If the application developer is injecting a skin addition into skin "A" and if skin "B" (aka version 2) extends from skin "B" then this is not an issue.
However, if the application developer has created their own skin that extends skin "A" then the end user cannot choose skin "B" (aka version 2) because the application developer is not also providing a separate skin that extends skin "B". One of the main reasons why applications will choose extending a skin over injecting a skin addition is that a skin addition does not guarantee any order in which the definitions will be injected into the skin so if there are competing definitions then it will be a matter of luck whether the application developer's definitions will win. However, by extending a skin, the application developer's definitions are guaranteed to override the existing selector of the base skins (provided the selectors are identical). In an ideal world, we wouldn't have a skin "B" (version 2) at all and the reasoning that the UI designer came up with the new design would be justification enough for why skin "A" needs to change. If there is no justification then we should push back on the UI designer or just live with there being a separate unrelated skin. Perhaps this isn't a very common use case to warrant a versioning system? Thanks, Matt On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Blake Sullivan <blake.sulli...@oracle.com>wrote: > Do they? I always get confused by which is which between skin additions > and skin extensions. Anyway, why wouldn't skin A' that extends Skin A pick > up all of the extensions and additions to A? Or, is the case you are > worried about that the customer has their own skin B that extends skin A but > wants to pick up the changes available in A'. However, in that case, isn't > the change still essentially one line? Instead of changing trinidad-config > to point to A' (since it already points to B), the skinner changes skin B to > extend A'? > > The reason I'm pushing back on this is that the skin files are confusing > enough without adding skin versioning into the mix. > > -- Blake Sullivan > > Matt Cooper said the following On 1/20/2010 3:09 PM PT: > > Hi Blake, > > Aside from the opt-in setting for end users choosing which skin to display, > application developers would also be impacted. Application developers would > need to extend all skins instead of just extending 1 skin whose version > number could be arbitrarily changed by the end user. > > Thanks, > Matt > > On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 3:15 PM, Blake Sullivan<blake.sulli...@oracle.com> > <blake.sulli...@oracle.com>wrote: > > > > Matt, > > Why wouldn't it be sufficient for the new skin the extend the old? What > problems does this add other than forcing customers to modify their > trinidad-config to use the new skin name in order to opt in? > > -- Blake Sullivan > > Matt Cooper (JIRA) said the following On 1/20/2010 2:09 PM PT: > > Skinning framework support for skin versioning > > > ---------------------------------------------- > > Key: TRINIDAD-1691 > URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TRINIDAD-1691 > Project: MyFaces Trinidad > Issue Type: New Feature > Components: Skinning > Reporter: Matt Cooper > > > UI designers periodically create new UI designs for various components > with the goal of these designs being applied to a specific skin. Although > the visual design might be completely new for a given component, it is > really meant to be available in context of other existing component designs > of the same existing skin. > > UI changes like this are sometimes considered to jarring for some > customers and they would rather stick with the original designs. This means > that skins are eternally frozen after their first release so any new changes > would need to be made in a new skin even though that new skin might be 75% > identical to the original skin. > > There is also a negative impact on customers that generate their own skin > definitions when we introduce a new skin name. Every skin (or skin > addition) that they have created won't be able to uptake the new designs > unless they physically go in and change all references from the old skin > name to whatever the new skin's name is. To remedy this while enabling the > "frozen" state of the original designs, the skinning framework must support > a concept of versioning. Since the nature of software means that code lines > branch into a vast tree structure, the version numbers of the skinning > framework must fulfill this need. A simple "x.y" will not be sufficient, we > will require "x.y.z.a.b.c.d.e.f.g" and so on where each "." represents > another code branch off of the previous code branch, e.g. there will likely > be a version that looks like "1.1.12.4". > > Customers will then need a configuration option where they can specify > which version of the skin they want to use. (Presumably near the same > location where they specify which skin name they want to use.) > > Business needs: > Some customers need new UI designs applied to existing skins but other > customers need the skin to remain unchanged. Versioning will allow > customers to optionally buy-into the new UI designs while other customers > can happily live with the past designs. > > > > > > >
