Re: Example use case.

["Gav...." <br...@brightontown.com.au>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Ross Gardler" <rg...@apache.org>
To: <de...@forrest.apache.org>
Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 7:51 AM
Subject: Re: Example use case.


| Gav.... wrote:
|
| This is whole thing getting confusing. It feels like you are trying to
| solve all problems at once, and as a result are being recommended to
| approach it with a whole raft of technologies.
|
| Lets take it one step at a time. Here are the major tasks:
|
| 1) get a theme that you like
| 2) get the content (without navigation) in your desired input format
| 3) get the navigation sections to work (either by integrating your
| existing systems or starting afresh)
|
| Lets tackle one of these at a time. It doesn't matter, from a technical
| perspective, which you do first (and hence those of us who understand
| Forrest inside out throw out all these technologies all at once). For a
| slow introduction I would recommend doing it in the order noted above.
|
| You can work on the theme part by taking a sample site and modifying the
| theme and bringing your CSS into it (I see in another thread you are
| already starting to do this).


Ok, so now I can cross off number 1) , I have a working theme.

Now onto 2) , get the content.

What are peoples opinions on getting the content from my old site
onto the new rc1 version, based on converting around 90 html pages.

I do not mind converting to forrest source xml if consensus is that is
what is best. But is there a way of automating this, or is it a do it
by hand type of job?

Thanks

Gav..
|
| Ross
|
|
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Re: Example use case.

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

Gav.... wrote:
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Ross Gardler" <rg...@apache.org>
> To: <de...@forrest.apache.org>
> Sent: Friday, January 20, 2006 7:51 AM
> Subject: Re: Example use case.
> 
> 
> | Gav.... wrote:
> |
> | This is whole thing getting confusing. It feels like you are trying to
> | solve all problems at once, and as a result are being recommended to
> | approach it with a whole raft of technologies.
> |
> | Lets take it one step at a time. Here are the major tasks:
> |
> | 1) get a theme that you like
> | 2) get the content (without navigation) in your desired input format
> | 3) get the navigation sections to work (either by integrating your
> | existing systems or starting afresh)
> |
> | Lets tackle one of these at a time. It doesn't matter, from a technical
> | perspective, which you do first (and hence those of us who understand
> | Forrest inside out throw out all these technologies all at once). For a
> | slow introduction I would recommend doing it in the order noted above.
> |
> | You can work on the theme part by taking a sample site and modifying the
> | theme and bringing your CSS into it (I see in another thread you are
> | already starting to do this).
> 
> 
> Ok, so now I can cross off number 1) , I have a working theme.
> 
> Now onto 2) , get the content.
> 
> What are peoples opinions on getting the content from my old site
> onto the new rc1 version, based on converting around 90 html pages.
> 
> I do not mind converting to forrest source xml if consensus is that is
> what is best. But is there a way of automating this, or is it a do it
> by hand type of job?

There is no real need to convert all source file, Forrest can work with 
HTML as a source. Although you should be aware of one or two issues with 
the html-to-document.xsl, most common stumbling block is that headings 
have to be correctly sequenced.

However, in writing out the steps involved in this I realised that in 
the above list of tasks we have 2) and 3) the wrong way around. We can't 
generate the whole site until we have the navigation working. SO it 
looks like we are working on 3 (navigation) not 2 (content)

There are three approaches to this. I'm not sure which is the most 
appropriate to your use case:

1) Write a contract, based on the current navigation contract, that will 
use your existing navigation document and render it for the site
   - I don't like this approach as it makes the contract responsible for 
converting the source format and therefore limits reuse of your contract 
and you will not be able to easily reuse new navigation contracts.

2) Write an plugin that will convert your existing format to site.xml 
(see the IMSManifest plugin for an example) and use the existing 
navigation contracts
   - I like this one because you will be able reuse current contracts 
and others will be able to reuse contracts you build for your site

3) Manually convert your current navigation document to site.xml
   - may be easier if you only have a single, relatively small nav document

Ross