Wedge

Public area => The Pub => Features => Topic started by: Nao on November 10th, 2013, 11:09 PM

Title: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 10th, 2013, 11:09 PM
So, these days, the skin system has become really, really powerful. Powerful enough to be able to replace themes altogether, but it's up to you to decide.

- Theme settings: the equivalent is in skin.xml, in a thoroughly documented XML format; you can provide your own settings in custom.xml.
- Templates: while right now you can't simply replace an existing template, you can:
   (1) write replacement functions for any template in your own Custom.template.php
   (2) write replacement functions for any template in skin.xml (or custom.xml, etc),
   (3) add code before or after an existing template function (through methods 1 or 2)
   (4) very easily add any custom JavaScript or CSS to any template.
   --> Overall, I think I could also provide the ability to override entire templates, but I'd like to avoid it, as it may easily break compatibility in the future. But really, it's just a matter of checking the skin folder, and loading the template there, instead of the 'default' template folder.
- Plugins, and skins, can already override, or add to any template functions, manipulate the layout skeleton so that one element will be shown before another instead of after it, etc.
- The only thing that isn't possible for now is completely overriding image sets, or language files, or scripts. I may write code in the future to account for these.

I don't really see anything that can't be done in skins. Granted, it might be easier to do some things in SMF and the theme system, but it's also true that some other things are much easier in Wedge, so... All in all, I think the skin system is better, more modern, and better suited to designers.
Removing themes from Wedge would allow me to...
- Simplify the folder structure. All folders in /Themes/default/ would be moved to the forum root.
- Remove a lot of legacy code from Wedge that I don't even know if it still works at this point. (I think it does.)
Drawbacks:
- It will postpone the first beta release by at least another two weeks.
- Likely to create bugs in the first phase of implementation.
- Heck, personally, I certainly hope I can still 'blame' files and view the 'commit history' for any files that have been moved, without any disruption. I think it'll be all right, but really, it's one of the things I'm worried about. I like blame, it's one of the best tools for debugging in (D)CVS software. Certainly saves me a lot of time.

So, please vote if you have any opinion on this!
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Sara on November 10th, 2013, 11:18 PM
Got a question: Let's say I want to edit the header and move items around.  With skins, will the header be placed in a template function for me to override like a plugin?
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 10th, 2013, 11:32 PM
Quote from Sara on November 10th, 2013, 11:18 PM
Got a question:
No problem!
Quote from Sara on November 10th, 2013, 11:18 PM
Let's say I want to edit the header and move items around.  With skins, will the header be placed in a template function for me to override like a plugin?
This is what the header area looks like, right now, in the index template:

Code: [Select]
// Start the header layer.
function template_header_before()
{
echo '
<div id="header"><div class="frame">';
}

function template_top_bar_before()
{
echo '
<div id="top_section"><div class="frame">';
}

function template_top_bar_after()
{
echo '
</div></div>';
}

// End the header layer.
function template_header_after()
{
global $context, $settings, $options;

echo '
<div id="upper_section"', empty($options['collapse_header']) ? '' : ' class="hide"', '><div class="frame"><we:banner title="',
$context['header_logo_url_html_safe'], '" url="', !empty($settings['home_url']) && !empty($settings['home_link']) ?
$settings['home_url'] : '<URL>', '">', $context['site_slogan'], '</we:banner>
</div></div>
</div></div>';
}

It will eventually be tweaked, probably to add more layers inside upper_section so you can override more specific functions. Basically, to change the header, you can do either of these:
- override (through custom.xml or Custom.template.php, or a plugin) template_header_after, or add a function before or after it. (You can override/before/after any function, even something that already overrides/befores/afters an existing function.)
- override the "banner" macro. This is what's in <we:banner>. It's basically the same as overriding a template function (aka block), but it may be a bit less overkill. Other macros available are title headers. You can completely rewrite their HTML, it'll be repercuted to all cat/title/title2 instances.

Is that all good with you..?
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Sara on November 10th, 2013, 11:40 PM
Yep!  That was the only thing that was on my mind in terms of the new skins system, how to edit efficiently.  You got my vote for skins!
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: colby67 on November 11th, 2013, 01:51 AM
Seems the logical way to go for Wedge since you put so much power into the skins feature.

For me its the other way around though - I like being able to scratch *almost* everything from default, and just write new and exciting things. Most others don't , heh. :P With the functions provided it will be a tweakers dream in Wedge I think: replace this function, carefully build that section up...and still run as solid as default theme does. But thats also wherein the challenge lies, how to make that easy enough for anyone to try, and where I suspect that Wedge skins will *maybe* be the playground for those that can code foremost - and second for those can design.

I know how important examples are though, so if you provide good ones showing the real power with skins - then people will copy and expand upon that. If not..well, then it will be like SMF, just default theme color versions. (I looked once again at SMF site for themes yesterday, and found a couple flat color projects, with more or less the default layout used. Sigh(..))

That said..SMF never became the "wordpress" of forum software graphically, so maybe it doesn't matter at all. I am not sure where you see Wedge in that respect.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 11th, 2013, 07:43 AM
Oh, Bloc, you know I have the uttermost respect for your experiments.
I would totally include any of them as core in Wedge. (default or even root would depend on neutrality for former and code shortness for latter.)

For instance I remember i really was in love with your Vienna BBS experiments. Protendo a bit less (at least on mobile) but I can assure you of one thing: anything you experimented so far is doable in Wedge.
If i can have you onboard for skins... telle what I need to do to reassure you it's doable and exciting ;)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: colby67 on November 11th, 2013, 08:22 AM
Thanks, likewise. :) The fact that you stuck with your vision and haven't not given up, is commendable.

True, I did more experiments in ViennaBBS as it were..but I thinks thats mainly because I've been more focused on having Protendo going in the right direction under the hood - so less time for graphical things. The current theme is on the minimalist side - its my current "phase" :D - but I see that it needs more themes, more diverse ones. And that I can do easily, but the old fashion way of replacing themes rather than skins/variations only. But, I am doing somewhat similar to Wedge in that some elements are built-in, my guess is that themers most likely want to replace the templates, but not so much the js or support css. (I have gone a bit back on my goal to be js-independant, its more Mootools based now, so any JQuery based theme will need to a bit of changing :P Hey, if Joomla can use the Moo, so can I lol)

In any case - theres a lot of freedom for themers in Protendo, the css is been transformed to much more use of classes - which is the IMHO only way to make sure one change reverberate back into default templates. Its also using a basic "frame" for building layouts in the form of simple grid CSS styles (which again, simplifies making css files from scratch, just include that and most templates still look nice, although bland.) Its also means better use in mobiles, as a responsive design, but I've not done enough there yet..on my todo-list though.

Making Wedge skins? I know I mentioned it before, and that it didn't pan out to anything then, but I think I need to really use Wedge for a while, see its way of working, under and over the hood, before dreaming up new designs. But I also know, I will prob. want to shift so much around that it might not be possible...but, can't say no until you tried - as the saying goes. ;)

Is the alpha 2 from 2012 the latest release? I am not asking you to heighten my involvement or anything, because honestly, I will prob. be poor on feedback(due to working also on my own things) but it would be great to try stuff with the latest code - or what you deem close enough to make skins for.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 12th, 2013, 12:29 AM
Hey, it's starting to look like I'm gonna have to get to work soon on removing theme support... Seven votes against zero in favor of doing that! :)
Quote from Bloc on November 11th, 2013, 08:22 AM
Thanks, likewise. :) The fact that you stuck with your vision and haven't not given up, is commendable.
:)
Quote from Bloc on November 11th, 2013, 08:22 AM
True, I did more experiments in ViennaBBS as it were..but I thinks thats mainly because I've been more focused on having Protendo going in the right direction under the hood - so less time for graphical things.
Apologies for implying otherwise, but I just saw your desktop version, and it's looking great.
So far, I'd only tested on my Android phone, and it didn't look as good. (Plus, it's very buggy in home pages.)
The only thing I'd seriously rework is Display pages, mainly avatars and page indexes (these circles, they have a 'meh' effect on me.)
The rest looks great.
Oh, also, when I saw your fixed header, I thought, "he must have run into the same problem that I did...", and you sure did. For instance, if you click a link to a specific post in a topic (not a topic itself), the resulting page half-hides the post, because it needs to be straightened by JavaScript into moving the page further up so you can see the desired anchor. I'd started to do that myself, and then I realized refreshed the page complicated matters: do I need to execute such JS in that situation? Depends on whether the browser forces the anchor position on refresh, and not all browsers agree on that, so... It gets complicated.
Quote from Bloc on November 11th, 2013, 08:22 AM
The current theme is on the minimalist side - its my current "phase" :D -
It's your most common phase, and the one I'm most jealous of. ;) (cf. Minimalism, Simplicity, ViennaBBS, and now Protendo.)
Really: I can't remove anything from Wedge without feeling I've removed too much, and I don't want a root skin that has too much CSS. What I want is a minimalist root skin, and then a 'full-featured skin' with styling everywhere, and give skins the ability to choose either of those as their parent.
Quote from Bloc on November 11th, 2013, 08:22 AM
but I see that it needs more themes, more diverse ones. And that I can do easily, but the old fashion way of replacing themes rather than skins/variations only.
Well you could always play with the HTML if you think you can make it more flexible for skinners. ;)
Quote from Bloc on November 11th, 2013, 08:22 AM
In any case - theres a lot of freedom for themers in Protendo, the css is been transformed to much more use of classes - which is the IMHO only way to make sure one change reverberate back into default templates.
Too many classes tend to make the CSS files bloated, though.
I kind of miss the days when SMF 1 had a single CSS file that weighed around 10KB, but hey... That's just me ;) I know that this particular SMF was also very, very reliant on tables and inline styles.
Quote from Bloc on November 11th, 2013, 08:22 AM
Making Wedge skins? I know I mentioned it before, and that it didn't pan out to anything then, but I think I need to really use Wedge for a while, see its way of working, under and over the hood, before dreaming up new designs. But I also know, I will prob. want to shift so much around that it might not be possible...but, can't say no until you tried - as the saying goes. ;)
AFAIK, you've always had a read access to the SVN at arantor.repositoryhosting.com, didn't you use it back in the day? ;)
Apart from that, that repo is now a month old, all development is now happening at the Bitbucket repo; still a private repo, so if you want access to it, feel free to ask. (I still have a slot open for my private repos, but it pretty much requires me to send you an invite by e-mail and have you create an account especially for that, following the link in the invite. That way, I get my last allocated 'promotional' slot.)
Quote from Bloc on November 11th, 2013, 08:22 AM
Is the alpha 2 from 2012 the latest release?
Yes. But I could very well release a new alpha right now, as it's relatively stable. I'm just waiting for the theme system to be removed, because it implies restructuring all folders, and I don't want to tell people to do it manually on their side ;)
Quote from Bloc on November 11th, 2013, 08:22 AM
I am not asking you to heighten my involvement or anything, because honestly, I will prob. be poor on feedback(due to working also on my own things) but it would be great to try stuff with the latest code - or what you deem close enough to make skins for.
I've never required of anyone with repo access to give regular feedback; knowing you're in is enough for me. I have a limited number of slots, though, so if someone doesn't seem to share anything (whether feedback or code or anything really), I may have to ask them if I can remove them from the list. OTOH, I could also add as many users as I want, as right now no one but me has commit access to the repo, and I think Bitbucket has an (hopefully) unlimited number of private users, as long as the repo is read-only.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: colby67 on November 12th, 2013, 01:18 AM
Hm, I wasn't aware of the masking of anchors..does it do it now, still? You may need a hard refresh. And no, I am not using JS for that, only CSS.

Sure, I have an account on bitbucket already, but no problem getting another.

Heh, just watched latest "Homeland" (s3e7), time for bed me think, if I am to function at work tomorrow. :D
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 12th, 2013, 01:30 AM
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 01:18 AM
Hm, I wasn't aware of the masking of anchors..does it do it now, still? You may need a hard refresh. And no, I am not using JS for that, only CSS.
Oh, indeed it works... That's odd. I think I used an anchor that was too 'recent', and that I confused it with another post, and... Anyway, forget what I said. How did you do that one, then? I'm surprised. I had a quick look at your CSS and couldn't find any hacks like doing a negative margin, things like that... (I couldn't do that in Wedge, because of complications with relatively positioned elements. Hell.)
Quote
Sure, I have an account on bitbucket already, but no problem getting another.
What address should I send it to, then? The one in your private profile here?
Quote
Heh, just watched latest "Homeland" (s3e7), time for bed me think, if I am to function at work tomorrow. :D
That was a fine episode, too! I'm starting for feel for Quinn... Good character, really.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: colby67 on November 12th, 2013, 07:37 AM
Oh, I changed it last night. :) Yes, with negative margins..I first added a "relative" class to the anchor in the template, then added "position: absolute" and top: -145px" which is roughly the height of the header. Not optimal since you have to change that if the header is higher, but still. Also, the "#new" id got the same treatment, as well as the "#top" one. Seems to work for now.

Homeland is great. :) Only a few series I look forward with excitement nowadays: Homeland, Person of Interest and the Blacklist.

(click to show/hide)
Quinn is the mystery now, wondering if he might have something to do with the delivering of the bomb at Langley..but at least his ghost of earlier kills are haunting him it seems. Remains to see, the infidelity scene at the end was also painful. But Saul is strong, he'll survive once he finds out..or she just tells him.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 12th, 2013, 04:00 PM
Okay, so after 8 votes, still none for keeping themes in, so I'll start work on it.
I'm just hoping that it doesn't screw up everything when it comes to moving folders around, of course...
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 07:37 AM
Oh, I changed it last night. :)
All right, I'm not crazy then! ;)
I checked it on mobile, and the fixed header is making it hard to appreciate the exprience. It has too many entries, so it spans over four lines, and makes the header twice as big as its background, meaning it overflows. You should disable the fixed positioning for it in narrow viewports. ;)
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 07:37 AM
Yes, with negative margins..I first added a "relative" class to the anchor in the template, then added "position: absolute" and top: -145px" which is roughly the height of the header. Not optimal since you have to change that if the header is higher, but still.
That's one of the problems I had with my Wedge implementation, yes. Plus, the fact that due to soft-merging, it's more complicated for me to add the link outside the message block, and adding it inside would screw up the layout, as most of these divs are positioned in a way or another... Well, gotta say, Wedge topics look great, but they sure have a few hacks that make it harder, I guess, to restyle completely... (You can still move the avatar to the right side or whatever, like Wine does, but of course it's not a hard one.)
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 07:37 AM
Homeland is great. :) Only a few series I look forward with excitement nowadays: Homeland, Person of Interest and the Blacklist.
I stopped The Blacklist after a couple of episodes (I love James Spader, but he seems to be re-playing his Boston Legal character, only with a dark side... I'll probably catch up when there's a half-season or full season available, but as a weekly show, it doesn't excite me). Person of Interest, I always found the concept to be silly, but Once upon a time had a sillier premise, and it turned out to be great (well... Until the latter episodes in season 2, of course. It's only starting to get interesting again these days, and even then, it's so full of plot holes, I wonder where the plot went... Certainly not to Neverland.) What I mean is, I watched 5 episodes and I was like, "meh." But I heard that Amy Acker is a regular in later episodes, so it might be enough of an incentive to watch. (I totally dig her. Sue me. She's a modern Audrey Hepburn.)

Personally, my unmissable weekly shows: The Legend of Korra (a true wonder, season 2 is awesome), Homeland, The Walking Dead, OUAT, Quite interesting XL, Elementary, South Park, The Big Bang Theory and Misfits. And Community is coming back soon, so add that to the list. And Doctor Who, and Sherlock. And on summers, Wilfred.
The rest, that I watch when I'm bored: Agents of SHIELD, How I met your mother (season 9 is the worst ever... Too bad), Mom, OUAT in Wonderland (it's even sillier than its parent show, can you believe that?), and older shows I'm catching up with: Mike & Molly, Defiance (such a great pilot, such a disappointingly slow show afterwards), The Almighty Johnsons (I think I read something from Aaron saying it rocked, so I started it, and indeed it rocks, but I'm holding up for subtitles of season 3), and I only dropped one show with no redeeming chances: The Crazy Ones. Robin Williams, I love him but I prefer him when he doesn't play crazy. I'm also considering dropping Toast of London. I like the actor, but he's not THAT funny.
Recently, I watched Dirk Gently. That was fantastic. Too bad it got cancelled. Same for Spy, a fun, mindless sitcom. At least it got sort of an ending.

Anything else going on these days, that I might have missed..?
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 07:37 AM
(click to show/hide)
Quinn is the mystery now, wondering if he might have something to do with the delivering of the bomb at Langley..but at least his ghost of earlier kills are haunting him it seems. Remains to see, the infidelity scene at the end was also painful. But Saul is strong, he'll survive once he finds out..or she just tells him.
That's an interesting theory about Quinn. I doubt it's true, though. But it would explain things.
As for the other scene, I think it's not surprising at all. His wife obviously came back to help him in a rough situation, as a friend, not because she wanted to give him another chance. Saul is obsessed with work. He pretty much knew there was a price to pay for her support. That's the price in question. But he's a child when it comes to relationships, so we can't know how he'll deal with it. Or if he will.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 12th, 2013, 05:30 PM
So, as previously announced, here's the (hopefully final) file structure for the new system:

Code: [Select]
/Smileys/* /assets/smileys/
/Themes/default/aeva/* /assets/aeva/
/Themes/default/fonts/* /assets/fonts/
/Themes/default/images/* /assets/ (including aeva, so --> merge folders)
/Themes/default/languages/* /languages/
/Themes/default/scripts/* /scripts/
/Themes/default/skins/* /skins/
/Themes/default/* /templates/

I decided to use the name 'assets' rather than 'images', because to me, fonts are not image files. Also, the aeva folder has a few Flash files, so, not images. Plus, it saves one byte, and anything to save bandwidth at HTML time is my friend.
I considered renaming it to 'img' instead, but (1) see above, (2) abbreviations may be a bit too geeky. Although FluxBB has 'img' and 'lang' folders, but... Well, I don't know, I'm not FluxBB. For now :P

Coming next: fixing tons of bugs, I'm pretty sure... >_< (There are approx. 3000 references to the word 'theme' in Wedge. Yes, I'll attempt to remove them all! And manually, for the most part! Yay!)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 12th, 2013, 07:56 PM
So...

- All files transferred. I also moved /avatars to /assets, for good mesure.
- Moved temp repo to my local website, so that I could test. Crashes in a funny way.
- Fixed variables, etc. It's running.
- Theme is still completely broken. It's going through wetem::hide() for some reason, I'll look into it.
- What have I got into, really..?!?! This is AGONY. The amount of code just to account for theme handling is incredibly huge. I think my estimate of 2 weeks is going to be correct, but it won't be 2 fun weeks.
- I may do this conversion in two phases. The first phase would keep all theme terminology, and some of the variables, and the second phase would attempt to convert everything.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: colby67 on November 12th, 2013, 08:02 PM
lol, fun times it seems, for you removing that. :)

About series, I like some of them you mention, but most of them is too light for me , Agents of Shield was promising, but now I just see it of curiosity. Person of interest is kind of silly, true..but I love the characters in them, well, most of the time. Spader acting I am mostly unaware of, apart from the old Stargate movie, but then I rarely watch cop series anyway, so Boston legal I haven't seen.

Sherlock is great, look forward to new season, others I follow now are CSI and Supernatural, still exciting! but I started and ended alot of series..lately i saw Broadchurch though, that was a keeper. Another more quirky english series is Utopia, quite excellent :) and of course Walking Dead, whom you know ..but did you know about another, similar but less bloody, called "Les revenants"? :D It was slow at first(well, first episode was quite fascinating), but it soon got me hooked all the way in. And yes, its indeed true what they say about french girls :) Look forward to second season of that too.

My bitbucket account is bloc67 - I think you mentioned it a bit back.

As for the fixed header..uhm, I haven't even checked on mobiles yet. I might get rid of it again, its a fad really, maybe not worth doing "hacks" for it. I'll make my mind up soon hah. :)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 12th, 2013, 08:23 PM
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 08:02 PM
lol, fun times it seems, for you removing that. :)
Yeah... I'd rather be watching some shows, I guess, but the TV's still taken... :^^;:
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 08:02 PM
About series, I like some of them you mention, but most of them is too light for me , Agents of Shield was promising, but now I just see it of curiosity.
Yeah. The last couple of episodes were better than the first, so IMHO it gets better after the first 3 which basically lacked any real energy, after all, the first few episodes of Dollhouse and Angel sucked, and Whedon still managed to get a few great episodes into both of these.
Still, if they have to rely on a Samuel Jackson cameo to make it exciting, well... ;)
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 08:02 PM
Person of interest is kind of silly, true..but I love the characters in them, well, most of the time. Spader acting I am mostly unaware of, apart from the old Stargate movie, but then I rarely watch cop series anyway, so Boston legal I haven't seen.
Boston Legal was a fantastic show. It was a perfect blend between The Practice (serious trials), Ally McBeal (quirky character relationship between Spader and William Shatner, two political opposites attracted to each other), and David E. Kelley's agenda: the show was very much about society issues, not really murder trials or anything like that. Most of all, it was really, really funny. I dropped the show after season 3, but it was mostly because of a lack of time; maybe I should watch the last couple of seasons one day.
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 08:02 PM
Sherlock is great, look forward to new season, others I follow now are CSI and Supernatural, still exciting!
Never tried them. Supernatural looked like a teen show to me... Like Vampire Diaries, etc. CSI, anything that tries to abuse the viewer's lack of IT/tech knowledge really, really upsets me.
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 08:02 PM
but I started and ended alot of series..lately i saw Broadchurch though, that was a keeper.
I'll take note of that. Seems to be written by a Torchwood/Dr. Who writer that I knew about (he wrote quite a few episodes I loved in both shows). And Utopia looks interesting, too.
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 08:02 PM
but did you know about another, similar but less bloody, called "Les revenants"? :D It was slow at first(well, first episode was quite fascinating), but it soon got me hooked all the way in. And yes, its indeed true what they say about french girls :) Look forward to second season of that too.
'course I heard about it, after all we don't often get good shows produced in my country... :lol:
I'm sad that Les Revenants gets to become popular outside France when Kaamelott, which is such a stunning show (started off as a cheap, short comedy show and ended as a full-length comedy-drama show with a large budget), is barely ever heard of.
I guess I try to avoid most French shows because 90% of them are really bad. The last one I liked that isn't Kaamelott, was "Bref" ("In short..."), a very short one (90 seconds per episode), but it'd probably lose too much in translation. It's one of the most original shows ever, though. Not only in France. A bit like Fight Club, come to think of it. Well, you'd need to see the show to understand what I mean.
Okay, apart from that, not much that stands out. Oh, I did like a couple of thriller TV movies adapted from Fred Vargas. I doubt they're available in English, though. There's also "Fais pas ci, fais pas ça", it's a very funny comedy, but they sold the rights to the US a few years ago, and they made a remake called, ahem... "Modern Family". It's not widely known that it's adapted from a good French show, but it's the truth. They only added the gay couple, the rest is the same.
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 08:02 PM
My bitbucket account is bloc67 - I think you mentioned it a bit back.
All right, added you! Apparently, you're the last slot available, so I won't have to have you create a new account.
Quote from Bloc on November 12th, 2013, 08:02 PM
As for the fixed header..uhm, I haven't even checked on mobiles yet. I might get rid of it again, its a fad really, maybe not worth doing "hacks" for it. I'll make my mind up soon hah. :)
It looks good and all, though! But usability-wise, it lacks interest. Only single-line fixed headers have a modicum of interest in general.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 13th, 2013, 12:02 AM
Update: finally got my skin to show up.. There are still plenty of problems (JavaScript not loaded, etc), but it's an important step for me.
I'm trying to document (internally) all of the steps required to make the conversion. This should help me here once I convert wedge.org, and maybe for Pandos, too, but other than that, it doesn't matter much. I think!

OTOH, if I can't get TortoiseGit Blame to work correctly for me, it may all have been for nothing, I don't know. I don't know if I can imagine working on a project where the history isn't available to me because of a software bug... :-/
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 13th, 2013, 08:23 PM
An update...

- Continued removing theme-related elements.
- Enabled ability to override a template entirely within a skin. Just create a sub-folder called 'templates' in it. As easy as that... So, basically, the main feature in themes is back, really.
- Removed theme-related settings in index.template.php, because who cares. Most of them were already removed.
- Flattened the skin folder. Instead of something like...

/skins/
/skins/Wilde/
/skins/Wilde/Wilderless/

You'll now have:

/skins/
/skins/Wilde/
/skins/Wilderless/

This makes it easier to 'spot' updated files, and/or update all skins manually, etc. And of course, easier to add custom folders, eh. However, it's going to be only for templates right now. I'm planning to add support for languages later, but 'images' is more complicated. The current implementation in themes is very, very messy and confusing. I'd rather not touch that. Plus, the images that count (which skins might want to 'override') are already defined by CSS and can be replaced easily.
Wilderless is seen as a child of Wilde by adding a 'parent' option pointing to Wilde.
However, I'm having trouble getting it to work fine, ah ah...

Overall, I'm starting to get worried about the fact that Wedge will be very buggy for the days to come. Maybe even months to come... There is so much to remove! (And also, so much ugly theme code that I'm thrilled to remove!)

Meh...
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 13th, 2013, 10:51 PM
Update...

Everything is working, AFAIK. Skin selection probably fails; skin selector shows a flattened view.
There are probably tons of things to fix, but phase 1, "getting the HTML, CSS and JS to work", is pretty much done.

I had to add hacks to the skin parser, though, and I hate that. Hopefully, I won't keep that too long...
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 14th, 2013, 12:49 PM
Update.

Sadly, I've decided to throw away all my work (or close to), and start again from the original folder structure.

The main reason is that I was starting to turn crazy, with all of the code that needed to be removed.

So, I will instead:
- Do a slightly softer structure change (no renaming of Sources to sources, so that I can keep blaming these files without trouble; renaming of Themes/default/skins to Themes instead of skins),
- possibly give up on the term 'skins' to just use 'themes' instead (internally, I'll still have both), but the jury's still out on this one.
- And, still keeping, ONLY at the beginning, most theme code in. I need to be able to do incremental commits, otherwise I'll just turn crazy again. So, for instance, Wedge will simply consider default_theme_url and theme_url to be the same as skin_url, etc... Then, in the longer term, I'll just remove default_theme_url and theme_url, etc.

That's still a lot of work, but it'll be worth it. I'm sure it will. Seriously, theme code is incredibly confusing, it's nice that I'll be able to remove that.

Oh, and I've decided to drop <name> params in skins. The skin will now be named by its folder, so that people can easily rename their folders to rename their skins, and not risk name collisions when updating the site with a new zip.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: colby67 on November 14th, 2013, 01:14 PM
Y'know, I started something similar for Protendo, renaming and changing that is..but it was too much work lol.

But, I have actually made folders = name, same as you have done. Also, Protendo just reads all theme folders at startup, then check if its installed and show the thumbs so one can see what theme it is easily. Those that are not installed will have a install checkbox.

You are right - themes are a real confusing feature in SMF, even if I spent most of my time with them, I still have lots of things I want to change internally. It just shows that the theme feature was a highpoint from Unknown - but less attention have been given to it since(internally that is).

But I have not the patience for rewriting that from scratch, so change bits in turns. :)

On another note: I have installed and tried out Wedge latest. I have to be honest though, its quite another way to work for me. I am not sure where the border between whats user-adjustable, whats auto-generated and whats left to a themer in the skins/themes code. Of course, the skins and its css..but the skeleton, if you change that in a theme, what are the chances it will not be changed by a plugin or the core..or the user? It seems, to me, and pardon me again for being forward :) that theres less "to do" for a themer other than provide the "look" of it. Maybe shift things around - but thats as much the job for the admin as for a themer. This is a bit difficult atm..but I will persevere in it, although it may take some time to then come up with good designs - without being too much alike each other. ;) Thats my drive in it anyhow, it may not be that for others of course.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 14th, 2013, 02:54 PM
Quote from Bloc on November 14th, 2013, 01:14 PM
Y'know, I started something similar for Protendo, renaming and changing that is..but it was too much work lol.
Yeah uh? ;)
But it's just a matter of taking the time to do it, and try to do it portion by portion, even if it means breaking everything for a while.
My original restructuring helped me see what should be done, and in what order, for a better result. Not that I'm going to achieve it this time, but... I'll do my best.
Quote
But, I have actually made folders = name, same as you have done. Also, Protendo just reads all theme folders at startup, then check if its installed and show the thumbs so one can see what theme it is easily. Those that are not installed will have a install checkbox.
See, themes need an ID, which is silly. There's not much of a need for that, except, maybe, for theme-specific options. I believe it's just simpler to get rid of these, and expect skins to simply hide things they don't want through CSS, and the extra HTML that doesn't show up... Well, the user can still force it to show up, through a custom local CSS file, but that's only for Opera and Firefox diehards... :lol:
Quote
You are right - themes are a real confusing feature in SMF, even if I spent most of my time with them, I still have lots of things I want to change internally.
Back in 2007, I was mostly a 'theme tweaker', that's how I learned to work with SMF, and I found it overwhelming. I appreciated that I could have my own theme folder, but that meant giving up on SMF updates, so it was a complicated relationship. Wedge skins are designed so that you don't HAVE to include an index template and redo everything. Well, I don't think SMF themes require an index template either, but anyway, all of the officially shipped themes are an index template, so it was confusing. Wedge will ship with just CSS files, and no custom templates. But to replace a template, you'll be able to simply add a 'templates' folder to your skin, and move any template file there. CSS files, though, need to remain in the root of the skin folder, because it's where the main attention is, really. For now. :P
Quote
It just shows that the theme feature was a highpoint from Unknown - but less attention have been given to it since(internally that is).
Certainly.
Quote
On another note: I have installed and tried out Wedge latest. I have to be honest though, its quite another way to work for me.
Yes, it sure is. But you can start by redoing templates (well... Once I get started on importing the ton of code I wrote yesterday for my restructured version), and then see where you get from there.
Quote
I am not sure where the border between whats user-adjustable, whats auto-generated and whats left to a themer in the skins/themes code.
It's designed not to have a clear border... :P
Auto-generated content, there's not much... A few callbacks in Subs-Cache (smileys, language flags, admin icons), and I think that's all. No more than 3 or 4 items.
Quote
Of course, the skins and its css..but the skeleton, if you change that in a theme, what are the chances it will not be changed by a plugin or the core..or the user?
There's always a chance, of course, but it's why I implemented a concept of priority. i.e., skeletons get to dictate the 'original' layout of blocks. Then, skins can also rewrite these with skeleton operations (see Subs-Cache, or just the Warm folder for a full documentation on all skin features -- it's the only thing that's thoroughly documented so far, so use and abuse it!), then plugins can also rewrite through the skeleton API (wetem::my_operation), and this is where it gets fun: either the plugin absolutely needs to do something in a certain place, and it says so (in which case, if the layer or block was removed, Wedge won't show anything), or it has a preference for a certain place, but wouldn't bother much if this was moved elsewhere, as long as it's shown, so it can specify multiple targets, and it should show up eventually.
That's the why I tried to satisfy both modders and themers, and believe me -- not easy.  I can still add steps to these, but I'm limited by what I'm actually using in my own system -- there are usually several ways to do a single thing, it's up to the author's preference. I do things my own way, but sometimes, sometimes I probably don't see the bigger picture. I'm flawed, but at least I know it.
Quote
It seems, to me, and pardon me again for being forward :) that theres less "to do" for a themer other than provide the "look" of it.
I don't know. Of course, being the author of this complicated system, I guess I can create a new skin and do something completely silly with it in less than 10 minutes, without modifying any CSS or HTML.
Quote
Maybe shift things around - but thats as much the job for the admin as for a themer.
And how does SMF fix that? They're not, AFAIK... The admin has to install a mod & a theme, and hope that they behave correctly together.
Quote
This is a bit difficult atm..but I will persevere in it, although it may take some time to then come up with good designs - without being too much alike each other. ;) Thats my drive in it anyhow, it may not be that for others of course.
As I said, I'm willing to have at least a skin of yours in Wedge core, and I'd be satisfied if it was as removed as possible from my own 'habits'. I've seen you experiment a lot, and I like the idea that skins are so short that you can afford to do strange things that won't systematically break.

Regarding core, Wedge will definitely ship with Weaving and Wilde. Wine will probably be distributed as a separate plugin 'for fun', as well as Warm. Wuthering will almost certainly be deleted entirely, because it was just a draft for Wilde, and originally a use case for 'nested skins', but Warm can do that as well. Regarding Weaving, I find it to be too complex, so I undertook a simplification of its CSS, got started a few days ago but stopped my work when I figured I should probably remove themes first. Weaving's goal is to remain 'usable', while refraining from using graphical additions to the DIVs around there. For instance, the linktree is very simple in Weaving, so I'm okay with that one, but the cat/title elements are already too 'busy'. This is actually the first thing I redid locally, lol... Removed a third of my cat/title CSS, just like that. I think Weaving can still look good as long as some care is given to the page header. It needs to be 'striking' in order to at least catch some attention. Maybe the Wine (or Warm) header is well suited for that. Or maybe Wilderless's. I don't know.

Anyway, just my 2 cents (and 2 years of work)... ;)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 15th, 2013, 12:20 AM
I'm 95% finished with moving theme options to settings.

It's just funny that I realized only today that I'd completely forgotten about the difference between member options, theme settings and things like that.
Basically:
- the settings table has site-wide features. That, I know.
- the themes table has both theme-wide settings, and member-specific options. That, I knew enough.

Only, id_member in the theme table can be one of three:
- "-1" seems to be "guest options",
- "0" seems to be "default member options". It's also "theme-wide settings", such as theme URLs. This is a confusing aspect.
- id > 0 is "current options for this member ID".

I'm going through the code, trying to analyze it... There are things that leave me puzzled (for instance, Register.php has $_POST['options'] and $_POST['default_options'] handling, but I've failed to find anything like that being shown at registration), and others where I feel completely out of touch.
Another example... 'view_newest_pm_first' is set to 1 for the theme settings, i.e. id_member = 0, so I'm guessing that it becomes the default setting both for guests (which don't have PMs...) and users. There is no interface to change that setting that I know of, as it's not in Settings.template.php -- but it IS in Admin > Member Options > Options (or Settings, or Preferences, can't remember the English word), which is a page that lists the member defaults. Did I say confusing...?
Then how am I supposed to change the default, short from modifying it in the database?
And my favorite has to be 'posts_apply_ignore_list', which is applied to id_member = -1, that is, 'default for guests'. Guests can't have an ignore list... So this doesn't serve any purpose. Even SMF 2.1 and ElkArte still have this one.

I'd be very, very grateful if someone 'in the know' could share their thoughts about this system, and clear up any confusion I might have. It's really a good thing that I'm eliminating the 'theme settings' page, but I don't want to eliminate any possibility of setting 'default options' for members and/or guests.
Of course, you find another layer of complexity when you start moving show_avatars to the general settings, and modify the code to basically mean, "if I allow show_avatars in settings, the user can determine whether they want to see them or not through their profile. If I disallow show_avatars, then the user won't even see that option in their profile." It's 'working', but it's not really a generic setting any more, to me.

I really, really need to go to bed I think...... -_-
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 15th, 2013, 11:13 AM
It's a really, really good thing I decided to drop my ongoing work of changing folder structure, because I needed more work than I expected on the code side.
It's more than that, though. Just earlier, I had a look at the Noisen admin area (it's still running SMF 2.0), and was just 'thrilled'. It turns out that what I believed was true: there WAS a 'default member options' tab in SMF, it was just removed (quite certainly by Pete) in Wedge, and I don't know what the equivalent is.
As I told you, I never worked much on the admin area; I left it entirely in his hands while I was focusing on user experience. But now that I need to do this one admin experience thingy, I realize that the admin area went in a completely different direction that what I'd expected.
In fact, the real fun starts here: in the general settings area, Wedge has only a handful of options, while Noisen has tons of them. Pete actually moved them away, in the name of 'thematic grouping', while I consider that this area should hold everything that the admin might want to change as soon as they install the software. I guess it's a clash of concepts, but in my case, it's very bothersome.

I'm trying to think of what I could do about it all. But it's clear, by now, that neither the old SMF developers, nor Arantor, were thorough in their writes/rewrites. If anything, it's all very confusing, even for someone skilled in SMF/Wedge development like I am.
Perhaps I should remove the themes table entirely, and store user options in their members->data table. It would make it harder to force all member settings to something, but I'm not sure there's even a point in that. What would matter more, I think, is if I could enter someone's profile (on their behalf), and change some of their setting(s), if they requested it of me, the admin. Not ideal either, but what is?
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Sara on November 15th, 2013, 01:09 PM
That sounds like one big, stinky kettle of fish. :(  There were only two times I ever had to "hard force" settings onto all members; one, change avatar size and two, changing a default theme to something else and wanted everyone using it.  I don't know if those are good examples in relation to your current conundrum or not.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 15th, 2013, 01:20 PM
Avatar size isn't a theme option, it's a general setting, so that's okay.
Theme changing options, yep, that one's staying anyway... ;) It's in a different page, and it's handled differently.

Okay, I think I found out why I couldn't change member defaults. It's actually there in the code, but it doesn't execute on my local install. Something was broken in yesterday's update, and I haven't had time to look into it. It's just a JS issue, so don't bother with my remark about default options being f*cked up.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 15th, 2013, 04:04 PM
So, err... Suggestion!

- Get rid of the themes table entirely.

- Turn the settings table from a (variable, value) table into a (variable, value, can_override) table where 'can_override' is an ENUM ('never', 'yes', 'no'), set by default to 'never'. 'never' means that it's a generic setting for the forum, while 'yes'/'no' is a setting that depends on the user's taste. If the admin decides that they want the forum to be as free as possible, they'll set all of these variables to 'yes'.

- User can then access settings that are flagged as 'yes' from their profile, and change these settings. These are then stored in a special variable in their data field of the members table.

- User then loads $settings from the file cache; then loads the data field, unserializes the variable lists, and quite simply replaces existing $settings variables with their overrides. That way, for instance, $settings['view_newest_pms_first']'s value would be set by the user. (Well, technically it'd probably be in $options, but I have yet to decide whether it's best to split {db_prefix}settings variables between two arrays depending on their can_override=never status, or if they should be grouped together.

What do you think, guys..?

The only place where I see potential problems is enabling users to change $settings from their profile, which means centralizing all of the ex-theme variables into one file. (I think most of these are/were in ManageSettings.language.php and Themes.language.php, so it's doable.)
Also, managing 'special' variables like anything that's not a textbox or a checkbox, of course... But I can look into that.

Oh, and the fact that it makes my 'get rid of themes' chore a little bit longer than expected, but... Then again, I've seen worse delays ;)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 15th, 2013, 04:46 PM
I forgot to mention one other 'advantage' of this technique...
One could add an option to a specific skin, saying something like this.

<option><var override="view_newest_pms_first">1</var></option>

That would still allow a 'theme' to have theme variables. I'd have to decide whether they can override non-overridable variables, though, and if their own setting can be overridden by users later on. Fun times... :lol:

Still, I think it's an interesting implementation I'm going to have.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Sara on November 15th, 2013, 08:57 PM
I say go for it, if you think it would work in the long run.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: colby67 on November 16th, 2013, 12:08 PM
Yes, the themes table have been troublesome for many..not the least when trying to figure out what setting is stored where.

I haven't done anything about it, in Protendo, but I use settings table for overall options and member options in the themes table, mostly due to the SMF functions putting them there. As long as themes are a vital part for me, I won't change it. I think lol.

Wedge clearly needs some cleaning up if skins are to be the "themes" so "go for it" from me 2. :)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on November 16th, 2013, 12:35 PM
You never officially voted, though :P (Or maybe it's just because I don't like seeing the number '13'...)

One of the things that always bothered me is the difficulty to grasp differences between $theme and $options. (In SMF, I think that's $modSettings and $theme, respectively. Which is even sillier.)
I believe they should be merged together. I simply thought that it'd make more sense to get rid of $options (or rename $settings to $options because it's shorter, but it'd take time to get used to...), and merge them into settings at user load time.

I haven't started work on this yet though, mostly because I want to get it right. And if I ever miss the December 2013 window for first public alpha release, nobody will die for it. It'll just be released a month or two later, and with less predictable hassle for future users.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 2nd, 2014, 05:50 PM
And that's it. I just updated wedge.org (took 45 minutes, because I had to convert everything, rather than just reinstall from scratch, as I would have done on a regular 'test' forum...), and it's looking good now. Well, it's the same as one hour ago, but you get what I mean.

The main difference is that the forum you're seeing now, no longer relies on themes.

I'm a bit disappointed with performance, as it's pretty much the same as before I removed themes. But Wedge is already as fast as it can be, so I'm not surprised a 5% increase (or anything like that) isn't noticeable. I did my tests on page 157 of the New Revs topic, and the page was consistently loading between 0.06s and 0.14s. If I disable the file cache and rely only on APC, I get between 0.06s and 1.02s, so... Well, that APC really is some fine piece of crap! I need to focus on committing my new version of the cache system.

Please post here if you notice any issue regarding the site update! Thanks.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Drunken Clam on January 2nd, 2014, 07:07 PM
Ah, found a couple of problems...

Screenshot 1 is viewing 'unread'

Screenshot 2 is replying to this thread.

HTH :wow:

(Chrome 32.0.1700.68 beta-m)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Drunken Clam on January 2nd, 2014, 07:16 PM
Hmmm,

Screenshot 1 has gone away on clearing my cache, screenshot 2 remains however. :unsure:
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 2nd, 2014, 08:05 PM
Thanks, I'll look into these. They show up in my error log anyway, but it's good to know it's still buggy.

Well, the second one isn't an error, it's actually some debug code I forgot to remove. I've reuploaded the slower, APC-based version so I don't have to revert my current cache tests. I'm trying to 'break' the $_SESSION-based caching system, but unfortunately it's not very encouraging, because the performance is pretty much the same as the file-based cache (even though it only stores one entry in the database), and I don't know if it's worth the huge hassle. I know that saving bits of processing power, little by little, is what brought Wedge to be so fast, but OTOH the fastest performance improvement I ever got with Wedge is by disabling the APC cache, so, whatever...
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Drunken Clam on January 3rd, 2014, 07:32 PM
Still something screwed here.... :whistle:
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 3rd, 2014, 08:45 PM
I actually fixed that an hour ago. How timely! But I haven't committed or uploaded it yet, because it needs some further testing (I replaced a variable across the codebase), and right now I'm busy watching TV. What, TV doesn't matter? Not when it's Community and Sherlock! :P
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Wanchope on January 4th, 2014, 05:55 AM
Reading the forum posts with mobile phone, user avatar not showing in the display. php (or whatever).
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 4th, 2014, 09:45 AM
Didn't I already fix that one last night..? The avatars are showing up for me, at least. Cache issue? Try to reload the page.
Oh well, no worries, I've moved the folder around again; this should ensure that your cache is not read. Plus, it saves two bytes of bandwidth per avatar load. (I'm that sick.)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Wanchope on January 4th, 2014, 03:54 PM
Working well now.  Peace.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 4th, 2014, 08:13 PM
Yes, although there's always going to be something broken around, I'll do my best to fix when that happens, of course.

:edit: Okay, post buttons are still broken, it's probably not in the codebase but rather a path I forgot to update, I'll look into it.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 5th, 2014, 11:46 AM
Asking for opinions on the best between these two generic folder structures...

/wedge
  /assets
  /attachments
  /cache
  /css
  /js
  /languages
<-- .english.php files
  /media
  /Plugins
  /scripts
<-- .js files
  /skins
<-- .css files
  /Sources
<-- .php files
  /Templates
<-- .template.php files

Or...

/wedge
  /assets
  /attachments
  /cache
  /css
  /js
  /media
  /Plugins
  /src
<-- all source .php, .template.php, .js and .css files
    /languages
    /scripts
    /skins
    /templates


Basically, anything that powers Wedge, but can also get cached or modified, would be in src. It's just that, I thought there were already enough folders in the root as it were... I figured, if you're uploading by FTP, you can have a shortcut to /src, then you can easily update whatever files are the most likely to have been modified. But, of course, it can also be argued that 'languages', 'scripts' and 'skins' don't have any semantic reason to be in 'src', things like that.

FWIW, currently, the folder structure is:

/wedge
  /assets
  /attachments
  /cache
  /css
  /js
  /media
  /Plugins
  /Sources
  /Themes
<-- all .template.php files are in this folder
    /languages
    /scripts
    /skins


PS: if you want to discuss the capitalization, feel free to do it, too. Right now, it's still something that's in the air. It doesn't make sense to me, or to anyone else.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Aaron Smith on January 5th, 2014, 12:18 PM
I prefer the second setup. It makes sense to have those directories under the /src directory. As far as capitalization I prefer things to be consistent. So either everything lower case or everything proper case(first letter capitalized).
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Wanchope on January 5th, 2014, 03:44 PM
The first folder structure is more friendly. All lower case, please.
I think it will be better to split this thread (add a poll?)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: MultiformeIngegno on January 5th, 2014, 06:20 PM
I vote for the second, it's organized better.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Drunken Clam on January 5th, 2014, 07:27 PM
I prefer the second too. And agree with @Aaron Smith regarding capitalization.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 5th, 2014, 07:53 PM
Yeah, I *think* I remember SMF having a reason for capitalization, but I really can't remember it.
I'll go for all lowercase in the final version.

A more radical structure (and naming scheme) for the src folder could be:

/src       <-- empty
  /php     <-- Sources
  /css     <-- skins
  /js      <-- scripts
  /lng_fr  <-- languages/French
  /lng_en  <-- languages/English
  /tpl     <-- Themes/default


Probably a bit scary, though... :lol:
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 5th, 2014, 07:55 PM
Quote from Wanchope on January 5th, 2014, 03:44 PM
I think it will be better to split this thread (add a poll?)
No polls, because it's not something you can determine with a limited selection of folder names. I'm about to release the codebase on github, I'd like for the folder structure to be 100% final before I do that, I don't want to screw up, I want something that's easy to understand, and easy to update by FTP. I'm listening to any opinions. :thanks:
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Drunken Clam on January 5th, 2014, 08:51 PM
Quote from Nao on January 5th, 2014, 07:53 PM
A more radical structure (and naming scheme) for the src folder could be:

/src       <-- empty
  /php     <-- Sources
  /css     <-- skins
  /js      <-- scripts
  /lng_fr  <-- languages/French
  /lng_en  <-- languages/English
  /tpl     <-- Themes/default


Probably a bit scary, though... :lol:
I'm actually liking that a lot! It seems very logical.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: kimikelku on January 5th, 2014, 10:29 PM
Quote from Nao on January 5th, 2014, 07:53 PM
Yeah, I *think* I remember SMF having a reason for capitalization, but I really can't remember it.
I'll go for all lowercase in the final version.

A more radical structure (and naming scheme) for the src folder could be:

/src       <-- empty
  /php     <-- Sources
  /css     <-- skins
  /js      <-- scripts
  /lng_fr  <-- languages/French
  /lng_en  <-- languages/English
  /tpl     <-- Themes/default


Probably a bit scary, though... :lol:
It reminds me of phpbb2 dunno why :hmm:
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 5th, 2014, 11:21 PM
Downloaded it, and I think you've got the wrong idea... ;)

Anyway, I'm still unsure where to go, right now. Should languages/ be a parent folder to all language sub-folders, or should these sub-folders be directly in the root? Should the parent folder for all things css/js/templates, hold the source files directly, or have them in another sub-folder? If not in a sub-folder, then should we have multiple sub-folders for php sources? (currently it's the case, we have media/, notifiers/ and captcha/, and I'm worried that these would 'conflict' with other top-level folders such as templates.)

PS: I fixed bbcode buttons, BTW. Sorry for the delay!
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Wanchope on January 6th, 2014, 12:16 AM
Quote from Nao on January 5th, 2014, 07:53 PM
Yeah, I *think* I remember SMF having a reason for capitalization, but I really can't remember it.
I'll go for all lowercase in the final version.

A more radical structure (and naming scheme) for the src folder could be:

/src       <-- empty
  /php     <-- Sources
  /css     <-- skins
  /js      <-- scripts
  /lng_fr  <-- languages/French
  /lng_en  <-- languages/English
  /tpl     <-- Themes/default


Probably a bit scary, though... :lol:
Will you marry my sister? :cool:
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 6th, 2014, 08:28 AM
I'm more into brunettes, but thanks :P

Need more opinions!
Well, today I'll be spending most of my day watching GamesDoneQuick.com anyway, like every year at the same date now, but I'm still listening eheh.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: MultiformeIngegno on January 6th, 2014, 07:44 PM
Uhm I prefer the second choice to this last one..
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 6th, 2014, 09:05 PM
Because of the folder names I suppose?
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 8th, 2014, 12:13 AM
Today I've flattened the skin system, so this last question of mine is preeeetty much the last hurdle before I can publish the source code. (Well, I'll also do a test-run of the install process, of course. I'm 66.67% sure it's broken again.)

Thus, I'd like to make sure we all agree on a 'best of the worst' solution for the general folder structure. I think we all agree[1] we can gather most PHP/CSS/JS files in src, but we need to determine the folder names, mostly (src? sources? code? Something else? What about the JS files? js, or scripts? etc.), and whether or not the Sources/*.php files should be in /src/php/ or in the /src/ root[2].
 1. Although I'm very open to discussing other possibilities, of course.
 2. Pros of having them in /src/php: easy to create new sub-folders, as is the case in SMF, Elk or current Wedge. Clean structure. Cons of having them: it takes one extra step to update the website by FTP. I don't like the idea of an extra step, hmm...
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 8th, 2014, 11:51 PM
Site is updated with the latest revision. It was broken for about 10 minutes (completely for a minute or two; partially for the rest.) If you find any problems, please report them. I also tested the session-based cache, and I'm getting slightly better results, just like on my local install, but so far, my page load record for shortest time is held by the file-based cache (.06s on New Revs page 1), followed by session-based cache (.07s at best). I only tested about a dozen page refreshes per cache type, so your mileage may vary. Also, session-based seems to be more consistent, so I'll probably eventually use it.

...

Still waiting on more feedback for the folder structure..?
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 9th, 2014, 06:48 PM
I'm getting plenty of likes on my latest thought, but no actually feedback, so I guess I'll have to choose by myself...

My current structure is thus:

Code: [Select]
/core
  /javascript
  /languages
  /plugins
  /skins
  /sources
  /templates

I thought 'core' made sense as the root folder. 'javascript' is a conscious choice to make it clearer that 'scripts' are 'JavaScript', not 'PHP scripts'.
languages will have French and English US at its root, and German and English UK in sub-folders, to match the future official languages repo. You'll probably need to move the folder contents to the languages folder though, if you want to have them enabled. Not sure yet.
Plugins are part of the rest, because that makes it easier to update them, and they're most likely to be uploaded by FTP, so I'm *hoping* we won't be getting problems with file permissions. (At worst, I could simply create that folder at runtime, so that Wedge can be sure it can manipulate its contents without filesystem problems.)
skins are the CSS folders, sources is the original Sources folder (meaning core is technically empty, which I'm not too happy with, but the alternative would be to have /core/media and /core/notifiers and /core/captcha in addition to the files above, and I'm not sure I want that), and templates are /Themes/default.

Everyone happy with this..?
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Aaron Smith on January 9th, 2014, 07:04 PM
I'm good with it. It's straightforward and logical. Uncluttered too which is a bonus.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Drunken Clam on January 9th, 2014, 07:37 PM
Quote from Aaron Smith on January 9th, 2014, 07:04 PM
I'm good with it. It's straightforward and logical. Uncluttered too which is a bonus.
Couldn't have put it better myself. :)  (Logical and uncluttered are two of my favourite things!) :cool:
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Pandos on January 9th, 2014, 07:51 PM
Very logical and clean. There you go :)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 9th, 2014, 08:25 PM
A problem I met while doing this... The plugins folder was put in the root for at least one good reason: plugins can access images directly from within their folders, so if you show an icon, it'll use <img src="mysite/Plugins/myplugin/myimage.png">, so moving plugins to core/plugins will make the URL longer. Ouch... I'd like to avoid these links in HTML as much as possible. Opinions..?
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 9th, 2014, 11:08 PM
Well, I guess the 'way to do it' would be to use CSS anyway.
background: url($here/myimage.png), or sum'ing like that. I don't do plugins (which is a bit of a problem since I'm the only Wedge developer by now), and Dragooon and live are MIA these days (especially Dragooon), so it's gonna take someone else to spot usability issues for plugin authors, and fix them, or point them out to me.

In the meantime, it's probably meaningless to bother about that.

I'm more annoyed with the fact that, on my local install, I'm having trouble finding my marks with the new folder structure -- not really the fact that they're all in a subfolder now, but more the fact that Sources is now lowercased, and it makes it harder for me to find it immediately. I didn't expect that I was relying SO MUCH on ucfirst'ed names to find folders quickly.
Ah, well... I guess it'll just take some time to get used to, or something.

Also, the fact that templates are currently in the root of /core/ is a bit strange, but I don't know what I can put into that folder anyway. I'm really, really bothered by the idea of having sources in the core folder, because I don't want any clutter as subfolders, I only want the 'solid' ones like javascript, languages, etc.

Finally, I'm also bothered that my skins folder is located before my sources folder. Plus, they look similar in name, so I tend to click on sources to get CSS files, or skins to get PHP files. Renaming skins to something else..? I figured 'themes' would make sense, but... That means it gets awfully similar to the 'templates' folder (which doesn't exist for now, cf. the fact that templates are in the root for now.)

It's interesting, how hard it is to find a new folder structure that 'works'... :^^;:

:edit: Aaaaaand, 14.000 posts! That deserves a few elaborate answers from a few of you, I'm sure... Hopefully I'll have some feedback when I wake up tomorrow! As Koreans would say: Fightin'!! (I don't know why they say that, really... But it's in every single modern K-drama.)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Farjo on January 10th, 2014, 02:13 AM
Well given I'm not particularly techie, and I do not understand some of what you say, please go easy on me.

In your current structure (reply 57), where do the media and attachment folders go? Could attachments be a subfolder of media?

Why is there a template folder if templates are no more?

When you talk about a 'core' folder, do you mean the public_html folder or will there be a folder named 'core' with all the other folders off of it? And if so will a site's address be "mysite.tld/core/" ?

It looks mush better to have the languages folder straight off the root, however I don't quite understand the folder's structure. In the ./languages/ folder there'll be admin.english.php admin.french.php and all the other english and french files, but the other languages' files will be put where? And then moved somewhere? Will they come with the original product download or will each language pack be on wedge.org as an optional extra?

Scripts: is there any danger of a different scripting language becoming popular? If not jscript then perhaps something that's not widely heard of - yet. If so should the js folder be named 'scripts' in case someone wants to script in this other as yet unnamed and unknown scripting language and there isn't a natural home for it. As for confusion of putting php files into it, surely people will see what's what when they look and see that the folder only contains js files and php files are elsewhere.

Out of interest will there no longer be a cache folder? Or plugins? And what is the 'assets' folder?

Sorry to go on; overall the newer structures are much neater and logical than the old one.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 10th, 2014, 04:56 PM
Quote from Farjo on January 10th, 2014, 02:13 AM
Well given I'm not particularly techie, and I do not understand some of what you say, please go easy on me.

In your current structure (reply 57), where do the media and attachment folders go? Could attachments be a subfolder of media?
/core/ is just another folder in the root, just like /media/, /attachments/, /cache/, etc.
Quote from Farjo on January 10th, 2014, 02:13 AM
Why is there a template folder if templates are no more?
I never removed templates. What I removed are themes, i.e. the ability to have multiple template folders, script folders, CSS folders, etc, all in one. All replaced with skins, which have 95% of what themes can do (and actually can do 100%, but I need to write some stuff to complete it.)
Quote from Farjo on January 10th, 2014, 02:13 AM
When you talk about a 'core' folder, do you mean the public_html folder or will there be a folder named 'core' with all the other folders off of it? And if so will a site's address be "mysite.tld/core/" ?
Nope.
Quote from Farjo on January 10th, 2014, 02:13 AM
It looks mush better to have the languages folder straight off the root, however I don't quite understand the folder's structure.
/languages is in core right now. I just wanted to gather in a single folder all files that can be updated by FTP, but aren't supposed to be updated through Wedge itself. (Most of the files in /core are actually re-cached in cache folders later on.)
Quote from Farjo on January 10th, 2014, 02:13 AM
In the ./languages/ folder there'll be admin.english.php admin.french.php and all the other english and french files, but the other languages' files will be put where?
See the new topic. English and French are root because of me, and my updating etc. Other files will be in their own folder, but you'll have to upload 'em to the languages root. Although I might add additional support for subfolders, but... No matter.
Quote from Farjo on January 10th, 2014, 02:13 AM
And then moved somewhere? Will they come with the original product download or will each language pack be on wedge.org as an optional extra?
English only. Languages is now a different repo, so I'll have to manually import English files from the languages repo. Other files will be repackaged as single file downloads, I suppose. These will probably need to be done manually, from time to time.
Quote from Farjo on January 10th, 2014, 02:13 AM
Scripts: is there any danger of a different scripting language becoming popular?
No. JS has been there since 1995... PHP + HTML + JS + CSS + MySQL is still the winning combination, by and large. Otherwise, I would have considered 'switching' one of these to something else, of course. But I don't see them becoming any less popular in the future. Save for MySQL, they're all in 'good hands'. As for MySQL, in case Oracle causes problems, we can always switch to MariaDB as the engine, of course.
Quote from Farjo on January 10th, 2014, 02:13 AM
If not jscript then perhaps something that's not widely heard of - yet. If so should the js folder be named 'scripts' in case someone wants to script in this other as yet unnamed and unknown scripting language and there isn't a natural home for it. As for confusion of putting php files into it, surely people will see what's what when they look and see that the folder only contains js files and php files are elsewhere.
My only confusion for now is with the sources folder.
I'm considering renaming it to 'code', so that Sources files show up first in my commit log (I'm absolutely used to that...!), and to avoid confusion with 'skins', but (1) will I get used to that name? (2) will people be confused with a folder called /core/code/..? Does that mean I should rename /core/ to something else? But I like that name...
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Farjo on January 11th, 2014, 02:05 AM
Ah! So the full folder structure is something like:
Code: [Select]
/wedge
/assets
/attachments
/cache
/media
/core
/javascript
/languages  <-- contains english only
/your-language-downloaded
/plugins
/skins
/sources
/templates

I guess I need to do some homework on skins / themes / templates (I thought they were just different names for the same thing).

You could rename core to weave, because you want to use the name and because it'll confuse people :)

Thanks for the replies.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 12th, 2014, 01:07 PM
Quote from Farjo on January 11th, 2014, 02:05 AM
Ah! So the full folder structure is something like:
Yes. Except for the languages folder, which is still flat, like in SMF, but it's worth considering whether Wedge supports both systems (flat or with subfolders for each language), which, come to think of it, thanks to caching, won't even add extra processing time. Hmm, so that's good... I could do that, yeah.
Quote from Farjo on January 11th, 2014, 02:05 AM
I guess I need to do some homework on skins / themes / templates (I thought they were just different names for the same thing).
Templates = PHP files containing blocks (functions) that output the HTML.
Themes = a set of Templates, and their associated CSS and JavaScript files (SMF-only)
Variants = a set of CSS files that can replace the default CSS files in a particular theme. Consider them as CSS-only sub-themes. (SMF-only)
Skins = these are Wedge-specific, and started as a supercharged version of variants (replacing them immediately), and then gradually getting upgraded to finally get the power of themes, so they now also replace themes altogether. There's still 'one' theme, as the topic's name suggests, but since it's unique, I removed all code pertaining to supporting multiple themes. And that was a lot of code, really.

A theme's structure is:
Templates
    CSS files
    JS files
    image files

A skin's structure is:
Skin definition (optional) + CSS files (optional) + skeleton (optional)
    Replacement templates (optional)
    Replacement languages (optional, and not implemented yet.)

The skin definition allows you to specify more JS and CSS files to load, too. Even external stuff. It's an XML file with dozens of options, and they're all detailed in skins\Warm\skin.xml, if you want to study them. (Once the repo is out, although I think you have read access to the BitBucket repo, anyway..? If you don't, feel free to ask, but the repo will be moved to Github this week anyway, so...[1])
Quote from Farjo on January 11th, 2014, 02:05 AM
You could rename core to weave, because you want to use the name and because it'll confuse people :)
Weave would be confusing, because it's already the main skin's name... ;) (Well, it's Weaving, but whatever!)

Oh, while I'm at it -- I recently decided that I'll drop the 'idea' of starting all Wedge official skin names with a 'w'. It's not that I'm planning to release dozens of skins, or that I fear I won't find any more interesting names in 'w', it's just that I certainly don't like restraining myself to a very, very limited subset of the English language when it comes to naming things I've worked on very hard, eh.
 1. Possibly duplicated on BitBucket, too. I have yet to determine which will be the final resting place for the public repo; while Github is a much more popular website, I still like BitBucket's design more, and if the GH repo doesn't get any popular, then there's no reason to stick to Github.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 13th, 2014, 12:46 AM
And this last one, I really need to get right... I need help for folder names!

I need to fine a folder name for what used to be the 'Sources' folder. It contains, of course, all the main PHP files that power Wedge.
The new name needs to:
- show up before 'languages' in the folder list, and even preferably before 'javascript'. So, it needs to start with a letter between 'A' and 'L' at best, or 'A' and 'I' at worst.
- Reflect the fact that it contains PHP files, or Source files, or things that power the software.

I consider 'code' but it's too close to 'core'.
I also considered 'engine', but maybe it's a bit over the top for that folder.

Anything else, guys..? Don't forget you'll be updating that folder quite often, so might as well help in finding its name... ;)



I'm also trying to determine if I can push 'skins' (the CSS folders) after 'templates' (the theme folder with *.template.php files) in the folder list. That means either renaming 'skins' to something that's after 'T' in the alphabet ('visuals'? Meh...), or pushing 'templates' to something that's before 'S' in the alphabet. Unfortunately, I don't even have a basic idea for that one.

As a reminder, I'm planning to release the first Wedge public alpha this week, and the source code could be online as early as January 15. As such, having the final names for these folders is important to me. The order in the folder list is also important to me, because I'm used to documenting my changelogs following the 'natural' SMF order: Source files are documented first, then templates, then languages, scripts and skins. Changing the folder structure unfortunately changed the current order to scripts, languages, skins, source files, and templates.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Pandos on January 13th, 2014, 09:36 AM

You can kill me. ;) But why we should not change the folder structure as described below:
wedge-->
               core (Sources)
              Themes (templates)
                                              ---->Skins (vendor)
                                                                               --->css, etc.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Norodo on January 13th, 2014, 11:55 AM
Quote from Nao on January 13th, 2014, 12:46 AM
And this last one, I really need to get right... I need help for folder names!

I need to fine a folder name for what used to be the 'Sources' folder. It contains, of course, all the main PHP files that power Wedge.
The new name needs to:
- show up before 'languages' in the folder list, and even preferably before 'javascript'. So, it needs to start with a letter between 'A' and 'L' at best, or 'A' and 'I' at worst.
- Reflect the fact that it contains PHP files, or Source files, or things that power the software.

I consider 'code' but it's too close to 'core'.
I also considered 'engine', but maybe it's a bit over the top for that folder.

Anything else, guys..? Don't forget you'll be updating that folder quite often, so might as well help in finding its name... ;)
You could call it app or cms. :P
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 13th, 2014, 06:56 PM
@Pandos, that's basically what's in the Wedge repo before my last couple of commits that modified everything...

@Norodo> I have many words to replace the Sources folder ('app' is a good suggestion though, I like that), but nothing much for the Themes (templates) folder...

Currently, I'm trying out this combination: sources becomes 'backend', and templates becomes 'frontend'. (I don't like these words, but they're easy to understand for native speakers, I suppose. It's all part of the MVC thingy.)
However, it suddenly makes more sense to have languages, skins and javascript inside the 'frontend' folder as well, in which case I'd suddenly have to move everything down one level.
/core
  /backend <-- *.php
  /frontend <-- *.template.php
    /javascript <-- *.js
    /languages <-- *.english.php
    /skins <-- *.css

Perhaps 'backend' and 'frontend' would work best as root folders, but then they'd have to share their space with 'assets' (fine by me), 'cache' (okay, becomes harder...), and 'css' and 'js', which starts getting messy. (Not even counting media and plugins...)

I like having two separate areas of the Wedge folder base: one area for files that shan't be modified by Wedge itself (with the exception of Aeva-Sites.php, and yes it does make sense to rewrite this one and store sites in the database to be cached later, but whatever...)

I like the word 'engine' more than 'backend', but if I'm going to use 'frontend', it makes more sense to use 'backend' for sources.
Also, apparently 'backend' and 'frontend' need a space before 'end', so, to English native speakers here -- does it bother you that I'm not putting a space or dash..? Or should I add a dash, at least?
Posted: January 13th, 2014, 01:19 PM

Bump... Still hoping to release ASAP ;)
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: wedge.helmer.co on January 13th, 2014, 07:00 PM
I'm confused.. The word as a whole is fine. Why do you think there is a need for a space or dash?
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: wedge.helmer.co on January 13th, 2014, 07:11 PM
As a matter of fact this link will show you that the words as a whole are quite common for the way you wish to use them I think.

http://skillcrush.com/2012/04/17/frontend-vs-backend-3/
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: wedge.helmer.co on January 13th, 2014, 07:50 PM
As for the new structure, you have to look at it one of two ways.

1. You follow what is loosely the standard used across other boards in the tree which is really already familiar to experienced users of other boards.

2. You strike out on your own and design the tree the way you think it should be. To new users the tree is what it is. To experienced users, they have to learn a new tree structure. No big deal, this is something you have to learn with any new software anyways.

I would not stress over it. Pick what makes sense to you as the author and go with it. There is however one thing I do agree with, consistency  of capitalization is important. I recommend you name each directory starting with upper case.

Example: Frontend, Backend, Packages and so on.

John

Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Farjo on January 13th, 2014, 08:41 PM
frontend and backend seems fine to me, there are worse hacked words on the internet! I agree with John regarding just doing what you prefer given that you are the author and have spent all this time on it. Nobody is going to say "He hasn't used a dash - this software must be shit!" But I disagree regarding caps and - lower case is much easier.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Pentaxian on January 13th, 2014, 09:49 PM
Quote from Nao on January 13th, 2014, 12:46 AM
And this last one, I really need to get right... I need help for folder names!

I need to fine a folder name for what used to be the 'Sources' folder. It contains, of course, all the main PHP files that power Wedge.
The new name needs to:
- show up before 'languages' in the folder list, and even preferably before 'javascript'. So, it needs to start with a letter between 'A' and 'L' at best, or 'A' and 'I' at worst.
- Reflect the fact that it contains PHP files, or Source files, or things that power the software.

I consider 'code' but it's too close to 'core'.
I also considered 'engine', but maybe it's a bit over the top for that folder.

Anything else, guys..? Don't forget you'll be updating that folder quite often, so might as well help in finding its name... ;)
Is 'base' anything good?
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: wedge.helmer.co on January 13th, 2014, 10:38 PM
Farjo,

I agree that lower caps is easier, my personal thought is that all directories start with an uppercase while all files are all lowercase.This makes for a very clean looking directory tree. And from a development side, in the code the directories stand out from the files.

John
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 14th, 2014, 12:58 AM
@Pentaxian, it would sound silly to have a sub-sub-folder that's called 'base'.

Re: caps, last week I lowercased all of Wedge's folders, precisely for consistency. I prefer them lowercased generally. As for files, they're still named like in SMF, so that's DoneThisWay. I'm used to this. If I change anything more, I really won't be able to find my mark anymore, and I might as well switch to Elkarte, whose main problem for me is the completely different (shall I say somewhat obtuse...) folder structure. I don't want to mess with Wedge's.

Re: backend/frontend, I think that my main concern is that for years, I've advertised the fact that Pete was the backend guy, while I was the frontend guy. To me, frontend was what people were seeing when they browsed a forum (i.e. all 'public'-facing pages), while backend was the admin area. It works as a definition, but it's not the same as the new definition -- backend is all PHP files that handle requests and gather data, while frontend is all PHP, CSS and JS files that are used in the creation of the final HTML, using the data injected into them by the backend files. They're both valid definitions, I'm just concerned about the fact that I've switched from one to the other, and it doesn't make much sense to do that. On the other hand, I couldn't find anything better.

I like the word 'engine' better for Sources (rather than backend), but that leaves me with the need to find a counter-offer name for Themes (aka templates), that would not be 'frontend' (because it doesn't counter 'engine' but 'backend'), and would be sorted alphabetically after 'engine' ('exsomething'..?), but before 'javascript'... Which leaves us with words starting with F, G, H and I, and a few other words after 'ENG' and before 'JAV'.
So, basically, you all have 4 letters and a half to determine a good name for the folder that will contain *.template.php files... If you accept this challenge... Get started now! I'll mark your test papers tomorrow. :P If I don't get any suggestions I'm excited with, then I'll stick with backend and frontend.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: wedge.helmer.co on January 14th, 2014, 03:02 AM
Nao,

Please take a moment to back away from the keyboard as you may be over thinking things here. Backend and frontend are fine or would not still be in the running. Are they really confusing, I think not. Is it just that you have convinced yourself it is a problem because of past history? Maybe, maybe not. They really are ok. If you like engine so much than use it and something like frame,

In the end it really does not matter. As the saying goes "it is what it is". As with any new software package, people will learn where everything is and what it is called. Hell you could call each directory a,b,c or 1,2,3 and people will figure it out. In the end all that is important is Wedge itself and how it functions.

I am retired now but back in the day I was the engineering Directer or VP on on close to 200 software and hardware projects. Trust me when I say this really is not important in the big picture. Wedge the software itself is the end goal. Make a choice and move on.

Grumpy old man

John
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 14th, 2014, 08:12 AM
Perhaps I'm hesitating simply because I want to get it right for myself, not for others.
If I can't live with my changes, I can always redo them later, but it's at the cost of annoying more people.

The only alternatives I have for now is:
sources -> engine (this one, I'm very happy with)
templates -> html, interface (I can't believe I didn't come up with 'html' until now, ahem..!)

Again, I need a word that conveys the idea of visuals, or interaction (another word in 'i', hmm...), or frontend as defined above anyway.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: wedge.helmer.co on January 14th, 2014, 09:10 AM
Ok here is the word of the day Infotainment.

Just kidding! Take a look through this link and see if anything strikes your fancy.


http://www.techterms.com/list/i


John
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 14th, 2014, 09:41 AM
I prefer to go through non-tech dictionaries for things like that, these are too limited... ;)

Anyway:
http://wedge.org/pub/8336/name-poll-for-something-useless-yay/
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Pentaxian on January 14th, 2014, 11:01 AM
Quote from Nao on January 14th, 2014, 12:58 AM
@Pentaxian, it would sound silly to have a sub-sub-folder that's called 'base'.
Hey, I'm sorry. I fail to see that 'sources' or 'engine' or 'core' in a sub-sub-folder are not silly but I was just trying to be helpful. I won't try again.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 14th, 2014, 11:10 AM
'core' means 'the main point of interest in this folder list', so it works as a root folder.
'engine' means 'what makes Wedge tick', and it'd probably work better as a root folder (while 'backend' is just fine in 'core'), so I see you point.

And sorry, I meant sub-folder for base, not sub-sub-folder.
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 15th, 2014, 12:36 AM
So, err... The whole point of renaming folders was to get the same usual file order (Sources < Themes < languages < scripts < skins) in my commit log, so that I could quickly find 'core' changes.

With the new structure, I was hoping for app < html < languages < scripts < skins.
Here's the result...

For some reason I don't know, core/app files are located at the END of my changeset list. I can reset the ordering by clicking the 'Path' area in the selector's title of course, but then if I hit Cancel and then re-commit, it's back to that order.

Anybody knows how to fix this..? It's just unacceptable to me!
Title: Re: One theme to rule them all?
Post by: Nao on January 15th, 2014, 12:49 AM
Oh, scratch that... Looks like making a fake commit (core/app/Admin.php needed some fixing, so I fixed it) somehow fixed my problem.

That gets the prize for fix of the day. And most uses of the word 'fix' in a short post.