Re: [WebMacro-user] Release Work

[Marc P. <ma...@an...>]

> > I have pending commits for this. If we are going to skip 2.0 and go 
> > straight for 2.1 with "early access" Spring and JSP I will commit
> this 
> > stuff tomorrow.
> 
> I would like it if you would commit this stuff right away. Be sure to 
> add some unit tests.

OK I will do this this week.
 
> btw: have you ever thought of just doing a WM Container? In fact, this 
> might be a really nice subproject because it would show how to run WM
> in both standalone and in Web-mode.

It's a nice idea, but I have precious little time at the moment. I think a
concrete WAR file that you can point at a directory of templates and have
it serve the pages is a -must- have for WM though.
 
> Also, I see a limitation with XML property specification ala Spring. 
> First, I do not like XML as a bean property spec. I would much rather 
> use #bean to instantiate and set props . Second, it does not allow for 
> the beans properties to persist in state and then evolve. Fine for the 
> default settings of a bean.

I think you've got the wrong end of the stick here.

The Spring bean config stuff is geared at application component
initialization (i.e. business logic objects, EJBs - yuck!, etc)

Its XML grammar is trivial, and you are not restricted to their XML - you
can write any bean factory implementation that uses any file format you like.

i.e. you could write a WebMacroBeanFactory for spring that parses WM
templates to initialize the bean context.

However Spring's XML config is very good because it can be validated using
any standard XML validation tool (and as part of the build process) and
99% of the world knows a lot more about XML than WebMacro.

Whatever, WebMacro configuration needs to be "bean scriptable". I am not
suggesting any replacement of the existing properties config scheme for WM
- but it -must- be possible for users to configurable WebMacro at runtime,
and from any POJO configuration tool such as Spring, Pico etc.

Right now the WM config/context system is not really "POJO".

Cheers