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Welcome to Apache Forrest
7 February 2011 : Forrest-0.9 released
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Apache Forrest™ software is a publishing framework that transforms
input from various sources into a unified presentation in one or more
output formats. The modular and extensible plug-in architecture of
Apache Forrest is based on Apache Cocoon and the relevant industry
standards that separate presentation from content. Forrest can generate
static documents, or be used as a dynamic server, or be deployed by its
automated facility.
Explanation and features
History and project status
News and events
Help Wanted!
The Apache Forrest project uses the opensource
Apache License 2.0
and adheres to
open development
ideals.
We are part of The Apache Software Foundation (
ASF
).
Note
Please realise that Forrest is still pre-1.0 release version. It is
certainly usable for those who are prepared to move with it. See more
notes about
status
below.
Explanation and features
Forrest is designed with the new user in mind. Much effort has gone into
making the process of generating a new site
easy
and
simple
Step 1
: Do
'forrest seed'
to populate
the directory with template site structure and contents.
Step 2
: Add content by editing docs in
task-specific, presentation-neutral XML.
Step 3
: Do
'forrest run'
then use
the web browser to immediately review
changes at
Step 4
: Do
'forrest'
to generate the
complete website from the XML sources.
Various styles (known as skins) are available. Custom skins
can be developed.
Step 5
: For more information about installation
and use, see the
Using Forrest
guide.
Note
The first time you run Forrest it may attempt to retrieve some plugins
from the Internet (it depends on which distribution of Forrest you have
installed). In some cases this will happen whenever a new plugin is
specified, in other cases, for example when you have installed all
plugins locally or have checked out the full source tree, the plugins
will be retrieved from your local installation. In all cases once a
plugin has been installed locally there is no need for Forrest to access
the Internet. For more information see the
plugins documentation
Forrest's focus on low "startup cost" makes it ideal for rapid
development of small sites, where time and budget constraints do not
allow time-wasting HTML experiments. Of course, that same methodology
can scale up to large projects. Your development team does not need Java®
experience, or even XML skills, to use Forrest. The framework lets you
concentrate on content and design.
By
separating content from presentation
, providing
content templates
and
pre-written
skins
, Forrest is unequalled at enabling content producers to
get their message out fast. This separation of concerns makes Forrest
excellent to publish
project documentation
(notably
software projects),
intranets
, and
pages
, and anything else you can think of.
Forrest is far from a quick and dirty solution however. Forrest is built
on the world's leading XML application framework,
Apache Cocoon
, which provides advanced
users with extremely powerful publishing capabilities.
Multiple task-specific source XML formats can be used
How-To
FAQ
changelogs
and
todo lists
supported natively).
Source formats include: Apache xdocs xml format, plain html
documents, some Wiki formats, a subset of DocBook, ...
Multiple output formats supported, for example HTML and PDF (using
Apache FOP
).
SVG to PNG rendering (using
Apache
Batik
). Simply drop the SVG in the appropriate directory
and it will be rendered as PNG.
Transparent inclusion and aggregation of external content, like
RSS feeds
Anything else possible with the
Cocoon sitemap
. Using database
queries,
charting
, web services
integration; the possibilities are constantly growing as Cocoon grows.
See the
Cocoon Features
list
for the full suite of capabilities.
Based on Java and XML standards, Forrest is platform-independent,
making for a documentation system that is just as portable as the
XML data that it processes.
Unique amongst comparable documentation tools, Forrest generates sites
that can run both
interactively
as a dynamic web
application, or as statically rendered pages.
This provides a path for site growth: start off small and static, and if
dynamic features (user login, forms processing, runtime data, site
search etc) are one day needed, these can be accommodated by switching
to webapp mode.
Running as a webapp has a major advantage during development: content
can be written, and then the rendered output viewed almost instantly in
a web browser. This
webapp
technique
enables Forrest's edit/review cycle to be faster than
command-line transformation tools.
History and project status
Apache Forrest was started in January 2002, with the major use-case
being to create a consistent and efficient
xml.apache.org
group of
project websites with a uniform, lightweight, easy-to-navigate layout
and structure. In addition, Forrest was to be a Sourceforge-like project
management tool, complementing
Apache Gump
(hence the name 'Forrest').
See the Apache XML and Apache Cocoon mail lists around end 2001 (e.g.
here
and
here
here
).
Forrest
became
a top-level project
in May 2004.
The focus shifted for Apache Forrest to primarily be a generic
documentation tool capable of meeting many needs. Certain relevant
project management facilities are being added.
Apache Forrest is currently progressing rapidly through a series of 0.x
releases. It is certainly usable now (despite not yet being version
1.x). See the growing list of
example
sites
including many Apache sites.
In general, prior to 1.0, ensuring quality of design will be considered
more important than retaining backwards-compatibility. Users
(particularly those with custom sitemaps and skins) should be aware that
this is evolving software, and read the release notes carefully before
upgrading. That said, we appreciate the commitment in time that adopters
make, and will not make capricious or undocumented
backwards-incompatible changes.
Documentation on the Apache Forrest website exists for various versions
including the latest release, the current development, and past
releases. All versions of Forrest include their own copy of the
documentation. There is also documentation for each plugin and the
forrest seed site contains further examples and documentation (see
FAQ
).
News and events
See the
events
list for more detail.
Apache Forrest 0.9 was released on 2011-02-07. Consolidation.
Apache Forrest 0.8 was released on 2007-04-18.
Locationmaps define the mapping from requests to locations,
which enables content and resources to be located at various
different sources.
Help Wanted!
Apache Forrest is in need of developers. If you know
(or want to learn) any of XML, Ant, HTML, XSLT, or CSS, then you are
qualified to help.
As with all Apache projects, Forrest is a meritocracy; the more you put
in, the more you get to define the project's future. See the
"contributing"
page for more
information.
Copyright ©
2002-2018
The Apache Software Foundation. Licensed under Apache License 2.0
Apache Forrest, Forrest, Apache, the Apache feather logo, and the Apache Forrest
logos are trademarks of The Apache Software Foundation.