Wedge

The "blobbish" wedges part of the current logo look clumsy to me. I'd go towards something like this :

We established that the current shape will be the quasi-final one, unless a much better one is found etc etc...
Look at how the 'level up' is nicely inserted below the shape, while on yours it's not balanced. Also, it's just a square with three colors and doesn't fit with the font. :^^;:

Oh, I've updated the poll with the PT Sans version.

I'm not sure if I'd expect people to "change" their votes after the fact...

But, the new one is pretty slick too.

I was avoiding this topic for the most part because I don't like fights. I've been in enough to know that little good comes of them, and invariably when I do join them, things get worse because I always call it as I see it, without much in the way of restraint.

That said, I do want to add my $0.02 here.


"I'm adamant that Pete and I will be the only developers on the first release."

We've never shied away from this being the case. We'll listen to anything people want to suggest, but the end of the day is that it will be our decision what gets implemented. Some things have been suggested and implemented, some things have even had code posted that I'm willing to accept in to the core once I've looked over them again and tested them to make sure there aren't any odd side effects, but the end of the day we're still acting as benevolent dictators.

Interestingly only yesterday I commented about this to a friend of mine, with the observation that every single open source project I've ever known to be actually actively developing has an inner core of benevolent dictators calling the final shots, but wise enough to accept contributions and ideas from anyone.Therein lies the first problem: why do people feel the need to be equal to contribute? Yes, we're not equal, but that's ultimately because we want to have the final say in what goes on. There are multiple goals for Wedge over its life, and some of those really rely on maintaining a single cohesive vision, and given the direction of some of those discussions, it's clear that that's a goal that's never going to be achieved.

You've indicated more than once about the desire (and even pretty much making it a *need*) for the software to have themes as the single dominant control on look and feel, but frankly, I don't think that holds up in real life as I tried to get across more than once. There have to be boundaries on creativity on both sides (between add-ons and themes) so that the two can co-exist nicely, and from the point we had that discussion, it seemed pretty clear to me that we were never going to work together too well, because we're at polar opposites and neither of us is prepared to give too much ground.

Yet, I don't regard anything that's happened as lost time. It's shown limitations and weaknesses in the status quo, and great things have happened as a consequence of all those discussions. Whether you realise it or not, or care or not, you have shaped Wedge in your own way, with the template skeleton stuff. That's huge stuff, it's completely changed how I will be writing mods, and you helped inspire that, so despite our mutual stubbornness, something good came of it. Maybe not everything you hoped for, but more than - I suspect - you expected. Much really as I thought when looking over the discussion about themes supporting add-ons. There isn't a way to handle both perfectly, so either you favour one or the other, or compromise somewhere in the middle, which is what I believe we're doing.

Specifically on the logo, I have to say I wasn't that impressed with the comment about the logo. You might find it a waste of time, but I don't, on different levels. Firstly, it's a relatively harmless way to blow off a bit of creative steam for Nao. Coding is a creative skill, yes, but it's a particular kind of creativity, and he has other creativity to let out, so to speak - so it allows for that.

Plus, it helps do something that we can't otherwise do at the moment: involve the community. I'm acutely aware that we have chosen, thus far, to keep the community at relative arms-length by keeping the code private and even keeping the demo site private. Thus for me, it's one of the few ways we can actually reach out to the community in a way that includes them in what we're doing.

I just want to answer Nao's last point, in a way that does kind of answer it on both sides, if that's going to make sense.Wedge has seen both Nao and myself with the freedom to do things that we've never done before, never been able to do before. It's a power, and it's sadly a little intoxicating. But with that power comes a responsibility.

There is one reason why we're conservative at times, it's because we know, deep down, we have to be. Yes, some things we can go nuts and really go to town on, like I'm doing with the admin panel and in particular add-ons. But I recognise that we can't just up-end things.

As much as I'd love to ignore the community and build our dream platform (which is, ultimately what Nao and I set out to do), we recognise that the community is going to use Wedge. That means it has to be usable, and at times it will have to fall back on the inconvenient truth that people don't always want what we want. They want what other software has. It means that we're bound by expectation to provide most of the same things as other packages, and it does restrict us from being too controversial particularly in the default look and feel area.

Therein lies the problem: you could design the single most innovative default theme ever, and we'd end up rejecting it or removing parts of it, not because it's you, not because it's not awesome: but simply because it's not what people expect, and it would reflect badly on all of us in that situation.

At the end of the day, though, the reason that Wedge is working the way it is, is because Nao and I have vision. It's mostly specific with some vagueness in places, but it's mostly a unified vision of where we want to take Wedge in the future, and the reality is that if someone wants to contribute something that doesn't really fit with that vision, no matter how good it is, the likelihood is that it's going to be kicked back, because that's life, and I know I've seen times where we've tweaked the vision to fit in with reality - but for the most part we have adhered to our vision.

Nao's right, when he says he's more conservative, but he doesn't give himself enough credit, because he didn't take the time to understand why he's more conservative, it's less about him wanting to be so and more because he knows, deep down, that he has to be.

As for being an innovator, I'd argue that by being prepared to buck the trend and go down roads that are less well travelled, or even untravelled, that does make you an innovator, Nao. I mean, what other system implements block management with the facility and ease of use that Wedge has?

---

The only reason I even came back to this topic today was that I was wondering if there was a bigger version of the current logo that I could pimp out my Twitter with. (Bigger version of the triangles, with the word underneath)

Thanks, and I agree with 100% of what you said :)Still doesn't mean we can't bring anything to each other. It's important to keep one's options open.IIRC, I built the skeleton code because I wanted to have one of my skins put the sidebar on the very left of the screen, because I was looking at one of my old sites that was built this way and had a feeling of nostalgia... eh eh :P
I thought hard, and first imagined I could make a 'string' that would tell Wedge where to put the sidebar. I just needed to give these 'blocks' a name and substance... Should I make a small HTML page that would call the template_functions by itself? Would it override the obExit code? And I think I quickly realized I could simply put together layers and blocks into that skeleton and call them normally from obExit & co.

Heck, the most surprising to me, is how natural this all is now. I mean, when it comes to templating, SMF is in the stone age for me. It took me only a day to implement a working prototype, and about a couple of weeks (among other projects) to make it work perfectly. Now I'm so happy with it, I'm actually working on splitting the index template into more items so that for instance a skin can push the language flags to the footer, things like that, without a single line of code... :)

Hmm, here's wondering if a plugin could do it by code easily... Hmmmmm... Either remove the block (removeBlock()) and then add it back where they want... Or just add it somewhere, and have Wedge automatically remove other instances... Although it could be possible that themers/modders would want to have a same block in two different places on the page.
Hmm... And what if I wanted to have a page index block... Problem is it takes params to work... Maybe I could improve the skeleton code to support something like <page_index:"base_url",0,100,10,false,true />

Or even conditional blocks...?

if (!empty($context['bottom_linktree']))
   template_linktree(false, true);

Could become...

<if:bottom_linktree:linktree:false, true />

Or just have the $context['bottom_linktree'] setter code go through something like this instead...

loadBlock('linktree:false,true', 'footer', 'before');

Oh, well... :)You know, I'm still not sure about either the logo shape and the logo font... :lol:Yes, true enough, when we started, we mainly saw Wedge as 'SMF for real men' (that was the original joke slogan), that is to say, a SMF for veteran admins who knew it well, and wanted to avoid its issues. I don't know when exactly we realized we'd started making Wedge targeted to just everyone. Our goal was never to be a 'real' SMF competitor, but I think that after spending a year of your life on something, you somehow want it to matter...There are two things in Wedge: themes and skins. I'm encouraging Bloc to both improve on the theme to make it more *universal* (i.e. more likely to help create stunning and original skins), and create skins for it. Given how small our skin files are, we can largely afford to provide several very different skins by default. As you can see, Warm and Wuthering don't require much attention from me. When I make a change to Wine, it's reflected automatically in the others, so it's like I only have one skin to maintain. I'm always considering making a barebones skin (which was my original goal with Warm, but honestly it was a failure, I just didn't go far enough and will something else about that in the near future.) There IS room for more skins, whether full skins or inherited skins. Really. The final choice over the 'default' skin will come later, and it can always change. Because people change, too. Ideas and tastes are not carved in stone, they evolve over time.I reckon I had plenty of ideas that the competition didn't have. I'm even a bit overprotective of them by now... I always let a sound out when I see John's fork (or another) is implementing a Wedge feature... (Well, that's mostly because he has access to the Wedge codebase and I don't have access to his own, so... I can't help but be a bit paranoid :P)
But I probably need to let these things behind me and focus on new things. There isn't any value in being 'attached' to your earlier achievements. Moving on is necessary at least when working on such a project.Here's a version that I hope you'll find visually appealing ;) Attached filesize and picture size variations in the RAR file. The second logo is for use on DARK backgrounds, of course.

Oh, and a last minute addition: a 50x50 version... Not in the RAR file though. It's not very good, I attempted to keep the font readable but I should have made the triangles a bit smaller.

Oh, sure. Just that when you have stubborn people on both sides of the debate, who are strong minded and fighting for their cause, they both have to realise that there must be compromise in a manner that benefits everyone.And here was me thinking it was because Bloc was talking about something that would give themes more flexibility and make them work more nicely with mods :P*nods* I don't think there's any doubt as to this being what it was always wanting to be when it grew up :)In my own take on the logo (see avatar!!!!) I reused the same font and messed about slightly with the shape, and distinctly went for the bevel that I could have sworn I'd seen in yours.When we started, it was SMF without the baggage that wound us up, at least in my head. But as soon as we realised that by dealing with the baggage, we'd encourage more people to use it... I think it was you, actually, who made me realise that my little 'building it for us' idealism didn't really work any more.Very much so, yes.You and me both. Fortunately for us, I have a few ideas in store that I haven't shared yet, some of which will be add-ons, some of which likely to become full core features, but it'll emerge over time exactly how and what they are :DI still have attachment, emotionally, to my earlier projects, but not because I lament the situation they're in, or that I resent how sour things got. I have attachment because each project I've done in the forum ecosystem taught me something more, and each mod I've written (which is about 70) has in its own little way shaped how Wedge is being refined.I like those but I'm still pretty attached to my own experiment as well... it does something different that reflects me in a funny way.

only I have a strange association?  :angel:

 :whistle: :whistle: :whistle:

Interesting association. Though yes, I guess, Wedge is like a heart pumping at the core of sites...

errrrr, isnt that your liver?
 :whistle:

Wedge - filtering out your forums cr4p  :eheh:

Well, I'm no biologist, but I thought the thing behind the 'heart' was the stomach...?