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Subject: Re: Futon Improvements
From: Jan Lehnardt <jan@apache.org>
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Date: Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:22:34 +0200
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To: user@couchdb.apache.org

Hi cinnebar,

On 10 Sep 2009, at 18:04, cinnebar wrote:

>> I don't believe CouchDB depends on jQuery.
>
>> In any case CouchDB by itself does not depend on jQuery.
>
> Perhaps I didnt explain my point well.  I mentioned jquery  
> dependency in the
> context of 'Futon improvements'.  Futon is the 'in box' app for  
> accessing
> CouchDB in browser and is dependent on jquery.

Futon wouldn't be what it is today without jQuery. But I'm happy to
consider alternatives.


>  Beyond this we think that
> the effect of better documenting at least the js included with  
> CouchDB on
> installation would be greatly increased usability of CouchDB.  We do  
> not
> have this opinion because we are stupid or because we do not  
> understand the
> code.

Nobody said you're stupid :)


> I myself would welcome the demonstration of an alternative version  
> of Futon
> from either of you that does not require jquery and is as good as or  
> more
> full featured than the Futon that we have .
>
>> jQuery and CouchApp are much easier to write
>
> The addition of the features mentioned by Paul in the jquery  
> dependent Futon
> would be good to see too.
>
> At the moment the feature set of Futon is far from useful for the  
> level of
> dev that we are already at.

We're happy to consider any patches you might have for Futon. This is
all voluntary work, please appreciate this, see below.


>> CouchApp is a third party tool
>> You don't need to use CouchApp though, you can push design  
>> documents any
> way you like.
>
> I mentioned CouchApp only in passing and i realise its dependencies  
> are not
> really relevant to this discussion but it does seem odd to me that  
> the demo
> 'standalone couchapp' in couchdb documentation is 'out of the box'  
> dependent
> on a python module.  At the same time personally i like using py and  
> i like
> using js so calling the CouchApp py module a 'third party tool' in the
> context doesnt seem to make too much sense.

CouchDB is an Open Source project in alpha stage driven by voluntary
contributions. While we're very keen on hearing about areas that need
improvement there is no obligation to focus on anything an individual
developer doesn't fancy. The best way to raise awareness for a feature
request (I consider documentation a feature :) is opening an issue in
our bug tracker: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COUCHDB (sorry,
it's JIRA).

As far as picking a Python dependency for the book, here's our  
reasoning:

  Pick a framework where we can focus on CouchDB, not the framework.
  We decided that Rails, Django and the others are too heavyweight for
  what we want to show. We opted for a pure JavaScript application.
  The couchapp tool helps developing these but CouchApps per se are
  not dependent on any particular tool. Other's have written their own
  version.

Besides, our CouchDB book is not the official CouchDB documentation
nor is the couchapp project part of CouchDB (yet).

(I'm aware that it is all a bit in flux all the time, but that's the  
nature of
  an alpha-stage software)


> ...development of CouchDB will also be aided if this user mailing list
> involved a higher % of informed discussion and lower % 'o crap i  
> cant it to
> work'

If people have problems installing, and there are a lot of potential  
issues,
they should be encouraged to come here and look for help, even if all  
they
receive is a friendly pointer to the archives or FaQ. I hope you can  
skim
messages fast enough to just skip the mails you don't want to read or  
you
can set up a filter for "problem installing" or similar.

Cheers
Jan
--