Velocity Questions

[Gregg Bolinger]

So I read a pre-release of Thomas Paul's Velocity article for the next Javaranch Journal. I started looking at velocity and came up with a few questions. But looking over Javaranch, where would we ask such questions?
It's not really a framework. So that doesn't seem like a good place although that's where most questions appear to be asked.
My other thought is that maybe JSP needs to be renamed to something like
JSP and other View Technologies
Any opinions?

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Well, we just ran a JSF promotion in the JSP forum using, I think, exactly the same reasoning. On the other hand, after the end of the promotion, Bear started kicking people out for talking about JSF and sending them to the Struts/Frameworks forum.
"Other Open Source Projects" ?

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Ernest Friedman-Hill:
Well, we just ran a JSF promotion in the JSP forum using, I think, exactly the same reasoning. On the other hand, after the end of the promotion, Bear started kicking people out for talking about JSF and sending them to the Struts/Frameworks forum.
"Other Open Source Projects" ?

I questioned why JSF was promoted in JSP in the first place.
JSF is a framework. Lasse was probably right. JSF does focus more on the View than other frameworks becaues JSF uses it's own components for the view and most other frameworks work with any view.
However, Velocity is not a Framework at all. It is purely a view technology. I think there are some technologies that are descent that get lost in the shuffle. Especially when they get thrown into "Other Open Source Projects". FreeMarker is another one.
I just really think there should be a better place for such things.

[Gregg Bolinger]

More on this....
Looking at the forum list we have now, Jason made a point about adding JSF to the Struts title and moving the whole thing up under Servlet and JSP in the Java Section.
I think what might be a better idea is to seperate Open Source Products/Projects from Products. And possibly pull some of the more popular Open Source projects out of "Other Open Source Projects" into their own forum. Like log4J and JUnit specifically maybe.
But keep commerical products like Orion, Oracle, JBoss, Resin, etc under Products or even change that to Commercial Products.
Another idea is to do what Paul suggested a while back and contact some of these Open Source Project leaders and see if they would be willing to point to Javaranch as their "Official Discussion Forum" and we create a Forum for them.
Just throwing around some things to discuss I guess. It's late and I'm bored.

[Jeroen Wenting]

Creating more forums for popular frameworks and techs that now seem to float all over the place might be a good idea at the risk of getting forums that are too narrow.
Say someone wants to accomplish something and has heard of product X, he'll ask his question there.
If product Y is really better suited he might never find out...

[Thomas Paul]

I think JSP, JSF, and Velocity belong together. They are all the "V" in MVC architecture. I don't think JSF is a true framweork in the sense of Struts or Turbine. Its focus is way too narrow.

[Gregg Bolinger]

Originally posted by Thomas Paul:
I think JSP, JSF, and Velocity belong together. They are all the "V" in MVC architecture. I don't think JSF is a true framweork in the sense of Struts or Turbine. Its focus is way too narrow.

I agree at least with the JSP and Velocity issue. So should we change something on the JSP title? Or are the amount of velocity questions not really worth it? Or are the velocity questions lower because they get lost in the Frameworks forum and no one really knows where to ask them?
Well, maybe those questions should just go in Other Open Source Projects. I still feel there are some things that just get lost in that forum though.
[ March 11, 2004: Message edited by: Gregg Bolinger ]