hominem drivel. I'm obnoxious, I'm
this, I'm that, so that discredits or devalues any technical point I made.
Pure ad hominem.
Besides, I have had enough interaction with you recently, Henning, to
know how obnoxious you are, so, you know... you're in a glass house
throwing stones anyway.
>
> You think, that developers will put up with your ego, if your
> "technical" input is good. That's wrong. Developers simply will stop
> listening to you, no matter what improvements you propose. Because
> your arguments drown in a continous drone of ridicule. You seem to
> expect that everyone discusses only "technical" information and you're
> allowed to deliver your snide comments "from high" because of your
> conceived supremacy to us mere mortals.
The stuff about my great ego is very overblown. The fact remains that,
as I have said, there has been no ongoing development on Velocity over
the past year. Nothing. No CVS commits. No new features, no bug-fixes,
no improvements in documentation or examples. No nothing.
For me to contrast favorably my efforts and that of the FreeMarker
community with the above-described situation does not require some
inflated ego. It boils down to the fact that we are comparing a serious
ongoing development effort (on the FreeMarker side) with *absolutely
nothing* (on the Velocity side).
Obviously the results of a year of our hard work are going to be better
than the results of a year of *doing absolutely nothing at all*.
So, to say this is not so terribly egotistical... <shrug>
>
> To me, who knew zilch about FreeMarker some weeks ago,
Henning, I am confident that you still know zilch about FreeMarker.
> the whole FM
> project now feels like "technical interesting, but the surrounding
> people have a serious problem towards anything Apache".
So what? That's just more irrelevant ad-hominem type stuff.
> Continous
> putting down of other projects isn't a good way to promote the
> superiority of your own project. It seems that there is some
> desparation because an "abandoned, sub-standard" thing like Velocity
> has a much, much larger user base than FM, simply because it is
> "ASF". But putting it down won't help FreeMarker at all. This is, what
> you don't seem to grasp.
Maybe not. But there is nothing ethically or morally wrong with my
pointing out the true state of the Velocity project. I have noticed an
ongoing attempt to mask the truth. Over the last months, I have
perceived a tacit agreement here to keep talking about the project as if
it was alive, as if ongoing development was taking place. "Maybe the
committers will do this". "Have you submitted a patch for that?" And so
on. They even put out a release in April that was identical to the
previous release 8 months prior simply to give the impression that
something was happening.
It seems right and proper for me to say that the emperor is wearing no
clothes. That actually could be beneficial to the Velocity project if
people respond pro-actively to that wake-up call. Whether it's
beneficial to FreeMarker or not, I don't know. But that's not relevant
anyway.
>
> Jonathan, we _all_ have noticed that you're "much better at writing
> templating engines" than this group of developers (your words). You
> rubbed it in many times and at least I am now under the firm
> impression that your technical abilities go along with a serious ego
> problem. Which is bad, because the _only_ thing that stands beween me
> and testing out FreeMarker in a production environment is actually
> your ego and the prospect of having to work with people that have
> attitude problems like you if a problem crops up.
>
> If you were able to exhale, you might have been able to persuade some
> velocity users to try out and maybe use FreeMarker. But I'm pretty
> sure, that most developers and users that read the archive of the
> discussion of the last days will not touch FM with a ten-feet pole.
This is just speculation on your part. Actually, many of the people
showing up on the FreeMarker lists are pretty obviously Velocity refugees.
>
> That's your personal achievement and has nothing to do with technical
> aspects of any templating engine or one being superior to the
> other. It's your attitude and that's the truth.
The above is just more irrelevant ad-hominem smoke-blowing.
Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Use JSP taglibs from a FreeMarker template:
http://freemarker.org/docs/pgui_misc_servlet.html
>
> Regards
> Henning
>
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion
Posted by "Henning P. Schmiedehausen" <hp...@intermeta.de>.
Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com> writes:
>Still not ad-hominem. I attacked your idea, and explained why I thought
>it was ill-advised.
You wrote that it is necessary, to "keep your hand on your wallet"
when being around on this list, which IMHO implies that you consider
members of this list being thieves.
This is, what I'd call "a personal attack". Worse, it's a perfidious
below the belt attack. The fact that you didn't actually write it
down but just implied it, doesn't make it better.
Your continous sneering and putting out side blows in all directions
simpy obliterate your possible technical arguments. Most people that I
know don't listen to any valuable input if it is delivered in an
obnoxious way like yours is.
You think, that developers will put up with your ego, if your
"technical" input is good. That's wrong. Developers simply will stop
listening to you, no matter what improvements you propose. Because
your arguments drown in a continous drone of ridicule. You seem to
expect that everyone discusses only "technical" information and you're
allowed to deliver your snide comments "from high" because of your
conceived supremacy to us mere mortals.
To me, who knew zilch about FreeMarker some weeks ago, the whole FM
project now feels like "technical interesting, but the surrounding
people have a serious problem towards anything Apache". Continous
putting down of other projects isn't a good way to promote the
superiority of your own project. It seems that there is some
desparation because an "abandoned, sub-standard" thing like Velocity
has a much, much larger user base than FM, simply because it is
"ASF". But putting it down won't help FreeMarker at all. This is, what
you don't seem to grasp.
Jonathan, we _all_ have noticed that you're "much better at writing
templating engines" than this group of developers (your words). You
rubbed it in many times and at least I am now under the firm
impression that your technical abilities go along with a serious ego
problem. Which is bad, because the _only_ thing that stands beween me
and testing out FreeMarker in a production environment is actually
your ego and the prospect of having to work with people that have
attitude problems like you if a problem crops up.
If you were able to exhale, you might have been able to persuade some
velocity users to try out and maybe use FreeMarker. But I'm pretty
sure, that most developers and users that read the archive of the
discussion of the last days will not touch FM with a ten-feet pole.
That's your personal achievement and has nothing to do with technical
aspects of any templating engine or one being superior to the
other. It's your attitude and that's the truth.
Regards
Henning
--
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de +49 9131 50 654 0 http://www.intermeta.de/
Java, perl, Solaris, Linux, xSP Consulting, Web Services
freelance consultant -- Jakarta Turbine Development -- hero for hire
--- Quote of the week: "It is pointless to tell people anything when
you know that they won't process the message." --- Jonathan Revusky
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
> Still not ad-hominem. I attacked your idea, and explained why
> I thought it was ill-advised.
Along the way insinuating that someone would be daft, nutty, and
perverse to come up with the idea. What is amazing is that the attack
was based on lack of reading comprehension.
> That's beyond my control really. It wasn't ad hominem.
It was an attack in _my opinion_. The proper response might be to say,
"I'm sorry, I didn't understand the question, and I apologize for
attributing my incorrect conclusions to you and making statements about
the idea and the character of the person who generated them."
> It's a rough-and-tumble world, Tim. Do you think anybody
> cares very much?
I'm sure you realize the fallacy made by this statement.
> I limit my response basically to pointing out that, contrary
> to what you say, I did not engage in any ad hominem attack on you.
"Abusive: An Abusive Ad Hominem occurs when an attack on the character
or other irrelevant personal qualities of the opposition--such as
appearance--is offered as evidence against her position. Such attacks
are often effective distractions ("red herrings"), because the opponent
feels it necessary to defend herself, thus being distracted from the
topic of the debate."
I have expressed why it is indeed in my opinion an Abusive Ad Hominem
fallacy - as proven again by my perceived need to defend my character
rather than discuss the topic.
And as such, since this is my opinion, there is no point in arguing it.
-Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Tim Colson wrote:
>>>>It seems a bit daft.
>>>>AFAICS, this is based on some perverse, distorted version of the MVC
>>>>paradigm.
>>>>Anyway, that's what Tim Colson wants, and it's nutty enough
>>>>that neither
>
>
>>An ad hominem attack is necessarily on another person's
>>character, not on their ideas.
>
> Agreed. And by saying that my request was "daft" and based on "some
> perverse, distorted..." which I took to implies and insinuate that I
> have those qualities of character in order to create such an idea. That
> is offensive to me.
Still not ad-hominem. I attacked your idea, and explained why I thought
it was ill-advised.
>
>
>>When I said that your idea seemed 'a bit daft' or
>>'nutty' and explained why I thought this, that was not an ad
>>hominem attack.
>
> This insults and offends me even more!
That's beyond my control really. It wasn't ad hominem.
> Please, do not tell me what my
> opinion is on the matter of being offended! I know quite well that and I
> am offended.
It's a rough-and-tumble world, Tim. Do you think anybody cares very much?
>
>
>
>>>The speciulation is incorrect, and the attacks are
>>>offensive.
>>
>>Could you please outline what is incorrect about it?
>
> The speculation that this idea was based on some "perverse, distorted
> MVC paradigm" was incorrect.
>
> Despite needing no defense, I previously outlined in faily simple
> language that this question about how one might modify the velocity
> engine to limit comparisons to booleans was academic and based on the
> modus operandi of another template language I use in PERL called
> HTML::Template.
>
> There is no need for reply unless it contains apologies for offending me
> (yet again) and wasting my time repeating myself explaining rationale
> that should not have required any explanation in the first place.
I limit my response basically to pointing out that, contrary to what you
say, I did not engage in any ad hominem attack on you. I simply
expressed my highly negative reaction to your idea. That's not
ad-hominem. Moreover, despite my negative reaction to your idea, I ave
you step-by-step instructions on how to implement it.
Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Velocity->FreeMarker template conversion utility,
http://freemarker.org/usCavalry.html
>
> -Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion (was: Can comparisons be limited to true/false? )
Posted by Bill Chmura <Bi...@Explosivo.com>.
You must let these things go... Only then can you be free. The demon on
your back makes you respond like this doesn't it? You did not really
want to write this, but could not stop yourself. We we're / are making
such progress... We have at least three people on the list who want to
love you. Think of what you could have done with the time you spent
responding to this... Read a book, watched a sunset, tweeked freemarker
a little, enjoyed a frosty cold beverage.
He me help you
> -----Original Message-----
> From: news [mailto:news@main.gmane.org] On Behalf Of
> Jonathan Revusky
> Sent: Saturday, July 05, 2003 3:15 AM
> To: velocity-dev@jakarta.apache.org
> Subject: Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion (was: Can
> comparisons be limited to true/false? )
>
>
> Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> > Daniel Dekany <dd...@freemail.hu> writes:
> >
> > Can you (and everyone else) please take this discussion
> off a project
> > development list.
> >
> > Personally, I'm not interested in the various ego
> problems cropping up
> > here.
>
> Henning, then why did you just separately contribute a long
> tirade to
> the thread??? You know, this long post going on about how I'm so
> terrible and egotistical, just completely off-topic
> personality stuff...
>
> And really, it's just A-1-A ad-hominem stuff. That's what
> all of these
> personal attacks on me are. I have pointed out that
> Velocity development
> has been at a standstill for a year or more. I have pointed
> out quite
> factually various deficiencies in the tool, and said quite
> truthfully
> that these problems have been addressed in a competing tool
> in the same
> space.
>
> The lack of development, and that the tool is falling further and
> further behind other things, these are simply facts and
> they are things
> the Velocity community should address. Meanwhile, my deplorable
> personality is not something they can do anything about
> anyway. So the
> tirades against my person are obviously just an attempt to
> blow smoke to
> obscure the real issue.
>
> Not only that, but it gets increasingly clownish. Look at the
> Velocity-user list. You have somebody proposing censorship.
> However,
> when asked to provide a concrete example of the material I
> have written
> that requires censorship, the guy simply won't provide any.
> This doesn't
> prevent other people from +1'ing the censorship proposal
> (to be fair,
> you were -1 on that crazy idea) but these other people also
> will not
> provide any concrete example of the egregious material that
> needs to be
> censored.
>
> Quite obviously, they simply don't like me pointing out the
> real state
> of this project. Also, they don't like me pointing out
> truthfully that a
> competing tool has features lacking in Velocity that a user wants.
> Basically, they want to censor truthful, on-topic comments that put
> their development efforts (lack thereof, I mean) in a
> negative light. Of
> course, they won't provide concrete examples of such
> material that they
> want to censor because that would make them a laughing
> stock -- I mean,
> even more of a laughing stock than they currently are. After all,
> there's no getting away from it; to propose censorship and
> be unwilling
> to provide any concrete example of the material you want to
> censor...
> that's pretty lame.
>
> Jonathan Revusky
> --
> lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
> Check out FreeMarker's powerful macro system:
> http://freemarker.org/docs/dgui_misc_userdefdir.html
>
>
>
>
> >
> > Thanks
> > Henning
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail:
> velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion (was: Can comparisons be
limited to true/false? )
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Henning P. Schmiedehausen wrote:
> Daniel Dekany <dd...@freemail.hu> writes:
>
> Can you (and everyone else) please take this discussion off a project
> development list.
>
> Personally, I'm not interested in the various ego problems cropping up
> here.
Henning, then why did you just separately contribute a long tirade to
the thread??? You know, this long post going on about how I'm so
terrible and egotistical, just completely off-topic personality stuff...
And really, it's just A-1-A ad-hominem stuff. That's what all of these
personal attacks on me are. I have pointed out that Velocity development
has been at a standstill for a year or more. I have pointed out quite
factually various deficiencies in the tool, and said quite truthfully
that these problems have been addressed in a competing tool in the same
space.
The lack of development, and that the tool is falling further and
further behind other things, these are simply facts and they are things
the Velocity community should address. Meanwhile, my deplorable
personality is not something they can do anything about anyway. So the
tirades against my person are obviously just an attempt to blow smoke to
obscure the real issue.
Not only that, but it gets increasingly clownish. Look at the
Velocity-user list. You have somebody proposing censorship. However,
when asked to provide a concrete example of the material I have written
that requires censorship, the guy simply won't provide any. This doesn't
prevent other people from +1'ing the censorship proposal (to be fair,
you were -1 on that crazy idea) but these other people also will not
provide any concrete example of the egregious material that needs to be
censored.
Quite obviously, they simply don't like me pointing out the real state
of this project. Also, they don't like me pointing out truthfully that a
competing tool has features lacking in Velocity that a user wants.
Basically, they want to censor truthful, on-topic comments that put
their development efforts (lack thereof, I mean) in a negative light. Of
course, they won't provide concrete examples of such material that they
want to censor because that would make them a laughing stock -- I mean,
even more of a laughing stock than they currently are. After all,
there's no getting away from it; to propose censorship and be unwilling
to provide any concrete example of the material you want to censor...
that's pretty lame.
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Check out FreeMarker's powerful macro system:
http://freemarker.org/docs/dgui_misc_userdefdir.html
>
> Thanks
> Henning
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion (was: Can comparisons be limited to true/false? )
Posted by "Henning P. Schmiedehausen" <hp...@intermeta.de>.
Daniel Dekany <dd...@freemail.hu> writes:
Can you (and everyone else) please take this discussion off a project
development list.
Personally, I'm not interested in the various ego problems cropping up
here.
Thanks
Henning
--
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen INTERMETA GmbH
hps@intermeta.de +49 9131 50 654 0 http://www.intermeta.de/
Java, perl, Solaris, Linux, xSP Consulting, Web Services
freelance consultant -- Jakarta Turbine Development -- hero for hire
--- Quote of the week: "It is pointless to tell people anything when
you know that they won't process the message." --- Jonathan Revusky
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion (was: Can comparisons be
limited to true/false? )
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Ed Korthof wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 06:57:19PM +0200, Daniel Dekany wrote:
>
>>Thursday, July 3, 2003, 4:56:40 PM, Tim Colson wrote:
>>
>>
>>>>>>It seems a bit daft.
>>>>>>AFAICS, this is based on some perverse, distorted version of the MVC
>>>>>>paradigm.
>>>>>>Anyway, that's what Tim Colson wants, and it's nutty enough
>>>>>>that neither
>>>
>>>>An ad hominem attack is necessarily on another person's
>>>>character, not on their ideas.
>>>
>>>Agreed. And by saying that my request was "daft" and based on "some
>>>perverse, distorted..." which I took to implies and insinuate that I
>>>have those qualities of character in order to create such an idea. That
>>>is offensive to me.
>>
>>Well, if its an OT thread anyway... a little theological course (seems
>>that FM people are experts in this field... :)). Ad hominem attack is
>>when the other persons tells something that is *irrelevant* regarding
>>the disputed question, to discredit you in general. For example, I say
>>that Vel. people was unfair with WebMacro people, and then the a Vel.
>>people bring up that: "Note that Daniel was in prison for 3 times
>>because of raping... he is a such man." This discredits everything else
>>what I said, because I'm such a bad man in general. In this case I have
>>suffered an Ad hominem attack. Typical method in politics.
>>
>>If somebody thinks that your idea is a nonsense, and he tells you that
>>"You are an IDIOOOOOT!", then it cleanly means that he strongly believes
>>that your idea is an utter nonsense, *this way* you must be stupid,
>>brain-damaged, etc. Now, this can be offending, and can be an attack,
>>but it's in no way an *Ad hominem* attack.
>
>
> I don't think your definition is correct:
>
> http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Ad+hominem&db=*
>
> Certainly the usage that I'm familiar with allows for ad hominem attacks
> to be pertinent, but separate from the real topic. That is, describing
> the person as daft would qualify, even if it has some bearing on the
> discussion; but calling the idea daft does not (in the quote above, it
> is the idea that is described that way).
The idea was described as daft. It was always the ideas that were being
characterized negatively, not the person.
There was no ad-hominem attack.
Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
FreeMarker XML transformation capabilities,
http://freemarker.org/docs/xgui.html
Language is usage of course,
> and it does change.
>
> Using the phrase "perverse, distorted" is stands out because of the
> extremely strong connotations associated with "perverse ideas" -- it's
> hard to avoid that there is a certain degree of personal smearing going
> on when that term is used rather than something more neutral like:
> "based on an incorrect idea of the MVC paradigm." The words used do
> suggest this could be described as "ad hominem abusive":
>
> http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/attack.htm
>
> Regardless of the definition you choose want to use for ad hominem, from
> my perspective as a lurker, the terms used seemed excessive and
> unhelpful, and they did seem designed to attack the person as someone
> worth of being dismissed.
>
> cheers --
>
> Ed, who has used -- and does not like -- templating systems which allow
> no real logic in the display layer
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion (was: Can comparisons be limited to true/false? )
Posted by Ed Korthof <ed...@apache.org>.
On Thu, Jul 03, 2003 at 06:57:19PM +0200, Daniel Dekany wrote:
> Thursday, July 3, 2003, 4:56:40 PM, Tim Colson wrote:
>
> >> >>It seems a bit daft.
> >> >>AFAICS, this is based on some perverse, distorted version of the MVC
> >> >>paradigm.
> >> >>Anyway, that's what Tim Colson wants, and it's nutty enough
> >> >>that neither
> >
> >> An ad hominem attack is necessarily on another person's
> >> character, not on their ideas.
> > Agreed. And by saying that my request was "daft" and based on "some
> > perverse, distorted..." which I took to implies and insinuate that I
> > have those qualities of character in order to create such an idea. That
> > is offensive to me.
>
> Well, if its an OT thread anyway... a little theological course (seems
> that FM people are experts in this field... :)). Ad hominem attack is
> when the other persons tells something that is *irrelevant* regarding
> the disputed question, to discredit you in general. For example, I say
> that Vel. people was unfair with WebMacro people, and then the a Vel.
> people bring up that: "Note that Daniel was in prison for 3 times
> because of raping... he is a such man." This discredits everything else
> what I said, because I'm such a bad man in general. In this case I have
> suffered an Ad hominem attack. Typical method in politics.
>
> If somebody thinks that your idea is a nonsense, and he tells you that
> "You are an IDIOOOOOT!", then it cleanly means that he strongly believes
> that your idea is an utter nonsense, *this way* you must be stupid,
> brain-damaged, etc. Now, this can be offending, and can be an attack,
> but it's in no way an *Ad hominem* attack.
I don't think your definition is correct:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=Ad+hominem&db=*
Certainly the usage that I'm familiar with allows for ad hominem attacks
to be pertinent, but separate from the real topic. That is, describing
the person as daft would qualify, even if it has some bearing on the
discussion; but calling the idea daft does not (in the quote above, it
is the idea that is described that way). Language is usage of course,
and it does change.
Using the phrase "perverse, distorted" is stands out because of the
extremely strong connotations associated with "perverse ideas" -- it's
hard to avoid that there is a certain degree of personal smearing going
on when that term is used rather than something more neutral like:
"based on an incorrect idea of the MVC paradigm." The words used do
suggest this could be described as "ad hominem abusive":
http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/attack.htm
Regardless of the definition you choose want to use for ad hominem, from
my perspective as a lurker, the terms used seemed excessive and
unhelpful, and they did seem designed to attack the person as someone
worth of being dismissed.
cheers --
Ed, who has used -- and does not like -- templating systems which allow
no real logic in the display layer
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion (was: Can comparisons be limited to true/false? )
Posted by Daniel Dekany <dd...@freemail.hu>.
Thursday, July 3, 2003, 4:56:40 PM, Tim Colson wrote:
>> >>It seems a bit daft.
>> >>AFAICS, this is based on some perverse, distorted version of the MVC
>> >>paradigm.
>> >>Anyway, that's what Tim Colson wants, and it's nutty enough
>> >>that neither
>
>> An ad hominem attack is necessarily on another person's
>> character, not on their ideas.
> Agreed. And by saying that my request was "daft" and based on "some
> perverse, distorted..." which I took to implies and insinuate that I
> have those qualities of character in order to create such an idea. That
> is offensive to me.
Well, if its an OT thread anyway... a little theological course (seems
that FM people are experts in this field... :)). Ad hominem attack is
when the other persons tells something that is *irrelevant* regarding
the disputed question, to discredit you in general. For example, I say
that Vel. people was unfair with WebMacro people, and then the a Vel.
people bring up that: "Note that Daniel was in prison for 3 times
because of raping... he is a such man." This discredits everything else
what I said, because I'm such a bad man in general. In this case I have
suffered an Ad hominem attack. Typical method in politics.
If somebody thinks that your idea is a nonsense, and he tells you that
"You are an IDIOOOOOT!", then it cleanly means that he strongly believes
that your idea is an utter nonsense, *this way* you must be stupid,
brain-damaged, etc. Now, this can be offending, and can be an attack,
but it's in no way an *Ad hominem* attack.
>> When I said that your idea seemed 'a bit daft' or
>> 'nutty' and explained why I thought this, that was not an ad
>> hominem attack.
> This insults and offends me even more! Please, do not tell me what my
> opinion is on the matter of being offended! I know quite well that and I
> am offended.
[snip]
It's amazing how gentle souls people are... :)
--
Best regards,
Daniel Dekany
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
OT: Jonathan's ad hominem discussion (was: Can comparisons be limited to true/false? )
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
> >>It seems a bit daft.
> >>AFAICS, this is based on some perverse, distorted version of the MVC
> >>paradigm.
> >>Anyway, that's what Tim Colson wants, and it's nutty enough
> >>that neither
> An ad hominem attack is necessarily on another person's
> character, not on their ideas.
Agreed. And by saying that my request was "daft" and based on "some
perverse, distorted..." which I took to implies and insinuate that I
have those qualities of character in order to create such an idea. That
is offensive to me.
> When I said that your idea seemed 'a bit daft' or
> 'nutty' and explained why I thought this, that was not an ad
> hominem attack.
This insults and offends me even more! Please, do not tell me what my
opinion is on the matter of being offended! I know quite well that and I
am offended.
> > The speciulation is incorrect, and the attacks are
> > offensive.
> Could you please outline what is incorrect about it?
The speculation that this idea was based on some "perverse, distorted
MVC paradigm" was incorrect.
Despite needing no defense, I previously outlined in faily simple
language that this question about how one might modify the velocity
engine to limit comparisons to booleans was academic and based on the
modus operandi of another template language I use in PERL called
HTML::Template.
There is no need for reply unless it contains apologies for offending me
(yet again) and wasting my time repeating myself explaining rationale
that should not have required any explanation in the first place.
-Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Tim Colson wrote:
> Jonathan wrote:
>
>>What this guy wants -- believe it or not --
>
> Please stop putting words in my mouth. Obviously since you didn't
> understand my initial question, you are not qualified to speak for me!
>
>
>>It seems a bit daft.
>>AFAICS, this is based on some perverse, distorted version of the MVC
>>paradigm.
>>Anyway, that's what Tim Colson wants, and it's nutty enough
>>that neither
>
>
> And please refrain from speculation and ad hominem attacks on my
> character and ideas.
An ad hominem attack is necessarily on another person's character, not
on their ideas. When I said that your idea seemed 'a bit daft' or
'nutty' and explained why I thought this, that was not an ad hominem attack.
> The speciulation is incorrect, and the attacks are
> offensive.
Could you please outline what is incorrect about it?
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
FreeMarker-Velocity comparison page, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
>
> I don't need to justify this to anyone, but if you read the first post
> again, perhaps you'll notice that I said that the question was academic.
> I am trying to learn who Velocity works and what would theoretically
> need to be done to significantly change the way the templates are
> parsed.
>
> Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
Jonathan wrote:
> What this guy wants -- believe it or not --
Please stop putting words in my mouth. Obviously since you didn't
understand my initial question, you are not qualified to speak for me!
> It seems a bit daft.
> AFAICS, this is based on some perverse, distorted version of the MVC
> paradigm.
> Anyway, that's what Tim Colson wants, and it's nutty enough
> that neither
And please refrain from speculation and ad hominem attacks on my
character and ideas. The speciulation is incorrect, and the attacks are
offensive.
I don't need to justify this to anyone, but if you read the first post
again, perhaps you'll notice that I said that the question was academic.
I am trying to learn who Velocity works and what would theoretically
need to be done to significantly change the way the templates are
parsed.
Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Attila Szegedi wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Tim Colson" <tc...@cisco.com>
> To: "'Velocity Developers List'" <ve...@jakarta.apache.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 10:07 PM
> Subject: RE: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
>
>
>
>>Not according to the FM documentation I read - FM does not throw an
>>exception when an IF conditional contains anytyhing other than a boolean
>>reference.
>>
>
>
> I don't know what documentation did you read, but
> http://www.freemarker.org/docs/ref_directive_if.html clearly says "The
> condition-s must evaluate to a boolean value, or else an error will abort
> template processing".
Attila,
What this guy wants -- believe it or not -- is simply to disallow
explicit comparisons on template pages. He wants to prevent people from
writing:
#if (x == y)
and thus oblige the programmer to put a boolean variable xEqualsY in the
context, despite the fact that both x and y are already in the context
and could (with the usual disposition) be compared perfectly well.
Then anybody working on the template level would have to write instead:
#if (xEqualsY)
It seems a bit daft. You then have to document the existence of all
these boolean variables. And then, when the template writer wants to
compare x and z, say, and there is no ready-made boolean variable in the
context for this, he has to come running to the programmer to ask for this.
AFAICS, this is based on some perverse, distorted version of the MVC
paradigm.
Anyway, that's what Tim Colson wants, and it's nutty enough that neither
you nor I, on first reading, quite grasped what he was asking for; we
thought he just wanted the stricter semantics (as implemented in the
"template engine that cannot be named") where a non-boolean in a boolean
context (like a string or number or whatever) was considered an error.
<sigh>
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
FreeMarker-Velocity comparison page, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
>
> Regards,
> Attila.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Bill Chmura <Bi...@Explosivo.com>.
I did some work with HTML::Template... Sam, as I remember, is quite
adamant about a number of things :) He has his idea of what it does and
that's that! Great guy though. I still use it for all of my perl needs.
I was considering using the java version until I found velocity
-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Colson [mailto:tcolson@cisco.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 10:09 AM
To: 'Velocity Developers List'
Subject: RE: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
> I see. You want to allow only a single reference that evaluates to a
> boolean, and want to exclude more complex expressions altogether.
I'm pretty sure that is correct to say. But the semantics can be a
little confusing. $foo.bar.bleck must 'evaluate' to a boolean, but even
though the expression $foo > $bar does 'evaluate' to a boolean -> I
don't want to allow that.
> Why would this behavior be desirable?
I'm not saying it would be. I'm curious how I might make it happen. It
is an academic pursuit. Next week, I may ask how I might change #if to
<IF>.
I got the idea, by the way, from another template system that I use in
Perl called HTML::Template.
http://html-template.sourceforge.net/html_template.html
Sam Tregar, the author, is a well respected chap who has been building
webapps for a long time. He happens to be adamant that comparisons not
leak into the template, so HTML::Template only allows boolean references
in TMPL_IF tags.
Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
> I see. You want to allow only a single reference that evaluates to a
> boolean, and want to exclude more complex expressions
> altogether.
I'm pretty sure that is correct to say. But the semantics can be a
little confusing. $foo.bar.bleck must 'evaluate' to a boolean, but even
though the expression $foo > $bar does 'evaluate' to a boolean -> I
don't want to allow that.
> Why would this behavior be desirable?
I'm not saying it would be. I'm curious how I might make it happen. It
is an academic pursuit. Next week, I may ask how I might change #if to
<IF>.
I got the idea, by the way, from another template system that I use in
Perl called HTML::Template.
http://html-template.sourceforge.net/html_template.html
Sam Tregar, the author, is a well respected chap who has been building
webapps for a long time. He happens to be adamant that comparisons not
leak into the template, so HTML::Template only allows boolean references
in TMPL_IF tags.
Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Attila Szegedi <sz...@freemail.hu>.
I see. You want to allow only a single reference that evaluates to a
boolean, and want to exclude more complex expressions altogether. Why would
this behavior be desirable?
Attila.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Colson" <tc...@cisco.com>
To: "'Velocity Developers List'" <ve...@jakarta.apache.org>
Sent: Wednesday, July 02, 2003 12:06 AM
Subject: RE: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
> >
> > > Not according to the FM documentation I read - FM does not throw an
> > > exception when an IF conditional contains anytyhing other
> > than a boolean reference.
> > >
> > I don't know what documentation did you read, but
> > http://www.freemarker.org/docs/ref_directive_if.html clearly says "The
> > condition-s must evaluate to a boolean value, or else an
> > error will abort template processing".
>
> Attila -
>
> I did read that :-) And it is not what I want.
>
> I don't want an evaluated boolean expression... only a boolean
> reference.
>
> #if ($foo == $bleck) -> Bzzzt. Throws an error
> #if ($foo > $bleck ) -> Bzzzt. Throws an error
> #if ($foo) assuming foo is an instanceof Boolean, then this would be
> fine.
>
> Freemarker doesn't do that. Velocity doesn't do that.
> I must remind, I don't care how FM does or doesn't do it - this was and
> is a Velocity question. If I wanted to know how I could make FM do this,
> I will join the freemarker mailing lists.
>
> Thanks,
> Tim
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
>
>
>
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
>
> > Not according to the FM documentation I read - FM does not throw an
> > exception when an IF conditional contains anytyhing other
> than a boolean reference.
> >
> I don't know what documentation did you read, but
> http://www.freemarker.org/docs/ref_directive_if.html clearly says "The
> condition-s must evaluate to a boolean value, or else an
> error will abort template processing".
Attila -
I did read that :-) And it is not what I want.
I don't want an evaluated boolean expression... only a boolean
reference.
#if ($foo == $bleck) -> Bzzzt. Throws an error
#if ($foo > $bleck ) -> Bzzzt. Throws an error
#if ($foo) assuming foo is an instanceof Boolean, then this would be
fine.
Freemarker doesn't do that. Velocity doesn't do that.
I must remind, I don't care how FM does or doesn't do it - this was and
is a Velocity question. If I wanted to know how I could make FM do this,
I will join the freemarker mailing lists.
Thanks,
Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Attila Szegedi <sz...@freemail.hu>.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Colson" <tc...@cisco.com>
To: "'Velocity Developers List'" <ve...@jakarta.apache.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 10:07 PM
Subject: RE: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
> Not according to the FM documentation I read - FM does not throw an
> exception when an IF conditional contains anytyhing other than a boolean
> reference.
>
I don't know what documentation did you read, but
http://www.freemarker.org/docs/ref_directive_if.html clearly says "The
condition-s must evaluate to a boolean value, or else an error will abort
template processing".
Regards,
Attila.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: Architecture Overview?
Posted by Bill Chmura <Bi...@Explosivo.com>.
I think this is a pretty good idea... I'd be interested in learning
about it
-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Colson [mailto:tcolson@cisco.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 5:59 PM
To: 'Velocity Developers List'
Subject: Architecture Overview?
Say folks -
There has been a lot of discussion about the Velocity engine. But for
me, any large piece of code (even with great Javadocs) is hard to get a
handle on by just digging around in the src.
It would really help me, and perhaps other folks interested in working
on the core Velocity engine, to have a document that describes the
architecture and how the engine actually works. A pretty diagram or
three might be nice. ;-)
Is there already something like this for Velocity?
Howabout using the Apache Wiki for this?
http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?VelocityProjectPages
http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?VelocityArchitecture
Wiki - where everyone is a committer. :-)
Thanks,
Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Architecture Overview?
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
Say folks -
There has been a lot of discussion about the Velocity engine. But for
me, any large piece of code (even with great Javadocs) is hard to get a
handle on by just digging around in the src.
It would really help me, and perhaps other folks interested in working
on the core Velocity engine, to have a document that describes the
architecture and how the engine actually works. A pretty diagram or
three might be nice. ;-)
Is there already something like this for Velocity?
Howabout using the Apache Wiki for this?
http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?VelocityProjectPages
http://nagoya.apache.org/wiki/apachewiki.cgi?VelocityArchitecture
Wiki - where everyone is a committer. :-)
Thanks,
Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
Jonathan wrote:
> Yeah, you anticipated it. The template engine that cannot be
> named does work the way you want.
Not according to the FM documentation I read - FM does not throw an
exception when an IF conditional contains anytyhing other than a boolean
reference.
So I assume Jonathan's suggested code modifications might change
Velocity behaviour, but not as I described.
Other kind readers, please do not conclude that Jonathan's post answered
my question. He is simply getting in the way of me trying to learn more
about how Velocity works.
Jonathan wrote:
> You're welcome. You've got to love it when the best available
> authority on the Velocity code base is...
> Yours truly,
Indeed, no thank you. And I certainly do not share Jonathan's delusion.
> P.S. Or just use the unnameable template engine. It already works the
> way you want. :-)
As is so often the case, Jonathan is incorrect.
FM does -not- work the way I want. And even if it did, that would not be
enough to justify switching thousands of lines of code that use
Velocity.
Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Tim Colson wrote:
> Howdy folks -
> I'm wondering how I might limit the comparisons in velocity templates
> to only boolean conditions.
>
> For example:
> #if ($value > 20) HIGHLIGHTED BUTTON #else stdbutton #end
> would throw an exception and would need to be written with
> a context containing "IS_OVER_LIMIT", new Boolean() and this template:
> #if ($IS_OVER_LIMIT) HIGHLIGHTED BUTTON #else stdbutton #end
>
> Another example:
> #if ($widget.size == "LARGE") large #else not large #end
> would throw an exception and would need to be written as:
> #if ($widget.size.isLarge()) large #else not large #end
>
> The question here is academic at this point. I do not care to argue
> about why this might be good/bad/weird, nor do I want to hear how it
> could be done in another engine.
<LOL>
Yeah, you anticipated it. The template engine that cannot be named does
work the way you want. The condition in an if must be a bona fide
boolean. It doesn't coerce non-empty strings and whatnot into true
etcetera. If the thing's not a boolean, it throws.
>
> I'm just curious to know how one might go about messing with Velocity to
> alter it's behaviour as described. Maybe I'll learn something in the
> process of looking. :-)
You're in luck, Tim. I have actually been in the Velocity code to write
the Velocity->FM template converter. The converter is actually a patched
version of Velocity that builds up the tree using Velocity code and then
dumps it in FreeMarker syntax.
So I know my around a bit.
The key API to look at is:
boolean
org.apache.velocity.runtime.parser.Node.evaluate(InternalContextAdapter
context);
This is the hook that is used to evaluate a node in the boolean if context.
To get the stricter behavior you want, you would do 2 things:
1. Patch the evaluate() method on line 334 of
org/apache/velocity/runtime/parser/ASTReference.java so that it only
accepts boolean values. As follows:
public boolean evaluate( InternalContextAdapter context)
throws MethodInvocationException
{
Object value = execute(null, context);
if (value == null)
{
throw new MethodInvocationException("Invalid reference");
}
else if (value instanceof Boolean)
{
if (((Boolean) value).booleanValue())
return true;
else
return false;
}
else
return throw new MethodInvocationException("Cannot do a
boolean evaluation of a non-boolean expression");
}
2. Modify the evaluate() method on line 253 of
org/apache/velocity/runtime/parser/SimpleNode.java
so that, instead of returning false there, it throws and exception. I
guess it should throw MethodInvocationException, as in:
public boolean evaluate(InternalContextAdapter context)
{
// return false; // Comment out.
throw new MethodInvocationException("Cannot do a boolean evaluation
of a non-boolean expression");
}
Then recompile and you should have the semantics you want.
>
> Thanks!
You're welcome. You've got to love it when the best available authority
on the Velocity code base is...
Yours truly,
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
Velocity->FreeMarker template conversion tool,
http.//freemarker.org/usCavalry.html
P.S. Or just use the unnameable template engine. It already works the
way you want. :-)
> Timo
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Tim Colson wrote:
> Howdy folks -
> I'm wondering how I might limit the comparisons in velocity templates
> to only boolean conditions.
>
> For example:
> #if ($value > 20) HIGHLIGHTED BUTTON #else stdbutton #end
> would throw an exception and would need to be written with
> a context containing "IS_OVER_LIMIT", new Boolean() and this template:
> #if ($IS_OVER_LIMIT) HIGHLIGHTED BUTTON #else stdbutton #end
>
> Another example:
> #if ($widget.size == "LARGE") large #else not large #end
> would throw an exception and would need to be written as:
> #if ($widget.size.isLarge()) large #else not large #end
>
> The question here is academic at this point. I do not care to argue
> about why this might be good/bad/weird, nor do I want to hear how it
> could be done in another engine.
>
> I'm just curious to know how one might go about messing with Velocity to
> alter it's behaviour as described. Maybe I'll learn something in the
> process of looking. :-)
Drat, I just reread your post and realized that I hadn't realized what
you wanted. I thought you wanted strict semantics where the thing after
an if had to be a bona fide boolean expression, and there was no
coercion of empty strings to boolean false and that sort of nonsense.
i.e. I thought you wanted it to work like the unnameable template engine.
You want something far far stricter. You want only boolean references to
be available.
That's very easy too. Basically, apply the same changes I gave you in
the last message, and also comment out or remove all the evaluate()
methods in org/apache/velocity/runtime/parser/node/*.java except for the
ones in:
SimpleNode.java
and:
ASTReference.java
Then you will have the semantics you want, I think.
Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
FreeMakrker-Velocity comparison page, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
>
> Thanks!
> Timo
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Will Glass-Husain <wg...@forio.com>.
Hi Tim,
Here's a link to JavaCC.
http://javacc.dev.java.net/
I just learned how to modify the core language syntax recently. Here's a
quick set of steps. Maybe one of us should write a "how-to" for new
Velocity developers.
(1) Modify "Parser.jjt" to change the syntax of the language
(2) Use jjtree (part of javacc) to compile to Parser.jj. This will also
generate a lot of "Node" java files which you should delete
(3) Use javacc to compile "Parser.jj" to "Parser.java".
(4) Edit the Node java files in the Nodes subdirectory to change evaluated
behavior.
(5) Compile, build the jar as usual
JJTree is a pre-processor that generates java code which stores a tree of
parsed syntax. All the Node files in the Nodes subdirectory were once
generated by JJTree, but have since been modified and moved into the Node
directory (to prevent them from being overwritten in step 2). If you
extend the language and create a new syntactical expression which requires a
new node, you should copy that generated Node file into the Nodes
subdirectory.
So, in reference to my earlier email, you will change the if statment syntax
in "Parser.jjt" to only allow references or method calls. (not a general
expression). This will cause a syntax error to be thrown if the user puts a
full expression in, e.g. ($a > 2) instead of just a reference or method
call. Then, change the code in the Nodes/ASTIfStatement.java to also throw
an exception if a non-boolean reference is passed in.
This gets more complicated if you want the syntax to be allowed/disallowed
via a user switch. The problem is that the syntax definition is compiled
into a wide swath of code in the resulting file Parser.java file. If you
want to have a switch, I'd guess you should then skip steps 1-3, and edit
the evaluation code to throw an eval-time error (as opposed to a parse-time
error that is thrown by default) if the child of the IF node is not a
reference or method node.
WILL
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Colson" <tc...@cisco.com>
To: "'Velocity Developers List'" <ve...@jakarta.apache.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 1:16 PM
Subject: RE: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
> Will -
>
> Thanks for the nudge...
> > (1) Write a custom directive #IfBoolean
>
> I wouldn't want a new directive. One of my unstated requirements was
> that the templates would continue to work with a standard velocity
> engine. Good idea, but I apologize for that omission. :-)
>
> Another unstated goal was to explicitly disallow expressions inside the
> #if() so that the templates would heavily limit designers (and me) from
> inadvertantly droping in logic.
>
> #if ($temp < 32) FREEZING #end
> versus
> #if ($temp.isBelowFreezing()) FREEZING #end
>
> The presentation might make FREEZING things bold and blue, but I prefer
> that the presentation layer does NOT define what FREEZING means. In my
> apps, I want that in a biz rule, and besides it likely varies - for
> example if the $temp is in Celsius or Fahrenheit, FREEZING is a
> different thing.
>
> > (2) Alter the Velocity source code. User javacc to compile a revised
> Parser.jjt.
> I'll have to read up a bit more on how javacc works, do you have a good
> reference link?
>
> > Since your syntax currently works in Velocity
> > (you want to limit what's acceptable, not add new syntax),
>
> Sorry, I'm a little confused. Does this mean that Parser.jjt (which I
> assume is a Javacc definition/config file) would -not- need to be
> altered?
>
> BTW - I don't want to break existing parsing functionality... I'd like
> to turn this strictness on/off with a switch on a per-template basis.
> (kinda like in Perl where you can specify a "use Strict;" on a script
> and then the perl interpreter will puke if you do nasty things... but
> you can turn off the flag so that included modules that aren't as picky
> can still run.)
>
> > I don't think you'd have to do
> > anything else. (correction: you'd need to change
> > ASTIfStatement.java to throw an exception for non-boolean references).
> Okay, I'll have a look at that.
>
> > This would be the section to revise in Parser.jjt. You'd
> > need to change
> > "Expression()" to only allow a reference or a method call.
> >
> > void IfStatement() : {}
> > {
> > <IF_DIRECTIVE> [<WHITESPACE>] <LPAREN> Expression() <RPAREN>
> > ( Statement() )+ #Block
> > [ LOOKAHEAD(1) ( ElseIfStatement() )+ ]
> > [ LOOKAHEAD(1) ElseStatement() ]
> > <END>
> > }
>
>
> While I was looking at ASTIfStatement, the first comment says:
> * Please look at the Parser.jjt file which is
> * what controls the generation of this class.
>
> Hmmm... so if I patch that file, will another process of the build
> over-write my changes?
>
> Thanks for the help!
> Timo
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
Will -
Thanks for the nudge...
> (1) Write a custom directive #IfBoolean
I wouldn't want a new directive. One of my unstated requirements was
that the templates would continue to work with a standard velocity
engine. Good idea, but I apologize for that omission. :-)
Another unstated goal was to explicitly disallow expressions inside the
#if() so that the templates would heavily limit designers (and me) from
inadvertantly droping in logic.
#if ($temp < 32) FREEZING #end
versus
#if ($temp.isBelowFreezing()) FREEZING #end
The presentation might make FREEZING things bold and blue, but I prefer
that the presentation layer does NOT define what FREEZING means. In my
apps, I want that in a biz rule, and besides it likely varies - for
example if the $temp is in Celsius or Fahrenheit, FREEZING is a
different thing.
> (2) Alter the Velocity source code. User javacc to compile a revised
Parser.jjt.
I'll have to read up a bit more on how javacc works, do you have a good
reference link?
> Since your syntax currently works in Velocity
> (you want to limit what's acceptable, not add new syntax),
Sorry, I'm a little confused. Does this mean that Parser.jjt (which I
assume is a Javacc definition/config file) would -not- need to be
altered?
BTW - I don't want to break existing parsing functionality... I'd like
to turn this strictness on/off with a switch on a per-template basis.
(kinda like in Perl where you can specify a "use Strict;" on a script
and then the perl interpreter will puke if you do nasty things... but
you can turn off the flag so that included modules that aren't as picky
can still run.)
> I don't think you'd have to do
> anything else. (correction: you'd need to change
> ASTIfStatement.java to throw an exception for non-boolean references).
Okay, I'll have a look at that.
> This would be the section to revise in Parser.jjt. You'd
> need to change
> "Expression()" to only allow a reference or a method call.
>
> void IfStatement() : {}
> {
> <IF_DIRECTIVE> [<WHITESPACE>] <LPAREN> Expression() <RPAREN>
> ( Statement() )+ #Block
> [ LOOKAHEAD(1) ( ElseIfStatement() )+ ]
> [ LOOKAHEAD(1) ElseStatement() ]
> <END>
> }
While I was looking at ASTIfStatement, the first comment says:
* Please look at the Parser.jjt file which is
* what controls the generation of this class.
Hmmm... so if I patch that file, will another process of the build
over-write my changes?
Thanks for the help!
Timo
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Will Glass-Husain <wg...@forio.com>.
Hi Timo,
As I just delved into the parser code and it's fresh in my mind, let me
throw out two ideas...
(1) Write a custom directive #IfBoolean that would operate as described.
The benefit is that you could use the "official" version of Velocity,
updating as new releases come out.
(2) Alter the Velocity source code. User javacc to compile a revised
Parser.jjt. Since your syntax currently works in Velocity (you want to
limit what's acceptable, not add new syntax), I don't think you'd have to do
anything else. (correction: you'd need to change ASTIfStatement.java to
throw an exception for non-boolean references).
This would be the section to revise in Parser.jjt. You'd need to change
"Expression()" to only allow a reference or a method call.
void IfStatement() : {}
{
<IF_DIRECTIVE> [<WHITESPACE>] <LPAREN> Expression() <RPAREN>
( Statement() )+ #Block
[ LOOKAHEAD(1) ( ElseIfStatement() )+ ]
[ LOOKAHEAD(1) ElseStatement() ]
<END>
}
Best,
WILL
----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Colson" <tc...@cisco.com>
To: "'Velocity Developers List'" <ve...@jakarta.apache.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 9:31 AM
Subject: Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
> Howdy folks -
> I'm wondering how I might limit the comparisons in velocity templates
> to only boolean conditions.
>
> For example:
> #if ($value > 20) HIGHLIGHTED BUTTON #else stdbutton #end
> would throw an exception and would need to be written with
> a context containing "IS_OVER_LIMIT", new Boolean() and this template:
> #if ($IS_OVER_LIMIT) HIGHLIGHTED BUTTON #else stdbutton #end
>
> Another example:
> #if ($widget.size == "LARGE") large #else not large #end
> would throw an exception and would need to be written as:
> #if ($widget.size.isLarge()) large #else not large #end
>
> The question here is academic at this point. I do not care to argue
> about why this might be good/bad/weird, nor do I want to hear how it
> could be done in another engine.
>
> I'm just curious to know how one might go about messing with Velocity to
> alter it's behaviour as described. Maybe I'll learn something in the
> process of looking. :-)
>
> Thanks!
> Timo
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
>
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
Can comparisons be limited to true/false?
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
Howdy folks -
I'm wondering how I might limit the comparisons in velocity templates
to only boolean conditions.
For example:
#if ($value > 20) HIGHLIGHTED BUTTON #else stdbutton #end
would throw an exception and would need to be written with
a context containing "IS_OVER_LIMIT", new Boolean() and this template:
#if ($IS_OVER_LIMIT) HIGHLIGHTED BUTTON #else stdbutton #end
Another example:
#if ($widget.size == "LARGE") large #else not large #end
would throw an exception and would need to be written as:
#if ($widget.size.isLarge()) large #else not large #end
The question here is academic at this point. I do not care to argue
about why this might be good/bad/weird, nor do I want to hear how it
could be done in another engine.
I'm just curious to know how one might go about messing with Velocity to
alter it's behaviour as described. Maybe I'll learn something in the
process of looking. :-)
Thanks!
Timo
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-dev-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-dev-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing list
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
> From: news [mailto:news@main.gmane.org] On Behalf Of Jonathan Revusky
> Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 6:01 AM
>
> Yes, except that [Jon's] posts are invariably truthful.
Again, demonstrably incorrect.
I refer to my previous post on the matter:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Tim Colson [mailto:tcolson@cisco.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 30, 2003 8:16 PM
> To: 'Velocity Users List'
> Subject: RE: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack
> on an emailing list
>
>
> Jonathan Revusky wrote:
> > And I only speak the truth.
>
> That is demonstrably untrue.
>
> On multiple occasions (I looked in the archives.) Jonathan wrote that
> either he would or was unsubscribing from the velocity
> list(s), and here
> is a specific archived mesg from Sunday, May 05 2002, where Jonathan
> specifically wrote,
>
> "__This is my last message__, I'm sending the unsubscribe
> message right
> now
> along with this one. Good bye everybody." (emphasis mine)
>
http://www.mail-archive.com/velocity-user@jakarta.apache.org/msg06985.ht
ml
-Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing
list
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Brian McCallister wrote:
>>
>>> Do you understand where I'm coming from, even if you dont agree with it?
>>
>>
>> I can understand it somewhat, but frankly, I think it's misguided. The
>> main point is that, as long as my posts are factual and on-topic, as
>> the one you quoted above as an example of my "inappropriateness", I
>> think you are on very shaky grounds proposing censorship.
>>
>
> Jonathan,
>
> I believe the problem is that you are unnecessarily surly in your
> pursuit of goals almost, but not quite completely, orthogonal to those
> of Velocity. The argument against what you are saying is not built upon
> any individual post (heck, go read almost any individual post by Andrew
> Oliver and you'll see a greater volume of flame-bait) but by a refusal
> to acknowledge or respect courtesy. The continued disregard for social
> and professional courtesy and standards for decent behavior is the
> problem -- not any single item you choose to say.
Well, I don't think that's good enough, Brian. Frankly, it would never
occur to me to advocate censorship, and then not have handy some
examples of the unacceptable material that I want to censor. Imagine if
somebody wanted to ban "Hustler" magazine. They would surely have some
egregious examples of the offensive material that they wanted censored
-- woman copulating with horse etcetera etcetera...
I mean, when you simply ask people who advocate said censorship to
provide you examples of material they want to censor and they seemingly
cannot provide any concrete example, doesn't this suggest that there is
something screwy going on?
As for this stuff about "social and professional courtesy", I think it
is disingenuous to suggest that I am the only person on this list who is
abrasive. In fact, it really seems that you even concede this point in
advance, pointing out flame-bait emanating from other people as being
quite commonplace.
In any case, I could concede for the sake of argument that I am often
abrasive and rude and even that other people are invariably polite (they
aren't... but I mean for the sake of argument...) and that would still
not let you off the hook; there would still be an onus on you to provide
examples of the egregious material that should be censored.
>
> As you will point out, this is an open and uncensored (and I am sure it
> will remain so, for both ethical and technical reasons) forum, and as
> such you are free to post what you post. The Jakarta project, and
> Velocity as a part of that project, are built on several community ideas
> that your postings are antithetical to.
Brian, could you please specify which community ideas (ideals?) my posts
are antithetical to?
> This is what generates the ill
> will and outrage amongst the Velocity contributors. In effect you simply
> violate the community conventions.
Yes, except that my posts are invariably truthful. To tell the truth
about the state of this project does seem to violate community
conventions. But it is not clear to me why I should lose any sleep over
that, you know...
> Again, as an open and uncensored
> forum, you are certainly within your rights to do so.
This may well be your view, but there are various people who disagree
with you on this point. They are advocating censorship.
>
> You are quite skillful in your use of logical fallacies
You mean other people's logical fallacies? Or do you mean my own?
If it's the latter, I think there is an onus on you to provide some
examples.... to back up what you're saying...
> to steer
> arguments in such a way as to generate more publicity for your project
> (which if it is as good as you claim, does not require it anyway)
That strikes me as disingenuous. Do you really sincerely believe that
high quality projects require no publicity?
> and
> entertainment value at the expense of people I can only presume (and I
> freely admit it is a presumption based upon a gathering of information
> and propaganda from your posts and the FreeMarker site) you see as your
> competition.
FreeMarker and Velocity are competing tools in the same space. However,
the truth is that we are not really competing with Velocity on any
technical level. Velocity development has completely stalled and
FreeMarker development continues, so the gap in functionality just
becomes greater and greater. We are competing somewhat on a mindshare
level, and we are at a disadvantage because of the placement advantage
that any Jakarta project has.
I see no particular problem with telling people on the Velocity-user
mailing list about FreeMarker because of the huge visibility advantage
Velocity has. Many (possibly most) of Velocity's user base use it
because it is perceived as a kind of "default". Similarly, I would have
no compunctions about announcing FreeMarker (or even Velocity or
WebMacro) on a JSP-related mailing list. When the playing field is that
non-level to your disadvantage, it is silly to have such compunctions.
>
> The problem seems to be that Jakarta is formed around the idea of free
> contribution in order to produce better software for anyone to use.
The Velocity project has not been living up to these ideals for a good
long while now. At least a year.
> It
> is not about being "the best," though because of the nature of the group
> the solutions that they come up frequently are the best solutions to
> many problems. When someone comes along with a completely different
> motivation -- proving they are the best by associating themselves with
> another solution that may (or may not ) be a better solution to some
> problems, and by creating a ruckus by (quite skillfully) manipulating
> discussion -- it is a lose/lose situation.
I disagree. Some of my posts (perhaps most of them) are unashamedly
advocacy material. However, as long as they are on-topic and factually
accurate, it is hard to see what damage they cause anybody. If I say
that Velocity lacks support for decimal numbers, and FreeMarker has this
feature, there are two possible results: 1. The reader already knew
this, and thus gained nothing. 2. The reader did not know this and thus
now knows something they did not previously know. The reader either
gains nothing or gains something. So, your characterization of this as a
"lose/lose" seems incorrect.
The bottom line is that you are arguing that, for me to make factually
accurate statements on such a topic is damaging to our open-source
communities, violates all professional courtesy, and is antithetical to
open-source ideals. I do not believe that these claims withstand any
serious scrutiny -- any more than proposing censorship and not being
willing to provide concrete examples of the unacceptable material that
should be censored.
Frankly, I believe that people in your camp are coming across in an
increasingly ridiculous light.
Best Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
FreeMarker-Velocity comparison page, http://freemakrer.org/fmVsVel.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing
list
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Denis wrote:
> Jonathan,
> On Tuesday, July 1, 2003, at 01:52 am, Jonathan Revusky wrote:
>
>> Now, that is what I would *say* in that situation. What I would *do*
>> would be to immediately look at the feature that the competing product
>> had and that we lacked and look at the desirability of implementing
>> it. The idea that we have to compete with other things in the same
>> space is something that I take as a matter of course. What is strange
>> here is that this almost seems like an alien concept here!!!????
>>
>> And what is also strange from my POV is that you, as an end-user, do
>> not quite seem to grasp that you are the one who benefits from such
>> competition.
>>
>
> You don't understand. The Velocity people don't mind competition,
Well, that may be your view, but I can say very sincerely that I have
never seen the slightest sign of a legitimate competitive spirit in this
community. By that, I mean, the gumption... the desire to compete
legitimately with other things in the same space. When I show up and
make truthful statements about the state of this project, or point out
missing features, their basic instinct, quite literally, is to try to
shut me up somehow, boot me from the list, and so on.
It does not even seem to occur to anybody (at least there's no external
sign of this) that the *legitimate* way to get me to shut up is in fact
to address the things I am pointing out. If you don't like me saying
that Velocity lacks decimal number support, then implement decimal
number support, and then I have to shut up about it. If you don't like
me saying that no development is going on, get some development
happening. Then I can no longer say that no development is happening. If
you want to talk the talk, walk the walk!
> they
> mind your intrusions on "their" list.
Well, I take as a given that a lot of people don't like it. I also take
as a given that my blunt comments about the state of the Velocity
project have a definite obnoxious side. However, I also take as a given
that these people do not really have any legitimate grievance. If you
don't like me making these comments, then get your act together. You
want to talk the talk, then walk the walk, dammit!
> You are not helping Velocity to
> progress by pushing its members to a defensive position.
> Leave them alone...
Poor little things... ;-)
>
> This is not a good place to advertise FreeMarker.
Well, frankly, the above statement seems to be about 180ยบ away from the
truth. If you look at the situation in objective, cold-blooded terms,
this is probably about the *best* place imaginable to advertise FreeMarker.
First of all, the people on this list clearly have a need for a tool of
these characteristics. That much is indisputable. Secondly, they have
basically been left high and dry by the Velocity developers -- no new
development, even bug-fixes for a year and so on.... A lot of sensible
people would be looking for an alternative by now. Thirdly, a Jakarta
list like this has a lot of subscribers because of the extreme
visibility or placement advantage that Jakarta projects tend to have. An
equivalently abandoned project that simply was hosted on sf.net would
not have this level of subscribers.
Given all these facts, this is about the best place imaginable to tell
people about FreeMarker. The other reason that it's a good place is that
the Velocity developers have a tendency to discredit themselves. They're
in a weak position, but this tends to exacerbate matters, I think --
calling for censorship when it is obvious that the core problem is that
their product is not competitive, and the project is in a shambles and
and so on.
You know, that their first instinct is to try to shut people up rather
than get their house in order. It does not inspire confidence, and would
tend to accelerate any already-occurring exodus.
The thing is that if users are getting exasperated with the state of
affairs in Velocity-land, many may just opt for JSP. I would like such
people to be aware of FreeMarker.
Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
FreeMarker-Velocity comparison page, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
>
> Cheers,
> -- Denis.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Please stop!
Posted by Kemal Enver <ke...@f2s.com>.
Hi,
I've just got out of bed, had breakfast and gone through my usual ritual
of weeding out spam marked email, however I have found approximately 30
emails which my SPAM filter has missed out. Mr Revusky I thank you for
pointing out what is in your view an alternative to Velocity, but I would
have thought by now you may have realised that nobody is particularly swayed
or impressed by your efforts. The constant bombardment of the list IS
damaging the ability of the community to help each other (I for one have
simply deleted everything from the mailing list over the past few days)
Please take the hint and stop posting to this list, in my oppinion you are
clearly going against the rules of the jakarta mailing lists as specified
here http://jakarta.apache.org/site/mail.html Your comments do not help
anyone using velocity and you are certainly not asking any intelligent
questions.
Please can anybody administrating this list please put an end to all of this
now, by any means possible.
Kemal Enver
u0ke@dcs.shef.ac.uk
www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~u0ke
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing list
Posted by Denis <br...@mac.com>.
Jonathan,
On Tuesday, July 1, 2003, at 01:52 am, Jonathan Revusky wrote:
> Now, that is what I would *say* in that situation. What I would *do*
> would be to immediately look at the feature that the competing product
> had and that we lacked and look at the desirability of implementing
> it. The idea that we have to compete with other things in the same
> space is something that I take as a matter of course. What is strange
> here is that this almost seems like an alien concept here!!!????
>
> And what is also strange from my POV is that you, as an end-user, do
> not quite seem to grasp that you are the one who benefits from such
> competition.
>
You don't understand. The Velocity people don't mind competition, they
mind your intrusions on "their" list. You are not helping Velocity to
progress by pushing its members to a defensive position.
Leave them alone...
This is not a good place to advertise FreeMarker.
Cheers,
-- Denis.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
RE: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing list
Posted by Tim Colson <tc...@cisco.com>.
Jonathan Revusky wrote:
> And I only speak the truth.
That is demonstrably untrue.
On multiple occasions (I looked in the archives.) Jonathan wrote that
either he would or was unsubscribing from the velocity list(s), and here
is a specific archived mesg from Sunday, May 05 2002, where Jonathan
specifically wrote,
"__This is my last message__, I'm sending the unsubscribe message right
now
along with this one. Good bye everybody." (emphasis mine)
http://www.mail-archive.com/velocity-user@jakarta.apache.org/msg06985.ht
ml
-Tim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing
list
Posted by Martin Jacobson <ma...@libero.it>.
I filter all mails from JR directly to the trash - if I want to know
about FM, I'll find out for myself, thanks.
I would suggest that anyone who wants to respond to JR does so directly
to him, rather than to this list, as my mailbox is still filling up with
JR-related stuff, which I do not wish to receive.
Thanks,
Martin
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing
list
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Serge Knystautas wrote:
> Brian McCallister wrote:
>
>> My apologies to Jonathan and Velocity-User. That email was intended as
>> private correspondence.
>
>
> No problem Brian... I similarly thought to send him a polite private
> email,
Serge, I don't know what "polite private email" you're talking about.
AFAICS, the email below is the only one you could possibly be referring
to. Is this your idea of politeness? "Shut the xxxxxx up!" and so on????
-----------------
X-UIDL: 1057017104.H596383P3309.mb04.eresmas.com,S=2978
X-Mozilla-Status: 1013
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Received: from [192.168.108.52] (helo=mx02.eresmas.com)
by mb04.eresmas.com with esmtp (Exim 4.20)
id 19X8Qy-0000rL-Eu
for revusky@wanadoo.es; Tue, 01 Jul 2003 01:51:44 +0200
Received: from amavis by mx02.eresmas.com with scanned-ok (Exim 4.12)
id 19X8Qy-0004Bi-00
for revusky@wanadoo.es; Tue, 01 Jul 2003 01:51:44 +0200
Received: from [209.11.145.2] (helo=webappcabaret.com)
by mx02.eresmas.com with smtp (Exim 4.12)
id 19X8Qw-0004B2-00
for revusky@wanadoo.es; Tue, 01 Jul 2003 01:51:42 +0200
Received: from snipe.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.62]
by NGASI Mail Server ESMTP Connection at webappcabaret.com
for <se...@lokitech.com>; Mon, 30 Jun 2003 16:55:08 -0700
Received: from sdn-ap-001dcwashp0063.dialsprint.net ([63.188.0.63]
helo=lokitech.com)
by snipe.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1)
id 19X8Qg-0004WU-00
for jon@revusky.com; Mon, 30 Jun 2003 16:51:27 -0700
Message-ID: <3F...@lokitech.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 19:51:17 -0400
From: Serge Knystautas <se...@lokitech.com>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4)
Gecko/20030529
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: jon@revusky.com
References: <3E...@lokitech.com>
<3E...@revusky.com> <3EFA0EBA.408 08@lokitech.com>
<bd...@main.gmane.org>
<1056578261.10893.799.camel@localhost.localdo main>
<bd...@main.gmane.org>
<10...@localhost.localdomain>
<bd...@main.gmane.org>
<10...@localhost.localdomain>
<bd...@main.gmane.org>
In-Reply-To: <bd...@main.gmane.org>
Subject: Re: [OT]Re: DVSL status? (or got another XSL replacement?)
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.50 (1.173-2003-02-20-exp)
X-SA-Exim-Scanned: Yes
X-Virus-Scanned: by amavisd 0.1
X-SA-Exim-Scanned: No; SAEximRunCond expanded to false
Jonathan Revusky wrote:
>>> Serge Knystautas was making noises along these lines -- though he
>>> didn't express it in terms as crass.
>>
>>
>>
>> He never said ANYTHING like that. He said something more along the lines
>> of (along with the standard "but I'm already using it" which you
>> consistently ignore) "it's not ASF, I'm less likely to use it."
>
>
> He did say precisely that.
>
>>
>> Big difference.
>
>
> Look, I really think you should let Serge (and anybody else) speak for
> himself.
Jonathan,
With all due respect, shut the (*&( up. *I* have said multiple times I
did not say what you keep quoting, anyone can read the message in
context and see this, and yet you still repeat this drivel.
Would you please stop mentioning my name? I've succumbed to the
realization that you are not worth discussing points, and would ask you
to stop misquoting me.
--
Serge Knystautas
President
Lokitech >>> software . strategy . design >> http://www.lokitech.com
p. 301.656.5501
e. sergek@lokitech.com
----------------------
> but now he's just sending emails cursing me out directly.
Projection.
>
> As you concluded, ignoring him is probably the only/best course of action.
>
Just one question, Serge. This business about my misquoting you. You
wrote a message here:
http://www.mail-archive.com/velocity-user@jakarta.apache.org/msg10099.html
in which you wrote:
"I've been an apache committer for 4+ years and am unlikely to adopt a
non-apache tool when there is a very well known, if comfortably mature,
project within Apache already."
It seemed quite clear to me from what you said above that you were
opting for Velocity very largely because it came from apache, and
really, anybody would infer that you would opt for it over a competing
tool like FM -- even if the latter was technically superior, and more
actively developed and maintained.
In fact, earlier in the self-same message, you mentioned that the lack
of ongoing Velocity development did give you pause. If we make the
conceptual experiment that Velocity was a non-apache project, just
something on sourceforge, and nobody had committed any code for a year,
I would bet very strongly, that you would not use it. There was a very
strong subtext in the messsage that Velocity being part of apache was a
key factor in your decision.
Now, don't anybody get this wrong. Serge most definitely can use
whatever tool he wants, for whatever arbitrary reasons he wants. That's
not what we're discssing. What is at issue here is that Serge is
claiming that I misquoted him.
I do not believe that to be the case. Also, very frankly, it is clear
that Serge has something of a tendency to say things that are not quite
true -- for example, this business about sending me a "polite, private
email". You can see the "polite" message he sent me quoted above.
Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
FreeMarker-Velocity comparison page, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing
list
Posted by Serge Knystautas <se...@lokitech.com>.
Brian McCallister wrote:
> My apologies to Jonathan and Velocity-User. That email was intended as
> private correspondence.
No problem Brian... I similarly thought to send him a polite private
email, but now he's just sending emails cursing me out directly.
As you concluded, ignoring him is probably the only/best course of action.
--
Serge Knystautas
President
Lokitech >>> software . strategy . design >> http://www.lokitech.com
p. 301.656.5501
e. sergek@lokitech.com
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing list
Posted by Brian McCallister <mc...@forthillcompany.com>.
On Monday, June 30, 2003, at 10:23 PM, Brian McCallister wrote:
>
> Jonathan,
>
> I believe the problem is that you are...
My apologies to Jonathan and Velocity-User. That email was intended as
private correspondence.
-Brian
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing list
Posted by Brian McCallister <mc...@forthillcompany.com>.
>
>> Do you understand where I'm coming from, even if you dont agree with
>> it?
>
> I can understand it somewhat, but frankly, I think it's misguided. The
> main point is that, as long as my posts are factual and on-topic, as
> the one you quoted above as an example of my "inappropriateness", I
> think you are on very shaky grounds proposing censorship.
>
Jonathan,
I believe the problem is that you are unnecessarily surly in your
pursuit of goals almost, but not quite completely, orthogonal to those
of Velocity. The argument against what you are saying is not built
upon any individual post (heck, go read almost any individual post by
Andrew Oliver and you'll see a greater volume of flame-bait) but by a
refusal to acknowledge or respect courtesy. The continued disregard for
social and professional courtesy and standards for decent behavior is
the problem -- not any single item you choose to say.
As you will point out, this is an open and uncensored (and I am sure it
will remain so, for both ethical and technical reasons) forum, and as
such you are free to post what you post. The Jakarta project, and
Velocity as a part of that project, are built on several community
ideas that your postings are antithetical to. This is what generates
the ill will and outrage amongst the Velocity contributors. In effect
you simply violate the community conventions. Again, as an open and
uncensored forum, you are certainly within your rights to do so.
You are quite skillful in your use of logical fallacies to steer
arguments in such a way as to generate more publicity for your project
(which if it is as good as you claim, does not require it anyway) and
entertainment value at the expense of people I can only presume (and I
freely admit it is a presumption based upon a gathering of information
and propaganda from your posts and the FreeMarker site) you see as your
competition.
The problem seems to be that Jakarta is formed around the idea of free
contribution in order to produce better software for anyone to use. It
is not about being "the best," though because of the nature of the
group the solutions that they come up frequently are the best solutions
to many problems. When someone comes along with a completely different
motivation -- proving they are the best by associating themselves with
another solution that may (or may not ) be a better solution to some
problems, and by creating a ruckus by (quite skillfully) manipulating
discussion -- it is a lose/lose situation.
It is a loss for Velocity because effort and energy are spent being
manipulated by you.
It is a loss for you because you come across as unprofessional and
damage the reputation your name carries, and by association the project
you lead.
This is open-source. It is not a competition for market share. It is
safe to say that nothing significant for any of the projects around
will hinge upon whether Joe Developer uses FreeMarker, Velocity, JSP,
Perl::Template, eruby, NVelocity, WebMacro, or Cheetah. The more
options the better according to many people who claim to be authorities
on such things. I will reserve personal opinion.
On the other hand there is, possibly, competition for talent. There are
only so many top-tier developers around so getting a particularly
productive developer to help develop a project which solves your
particular problems is awfully nice.
There is also, potentially, competition for consulting positions. This,
however, hinges upon perceived professionalism and results produced in
the past. Open source software, particularly relatively high profile
projects such as the Jakarta projects provide a venue for displaying
professionalism and demonstrating ability.
To bring this back to the point - the distress you engender in people
who care about Velocity is not a direct result of any post but of the
pattern of behavior you exhibit. You behave similarly to the 8th grade
student (US school system, approximately 13 or 14 years of age) who
believes he is smarter than his teacher -- and who may in fact possess
more wit and raw ability. The student will typically act obviously
inappropriately and defend it on straw man and slippery slope
arguments. If the student is in fact quicker of wit than the teacher,
the student can win and gain in prestige to those who do not realize
that the end result is a loss for everyone involved -- the student who
has anti-social behavior reinforced, the teacher who loses face in
front of students, and the other students who lose the option and
opportunity to learn something. It is abominable behavior in a child,
and more so in an adult.
As you say, "this is open-source," and part of that is trolls. This
entire conflict is a classic open-source pissing match rehashed across
the epoch. In this case it lacks the interesting philosophical
underpinnings of BSD vs GNU, or even the possible productivity
arguments of vi vs emacs. It comes across as hubris versus community.
Most developers and projects have learned how to deal with these
things. Ignore them, they go away -- in other words, don't feed the
trolls. In this case the troll (you, Jonathan) is being regularly fed.
-Brian
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing
list
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Dmitri Colebatch wrote:
> Jon,
>
> Firstly, I'm not a flamer, and given that you've obviously developed a very
> good framework, I'm giving you credit for being able to have a short,
> succint (?sp) discussion on this - I imagine in 30minutes I'll be prepared
> to "agree to disagree".
>
>
>>Okay, Dmitri. You, like Joshua, are in favor of censorship. I asked
>>Joshua to provide examples of the sort of material I have posted that
>>requires such censorship.
>
>
> No, not censorship, but appropriateness. I'm sure we both agree that
> "business offers" from Nigeria and other such like posts dont belong on this
> list (or the FM list for that matter). Whilst your posts are obviously no
> where near as extreme as that, I make the same argument about them.
>
>
>>I will naturally ask the same question of you. Could you please provide
>>examples of the material I have posted that should be censored?
>
>
> Your earlier post this morning, snipped here:
>
> [start snip]
>
>
>>Ah, the good old problem, that was never solved... :)
>
>
> Never solved?
>
> I have the distinct impression that we solved it. See:
>
> http://freemarker.org/docs/ref_directive_escape.html
>
> [end snip]
>
> is an example of what I see as being inappropriate for the list. As I said
> in my previous email, imagine how you would feel if I was the vendor of a
> commercial templating library and I starting posting responses like this to
> questions about FM on your list.
To be perfectly honest, I might not *like* such a situation, but as long
as the post in question was truthful, I would certainly not start
screaming for censorship. In fact, that is about the very last thing I
would ever do.
And here is how I would answer:
"Thank you, Dimitri, for bringing that to our attention. We are always
very interested in what other people are doing in this space, because it
helps us make FreeMarker better."
"Best Regards, blah blah."
AFAICS, there is simply no other appropriate response in such a
situation. If you try to attack someone personally for making truthful
statements, if you start screaming for censorship, you will be doing
yourself a huge amount of damage.
Now, that is what I would *say* in that situation. What I would *do*
would be to immediately look at the feature that the competing product
had and that we lacked and look at the desirability of implementing it.
The idea that we have to compete with other things in the same space is
something that I take as a matter of course. What is strange here is
that this almost seems like an alien concept here!!!????
And what is also strange from my POV is that you, as an end-user, do not
quite seem to grasp that you are the one who benefits from such competition.
>
>
>>I have not done that. Yes, I have mentioned the existence of an
>>open-source templating project that has the features being discussed,
>>that Velocity lacked. But I have already explained why I see no
>>particular moral or ethical problem with that.
>
>
> ok, perhaps thats where we need to agree to disagree. I do think that the
> answer of yours above is inappropriate.
Look, Dmitri. This is open-source, baby. If you want to talk the talk,
you've got to walk the walk. If you sit on your hands for a year or
more, doing nothing, and somebody shows up and points out that you've
done nothing, and that a competing project is way way ahead in features
and functionality, what on earth is your grievance really?
As I said before, all of my posts are truthful. If I say that FM has a
feature and Vel lacks that feature, then it's true. There is an easy way
to get me to stop saying that Velocity lacks the feature.
Implement the feature.
If you implement the feature, then I can't say any more that Velocity
lacks the feature, because it wouldn't be true any more.
And I only speak the truth.
I specifically challenged you to say what the moral or ethical problems
with my stance were. I did not ask you whether it was maybe a little bit
rude, because that is not the issue. The issue at hand right now is what
your justification for censorship is. If you are really saying that
completely truthful on-topic posts should be censored because it might
hurt the feelings of the Velocity developers -- i.e. it might hurt
people's delicate sensibilities when I point out that FreeMarker had
already solved the problem when Velocity had not, then I think you've
got a conceptual problem. I think you really ought to rethink the basis
of what you are saying.
> To provide another context, I use
> to be heavily involved in XDoclet, which as you may or may not know is to
> some extent a competitor to ejbgen. We never saw responses to questions on
> the XDoclet list from Cedric Beust (ejbgen dev) suggesting that the problems
> people were having would be solved if they switched to ejbgen.
Well, I do not know all the details, but I suppose that ejbgen and
XDoclet compete on an even footing, more or less. FreeMarker and
Velocity do not. Most of the people who use Velocity do so because it
was some kind of "default choice". As I said before, Velocity is very
very far from being the best option technically in this space. Also, it
has been neglected for at least a year and is falling further and
further behind.
Frankly, I think that, for people in the Velocity community to whine
about my behavior is quite unseemly. you want to talk the talk? Then
walk the walk! To simply do nothing for a year or more, and then whine
and cry and scream and threaten censorship when somebody points it out,
and points out that a competing project is way ahead in functionality
and features and so on... that seems utterly pathetic to me.
>
> Do you understand where I'm coming from, even if you dont agree with it?
I can understand it somewhat, but frankly, I think it's misguided. The
main point is that, as long as my posts are factual and on-topic, as the
one you quoted above as an example of my "inappropriateness", I think
you are on very shaky grounds proposing censorship.
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
FreeMarker-Velocity project, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
>
> cheers
> dim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing list
Posted by Dmitri Colebatch <di...@colebatch.com>.
Jon,
Firstly, I'm not a flamer, and given that you've obviously developed a very
good framework, I'm giving you credit for being able to have a short,
succint (?sp) discussion on this - I imagine in 30minutes I'll be prepared
to "agree to disagree".
> Okay, Dmitri. You, like Joshua, are in favor of censorship. I asked
> Joshua to provide examples of the sort of material I have posted that
> requires such censorship.
No, not censorship, but appropriateness. I'm sure we both agree that
"business offers" from Nigeria and other such like posts dont belong on this
list (or the FM list for that matter). Whilst your posts are obviously no
where near as extreme as that, I make the same argument about them.
> I will naturally ask the same question of you. Could you please provide
> examples of the material I have posted that should be censored?
Your earlier post this morning, snipped here:
[start snip]
> Ah, the good old problem, that was never solved... :)
Never solved?
I have the distinct impression that we solved it. See:
http://freemarker.org/docs/ref_directive_escape.html
[end snip]
is an example of what I see as being inappropriate for the list. As I said
in my previous email, imagine how you would feel if I was the vendor of a
commercial templating library and I starting posting responses like this to
questions about FM on your list.
> I have not done that. Yes, I have mentioned the existence of an
> open-source templating project that has the features being discussed,
> that Velocity lacked. But I have already explained why I see no
> particular moral or ethical problem with that.
ok, perhaps thats where we need to agree to disagree. I do think that the
answer of yours above is inappropriate. To provide another context, I use
to be heavily involved in XDoclet, which as you may or may not know is to
some extent a competitor to ejbgen. We never saw responses to questions on
the XDoclet list from Cedric Beust (ejbgen dev) suggesting that the problems
people were having would be solved if they switched to ejbgen.
Do you understand where I'm coming from, even if you dont agree with it?
cheers
dim
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing
list
Posted by Jonathan Revusky <jo...@revusky.com>.
Dmitri Colebatch wrote:
> I dont know if the request to remove someone from the list on the grounds
> indicated is "valid" or not, but I have to say, I wholeheartedly agree.
Okay, Dmitri. You, like Joshua, are in favor of censorship. I asked
Joshua to provide examples of the sort of material I have posted that
requires such censorship.
I will naturally ask the same question of you. Could you please provide
examples of the material I have posted that should be censored?
If neither you nor Joshua will accede to the above request, then it's
not even clear what we're talking about. There is, after all, a complete
electronic archive of all of the exchange on this list.
> Most people (I hope) subscribed to this list, are here because they use
> velocity, and they want to keep in touch with the project's uses, ask
> questions, and hopefully help a few others out along the way. Mailing lists
> comprised of these sort of people are very productive.
>
> However, some people on this list appear to have no interest in answering
> questions, and rather are simply offering alternative products. Imagine the
> uproar if I offered a commercial templating project as a response to
> enquiries about Velocity.
I have not done that. Yes, I have mentioned the existence of an
open-source templating project that has the features being discussed,
that Velocity lacked. But I have already explained why I see no
particular moral or ethical problem with that.
Regards,
Jonathan Revusky
--
lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
FreeMarker-Velocity comparison project, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
>
> my 2c
>
> cheers
> dim
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jonathan Revusky" <jo...@revusky.com>
> To: <ve...@jakarta.apache.org>
> Sent: Tuesday, July 01, 2003 7:39 AM
> Subject: Re: Using FM to implement a denial of service attack on an emailing
> list
>
>
>
>>Joshua Levy wrote:
>>
>>>I said this privately before, and now I'll say it publicly:
>>
>>Interesting. You never said it privately to me... :-)
>>
>>
>>>I think Jonathan Revusky (jon at revusky.com) should be banned
>>>from the Velocity emailing lists, because I think his purpose
>>>here is a "denial of service" type attack on the emailing list
>>>itself.
>>
>>This is an interesting concept, Josh. A "denial of service" attack on an
>>online community.
>>
>>Well... with a "denial of service" attack against a server, you flood
>>the server with bogus requests and then, in an attempt to answer all the
>>requests, the server gets bogged down and slows down to a crawl.
>>
>>Denial of service.
>>
>>But such a "denial of service" attack is based on the fact that the
>>server (like any computer system in general) is basically a mindless
>>automaton. It must (because that is how it is programmed) attempt to
>>respond to all requests indiscriminately.
>>
>>However, an online community is made of up humans -- sentient beings.
>>They can use their own judgment and discretion to decide what things
>>they should respond to. And how to respond...
>>
>>So the analogy breaks down significantly, does it not? In effect, what
>>you seem to be implying is that the people here are mindless automatons
>>who must find some response to what I'm saying, and in attempting to
>>respond to me, they waste cycles (and this is beyond their control
>>seemingly) that would otherwise be devoted to helping other people -- by
>>answering their questions and so on.
>>
>>Really, Josh, isn't this a rather strange view of things... ?
>>
>>
>>>One of the huge advantages that velocity has is a large user
>>>base, and a helpful and supportive emailing list.
>>
>>Well, it's true that Velocity still has a lot of users and typically,
>>people like to help out. So if somebody posts a question and somebody
>>else knows the answer, they'll answer it. That's all fine. Of course,
>>it's not a particularly special feature of this community. You get on
>>the mailing list for any reasonably well-known OSS product (FM included)
>>and ask a reasonably simple question and you'll typically get a
>>response. What is puzzling to me is the idea that I am somehow throwing
>>a monkey in the works. It would seem that, according to you, my presence
>>is preventing people from getting answers to their questions.
>>
>>By what mechanism?
>>
>>Moreover, has their been a flood of complaints on this score? For example:
>>
>>"I asked a question about Velocity usage and I never got an answer
>>because everybody who would have answered was too busy flaming this
>>Revusky bastard. Damn that Revusky!"
>>
>>or
>>
>>"Somebody asked a question and I would have helped the person out, but I
>>couldn't, because that S.O.B. Revusky was forcing me to flame him! Damn
>>that Revusky bastard!"
>>
>>
>>>I think that
>>>Jon posts here specificially to create flame wars which encourage
>>>people to unsubscribe (due to short term volume spikes).
>>
>>It is probably true that the velocity-related mailing lists have lost
>>subscribers over the past year. I can only speculate because I am not
>>privy to the administrative list info. But one does get the feeling that
>>there is less and less activity. However, I wonder whether you sincerely
>>believe that this is my fault. It might simply be that people have come
>>to realize that the project is rather dead, and have looked for
>>alternatives, found them, and thus, unsubscribed from velocity-related
>>lists, because they are simply not using Velocity any more.
>>
>>You know, really, it is very much in the normal course of things, that
>>if a project is abandoned like this -- no new features, or even
>>bug-fixes in a year or more -- that you will lose users. The product
>>becomes less and less competitive with other things in the same space
>>that are moving forward. Don't you think it sort of smells of
>>scape-goat-ism this idea that I am to blame for any of this?
>>
>>Anyway, I think I should set certain matters clear. I do not post here
>>in order to create flame wars. I post here primarily so as to inform
>>people about FreeMarker. That may have its obnoxious side, but I don't
>>really see any ethical or moral problem with it. The fact remains that
>>Velocity owes most of its success to placement. Face it: Velocity is
>>very very far from being the best technical solution in this application
>>space. In fact, the project is largely abandoned, and the gap between it
>>and things at the cutting edge is only widening.
>>
>>Still, a lot of people simply gravitate towards Jakarta tools (Velocity
>>among others) because of their visibility and don't really investigate
>>alternatives. It is similar to what happens with Microsoft products, for
>>example. For that reason, I would see no particular problem with showing
>>up on a Windows-oriented list and simply telling them quite calmly that
>>many headaches that they deal with in Doze don't happen with Linux --
>>frequent inexplicable crashes, and so on. Most of the people using
>>Windows are using it simply because it's the "default" anyway. Windows
>>has such a huge placement/marketing advantage, that it simply does not
>>make sense to be very shy about informing people that there are
>>alternatives in every available context. The Microsoft die-hards might
>>flame me, but at the end of the day, what is the grievance? People may
>>simply compare the two products on their merits and decide that the
>>other product is actually better for their purposes. <shrug>
>>
>> > As a
>>
>>>side benefit (to him), new users who join during one of his
>>>flame sessions will have more hassle getting help. (Ditto with
>>>the archives.)
>>>
>>>If you look at his behavior over the last three years or so (since
>>>I've been on the list), I think it is clear his is trying to create
>>>as much havok as possible (without getting kicked off), and then
>>>waiting a few weeks (or months), and doing it again.
>>
>>Okay, Josh. So the bottom line is that you want to shut me up. You want
>>censorship. Okay, fine.
>>
>>But in the open-source world, free speech is the norm and censorship is
>>an extreme, drastic measure. So there is an onus on you to make your
>>case. And meanwhile, you are engaging in a certain amount of
>>hand-waving. If you want to censor these horrible things I write here,
>>then you should at least be able to point out some concrete examples of
>>the kind of unacceptable material that I have posted that should be
>>censored. You cannot really argue "Revusky is a bad guy, I don't like
>>him, so let's censor him." (Well, you can argue that, but it's pretty
>>lame...)
>>
>>So, Josh, could you please point out some of the most egregious examples
>>of the material I have posted here that really gives you no recourse but
>>censorship?
>>
>>Then maybe we can discuss this on a case-by-case basis and see what your
>>point is. Frankly, I think it would be hard, at least from this post of
>>yours, for a fair-minded observer to see what your point is. One would
>>mostly infer something like: "This guy is saying stuff we don't like, so
>>let's boot him."
>>
>>And that really doesn't give a good impression.
>>
>>Regards,
>>
>>Jonathan Revusky
>>--
>>lead developer, FreeMarker project, http://freemarker.org/
>>FreeMarker-Velocity comparison page, http://freemarker.org/fmVsVel.html
>>
>>
>>>Joshua Levy
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
>>For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: velocity-user-unsubscribe@jakarta.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: velocity-user-help@jakarta.apache.org