On 22 Aug 2006, at 3:59 PM, Jerry W. Walker wrote:
Hi, David & Anjo,
First, Anjo and gang, thanks for Project Wonder (PW)! I address the comment to Anjo because he tends to remain the most vocal PW champion. My thanks go to you all.
I feel obliged to include that in every comment I make about PW because it is an incredible code base.
I'm now (finally) using Project Wonder primarily because a client wants AJAX features and PR seems to provide them in WO in a better integrated fashion than I'm likely to find anywhere else. Having said all of that, I'm still going to complain (criticize), but before that starts any flames, please read to the end where I will offer my support.
<rant>
I'm still troubled about using PW for two reasons:
* lack of easy access to documentation
* trepidation that some unknown way of doing things in PW will conflict with the way they're being done at the moment in a project built without PW.
The project in which I'm integrating PW is not yet in production, so item two is not yet a major issue. It has been a show stopper a few times in the past.
Item one is the issue the everyone has been most vocal about and remains the biggest issue with me.
David (Holt), you added David Teran's comments to the Wonder/Quickstart page and that is very helpful. However, even more helpful would be a convenient way of getting at the documentation, particularly the JavaDocs, if one is not using Eclipse. I presume I'll have to reread the Java documentation on building JavaDocs and set up a script to do so, but before I do that, if anyone knows of either of the following:
* a prepackaged (maybe zipped) set of the javadocs available for downloading
* a pre-existing script to build them independently of Eclipse
they will save me that time and effort and make PW even more available to the newbies (like me) who haven't yet bought into Eclipse. The easy answer, of course, is for me to just take the Eclipses plunge, but I already took it (over a year ago) and was dissatisfied. I won't take it again until I have more time than I do right now, since it also comes with an expensive learning curve.
It also bothers me that even when I go to the wiki pages on Wonder referenced by Anjo, click on the link to the most basic framework (ERExtensions) and scan the list, that of the 120 odd classes named there, only one of them is documented in the wiki. And that documentation is an overview comprising the following:
"ERXArrayUtilities provides convenience methods and tools for manipulating NSArrays."
followed by a an uncommented list of NSArray.setOperatorForKey messages. Although I know what setOperatorForKey does and though some of those operators look downright exciting, that is insufficient documentation for the most basic of PW frameworks.
</rant>
So now that I've gotten the rant out of my system, I will try to offer one to two hours per day for the next several days (years) to supplement the PW ERExtensions JavaDocs and the ERExtensions wiki page if anyone on the PW team will offer me support for my doing so.
If you would like my help (I'm not pulitzer material, but I can write documentation), please reply to me off list and I will have specific questions that you might answer to get me off the dime.
Finally, regarding Anjo's comment earlier in the thread:
"Which makes me kinda doubt that *any* info we write will ever be sufficient."
I think that it's a given that documentation is never done. All the coding work we do is built on a foundation of sand and when the sand shifts, large amounts of the code and documentation will go obsolete and require updating. But you knew that.
I'm still volunteering to help write documentation for now and, perhaps, code (and accompanying documentation) later.
Regards,
Jerry
On Aug 22, 2006, at 5:09 PM, David Holt wrote:
I have just updated the Wonder/Quickstart page to include some pointers from David Teran on what JavaDocs to read in order to begin to use Wonder.
David
On 22 Aug 2006, at 1:26 PM, Mike Schrag wrote:
Still plenty left to do in here, but it's a start ...
ms
On Aug 22, 2006, at 4:09 PM, Chuck Hill wrote:
On Aug 22, 2006, at 2:03 AM, Fabrice Pipart wrote:
Thanks to you both Timo and Chuck
You were right, I was in the wrong direction and it was far far easier to use project wonder for that purpose (though I loved the KVC thing with @localize)
The ERXSession and its ERXLocalizer was set up in 5min and works just like I dreamed :-)
Since it seems that all my questions to the list end with a "it's already available in Project Wonder" and that its a far better implementation than mine, I have a question :
What documentation is available for Project Wonder? How can I have an overview of what project wonder can do for me?
I am not sure really. Kieran had a Quick Start on his blog, not sure if I can still find it. This is a complaint that people often have about Wonder: there is not much in the way of documentation on how to get started and how to use it and what is there. As is common with Open Source things, the developers add what they need. And they need code not docs. As a new Wonder user, you need docs more than code. So, er, perhaps you can write some and add them to Wonder. :-)
I found the Javadoc (it seems that the Javadoc on sourceforge is a bit outdated compared to the one in the latest bin or sources).
I found some information in text files when I downloaded the sources...
But is there anything better?
I mean it's a bit complicated to look in hundreds of classes' names in a Javadoc to guess which one could help you.
And most of the time I don't even have the idea that wonder could help me.
So, is there a good way to learn what project wonder can do?
Not that I am aware of. This is probably the single reason that Wonder is not more widely used.
Chuck
--
__ Jerry W. Walker,
WebObjects Developer/Instructor for High Performance Industrial Strength Internet Enabled Systems
203 278-4085 office