RE: [Webmacro-devel] Some WM PR stuff

[<kea...@na...>]

Hey Marc,

I like your ideas.  I've written a sample servlet which does pretty much
what you're suggesting, but I never packaged it up as a WAR.  I think Lane
has done something along these lines as well.  

My servlet extracts the template name from the extra path info of the
request, like

  http://www.mysite.com/wmlab/mytemplate.wmt

I spent some time figuring out how to pass in other stuff from the URL, but
then I realized that you can just use CGI form variables for most stuff.  

The ContextTools stuff already works as you describe, although imho
"functions" are even cooler, 'cause you don't need to implement any special
interface.  Couple this with the #bean directive and you have a pretty
decent workbench out of the box for developing WM apps.  

I've also been working on enhancing the /contrib/datatable stuff to give an
out-of-the-box database query and reporting capability.  One other thing
I've been playing with is a very simple WMScript editor that reports syntax
errors and puts the cursor on them.  This is still very rough.

Anyway, it would be great to kick some ideas around on this.

Keats



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Marc Palmer [mailto:ma...@an...]
> Sent: Monday, January 06, 2003 8:50 AM
> To: web...@li...
> Subject: [Webmacro-devel] Some WM PR stuff
> 
> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> Seeing as Eric has done all the hard work for us lazy people 
> in producing 
> a WM 1.1 release, we should do our most to promote it!
> 
> Nobody seems to be "in charge" of issuing WM press releases. 
> It is vital 
> that we issue press releases to let people know WM is around, 
> maturing, 
> and used by some very BIG people (i.e. AltaVista). The more 
> exposure, the 
> more users we will have.
> 
> I am willing to write and send out this press release. I did 
> it recently 
> for one of our own products and had some reasonable success 
> (announcement 
> covered by people like JavaWorld, ITToolbox, Javable, 
> JavaLobby, jGuru 
> etc.) which generated several thousand hits for us.
> 
> Also, I want to ask a related question - because I don't have time to 
> check - if WM comes with a default web application yet, that 
> will server 
> up templates and provide context tool classes, the class 
> names of which 
> are loaded from some .properties file?
> 
> If not, I will write this. I have been planning it myself as 
> I need it, 
> and this could completely change the market for WM.
> 
> Instead of WM just being for web-app/Java developers, it 
> would suddenly 
> become a tool that any webmaster can download and install, to get 
> world-class templating of site pages with configurable "plugins" that 
> they can write in Java or download.
> 
> As such, a repository of general-purpose Java classes that 
> work well in 
> templates would also be very useful to such people.
> 
> With this I think we can turn WM's user-base from 100s into 1000s.
> 
> So, if someone can fill me in on the above / supply comments, 
> I would be 
> grateful. I'm thinking of a single servlet in .WAR with WM in 
> WEB-INF/lib 
> and a way to pass a list of context tool classnames to it, 
> probably via 
> WebMacro.properties. These would be instantiated at servlet 
> startup, and 
> put into every page. It would just be a case of using URIs like:
> 
>  www.mysite.com/WebMacro?template=mytemplate.wm
> 
> ...which is obviously something any webdesigner can 
> understand, and means 
> they can get the basic advantages of running WM with absolutely NO 
> programming at all.
> 
> I will run a 1.1 press release by you guys in the next couple of days 
> (unless somebody else feels they are more qualified for this). I'm no 
> expert on this stuff, but I've done it before which is something.
> 
> I want to give something back to WM... for me WM has been the 
> gift that 
> keeps on giving!
> 
> Best wishes,
> Marc
>