Hi, I am looking to use Cocoon for a couple of sites I am creating. I will make heavy use of xml, xsl and conversion to html, pdf and excel on the sites. I am attracted to coccon as it implements these functions quite well.
I guess I am just wondering if anyone has used it and like it, or if they found it was more trouble than it's worth.
Just had a quick look for alternatives you could look at:
I've used cocoon for generating targeted content (e.g. DHTML, XML, SVG) for mobile devices (based on the device capability).
The biggest issue is all the default components that are enabled by default in the sample configuration. There's a lot of whack-a-mole to get the application up and running.
However, once you have everything configured, it is a very powerful framework.
Cocoon is a very powerful framework. But it's not easy to understand all aspects of it. (see Ulysses answer). Once you have understood the basic concepts though there is hardly anything comparable in the XML space.
It has been integrated with so many things that you really need to strip it down to what you really need. The initial sitemap is huge. That's were most newbies already fail. (see meadandale's answer)
So it really comes down to what you really want to do with it. Today I would not use it for web applications anymore. There are other frameworks that have that focus and do a better job at it. You probably can still integrate those with Coocoon. Well, it probably has already been done by someone ;)
If you really make heavy use of xml/xsl and need different output formats, there is probably nothing really better for it than Cocoon. Properly tuned it even serves a couple of really big sites out there.
If you got questions it has one of the most welcoming open source communities. Just make sure it's the right tool for the right job. But from your description it sounds like. Even if you just use it for the rendering.
It has a bit of a learning curve - but don't get frustrated.
Disclaimer: I am one of the developers :)