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| <h1>Dispatcher (Draft - feature under development)</h1> |
| <div id="motd-area"> |
| This is documentation for development version v0.8 |
| (<a href="http://forrest.apache.org/versions/">More</a>)</div> |
| <div id="minitoc-area"> |
| <ul class="minitoc"> |
| <li> |
| <a href="#introduction">Introduction</a> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <a href="#background">Background</a> |
| <ul class="minitoc"> |
| <li> |
| <a href="#nc-definition">Definition of naming conventions</a> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <a href="#leather">leather-dev</a> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <a href="#dispatcher">Dispatcher - advanced separation of concerns</a> |
| <ul class="minitoc"> |
| <li> |
| <a href="#contracts">Contracts - grouped functionality</a> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </li> |
| <li> |
| <a href="#info">Further information</a> |
| </li> |
| </ul> |
| </div> |
| |
| <div class="warning"> |
| <div class="label">Warning</div> |
| <div class="content"> The "dispatcher" is new functionality which is still in |
| development phase. That is why it is in the "whiteboard" section of the |
| Forrest distribution. We are working at the moment on moving this plugin |
| from the whiteboard into the core plugins. Further all dispatcher related |
| documents will be moved into the plugin as well. |
| See <a href="../docs_0_80/status-themes.html">Status of Themes: Skins and Dispatcher</a>. |
| </div> |
| </div> |
| |
| <a name="N10014"></a><a name="introduction"></a> |
| <h2 class="underlined_10">Introduction</h2> |
| <div class="section"> |
| <p> As stated in the <a href="../docs_0_80/howto/../your-project.html#skins">Skin |
| documentation </a> the aim of the Forrest skins is to provide many |
| capabilities so that extra skins are not needed. Experience showed that |
| many Forrest users still decided to create a new skin because the |
| default skin did not offer the features that they wanted or they "just" |
| needed extra content in some pages. We introduced skinconf.xml where |
| the user could configure some features of skins but it was up to the |
| skin to support it and did not solve the problem to add page specific |
| extra content. That led us to develop a new concept of creating skins |
| (we called the result "themes") which would be more easily extensible |
| by a user. </p> |
| </div> |
| |
| <a name="N10022"></a><a name="background"></a> |
| <h2 class="underlined_10">Background</h2> |
| <div class="section"> |
| <p> The problem with the forrest skins so far has been that even if |
| "only" the design changed (html-skeleton), we still had to write a |
| completely new skin and implement all functionality. Another problem |
| was that the functionality was not easily extensible by a user. We |
| decided to support a standard regarding naming conventions for css |
| elements. This standard has been developed on the <a href="http://www.oscom.org/events/oscom4/proposals/skins.html"> OSCOM |
| website</a>, where you can find some more background information.</p> |
| <a name="N1002F"></a><a name="nc-definition"></a> |
| <h3 class="underlined_5">Definition of naming conventions</h3> |
| <p> "A naming convention is an attempt to systematize names in a field |
| so they unambiguously convey similar information in a similar |
| manner." <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naming_conventions">wikipedia</a> |
| |
| </p> |
| <a name="N1003D"></a><a name="leather"></a> |
| <h3 class="underlined_5">leather-dev</h3> |
| <p> That led to the development of the "leather-dev" skin which |
| established a semantic container approach for div elements. |
| Leather-dev evolved from the "pelt" skin and almost used the same |
| functionality (contracts). We had started to encapsulate functional |
| code into templates, but there have been still in 4 xsl files and without |
| any documentation what they are doing and how to use them. The |
| problems with leather-dev was pointed out in the mail "<a href="http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=forrest-dev&m=111049344517653">status on leather-dev?</a>". The main proplem was to limit users to |
| only one html-skeleton was way too limiting regarding design. Since |
| we had now grouped functionality in named container we were ready to |
| start the dispatcher (aka forrest:views).</p> |
| </div> |
| |
| <a name="N1004C"></a><a name="dispatcher"></a> |
| <h2 class="underlined_10">Dispatcher - advanced separation of concerns</h2> |
| <div class="section"> |
| <p> The aim of the "dispatcher" concept is to provide a flexible |
| framework for creating site and page specific layout in different |
| formats from different content through an advanced seperation of |
| concerns.</p> |
| <p>The dispatcher is a filter that limits the data-model to a minimum by |
| only requesting what the strucuter (e.g. common.fv) need. This leads to |
| a different URL handling focus - away from document centric. A document |
| can (but do not have to) be behind a certain URL. Like said a |
| structurer can request any given data as input not only a document and |
| the forrest core contracts (like navigation). It may be the main |
| enhancement in comparison to skins that this concept let you easily |
| extend the default data models provided by forrest.</p> |
| <p>Since the dispatcher has implemented a fallback concept it makes |
| maintenance of custom themes which are based on forrest core ones very |
| easy and less time consuming. The principal is to override or extend |
| only certain parts (contracts) of the core. This is based on the |
| observation that normally only a small percentage of core skin |
| contracts have been changed. At the same time the new plugin system |
| emerged. Plugins are a way of extending Forrest to satisfy |
| site-specific needs. This includes to provide plugin specific |
| contracts.</p> |
| <a name="N1005B"></a><a name="contracts"></a> |
| <h3 class="underlined_5">Contracts - grouped functionality</h3> |
| <p>The result of the leather-dev development were grouped functionality |
| in named container. We gave those code snippets names (based on their |
| functionality) and called them contracts. This naming enabled us to |
| keep the contract separate from the position code itself. Further |
| since major parts of the code of skins never have been documentended |
| we started to add for each contract a description and an explanation |
| how to use this contract. The skinconf.xml gave an excellent |
| source for this documentation effort, since it described most |
| features of the pelt skin.</p> |
| <p>Contracts are standalone, self explaining, configurable |
| pieces of xsl templates created out of pure maintaining reasons.</p> |
| </div> |
| |
| <a name="N10069"></a><a name="info"></a> |
| <h2 class="underlined_10">Further information</h2> |
| <div class="section"> |
| <p> See the various How-to documents about the dispatcher, starting with |
| <a href="../docs_0_80/howto/howto-dispatcher-install.html">installing the |
| dispatcher</a> and |
| <a href="../docs_0_80/howto/howto-dispatcher-quickstart.html">quickstart</a> |
| |
| </p> |
| <p> Apache Forrest 1.0 Specification (Draft, not yet published): |
| <span class="codefrag">site-author/content/xdocs/TR/2005/WD-forrest10.html</span> |
| </p> |
| </div> |
| |
| </div> |
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| Copyright © |
| 2002-2006 <a href="http://www.apache.org/licenses/">The Apache Software Foundation.</a> |
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| <!--+ |
| |end bottomstrip |
| +--> |
| </div> |
| </body> |
| </html> |
