Mailing Lists

IMPORTANT: Before posting a question or problem to any mailing list, please first look at the following resources:

1. FAQs
2. Cocoon Links
3. Mailing list archives - a veritable goldmine of Cocoon-specific information - if you know where to look!

IMPORTANT: Careful postings please. These are high-volume lists, so we all needs ways to help us all work smarter.

We use the mail list both as a media to transmit our thoughts and as a virtual location to hang around and feel part of something.

In order for the second to happen, you just have to subscribe. That's it, nothing fancy.

But in order for the first to happen (transmit your thoughts) it's an entirely different matter.

Here are a few things that help a lot:

1) reduce noise, increase signal: your email client will quote the message you are replying to automatically, but it's *your* responsibility to remove those parts that aren't part of the signal of your email. Sure, you might let this operation to the reader, but you must understand that the reader is not supposed to do this. Or, at least, it should be *you* to make the reader confortable.

2) be respectful, be aware of community dynamics: sending HTML in the mail more than *doubles* the message size and interferes with text-based mail clients. You want your point to come across, so make sure that everybody can get to that point with the *easiest* possible effort, or, otherwise, your signal might be wasted in the noise and the time you think you are saving, you are, in fact, loosing it completely.

3) promote your signal: people on mail lists are used to read tons of email a day. Without a good 'promotion' of your points, they might get missed in the noise. (note: 'noise' is a subjective notion, what is signal for you might be noise for others, it's up to you to make your signal stand up). Things that help in this respect:

a) a simple yet effective email title. Geeks are ultimately curious animals, tickle their curiosity!

b) be elegant and visually effective. Sure, you have to use ASCII, but there is a lot that you can convey with ASCII

          +---------------------------------+
          | I'm sure nobody will miss this! |
          +---------------------------------+
   

c) structure your text. Whenever possible, use *strong* or _underline_ or /italic/ or use bullet lists and so on. Consider textual RFC, that's how you should write your emails. Sure, it takes a little more time, but I guarantee you that it saves a lot of it later on.

d) keep paragraphs short! you can go on and on forever, I'm sure you do, but keep your point focused, so that the signal/noise ratio is increased.

4) be respectful of other's opinion: your email will be stored forever, archived in several locations around the world, indexed by Google, locked in magnetic tapes into the NSA caves and so on. Just keep this in mind before you hit "send", this will keep your ego honest :)

5) admit your incapacity/ignorance/mistakes: there is nothing more appreciated in a community that someone that can stand up and apologize for something. Remember: if you don't make mistakes, you can't learn. And if you don't admit you made it, nobody knows you are learning :)

Keep all these things in mind and you'll be impressed by how much fun and knowledge you can get out of all this open development thing.

Post mail to users<at>cocoon.apache.org.

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The general Cocoon list, for problems, bug reports, asking for advice on how best to implement a site, comparisons with other XML frameworks, etc. But don't forget to look in the FAQ first, please!

This is not an appropriate list for general XSL and XML questions. Instead look at the various resources listed at the Cocoon Links pages, or try the Mulberrytech XSL list.

This is also not an appropriate list for general Java questions. Instead try news:comp.lang.java.help or http://hotdispatch.com/, for example.

IMPORTANT: If you are posting about a problem you are having (as most people do), it will aid in finding a speedy resolution if you provide full configuration details (especially the Cocoon version number, but also your operating system, JDK version, and servlet engine), and full details of any errors encountered (including full error messages and stack traces).

Please also have some consideration for the other users on the list - this is a busy list and we do not appreciate getting the exact same message posted impatiently several times a day/week! Doing so is only likely to make your question answered more slowly, or not at all, not faster.

Post mail to dev<at>cocoon.apache.org.

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This list is for developers working on or wanting to work on Cocoon itself (not developers merely working with Cocoon), for code patches to Cocoon to be posted (please use diff -u format), and for general Cocoon questions.

Note this is NOT for general Cocoon questions like "Why isn't Cocoon working on my machine?" - please ask those sorts of questions on cocoon-users (after reading the FAQ first, of course).

Post mail to docs<at>cocoon.apache.org.

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This list is for everyone (users and developers) to assist with building the Cocoon documentation. Also, all Wiki changes are automatically posted here.

Please be careful to limit cross-posting between the Cocoon lists. You can assume that all developers are also subscribed to cocoon-docs. Any docs-related thread on -users or -dev should be moved to -docs (do not Cc the original list, but send a short reply to indicate that the thread has moved).

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This read-only list sends out notification messages detailing any change made to the Subversion (SVN) repository where all the source code and libraries are stored for development purposes. The average user probably doesn't need to subscribe to this list. (It is named CVS due to the fact that Cocoon previously used CVS as its repository.)

This is a french-speaking users list. More information on this list in the fr zone.

(See also ODP XML links for related websites.)

• Mulberrytech XSL list - more appropriate than Cocoon Users for general XSL questions.
• XML Apache Projects - list of mailing lists for all the projects on xml.apache.org.
• Some servlet engines have their own mailing lists for servlet-engine configuration questions, such as tomcat-user (note it is "user" and not "users").