Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:
> Replying a bit late...
>
> David Crossley wrote:
> > Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:
> >>Dave Brondsema wrote:
> >>...
> >>
> >>>In
> >>>http://nagoya.apache.org/eyebrowse/ReadMsg?listName=forrest-dev@xml.apache.org&msgNo=8929
> >>>you suggested a property called 'forrest.extensions.descriptors'. Do we
want
> >>>these descriptors to apply to more than just skins? In light of the recent
> >>>discussion of skins, I am inclined to keep skins descriptors seperate from
dtd
> >>>descriptors and any other descriptors we might have.
> >>
> >>Are we talking about the same thing here? As "descriptor" I mean the XML
> >>file that tells Forrest where to download extensions.
> >>
> >
> > <snip/>
> >
> >>I was thinking of changing it to:
> >>
> >><forrest-extensions>
> >> <extension type="skin"
> >> name="testskin"
> >> author="Nicola Ken Barozzi"
> >> website="http://www.nicolaken.com"
> >> url="http://www.apache.org/~nicolaken/whiteboard/forrestskins/">
> >> <description>
> >> Based on the standard forrest-site skin.
> >> (Note: This is only a test skin, with trivial changes to
> >> demonstrate the concept.)
> >> </description>
> >> </extension >
> >> <extension type="dtd"
> >> name="testdtd"
> >> author="Nicola Ken Barozzi"
> >> website="http://www.nicolaken.com"
> >> url="http://www.apache.org/~nicolaken/whiteboard/forrestdtds/">
> >> <description>
> >> Blah
> >> </description>
> >> </extension >
> >>
> >>...etc
> >>
> >>Why should we have two different files?
> >
> > I think that DTD descriptors would need more information.
> > There is no guarantee that all the bit-and-pieces are packed
> > together in one nice compressed archive. This is especially
> > the case for DTDs that we do not manage and cannot re-distribute.
>
> Hmmm. If we cannot distribute them, then we should not even link to
> them, as autodownload is basically equivalent to redistribution in most
> cases. We should not mix things: or we distribute, or we link to their
> whole package if they ask us for it.
>
> > I can see DTDs that have the main DTD at one URL and DTD modules
> > at another relative URL. Maybe they do not provide a catalog,
> > so it would need to come from a third-party site.
>
> I'd say that we stick to redistributable ones for now.
> Non-redistributable ones will still need to be installed by hand.
>
> > Perhaps we need to define the individual pieces separately in the
> > descriptor with a "from" and "to" and "type" etc. so that the
> > descriptor can tell Ant where to get and put the individual pieces.
>
> This is redistribution, I'd rather stay away from half-distros.
>
> In any case this system is thought for custom DTD extensions, so the
> system will anyway get the whole package from a place that distributes
> them and that agrees that we link to them.
I agree with the gist of what you are saying.
However, i wanted to provide the ability for a project to
make a local descriptor to pull together the scattered bits.
The use-case that i was trying to describe is where a government
organisation has published a DTD (and supporting bits) but did not
also package it up in a nice tar.gz that Forrest can use. Now that
the funding has gone, there might not even be a way for us to zip
it for them to add to their website.
Okay, this is way more complicated, so we should stick with
the pre-packaged method for now.
--David
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