webmacro-devel

Re: [Webmacro-devel] WM 2.0 strategy

[Lane S. <la...@op...>]

Hi Mike,

Thanks for the excellent feedback. As my last email hinted, we, the 
developers, would like to see a bigger community for WM. Please consider 
what you might do to write some letters to some influential and 
interested friends.

As to the template directive, this is a very important new directive and 
it will surely be in release 2.0.

thanks for your feedback!

-Lane

Mike Weerdenburg wrote:

> At 08:02 PM 6/10/2003, you wrote:
>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> > Eric B. Ridge
>> > Are we doing this just for ourselves?
>>
>> You guys are doing great stuff and should not feel discouraged. 
>> Webmacro is good and stable so hugely useful but maybe a bit boring.
>>
>> Your contributions are very appreciated.
>> Harmeet
>>
>> One satisfied user. We use WM to generate email notifications, create 
>> webmacro/DB driven dynamic sites and to paramterize protocol 
>> simulation for testing.
>
>
> Harmeet,
> I couldn't agree more!
>
> Webmacro is a great and stable product!
>
> We use it for web aplications:
> - Ecommerce system
> - Web content management system
> - Generating E-mail letters.
> - Grabbing web pages and getting information out of it, like the 
> weather forecasts etc.
> - and a lot more nice things.
>
> What I / we like to see in the new 2.0 release:
>
> - We need the template tool / (directive?)
> Whe have a string (out of the database for example) and this string 
> has to be parsed within a template.
> (just like a seperate template, but it uses the current context).
>
> <CODE EXAMPLE>
>
> #set $tmplText = $webUtil.getFromDatabaseForExample()
> // $tmplText now contains : "This is $MyTest and this is $dummy"
>
> #set $MyTest = "test 123"
>
> #set $tmpl = $Template.fromString($tmplText)
> #set $tmpl.copyCurrentContext()
> #set $tmpl.Args.dummy = "my dummy argument"
> $tmpl.eval()
>
> The result of the evaluation has to be : "This is test 123 and this is 
> my dummy argument"
> </CODE EXAMPLE>
>
>
> All the other improvements etc...
> I dont'n know if we will use them, but it sounds good!
>
> * Another satisfied user.
>   Webmacro user since version 0.95 / 0.98
>
> Mike Weerdenburg - Development
>
> Traction Information Technologies B.V.
> Bedrijvenweg 6a
> 1424 PX De Kwakel
> The Netherlands
> tel. +31 (0)297 386850
> fax. +31 (0)297 386851
> http://www.traction-it.nl <http://www.traction-it.nl/>
>

Re: [Webmacro-devel] WM 2.0 strategy

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

On Tue, 10 Jun 2003 11:11:17 -0400, <Kea...@di...> wrote:

> WM has always stayed focused on just being a template system that works 
> well and can interoperate with other frameworks.  I think that is a good 
> approach given our limited resources.

Absolutely - I'm not suggesting that changes. However applications are - 
required- if we are to make WM survive in the long term I think.

There's only so many tweaks and mods we can make to such a language - it's 
the "value added" stuff that will bring WM to the masses.

> However, having said that, I think that adding out-of-the-box 
> functionality on top of WM, like a WIKI .war would add tremendous value. 
> You're wishlist sounds a bit ambitious, but I like the general idea -- as 
> long as the WM core remains distinct and focused.
>
> My personal priorities for prepackaged WM apps are:
>
> - user management: registration, passwords, profiles, etc. with pluggable 
> back-end (JDBC, LDAP, XML)
> - threaded discussion list
> - data abstraction layer (a beefed up version of DataTable?)
> - WM admin UI
> - workflow enabled content management system (probably a pipe dream)

Pretty much all of this is in the "to do" list for the webapp am I soon 
(hehe) to release.

> All this on top of core improvements such as
>
> - code refactoring: removing dead code (e.g., Filter stuff), cleaning up 
> broker and property operator, etc.
> - better documentation
> - improved bean/tool management/configuration
> - improved whitespace handling

Better docs are definitely a must-have. We need to do some cleaning up of 
the Wiki to remove obsolete info.

Also, I have written some quick-start docs about template writing and 
related WM concepts for the webapp documentation. When you get to see this, 
we might decide to adapt some of it for the WM Wiki site.

> I also dream of integration with tools like DreamWeaver, Eclipse, 
> NetBeans, jEdit, etc.

Yes, I was wondering about that. I don't know of any editors that support 
"plugins" for rendering content. Do you?



-- 
Marc Palmer
Contract Java Consultant/Developer
Currently available for hire!
http://www.anyware.co.uk/marc/
http://www.wangjammers.org

Re: [Webmacro-devel] WM 2.0 strategy

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

On Tue, 10 Jun 2003 11:11:17 -0400, <Kea...@di...> wrote:

> My personal priorities for prepackaged WM apps are:
>
> - user management: registration, passwords, profiles, etc. with pluggable 
> back-end (JDBC, LDAP, XML)
> - threaded discussion list
> - data abstraction layer (a beefed up version of DataTable?)
> - WM admin UI
> - workflow enabled content management system (probably a pipe dream)

By the way I forgot to mention. All of these things can be a hell of a lot 
easier to implement using the web application framework.

With Lane's help the Ignition webapp already has abstracted storage for any 
data you wish to associate with a visitor to the site, without requiring a 
login. This is coupled with realtime info about the visitor such as # of 
pages visited this session, time since previous visit (session) and so on.

It uses Lane's VLH which I am reliably informed is about to sprout a nice 
batch of new documentation.

The actual code in the "action" implementation for this is so minimal it's 
laughable.

I also plan a Hibernate based storage implementation. I also think we 
definitely need a "blog" implementation too. These things really are no big 
deal once you have all the servlet and parameter hell taken away from you.

Marc
-- 
Marc Palmer
Contract Java Consultant/Developer
Currently available for hire!
http://www.anyware.co.uk/marc/
http://www.wangjammers.org