Waiting for Manakin
The big news in DSpace geekery these days is the new XML/SAX/Cocoon user interface called Manakin. Eventually, DSpace is going to transition off Java Server Pages to Manakin. It’s in beta now, and is expected to go gold in a month or so.
I’ve heard some sotto voce moaning about performance issues, which I can’t speak to. I can say that I will be thrilled to get away from JSPs, especially in DSpace’s current implementation thereof. If we could put a stake in Tomcat, I’d be even more thrilled, because Tomcat’s operation is opaque to me even after a year and a half and I hate depending on a technology I don’t understand how to run, but as I understand the matter that’s not in the offing.
It doesn’t hurt that I grok XML and SAX. At a stroke, I’ll suddenly feel far more in control of the application my job depends on. And of course I’m also looking forward to more flexible design of pieces of DSpace. Over the last year I’ve had a number of requests to customize the view for a particular community or collection, and I haven’t been able to oblige. As I’m an obliging sort, that’s bothered me.
I expect that transitioning from JSP to Manakin will be fairly horrible, but worth the effort. And when it’s in… there are things I want to do. I’d take a stab at doing them in JSP, but it’s hardly worth the bother, is it?
Right now, DSpace is a very “clicky” interface. You do something, then you click, and DSpace tells you it did it, whereupon you have to click again to get anywhere useful. Perhaps this doesn’t bother casual users, but when I have a load of items to check, the umpteenth repetition of “This item has been saved and given its identifier; click here to go back to your My DSpace page” does not improve my temper.
Blog software (well, WordPress at least) has this licked. There’s no such thing in WordPress as an “I did something; aren’t you proud of me?” page. For example, when I click the “Publish” button on a post, WordPress sends me right back to a blank compose-a-post page, with the addition of a message telling me the post was published and offering me a link to view it. This is what I want DSpace to do. It shouldn’t be hard to add a “message” object and pass it around between pages.
Pulling back a little bit, it seems possible to go through the DSpace user interface and designate a few “destination” pages, default places to send people after they’ve done something. My DSpace, of course, is an obvious one; it should probably be the default destination page for anything done in the administration interface. Alternately, one could go through the UI and sort out where the dead ends are, the places where the UI pauses and says “okay, the user has done something; what next?”
Just please, please, no more “aren’t you proud of me?” pages! They’re just clutter.