Halogen Labs Weblog

I’ve decided I need a break from computer stuff, which includes all things Cocoon. Unfortunately it includes this blog as well, so posting will be extremely sparse. I could be gone a week, or a month, or several months. Probably not as drastic as a year, though.

My weather RSS project is officially on hold. I really want to get the service rolled out, but in my current state of disliking computers, I can’t put forth a good effort into the project. When I return, I *promise* to get the service up and running. I have some cool ideas, but I can’t be working on it and hate programming and computers while doing so. I’ll be reading any comments posted here, so feel free to send me a message this way.

Carsten Zeigeler announces 2.1M2:

Apache Cocoon is an XML framework that raises the usage of XML and XSLT technologies for server applications to a new level. Designed for performance and scalability around pipelined SAX processing, Cocoon offers a flexible environment based on the separation of concerns between content, logic and style. A centralized configuration system and sophisticated caching top this all off and help you to create, deploy and maintain rock-solid XML server applications.

Congrats on the team on getting M2 out, we’re nearing 2.1 final!

(via Be Blogging)

Russell Beattie gives up on Cocoon:

Well, I’ve spent the last week or so working with Cocoon and I give up. I can’t get any real work done with it, so I’m moving on.

He goes on:

I OBVIOUSLY just don’t know how to use Cocoon properly, but the fact is that after absorbing two big-ass books and spending a hell of a lot of time on it, if I’m not getting any work done, then it’s not the right technology for me. Cocoon generally goes against my way of thinking about things anyways.

It’s too bad, because he hasn’t even seen the Flow layer yet, either. It looks like he’s been having bad problems with strange characters. I wonder what version he used, and what errors he’s been having. Never saw a flash of him on either of the mail lists, either. It’s too bad, because he would have gotten plenty of help.

Yep, cocoon.apache.org has ‘gone live’, and it’s now running off Forrest. There’s some rudimentrary pages there now, but it’s nice seeing the different site versions and all of the sites Forrest-ize :)

Alex Krut continues his Cocoon Flow in Java with some more advancements. It looks like he’s managed to squash the Java code down to a reasonable amount of lines :) This thread is the discussion on cocoon-dev about it all.

Luca Morandini and the Geoid team announces the first public version of Geoid, a set of components which connect Cocoon to Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Geoid is currently being hosted at CocoonDev.

I took particular interest in this because I used to work on NHGIS, and we were going to be needing a way of connecting ArcIMS with Cocoon. I’m not at there anymore, but this still holds a high level of interest with me. And I’ve forwarded the announcement to some former coworkers who may find it interesting, and want to use it (and hire a Cocoon mastermind *nudge, wink*).

Reinhard Pötz noticed this page about using Java (Not Javascript!!) in Cocoon for Flow control. (via Oividiu’s Blog). Interesting. I wonder how heavier this will be over the Javascript implementation.

Although…

Looking at the “guess the number” example, there’s quite a bit more code in the Java version versus my Javascript version that I did for the Wiki.

Code like this:
number = Integer.parseInt(ObjectModelHelper.getRequest(environment.getObjectModel()).getParameter(”number”));

Can be written like this in Javascript:
var guess = parseInt( cocoon.request.get(”guess”) );

Yes, please.

Questions:

How much heavier is the Java version over the Javascript version?

Are the Java continuations handled with the ContinuationsManager?

How long until we get Python to define Flow control? IMO the ultimate would be Python Flow control. I’ve seen stuff about stackless Python, and I’ve read messages asking the Jython people about a stackless version. They said it was impossible, but somehow I doubt that. I think they’re just lazy.

I think I’ll stick with Javascript for Flow control, if only to keep the # of lines down to a minimum. Simplicity is good. So is the interpretation.

Sylvain also weighs in on Java Flow Control.

(XML.com via Dive Into Mark)

Berkeley DB XML is an open source, embedded XML database created by Sleepycat Software. It’s built on top of Berkeley DB, a “key-value” database which provides record storage and transaction management. Unlike relational databases, which store data in relational tables, Berkeley DB XML is designed to store arbitrary trees of XML data.

I’ll give a cookie to the first person who gets Cocoon working with this… :)

Thanks to Bertrand, David, Vadim, Stephan and Joerg, not only have a whole slew of Cocoon samples returned, but they now sport a snazzy new look. IMO the “Welcome to Apache Cocoon” page could use some more stuff (It should look like an actual website), but the project is moving ahead by leaps and bounds.

In other news, Joerg Heinicke was proposed as a Cocoon commiter based on all the work he did bringing the samples up to speed. Congrats, Joerg!

MovableType totally broke my blog the other day, and there was a completely empty page here for a while. I’m still trying to track down the problem, as well as iron out the last few design issues I’ve been having.

Totally unrelated: Finished my last final on Monday, and I’m relaxing before classes start back up next week already (!!). So much for summer break. I was hoping to make my week off productive but it’s not looking like that’s going to be the case. So much to do, so little time…