Howard, you touch too many points to make a very concise reply, but I agree with many others encouraging you to continue coding 5.2 before you start writing a book. By now, you probably have a fairly good idea how you could improve things and I'd hate to have the first book on Tapestry5 to already become outdated right away if you start on T5.2 only after releasing the book. Yes, there are a few active committers but the community still needs your direction and you have a superior ability to generalize concepts and turn them into brilliant implementations. I'm not sure the committers would be able to lay out a release plan without you either - bug fixes and some pet improvements yes, but coming up and deciding features for a new major release is a different ballgame. Of course, it's always easy for people like me who are sitting on the sidelines to tell what you should and shouldn't do.
On the matter of new features, I'm more and more convinced that web conversations can be simplified a lot if they stay on the same "page" - as proven by my Tapestry-conversations module (http://docs.codehaus.org/display/TRAILS/Conversations+in+Trails). As good as Spring Web Flow is, it's cumbersome and unnecessarily heavy for modern ajaxified web. A built-in conversational scope with a better mechanism for dealing with different page context entry points (I'm likely not the only one with long if-elses in my onActivate methods) might be enough for 90% of the use cases. Still, a book is badly needed. The inconvenient truth is there are very very few users of Tapestry anymore, the popularity of Tapestry is declining and new Java developers are not finding the framework (as proven by http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=tapestry%20java%2C%20wicket%20java%2Cgrails%20java&cmpt=q - by know T5 release should have made a bump in those graphs). And don't get me wrong - I've never believed that popularity would make anything better, but without a wide enough user base it's difficult to make a living out of it even if you want to and a healthy user base is needed for a project to alive and active. I'm sure you've gone out of your way to evangelize Tapestry but I'm amazed by (and I bet you've been equally amazed, even envious at times) how some other frameworks such as RoR and Grails have been able to market themselves so well. It's baffling as we all know that purely from technological standpoint, T5 is easily on par with the rest out there and often surpassing the competition on specific areas. Clearly, but sadly, eye-candy and looks over substance plays a big part here even among engineers and I'm sure Tapestry could do more there. Documentation is an issue with new-comers and a book would help. The reference documentation is great but what missing is the longer, more descriptive tutorials on how to get started and a book would at least partially address those needs. It's not really just Tapestry's fault, just that modern Java is complex and there are various tools like Maven and other frameworks that you need to know about compared to lighter, but easier all-in-one frameworks. But when it comes down to choosing between coding and writing (a book), I think most would agree that your time is better spent improving the core framework and pushing the envelope further, while letting somebody else fill the gap for the book. If you start feeling like it's getting harder to find new things that might be worthwhile to add to the framework, at that point it may be the right time for you to write a book. Hopefully that time is not yet. Just my 2 cents, Kalle On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 10:11 AM, Howard <hls...@gmail.com> wrote: > I've been consciously letting Tapestry 5.1 sit and stabilize for a > while ... a time that's stretched a few months longer than I initially > intended. > This is due to a number of factors: my return to independent > consulting, my desire to write a definitive Tapestry 5 book, and > preparations for many trips and speaking engagements. > All of these factors have worked on each other: I've been improving and > extending my Tapestry Workshop training materials which can be quite > time consuming. I've also (over the last several months) been on the > road several times, talking about Tapestry or doing Tapestry training. > I do want to write a book on Tapestry but if I start writing 5.2 code, > I know I'll be sucked right in ... lots of code (that darn Spring Web > Flow integration for sure this time) and bug fixes. > In addition, I've had an embarassment of riches: two main clients, one > regular part time, and the other requesting (but not always getting) > all my remaining time. I also have additional clients and training > engagements waiting in the wings. I simply have a lot of draws on my > time. > As usual, working on real-world projects lets me experience the "rough > edges" of Tapestry and fills me with ideas on how to address those in > the next release ... often by splitting up Tapestry services into > smaller, more easily overridden chunks and carefully moving internal > services out into the public APIs. > Finally, I've been very pleased by the fact that as I've stepped back > temporarily from my normal stream of commits, the other Tapestry > developers have stepped in and filled the gap. There's been quite a bit > of activity especially from Igor that I've barely had a chance to keep > up on. > So the question is: do I wait and see if time opens up in Q1 to > actually start on a T5 book ... or do I jump into 5.2 coding and leave > books to others? It's much, much easier to write code than to write a > book ... a book is a large amount of concentrated effort. It's very > hard to accomplish anything on a book using an hour here or an evening > there ... whereas Tapestry's code base lends itself to that kind of > effort quite nicely. > > -- > Posted By Howard to Tapestry Central at 11/07/2009 10:11:00 AM --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tapestry.apache.org For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tapestry.apache.org
