[Narf-lib-devel] narf roadmap

[Patrick M. <pa...@he...>]

Hello,

Narf now has lots of competition.  We aren't one of the few kids on the 
ruby web library block anymore.  I'd like to make Narf relevant.  
Relevant, like how say php is relevant.  As in, php can win at my job, 
and Narf can't.  So that sucks.  I was thinking of this roadmap:

+ When I imported WebUnit, I forked it into Web::Unit inside narf.  
Time to undo this fork, so that it is easier to integrate code.

+ Undo the fork, then re-write Narf's cgi testing to overlap with 
WebUnit.  This way, some of the useful methods like 
#assert_form_includes will be implemented in a way that can be merged 
back into WebUnit.

+ One of the happy by products of forking Web::Unit was the discovery 
that the WebUnit test suite can be used to "validate" Narf running on a 
particular server configuration.  I'd like to re-write these tests, so 
that Narf depends on a test script instead of a site.

+ There's a weird quality of templating libraries.  First programmers 
throw away the functionality of a programming language, muttering about 
separating "Display Logic" and "Code".  Then, as they discover that 
"Display Logic" could use some of the nice features of a programming 
language, they start implementing a wierd half language on the side.  
Since Ruby is perfect for everything, I'd like to make Narflates more 
like eruby+.  Ruby code in your narflates, in addition to the nice form 
stuff like <narf:input ....> etc.  Oh yeah, and the different tags will 
get a Ruby api for creating them, so you can do the in code generation 
of forms too.  And finally, we should support <? ?> in addition to <% 
%> because the % is a pain in the @$$ to type.

this is all rolling up to a drum roll....

+ I think the reason php is winning is b/c it is easy to install, and 
easy to write.  I like code in html environments that are easy to 
install on every web server.  So once narflates can contain ruby code, 
I want to rebuild narf as eruby++.  Easy installation, ala php.

And yea, cgi scripts, IOWA, Rails, and everything else will still run 
in narflates.  Because we will be a sneaky bastards.

What do you think of this rough roadmap?

Cheers,

Patrick

p.s. I locked down the narf-lib.org wiki b/c the only edits were 
spammers and spam restores.  seemed like a waste of time to me.  Email 
me if you want to edit the pages, and I'll send you the link / password.