Scott T Weaver wrote:
Yeah, I think I may have something for you to take a look at if you have
time, David. I re-implemented the decoration/layout system (like I had
talked about before). Layouts are no longer portlets and all markup is held
in each individual theme's directory (no more speration between layout
templates and decoration templates). It is loosely based of the Drupal
phpTemplate engine (very loosely).
I do see your motivations, especially from a 'designer interaction' POV
We also have to consider backward-compatibility, as well as affected
features and rewrites
Consider functionality loss: how would I go about mixing a blueocean
decoration with a three-column layout. And then from the customizer,
switch to a two-column layout, and then switch to another decoration.
I just think that having the layout separated from the skins has some
value. (I also see that its more difficult for designers to contribute
the way it is currently.)
In the desktop, we are also addressing this problem, by allowing the
user to customize the number of columns and nested columns directly in
the PSML. There is only one 'theme' on the desktop.
I just think we have to be careful and understand the direction we are
going in.
Users won't want to have to rewrite their decorators for the 2.1
release. Both solutions need to exist side-by-side. I would like to see
a clear plan of how we would migrate existing installations as well as
features
I know Ate wanted to look into newer technologies like Wicket or
Tapestry with non-intrusive markup. We all like working with Velocity
and JSP (well...), but I think we could make it lot easier for designers
to contribute skins if they weren't required to use Velocity or JSP syntax.
So I have to say, is this the direction we prefer to go in, and
perpetuate? Or is it just going to confuse the user base more,
especially if we dump the current layout scheme, throw in the desktop,
and then briefly go to your new model, and then move again to another one.
I know its fun to try out new technologies, but I think we are shooting
ourselves in the foot if we use this project as a place to prototype.
I would prefer that major decisions like these were discussed and
designed in the open, with community participation, and that we voted on
a major change like this
Im not sure if 2.1 is the best time to introduce this kind of change,
and if it is, I would like to see a proposal, a time for discussion,
design, and then vote
I think we have hurt our project community in the past by not following
the Apache process and just going off and implementing things without
getting everyone involved first. Im as guilty as anyone.
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