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RE: Rant


Joshua,
Having slept on it I am a little calmer this morning. There are some good
things about FPSE. I like the way everything you need is integrated in one
IDE. Rightclicking on a file and choosing Check In for instance although
there are products that can do that from within explorer.

>Seriously, though, I can sympathize with the issues around FPSE.  Having
>used Frontpage since 1.0 version, I still have not ever approached
>enlightenment about exactly what the FPSE are doing and what all of
>those _vti files do.

I don't want to give a training course to Microsofy ppl but briefly _vti_cnf
directories are a mirror of the directory they are in. If the directory has
an index.html file then the _vti_cnf directory has an index.html file but it
isn't a copy it contains lots of useful information like
vti_encoding:SR|utf8-nl
vti_timecreated:TR|21 May 1999 16:00:43 -0000
vti_sourcecontrolcookie:SX|E:\\Common\\VSS\\srcsafe.ini
vti_timelastmodified:TW|05 Mar 2001 15:27:04 -0000
vti_sourcecontrolversion:SX|V5
vti_filesize:IR|18812
vti_metatags:VR|Author Chris\\ Bayes
plus a load of other stuff about links images used etc. A perfect example of
something that should be in XML or RDF.

>When it is so easy to set up a batch file that
>publishes a site via FTP, one wonders how the publishing process could
>have been made so complicated and fragile in the case of FPSE.

That is what I've been doing to my old unix host. But on big sites the odd
file can get lost and it isn't until you deploy to a clean target that these
show up. You don't have crossreferencing that FPSE is supposed to give you.

>One
>thing I can say in defense of FPSE is that these are meant for use by
>"real" users -- the sort who don't write their own XSLTs or FTP scripts.
>FPSE works quite well for letting a non-technical user publish a
>website, so long as you have your web hosting provider re-install the
>extensions whenever they break (speaking from experience here).

Well in this case I am the provider because I haven't even got it to upload
a single file yet. I have re-installed the extensions on my master web.
Refreshed my project view in VI added all files that don't have a padlock
next to them to SourceSafe and still the Deployment Idiot breaks.

> Well, I
>think of it sort of like ActiveSync -- it is amazing how breakable
>something so seemingly simple as file synchronization becomes as soon as
>you try to make it totally automagic.
>
But like I said in my original post a 15 minute integrity test that produces
a report of possible errors would save all these problems before they begin.

>The other thing to mention though is that it is possible to live a life
>free of FPSE by doing the same thing you would do with any Unix service
>-- that is, use FTP or WebDAV to publish your site.  When you do this,
>at least you know what is going on.  Also I have to point out that IIS
>w/ Perl (e.g. www.activestate.com) is pretty much identical to Apache w/
>Perl.  Just because all of the other fat features are there doesn't mean
>you have to use them (or even install them, in many cases).
>
Well I don't use all those little gadgets that are in there. I just want to
use VI integrated with source control. Oh and a one click publishing
deployment of changed files solution.

>Anyway, I apologize for the pain you guys have with FPSE and apologize
>for continuing off-topic thread -- people can continue the thread w/me
>off-line if you want and I could maybe share other ideas about how I've
>avoided FPSE hell in the past..
>
I've avoided it by writing my own publishing solution. List all files
changed since last published date and FTP them to the server.
Maybe I was stupid enough to think that Microsoft would have fixed these
problems in the 5 or 6 years since FP1 came out because I know that they
were broken back then.

Ciao Chris

XML/XSL Portal
http://www.bayes.co.uk/xml


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