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Posted to dev@lenya.apache.org by jplejacq <jp...@quoininc.com> on 2005/03/19 22:24:11 UTC

Re: [ANNONCE] Myotis 0.80

There's yet another CMS based on Cocoon, Myotis, which was recently 
announced on the French language mailing list. The message below answers 
the question of why not use Lenya or Daisy. Summarizing the answer:

* They want to fix the location of a document within the site
   at time of creation.

* They are using a Wiki format.

Oh well.

-- 
JP


Thenon David wrote:
> 
> Alors tout d'abord, Myotis est basé sur un modèle différent que ceux de Lenya 
> et Daisy.
> 
> Principalement, on ne propose pas au gérant(s) la possibilité de disposer les 
> documents tel qu'on le veut dans l'arbres du site.
> La structure initiale du site est donc plus où moins figée dès le départ 
> d'après les modules activés.
> On a en bdd plusieurs types de contenus qui sont activables/désactivables.
> En fait tout celà, repose sur un modèle de cms qui avait été réfléchi 
> auparavant par une communauté, mais sans se baser réellement sur une 
> plateforme de dev particulière.
> 
> Autre grande différence, tout le contenu est géré via le format d'une syntaxe 
> wiki, le contenu n'embarque aucun code xml/html.
> 
> Nous avions choisi Cocoon, parce qu'il permettait de produire au plus vite une 
> solution dans les meilleurs conditions qui soient.
> 
> Lenya et Daisy sont très bien, mais leur complexité était telle, pour nous 
> débutant, que tout faire de zéro nous permettait d'avancer à notre rythme 
> dans la découverte de Cocoon et dans notre développement. De plus, ni 
> aurélien, ni moi ne sommes développeur Java, mais alors même pas une ligne 
> donc ça n'aidait pas du tout.
> 
> On a quand même la chance d'avoir pu en séquestrer un suffisement de temps 
> pour qu'il nous ponde le transformateur wiki2xdoc qui gère notre syntaxe 
> wiki.
> 
> Voila voila
> 
> Le vendredi 18 Mars 2005 17:27, Nicolas Maisonneuve a écrit :
> 
>>Salut,
>>Quelle sont les différences entre votre CMS et Lenya ou Daisy ?
>>Pourquoi avoir développé un autre CMS fondé sur Cocoon ?
>>
>>nicolas
>>
>>On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 10:35:36 +0100, Aurélien DEHAY <ad...@zorel.org> wrote:
>>
>>>Bonjour à tous.
>>>
>>>Nous mettons à disposion aujourd'hui la première version de notre
>>>semblant de CMS sous licence GPL développé avec Cocoon, Myotis
>>>( http://myotis.org/ ).
>>>
>>>Une version live de ce que peut faire Myotis peut être trouvée ici:
>>>http://logicielslibres.info/ .
>>>
>>>Il reste encore beaucoup de travail, tout ne fonctionne pas, ou mal,
>>>mais dans l'ensemble, nous en sommes assez fiers (nous ne connaissions
>>>pas trop Cocoon lorsque nous avons commencé). Nous cherchons donc des
>>>gens pour de tester, nous remonter des informations, voire nous aider
>>>pour le développement.
>>>
>>>L'installation n'est pas totalement triviale, il faut un serveur
>>>Posgresql (et Cocoon, bien sûr), mais le répertoire install/ du paquet,
>>>même s'il donne peu d'information, donne j'espère les principales.
>>>
>>>En espérant avoir des remontées et que le projet vous plaise...
>>>
>>>--
>>>Aurélien DEHAY & David Thenon
>>>
>>>---------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>Liste francophone Apache Cocoon -- http://cocoon.apache.org/fr/
>>>Pour vous desinscrire : mailto:users-fr-unsubscribe@cocoon.apache.org
>>>Autres commandes : mailto:users-fr-help@cocoon.apache.org


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Re: CMS shortcomings, was: Re: [ANNONCE] Myotis 0.80

Posted by "Gregor J. Rothfuss" <gr...@apache.org>.

Johannes Jander wrote:

> I dabbled around with Lenya for some month and even published a site on 
> it - but in the end, the amount of work I had to put into it was 
> frustrating, and even though the server is not the slowest on the 
> planet, the site is horribly slow. It might be different now, but it has 
> cooled my interest remarkably. To be quite honest, I have frequently 
> thought about rolling my own solution again - this time using cocoon.
> 
> Please don't take this personally - I admire the work you all put into 
> Lenya, and maybe I am unjust since I have not tried the 1.4 versions. It 
> is in fact one of the most promising CMS I know of. But it still is not 
> up to par when it comes to flexibility and usability.

understood, and appreciated. unfortunately, rather than voicing these 
opinions and filing bugs (which would go a long way to address the 
problems), people instead put the energy into doing their own thing.

more feedback, good or bad, is very much appreciated, since the main 
develpers of any project usually develop a blindness to the project's 
shortcomings, and need the occasional kick to make sure they are 
actually solving real problems.

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Re: CMS shortcomings, was: Re: [ANNONCE] Myotis 0.80

Posted by Michael Wechner <mi...@wyona.com>.

Gregor J. Rothfuss wrote:

> Michael Wechner wrote:
>
>> flexibility and having defaulst do not bite each other at all and I 
>> don't see
>> this as a reason for these problems at all.
>
>
> the way they used to be implemented created lots of headaches.

badly implemented stuff can also be cured by improving the implementation
and not necessarily by just removing the whole thing as it would be cancer.

One very good example is the sitetree implementation or the sitetree 
navigation
implementation within the info area.

> see recent discussion about back doors.

Well, I would say that's another issue and I could also refer
to the sitetree re that.

But it doesn't make sense to point fingers, because we all make mistakes.

We just have to improve stuff ...

Michi

>
>
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-- 
Michael Wechner
Wyona Inc.  -   Open Source Content Management   -   Apache Lenya
http://www.wyona.com                      http://lenya.apache.org
michael.wechner@wyona.com                        michi@apache.org

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Re: CMS shortcomings, was: Re: [ANNONCE] Myotis 0.80

Posted by "Gregor J. Rothfuss" <gr...@apache.org>.

Michael Wechner wrote:

> flexibility and having defaulst do not bite each other at all and I 
> don't see
> this as a reason for these problems at all.

the way they used to be implemented created lots of headaches. see 
recent discussion about back doors.

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Re: CMS shortcomings, was: Re: [ANNONCE] Myotis 0.80

Posted by Michael Wechner <mi...@wyona.com>.

Gregor J. Rothfuss wrote:

> Michael Wechner wrote:
>
>> Lenya actually allows any kind of URL scheme, but the default 
>> publication doesn't
>> without customization and I think this is a big mistake, so I 
>> perfectly understand your reasoning here
>
>
> disagreed. the default publication has a sane URL structure that 
> strikes a good balance between being widely useable and having a 
> reasonable implementation effort.


as a default it might make sense (whereas I still think

..../tutorial/index.html

is better than

..../tutorial.html

actually I wanted to fix the redirect some time ago, such that at least
the redirect is working correctly, which AFAIK doesn't make sense at the 
moment at all)

but it should also allow other URL schemes if necessary and this without 
real
customization needed

>
>
>> I think Lenya was really even worse on this, but is improving 
>> continuously and
>> that's very promising
>
>
> yes. it is improving because there are now sensible defaults instead 
> of offerering unlimited "flexibility" that complicate development and 
> deployment.


flexibility and having defaulst do not bite each other at all and I 
don't see
this as a reason for these problems at all.

Michi

>
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-- 
Michael Wechner
Wyona Inc.  -   Open Source Content Management   -   Apache Lenya
http://www.wyona.com                      http://lenya.apache.org
michael.wechner@wyona.com                        michi@apache.org


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Re: CMS shortcomings, was: Re: [ANNONCE] Myotis 0.80

Posted by "Gregor J. Rothfuss" <gr...@apache.org>.

Johannes Jander wrote:

> I am not the only one who feels strongly about this - cf. 
> http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html for a very well thought out 
> discussion on why cool URLs don't change - esp. "We would like to, but 
> we just don't have the right tools." I can sympathize with. URLs don't 
> belong to the realm of the system (like internal GUIDs) but mine.

i am very open to implement 
http://issues.apache.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=25009 if the problems 
mentioned there can either be solved or shown to be irrelevant.

for other url schemes, you can either implement your own 
DocumentIdToPathMapper, or use mod_rewrite.

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Re: CMS shortcomings, was: Re: [ANNONCE] Myotis 0.80

Posted by Johannes Jander <ja...@zedat.fu-berlin.de>.

At 15:39 Uhr -0500 20.03.2005, Gregor J. Rothfuss wrote:

>disagreed. the default publication has a sane URL structure that 
>strikes a good balance between being widely useable and having a 
>reasonable implementation effort.

Sorry, but this is missing the problem completely, imho. Of course 
the lenya URL-structure is sane - after all, it was designed by very 
capable people. Alas, there ist not one sane URL structure, but many 
- and a tool should not force me to adopt to its way, but adapt to my 
way.

I have a fairly large site (~3000 pages) I would like to move to 
_some_ CMS finally - it is currently managed by a multitude of 
scripts and homegrown mini-CMS. However, I cannot switch to a new URL 
scheme - there are links to the site dating back to 1998 and they are 
never going to be updated in my life. If I was sure I had to break 
the current URL organization once and then continue with a new for 
the future, I'd script me a large htaccess file.

But what happens if for some reason Lenya is not the thing for me 10 
years down the road? Maybe the developers in the future take a new 
direction that does not suit me and don't provide any security fixes 
for obsolete versions? Maybe the Lenya project dies and I am forced 
to switch to another CMS - the one sure thing is, I will have to 
reorganize the URL scheme again to suit the new tool. Then it's two 
generations of htaccess rewrites or broken links.

I am not the only one who feels strongly about this - cf. 
http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI.html for a very well thought out 
discussion on why cool URLs don't change - esp. "We would like to, 
but we just don't have the right tools." I can sympathize with. URLs 
don't belong to the realm of the system (like internal GUIDs) but 
mine.

I know the feeling if you have been working on something, and then 
late in the day, someone comes along and just says "yeah well, but 
why don't you..." - but as far as I am concerned, I don't really care 
if a CMS is based on Java, PHP or .NET/C#. What I care for is 
usability - a friendly first impression and a system I can easily 
mend into the form I want to see.

Good night :)

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Re: CMS shortcomings, was: Re: [ANNONCE] Myotis 0.80

Posted by "Gregor J. Rothfuss" <gr...@apache.org>.

Michael Wechner wrote:

> Lenya actually allows any kind of URL scheme, but the default 
> publication doesn't
> without customization and I think this is a big mistake, so I perfectly 
> understand your reasoning here

disagreed. the default publication has a sane URL structure that strikes 
a good balance between being widely useable and having a reasonable 
implementation effort.

> I think Lenya was really even worse on this, but is improving 
> continuously and
> that's very promising

yes. it is improving because there are now sensible defaults instead of 
offerering unlimited "flexibility" that complicate development and 
deployment.

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Re: CMS shortcomings, was: Re: [ANNONCE] Myotis 0.80

Posted by Michael Wechner <mi...@wyona.com>.

Johannes Jander wrote:

> At 11:09 Uhr -0500 20.03.2005, Gregor J. Rothfuss wrote:
>
>> there is something particular about cms requirements that makes 
>> people much more willing to do all the work themselves than in other 
>> software categories. reuse is low, check the number of cms projects. 
>> why is that?
>
>
> Because you don't just install a CMS to replace another or static 
> HTML, you buy into a whole philosophy. Let me explain:
>
> 1) If you like to expand your site and move from one tool (let's say 
> Golive) to some other (a CMS), (usually) you'd like to retain your URL 
> scheme and categories - for your convenience and that of your 
> visitors. You look through the CMS' on the market and (almost 
> everywhere) no dice. You have to conform to the CMS' creators idea of 
> good URLs and rewrite them or install .htaccess redirects.
> Not a biggie you say - but it puts a damper on your enthusiasm. The 
> software commands you instead of empowering you. No CMS I have seen 
> allows you do define a URL/hierarchy scheme and then import an 
> existing site according to this scheme. WYSIWYG HTML editors - in 
> contrast - allow you to import HTML written by (almost) any other 
> editor and export it again.


Lenya actually allows any kind of URL scheme, but the default 
publication doesn't
without customization and I think this is a big mistake, so I perfectly 
understand your reasoning here

>
> 2) CMS usually don't offer a host of options regarding the backend. 
> There are those relying on file system and those relying on databases, 
> but few ask you which backend you would like to store your data.


again, Lenya allows this and was intended to do so from the very 
beginning, but it needs customization. I hope that the Jackrabbit 
integration will improve this situation, whereas something just comes to 
my mind ...  but more on this on another mailing list ;-)

>
> 3) CMS usually are cumbersome to configure and not very 
> user-friendly.  I toyed around with zope/plone and could not get a 
> site up in some hours. Maybe my dumbness, but of course, I abandoned 
> it - even though I would eventually succeed. Documentation detailing 
> the first steps and the usual questions is mostly lacking or 
> inaccurate. Lenya is better, but only for the first impression - 
> configuring the HTML skeleton and including feedback forms support was 
> troublesome (this was in last August).


I think Lenya was really even worse on this, but is improving 
continuously and
that's very promising

>
> Now, someone said that webcontent  management is either trivial or 
> impossible - but at first it seems trivial to develop something better 
> than the existing solutions. I developed my own mini-CMS back in 1999 
> in Perl and this took me about a month. It is completely coded to my 
> requirements, but fulfills them marvelously - I still use it for some 
> specialized tasks and could not replace it by any existing CMS I am 
> aware of because of the reasons detailed above.


I can perfectly understand this :-)

>
> I dabbled around with Lenya for some month and even published a site 
> on it - but in the end, the amount of work I had to put into it was 
> frustrating, and even though the server is not the slowest on the 
> planet, the site is horribly slow. It might be different now, but it 
> has cooled my interest remarkably. To be quite honest, I have 
> frequently thought about rolling my own solution again - this time 
> using cocoon.


I often think about creating a new CMS project for several reasons ;-), 
but fortunately
I do not find the time to do so ;-)

>
> Please don't take this personally - I admire the work you all put into 
> Lenya, and maybe I am unjust since I have not tried the 1.4 versions. 
> It is in fact one of the most promising CMS I know of. But it still is 
> not up to par when it comes to flexibility and usability.


It's good that you are saying your opinion, because I think the Lenya 
devs really
that.

Thanks

Michi

>
> Yours
>
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-- 
Michael Wechner
Wyona Inc.  -   Open Source Content Management   -   Apache Lenya
http://www.wyona.com                      http://lenya.apache.org
michael.wechner@wyona.com                        michi@apache.org


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CMS shortcomings, was: Re: [ANNONCE] Myotis 0.80

Posted by Johannes Jander <ja...@zedat.fu-berlin.de>.

At 11:09 Uhr -0500 20.03.2005, Gregor J. Rothfuss wrote:

>there is something particular about cms requirements that makes 
>people much more willing to do all the work themselves than in other 
>software categories. reuse is low, check the number of cms projects. 
>why is that?

Because you don't just install a CMS to replace another or static 
HTML, you buy into a whole philosophy. Let me explain:

1) If you like to expand your site and move from one tool (let's say 
Golive) to some other (a CMS), (usually) you'd like to retain your 
URL scheme and categories - for your convenience and that of your 
visitors. You look through the CMS' on the market and (almost 
everywhere) no dice. You have to conform to the CMS' creators idea of 
good URLs and rewrite them or install .htaccess redirects.
Not a biggie you say - but it puts a damper on your enthusiasm. The 
software commands you instead of empowering you. No CMS I have seen 
allows you do define a URL/hierarchy scheme and then import an 
existing site according to this scheme. WYSIWYG HTML editors - in 
contrast - allow you to import HTML written by (almost) any other 
editor and export it again.

2) CMS usually don't offer a host of options regarding the backend. 
There are those relying on file system and those relying on 
databases, but few ask you which backend you would like to store your 
data.

3) CMS usually are cumbersome to configure and not very 
user-friendly.  I toyed around with zope/plone and could not get a 
site up in some hours. Maybe my dumbness, but of course, I abandoned 
it - even though I would eventually succeed. Documentation detailing 
the first steps and the usual questions is mostly lacking or 
inaccurate. Lenya is better, but only for the first impression - 
configuring the HTML skeleton and including feedback forms support 
was troublesome (this was in last August).

Now, someone said that webcontent  management is either trivial or 
impossible - but at first it seems trivial to develop something 
better than the existing solutions. I developed my own mini-CMS back 
in 1999 in Perl and this took me about a month. It is completely 
coded to my requirements, but fulfills them marvelously - I still use 
it for some specialized tasks and could not replace it by any 
existing CMS I am aware of because of the reasons detailed above.

I dabbled around with Lenya for some month and even published a site 
on it - but in the end, the amount of work I had to put into it was 
frustrating, and even though the server is not the slowest on the 
planet, the site is horribly slow. It might be different now, but it 
has cooled my interest remarkably. To be quite honest, I have 
frequently thought about rolling my own solution again - this time 
using cocoon.

Please don't take this personally - I admire the work you all put 
into Lenya, and maybe I am unjust since I have not tried the 1.4 
versions. It is in fact one of the most promising CMS I know of. But 
it still is not up to par when it comes to flexibility and usability.

Yours

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