Wedge

I shushed!

Ultimate Profile mod, plus the Google Member Map mod...

They get to see part of the truth, the part recorded there, and as we know history can be manipulated.

None of the new team members were privy to the full events that happened, they weren't in the chat rooms, they weren't in IM conversations... and none of that is documented.

Yes, I meant the block system, though really, it IS a meta tag, since <we:*> is a tag that will become other tags.

Like an alien? SILENCE, DOCTOR, SILENCE WILL FALL.Hrm. This is a complex issue. Let's see...

We have a top level Sources folder for all the fun sources stuff. We also have a top level Themes folder which contains a whole bunch of stuff, including languages.

Now, there is a wisdom to that top level Themes folder - you have the default theme and each theme that's added to it is added in parallel, making up anything it doesn't have in resources by substituting the default theme's.

If we remove that Themes folder, we essentially risk damaging that association. Thing is, true parallel themes can do things that styling cannot.

Yes, styling can change any CSS right now, and can change certain block elements in the HTML of templates. For stylings to replace themes, two things would have to happen.

Firstly, we'd need to give stylings the ability to modify any template's markup. To me, this seems the wrong way to go; a styling should be a *style*, rather than a complete layout specification. To me, then, I see stylings as making the theme variants system what it always wanted to be: a clear, easily accessible manner for a theme to provide multiple colour variations, or small style variations under a single 'theme' banner. This it can do, and do extremely well, and I see no reason to graft on the ability to hit up markup more generically when really if the markup is that far different, it should be a different physical theme with its own templates (and using the default templates where necessary)

Secondly, languages. If you have a theme that's doing really, really funky things the odds are it's going to bringing its own settings and with that its own language strings. Right now, SMF can deal with this (and even do it properly now, as far as I know!)

More importantly, languages already inherits the template loader subsystem, so it can load theme specific strings then load the default ones.

IOW, I'm not 100% sure we need to change anything, unless we replicate most of the functionality that's already present.

It's all relevant, actually.

The whole nature of the caching and processing means that theme editing from inside the box, as it were, is far less realistic, but making it vastly easier for admins to tweak the colour scheme of their forum. And since it's done as a styling rather than a theme, it really is ditching the bulk of what themes were conventionally used for.

This is not to say that we're ditching the theme capability, but to focus intent where it's needed: for themes that are simple recolouring/CSS tweaks derivatives of an existing theme, they shouldn't be made into new themes fully, but made into stylings that can inherit from the parent - which takes care of all the issues about mods on custom themes when the themes are basically the same.

The system does make it easier for themers to do slightly more interesting CSS too - but when custom templates are the only way to go, there's no barrier there at present that isn't in SMF in some fashion, but the barrier is lower: instead of having to craft some random mashup of tags that varies between RCs, there is a standard meta tag to use instead, that's under the theme's control, not mod control.

Oh, completely bonkers, yes :D

I'm looking forward to next week...

In other news I acquired some 'Lego compatible' stuff today which features the Doctor, Amy, the TARDIS, the Dalek Progenitor Machine and the white Supreme Dalek.

This is something that occurred to me in passing. I'm well aware that phpBB sells plushies of their mascot Bertie, and that MyBB is designing a mascot so that they can possibly sell merch. I'm also aware that SMF have t-shirts (both Nao and myself own SMF t-shirts) but they were always perks for being team/major contributors and the last time the notion of selling them for funding for servers etc, the idea was turned down (I won't get into details but it was basically said that they didn't need the money and preferred to keep the t-shirts as a team thing)

I do not want it to be a profiteering exercise, so if we ever do anything other than a limited edition run for supporters or whatever, I really can't see us doing it for any serious profit - but that's just my opinion right now, sat in a darkened room, late at night, in between struggling to make a new feature work. (i.e. Not with my business-sense brain in gear.)

It's never been about the money with us, but I guess one day we could consider it for funding servers down the line if needed.

(Right now: I'm just trying to get an idea of interest, so I can go investigate pricing and so on. More that are interested, the cheaper it gets per item.)