Re: [Springframework-developer] XSL-FO (Apache-FOP)

[Colin S. <col...@ex...>]

Darren Davison wrote:

>On Mon, October 4, 2004 13:13, jürgen höller [werk3AT] said:
>  
>
>>Darren,
>>
>>While this is certainly a worthwhile extension, I'm not sure if we should
>>raise the size of the Spring core distribution with a further 1.3 MB jar file
>>for such special functionality, in particular for a library that is still in
>>0.x (i.e. whose API is not guaranteed to stay stable). I'm a bit worried in
>>that respect... Do you know what timeframe the next FOP major release is
>>scheduled for?
>>    
>>
>
>It's a big jar for such a small class, agreed.  But then again, 1.3Mb isn't
>much on top of what is already a 26MB+ download.
>
>The 0.x version is annoying, but also slightly misleading.  A lot of projects
>these days hugely overuse the 0.x versioning - particularly in the GNU space
>where some software has been in production use for years (literally) and yet
>still has a 0.x version number.  0.20.5 is a stable, supported branch of FOP. 
>The API *will* change in the rewrite (currently only available via CVS), see
>http://xml.apache.org/fop/dev/index.html#lines for more info.  But then that's
>not really any different to other projects that we currently ship a dependency
>for as they could change their API in the next major release.  Changes to the
>FOP API should be hidden within the View implementation in Spring and won't
>affect end users.
>
>I'm not overly concerned if it goes in the sandbox or not at all since it's
>trivial to code it as an extension in my apps.  It just seemed like a useful
>addition that we needed anyway and others had already asked for.
>
>Just my $0.02 - be interested to hear anyone else's.
>
>  
>
>>Thus, I suggest to put the FOP support classes into the sandbox for the time
>>being... like we do for Commons Validator and co. People will use it from
>>there too, like they already do with the Commons Validator support and the
>>Portlet stuff... We can always move it over once we agree that the time is
>>right. Another option would be to start shipping a separate extension
>>distribution...
>>
>>Opinions? (both on FOP support and the extension distribution idea...)
>>    
>>
>
>would some of the currently core things then move into the 'extension' distro
>(Velocity/FreeMarker/POI et al)?  I'm unsure how this works..
>
>  
>
 From what you're saying it sounds like it doesn't make sense to put it 
into the sandbox on the basis that FOP is immature.

The question to me becomes how much we let Spring grow, and what are 
'core' features that must ship with it, and what are 'extensions', and 
what are related projects? I was chatting a bit with Keith on the 
weekend about the validator stuff that's currently in the sandbox, but 
has become pretty mature, and is used by the Spring Rich Client Project, 
and could probably be of use to other Spring users. There's a question 
of where that would go. It's probably big enough that it should maybe be 
its own project, which is manageable I guess. But once you start 
splitting off all these little bits and pieces you open up the potential 
at least for a lot of dependency issues. Extensions I guess is a bit 
different than related project, since at least it would probably be 
built one-to-one with the main project...

Colin