On Aug 13, 2010, at 8:14 PM, Christopher Davis <[email protected]> wrote:

> What is unclear to me is why to do all that you so eloquently outline here, 
> we must remove the ability for people to create completely custom solutions 
> for comment creation. All of this was already possible as you have pointed 
> out. You have gained nothing by removing the ability for people to roll there 
> own solution, save for strong arming people into using the core feature.

What I meant to say is that what you wanted to do is already possible
with FormUI. That you could do what you suggested prior to the change
does not mean that it wasn't subject to it's own bevy of issues.

For the code to validate the FormUI submitted values, no arbitrary
form values could accompany it, since they're interpreted as invalid
form elements.  If any form data could be valid because FormUI isn't
required, then sending spam past the filters becomes trivial when you
use the method not employed by the form.  That's the major technical
reason to reduce to only FormUI, with the additional, significant
feature that FormUI allows multiple plugins to easily extend the
comment form at once without modifying the theme, whereas the other
method does not.

We *have* gained things by forcing plugin devs to use the FormUI
methods. We gain the ability for any plugin that alters the comment
form to do so on ANY theme, which simply is not possible to do without
FormUI without making code edits to the theme.

You're welcome to review the edits and determine how the two methods
could more happily coexist, or to write a new handler that would
accept arbitrary forms but still pass incoming mail through the spam
filters correctly. Still, it is my opinion that doing such a thing
would do a disservice to the rest if the community, since anything
done or allowed to be done outside of FormUI would by necessity be
incompatible with other plugins that attempt to alter the comment form
using FormUI.

> Since I have found documentation on the change (thanks whoever wrote it) I 
> can make things work, but I am not happy with the attitude "It's our way or 
> the highway" that this change shows. Of course it could just be me being 
> cranky, since I now have to update the code for 10 sites built on top of 
> Habari to use the new system before I can update them to 0.7.

Thee are many things like this in Habari that we have chosen a hard
line for a good reason, but I'm sure that this choice was a good one.
Sorry you have so many sites that need changing.  I wonder if the new
FormUI code will do anything for you to make whatever you're doing
more portable, and therefore, less work overall. Or if any plugins you
create to replace your theme-specific code would be useful to others.

Owen

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