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From: Doug McCune <doug@dougmccune.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2012 11:28:45 -0700
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Subject: Re: Painful story...
To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org
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>
> I agree there is benefit to debating various options and alternatives.  I
> disagree that this list is the place for such discussions, as such
> discussions are unrelated to the development of the Flex SDK.
>

I guess my concern is that the people contributing to the Flex SDK will
essentially put heir head in the sand when it comes to alternative tech. So
in this case, the topic was about the difficulty doing relatively simple
box layout with HTML vs Flex.  If anyone is going to try to do any kind of
Flex -> HTML cross-compilation thing then an understanding of the
differences and alternative frameworks (like Blueprint, which was brought
up in the thread) is good to have. Additionally, I think the core SDK
contributors should consider it part of their "job" to educate the wider
community and be able to intelligently articulate the pros and cons of Flex
(layout being one of those items), which inherently requires an
understanding of the alternatives to Flex.

As another semi-unrelated example, which I think is very appropriate for
this list: Apple just announced a new layout model and list collection
stuff in iOS 6. From what I understand, this is *very* much like using
DataGroup and item renderers in Flex. It supports virtualized elements,
custom layouts, etc. The way in which this is implemented should be
well-understood by anyone working on the Flex SDK. I'd hope that this forum
would be a good place to have that discussion.

So sure, the original post may have been a bit too much "rant about HTML"
and not enough about the "why" of why that's important to this project. But
I really want to avoid any kind of blanket "this topic is inappropriate for
this forum" response unless the topic *really* is inappropriate. A
discussion (even a rant) about HTML's shortcomings compared to Flex passes
my test for appropriateness, and based on others' responses here I think
we've seen it passes others' test as well, so I'd just suggest we don't get
too trigger-happy with the "take that topic elsewhere" type of reactions,
otherwise people who want to bring up important topics (like my example of
how Apple is doing layouts in iOS 6) will feel unwelcome in this forum.

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