Re: Fwd: Re: backend -> phpslash questions

Hi Joe,

(And Back-End (BE) & phpSlash (PSL) develoopers)

This is a discussion that a few of us were having about opportunities to
better integrate the BE & PSL development efforts.  BE is heavily based
on PSL, but we've enhanced some things a lot in the last year and also
really look forward to integrating the work that the PSL is doing on
M8..  Really exciting stuff here..

On Fri, 2003-11-14 at 13:35, Joe Stewart wrote:
> Maybe we should move more discussion to the phpslash developers list.

Very good idea..  There are a few BE developers not already part of this
discussion so I cc'd them too.

> Bunch of snipping inline below.
> On Fri, Nov 14, 2003 at 12:33:20PM -0500, Mike Gifford wrote:
> > How would the BE_default skin import into the php-slash-skins?  We've
> > got so many more templates that you aren't using and the organization of
> > all the templates is going to change with PSL 8 anyways.
> Just the applicable templates.  I'll probably do this anyway.  I had most of
> the basics the other day and got sidetracked.

It's far too easy to do these days..  Thanks for porting over the
template.  We've just been focusing on default & BE_default in the last
year, but like the idea of having other skins for folks to choose from.

Really should take the time to test/implement the skins for BE..  We've
had a couple clients want to have light versions of their web site
(either for low bandwidth users or visually impaired users).  Didn't end
up getting either of those two contracts though.

> > > I like Author UI changes.
> > > Maybe the search extensions.  The search part of PSL is one that has been
> > > pretty much in need of some attention.
> > Neat..  Are you looking for modules which could complement PSL which
> > exist now in BE?  Things like the upload module, email 2 a friend, etc?
> Yes.  As well as Links, Gallery and Downloads at least.

We're going to have to go back and insert proper inline documentation. 
It will be even more important when there are two development
communities using the code base.  PeterC has probably injected the most
of those into our code.  Quite useful when you are trying to figure out
what a function does that someone else wrote.

> > The multi-lingual block adaptation is a bit of a hack.  It works, but
> > probably could be enhanced a bit.  
> Does it seem the best way to go?  If not, let's sit back and decide what
> is.

It is probably the best at the moment..  I can see being able to select
both what section a block appears in and also what languages it is
available in.  

If blocks are going to be multi-lingual, you would probably want the the
data cell to be available in all languages that the block is available
in (much like the BE_Sections & BE_Stories are now).

Presently to edit a french html block you need to be viewing the site in
french & then need to switch to english when you want to edit the
english block.

> > Stories & Articles are very similar entities.  The biggest change would
> > be the multi-lingual code I think.
> > I think that there are more significant differences between BE's
> > sections & PSL's sections.  There were last time i checked in any case,
> > but I don't think there is any reason that they couldn't be.  
> I'm starting to understand how different.  Peter C and I had discussed
> this before.  I'd like to have subsections in PSL though.

If we added fields for artcount & section_options, would it be possible
to use the bulk of Back-End's sections?

There would be some extra fields there which you wouldn't need to use
for PSL..

Back-End Sections pack a lot of information in them..  All of the
content on your web site can be in sections and sub-sections if you
want.  There are a lot of similarities between the data in BE Articles &
BE Sections..  Some special classes apply specifically to articles at
the moment (related articles, keyword articles, etc)..  Perhaps some BE
section info could be stored in an article???  Not sure how that would
look...

> > > It would be nice to sort blocks and stories/articles/polls together in a 
> > > column.
> > how would this happen?  They are all blocks in PSL8 now anyways, right?
> yes.  but I'd like
> story1
> poll
> story2
> block
> story3 
> 
> for instance.
> 
> I can do this now only by making three calls to get the three stories.

Interesting..  It's going to be quite a challenge to get a User
Interface that is complex enough to allow this, but simple enough so
that a user who's familiar with publishing on a blog can easily update a
simple site..  

That's part of the challenge with flexible code..  How do you make it
flexible enough for power users and simple enough for folks who only
need to go to the site once a month to update their specials list?

> > ...
> > > > > > The benefits to PSL are:
> > > > > > - becomes multilingual
> > > > > > - access to BE modules (eg Links, Gallery, Downloads) becomes 
> > > > > > possible
> > > > > > (as well as the specialist petitioning/actioning modules)
> > > Yeah, I thought the Links was ready now.  I see now.
> > There was talk about incorporating the links directory into PSL..  I
> > hadn't heard that someone did it already.
> No, I thought it would be more simple to bring it in.

Sorry..  It's tied pretty heavily to our sections (and could use a lot
more inline documentation).

> > > > > > The benefit for BE would be that we can avoid the pain of 
> > > > > > back-porting
> > > > > > PSL upgrades into our codebase. It'd be much easier to benefit from
> > > > > > improvements in PSL as it matures.
> > > This is a big goal for me.
> > This almost gets into the idea of setting up a back-slash/phpEnd API
> > project.  This was discussed a while ago.  
> Be nice if someone would document more of what it is now.  Unfortunately
> that won't be me.

I've been doing some work to enlarge the BE developer community this
fall..  I'm hoping that the cleaner code will help..  I don't have a
very good record with documentation either....  

I've set up a wiki with Back-End for user documentation..  I'm hoping
that more users will start documenting what they know and asking
questions about what they don't in it...  Right now it is mostly me
though..

Does the psl team have a wiki for discussing directions, todo lists,
etc??  Or even just jotting down notes in a more formal/permanent mode
than the mailing list?

> <snip>
> > There will be this discussion on the 20th (5-7PM EST) about the future
> > of BE..  Certainly the relationship to PSL is going to be a part of that
> > and it would be good to have some PSL folks there.  I've invited Nathan
> > & yourself to call in.  Anyone else on the PSL team I should invite? 
> > OpenConcept will pay for the call.
> I should be available.  Contact Matthew.  He hasn't been contributing
> code lately, but his ideas and code have been good.

Will do..

> > We could probably set up something like this for psl as well.  
> Luis usually has a cvs up on an hourly cron I think.  It's just not very
> publicized.

:)

> If you remove the permissions to save, you can leave it more open.  Even have
> admin functions for all to see.

I've removed the upload functions, but don't have a way to easily remove
the write permissions...

... snip ...

> > We've got that ported over to Articles, but would be nice to have it set
> > up so that any BE object could have comments enabled/disabled on it.
> Ajay made it so this can be done if you generate the id using
> commentcount.

Yup..  We've incorporated this into BE..  We count both the articleID's
& the articleTextID's so that one could potentially have language
specific comments if a site wanted to do that..

Just haven't brought it over to the gallery etc..

> > > Cluebat please.
> > gdict couldn't define cluebat for me...
> hit me up side the head with a clue.

Just to get it into gdict in the future:
        http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluebat

Definitely have to clean up the BE default install data to clean out
sections & articles which aren't properly linked in to
be_article2section...  

Mike
-- 
Mike Gifford, OpenConcept Consulting
Free Software for Social Change -> http://www.openconcept.ca
Stop Cdn Pension Plan War Investments -> http://coat.openconcept.ca/
Another world is not only possible, she is on her way -Arundhati Roy



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