Preface: I've been around since the alpha days of T4, and I try to keep up my reading on the list, but I usually only pop my head to contribute up when something is painfully familiar - like security manager issues with Tomcat on Debian, or the occasional Spring issues. I'm associated with a couple of JIRA issues, and there's some code in tapestry-spring-security from the Acegi days that I contributed that is an adaptation of old Acegi taglib code.
The documentation has improved immensely, and the quality of help on the list is amazing. This has not been a single-guru project for quite some time :-) Half of what I do uses more than one database, and I like Spring transaction management, so I almost always have that baggage. Historically, most of my development has been internal and productivity related - only more recently has appearance been much of an issue. So, what has hit me? I routinely get bitten by something related to whether I'm managing a service with Spring, or Tapestry-ioc. More specifically, when Spring services depend on Tapestry services. Things are getting better on this front. Select models. Mostly, this problem has gone away for me because I use a chunk of code from the wiki that I know you don't like :-) and I agree with your points. However, it works, it has allowed me to do some funky stuff with augmenting lists (where I need to preserve an original selection even if it is not in the currently available options), and I don't have high volumes to deal with. It would not be good for inclusion in Tapestry however. Recently, I've done a couple of simple Facebook apps. I needed to generate absolute URL's (including http://server.domain/) for assets. There was an option tapestry-force-absolute-uris, and I've contributed my own BaseURLSource before to handle some development vs. production switches, so I thought that would cover it. Unfortunately, I found (after looking at Tapestry source) I needed to override the AssetPathConstructor to get the right URLs for my image files. So, it's great that I could do it, but that would not be nice for a newbie. (Note: I see there have been some changes with T5.2 but I don't know if they resolve my issues). I also recently built a validation and import page that includes multiple progressive displays as each phase is completed. Some move automatically from one to the next, and others require manual verification (acceptance of warnings). Cool, and it makes sense to me, but getting the blocks right, and making it so that it degrades nicely takes a bit of effort. Perhaps there's a good example now, but my first attempt at graceful degradation took some head-scratching. I've always found forms containing loops or grids, or loops containing forms to be a particular challenge. In extreme cases, what I'm really looking for I guess is a DataGrid. I wonder if this is an area where pairing with a company that sells such a component to build a Tapestry wrapper would be an idea. I had considered it, but it wasn't enough of a need, because I had flexible requirements. (Specific case: grid largely read-only, but a comment (text box) and status (drop down) in each row need to be editable. The grid needs to retain sorting ability, and keep information between refreshes or changes in sorting, but only have the comment and status information updated as a batch for the whole grid.) We all have our comfort zones. For some, javascript is second nature. I dread it - probably because of experiences years ago. For some, filters, advice, (insert your favorite design pattern here), are very familiar, and there have been conversations on the list about the best way to implement or override a particular piece of functionality. At the framework level, options need to be carefully weighed. When you're just trying to get something done, I recall a quotation, "When the need arises, the nearest object becomes a hammer." My wish list? Multiple database support - there was some great conversation last year on the list with Tom van Dijk. Transaction management on par with Spring. Why don't I ask more questions on the list? If I can't find my answer in a search, I can probably figure it out myself in about the same time it would take to generate a simplified version of whatever I'm working on to post to the list. Or perhaps I should say that in formulating an intelligent question, I often answer my own question. Keep up the good work! Jonathan On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 12:41 PM, Thiago H. de Paula Figueiredo < thiag...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 12:56:45 -0300, Jonathan Barker < > jonathan.theit...@gmail.com> wrote: > > It's not so much that Tapestry is rigid, because it is incredibly >> flexible, but knowing how to flex it is the challenge. I've spent lots of >> time trying to figure out the RIGHT (TM) way to do something when it feels >> like it >> should be just a few pieces of duct tape away. >> > > Example please. :) > > The documentation is has been improved. The mailing list has many people > who like to help and discuss, so post your questions. :) You can have some > very good answers and the Tapestry team can have invaluable feedback on what > needs to be improved. ;) > > > -- > Thiago H. de Paula Figueiredo > Independent Java, Apache Tapestry 5 and Hibernate consultant, developer, > and instructor > Owner, Ars Machina Tecnologia da Informação Ltda. > http://www.arsmachina.com.br > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@tapestry.apache.org > For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@tapestry.apache.org > >
