[Springframework-developer] View technologies

[JP PAWLAK\(Tiscali\) <jp....@ti...>]

Hello,

I have noticed that only JSP and velocity are for now available on the
Spring framework, as in Rod=92s book a larger tour was made.

I have used for special uses a few of these with the original i21
framework.

- XML/XSLT: this one was not really a requested feature. The cyclic java
architecture, even in core objects, was really a problem (example: a
Locale has a defaultLocale property which is itself a Locale=85). This
problem was noticed by Rod, but worked not as good as expected, the
source of the patched jar being not available and the original library
didn't be aware of this problem. My feel is that in real world a product
like Castor will certainly be better, even if it=92s more complex at the
beginning.

- XMLC: I had no reason for testing it and don=92t like too much the
approach.

-PDF-iText: I had to render queries results in PDF format for friendly
printing and emailing the results as one clean document. I had no time
to search on others ways like FOP having in a sense a more attractive
approach. But iText was simple to learn and the result is good. The only
drawback is the servlet-style writing hand-coded presentation. =20

-Excel-POI: It was not in Rod=92s book, but always the same data had to =
be
reworked by users, so an Excel document was a good choice. Having the
velocity and iText views source, it was simple to write an ExcelView
class using Jakarta=92s POI.  This class loads an Excel template (it can
also generate a blank document), completes it before serving. Also a
nice result. The same drawback as for iText can be addressed.

I am aware that using iText or POI links to their code the specialized
View class and launches once more the discussion about the external
libraries, but, at least marginally, it=92s useful.=20
My question in this context is: is the re-introducing of alternative
views planned or will we consider this has to rest a user development?=20

Regards,
=A0
Jean-Pierre Pawlak
jp....@ti...