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Re: "Content-Type" Abstraction
>mary
“Ha! We will never add a “simple” Save as button! Ahahahahahahah!”
I imagined it more like “Muhahahahahahaha!” ;)
Seriously though, I give. I think this discussion has run it’s course. Sorry to have wasted time.
I just got rapturously excited about capabilities I saw somewhere else (too bad they live inside a dreadful framework). I thought they would fit nicely in the TXP context, and decided to share. I was genuinely surprised to find that this idea in particular is nothing new, and in fact, something that is at odds with the scope and focus of TXP.
We also have to support lots of people, AND develop an open source application. It’s not like we sit around on our asses…
OK, of course I understand this, and I have nothing but respect (even wonder[tag] at times) for the dev team. But I also feel that as a part of the community it is my/our job to help make TXP stronger by pointing out omissions and coming up with new uses/ideas/possibilities. Also by throwing lots of sites at TXP. I think that in turn, this is of great benefit to the devs and to TXP. Perhaps, pushing it in ways it was never intended to work.
I could think of myself and other non-programmer types as voracious consumers always asking for new stuff, or as partners with an important role in pushing forward a stronger TXP. I’m audacious enough to consider myself in the later group.
Thanks all.
Last edited by mrdale (2007-01-15 16:44:03)
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Re: "Content-Type" Abstraction
Mary wrote:
An element: think of the admin UI, urls and tags regarding files. That can be considered an element, and it already is, in crockery. You could, for example, make a completely customized file management system (complete with different tags) to replace the one that comes with Textpattern, without hacking anything. It’s better than a really big plugin, in that it would be more efficient (running native PHP rather than storing it in the db and eval-ing it) and wouldn’t require hacking or strange workarounds. It has the potential to be as simple or as complicated as you want.
Awesome, awesome, awesome. Being able to replace the built in Tabs without having to hack the source is one of the things that has been missing in terms of extensibility IMO. I know there are ways to do it now but I was hoping elements would allow for a more elegant approach. Very happy that at least in theory they should.
While not moving TXP into framework territory (where i don’t think it should go) it opens up even more options on top of the already extremely flexible plugin system.
Last edited by hakjoon (2007-01-16 23:59:15)
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Re: "Content-Type" Abstraction
hakjoon wrote:
Being able to replace the built in Tabs without having to hack the source is one of the things that has been missing in terms of extensibility IMO.
Actually it currently takes 1-2 lines in a plugin to replace a built-in tab. Register the tab to be called before the regular tab is called, and then use pagetop(), build your own UI and code, and then exit. There was a logging-plugin that used this method for well over a year.
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Re: "Content-Type" Abstraction
Doesn’t calling exit terminate the page building before things like the bottom drop down list and the logout link render? That was what I experienced when I was using it to render callbacks in pop up windows.
Of course I might have just been missing something when I tried, it’s been a while. If so please ignore my statement and redirect my excitement to the new knowledge I have acquired.
Last edited by hakjoon (2007-01-16 14:43:50)
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#17 2007-01-16 22:02:04
- zem
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- From: Melbourne, Australia
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Re: "Content-Type" Abstraction
Doesn’t calling exit terminate the page building before things like the bottom drop down list and the logout link render?
Just call end_page() yourself before exit if that’s a problem.
Alex
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Re: "Content-Type" Abstraction
Rockin. Thanks guys.
Still think elements are cool.
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#19 2008-04-14 05:07:10
- km
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- Registered: 2008-04-12
- Posts: 4
Re: "Content-Type" Abstraction
Said out of love:
I have to say I’m completely confused as to why this is controversial.
I understand opportunity cost as regards to implementation, but otherwise…?
I’ve been digging around the code trying to create a ‘plugin’ that is simply a content type. I’m going to succeed hell-or-high-water, but it just seems odd that articles/images/files/links aren’t all types of “content” with different fields.
I think of this abstraction idea as not abstract, but concrete… like “True Sections”.
The Classifieds, Movie Reviews, Arts pages, Sports boxscores, and News articles in a newspaper have very little structural relation to each other.
Similarly, a site’s blog, news commentary, cd review, photo album, podcast, blogroll, technical how-to articles, etcetc all have very little to do with each other structurally. Calling them all ‘articles’ and smushing their 48 fields (say) together into one content type is just confusing. (And with only 10 custom fields of one datatype…. braingroan)
If TXP shipped with only Articles, Links, Files, Images, that’d be great and-user friendly, but it’d be amazing to wander into the the db’s txp_content_types, add a row, a corresponding table with fields, and Wow! a whole new #$*()# reason for existence.
Anyway, I say this out of love, because I think TXP is awesome, and I want to use it waaaaay more than I do, and because I think extensibility makes the guts simpler, not more complicated, and would offer a sudden rush of uses, implementations, shared (and awesome) content types (like contenttype plugins!), and users.
It would also bring world peace.
Anyway, I’m just pointing out that I think this is a huge itch that needs to be scratched. I can’t build a back-scratcher that big, but I’m betting somebody can.
As to Drupal, CCK isn’t even in core, and depends on Views, and lags behind final releases by like a year.
TXP gets presentation and simplicity templates sooooo right (imo), that I just wish the contenttypes were that straightforward…
Sincerely,
Blah Q. Public
Last edited by km (2008-04-14 05:14:52)
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Re: "Content-Type" Abstraction
km wrote:
I’ve been digging around the code trying to create a ‘plugin’ that is simply a content type. I’m going to succeed hell-or-high-water… I think this is a huge itch that needs to be scratched. I can’t build a back-scratcher that big, but I’m betting somebody can.
Hi km. Though it sounds awesome and I’d love to see it done, you might want to point some of your effort over to xpattern instead.
With your ideas and enthusiasm, you could give us (the Royal Us; I’ve been out of the loop a bit the past few months) a hand batting about the best way forward for content types on the xpattern forum. Just a thought.
Last edited by Bloke (2008-04-14 08:00:27)
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Re: "Content-Type" Abstraction
This is definitely something xPattern hopes to tackle.
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