Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:
Thorsten Scherler wrote:
...
The problem
(like you mentioned above) is that they are depend on each other and it
is quite a pain to read the docu of all the plugins involved right now.
I reckon I should add it to the how-to then we have a central place to
document views.
IMO the views are part of core Forrest, they are not plugins.
This would solve both dependency and documentation problems.
I agree that the controlling portion of the view is in fact part of core
(i.e. the stuff in o.a.f.p.internal.view). However, the parts that
define the contracts (i.e. o.a.f.p.output.viewHelper.xhtml) are not,
there may be different versions of these, like we have different skins
at present.
However, they should not be called "plugins", that will serve to
confuse. A plugin adds functionality, it does not change the look of the
final document. I think they need to be called "views" (a name that will
be freed up if we move the view "plugin" into core).
Ultimately, what I think would be great to see is the provision of each
contract as an independently downloadable unit. Views (aka skins) would
then define a collection of related contracts via the default.fv file.
Allowing contracts to be downloaded and used independently provides a
set of building blocks for view designers. For example, someone could
choose to have the AJAX enabled search contract from the (fictitious)
fully dynamic view, but the static navigation menu contract from another
view.
With careful CSS design the look and feel of the resulting page will be
consistent.
I suspect that this is what Thorsten has had in mind all along, I'm only
seeing it now I have had chance to have a little play.
Ross
