[feedback] Drew Mclellan on the state of Textpattern

Mary · 2007-05-16 03:15:16

…or are there going to be specific additions?

I’m not sure what you’re asking exactly, but I’ll try and answer that once more.

Logoleptic · 2007-05-16 06:59:42

Thanks for the blog post, Mary. It should help clear things up for people.

Hopefully the new book will bring some new developer interest to Txp, thus speeding things up a bit.

I think it’s important to note what Textpattern has going for it:

Security. Since the release of 4.0.4, how many “OMG HAX0RZ WILL KEEL U” security releases has WordPress had? At least three that I can think of, and I’m not even thinking that hard. TextPattern? Zero.
Stability. I kind of like not feeling pressure to upgrade the foundation of a website every four months, thank you very much.
Speed. In my experience, Textpattern is typically faster at rendering pages than the competition. Caching plugins make it faster still.
Flexibility. Things that are hard in systems like WordPress are easy in Txp. The template system is somewhat complex, but very powerful. Plugins abound.
Community. This is one of the most helpful CMS forums I’ve participated in. Active and well-organized, too.

And what is it missing?

A roadmap to soothe the doubters. I understand why this isn’t practical, but it could have a beneficial effect on community morale. Even a general “we’re shooting for these features in the next release” would help, and we’re already seeing those statements for crockery.
A release treadmill. No big loss there.
Pingback and trackback support. Sorry, but this is important for the bloggers out there. Trackback support is available, but only as a two-year-old hack with German documentation.
Simple navigation handling. The built-in tags got better at this in 4.0.4, and more improvements are probably underway for 4.0.5. With nested sections and unlimited categories in 4.1.x, we’ll have to see this stuff dramatically overhauled. I’m very curious to see how that comes out. Meanwhile, some plugins are filling the void.

Those are my thoughts. I’m working on my PHP chops, and will probably be investigating the pingback/trackback issue if nobody else gets to it first.

ramanan · 2007-05-16 15:00:49

If people are so damn unhappy I don’t see why they don’t just fork TxP. The code is all “free”. If people think they can do a better job of things than Alex, Pedro, Sencer, Mary, etc, etc, why not do so. Complaining isn’t going to make things magically better, though it is certainly much easier.

Last edited by ramanan (2007-05-16 15:01:50)

Logoleptic · 2007-05-16 15:10:12

A lot of people have expectations of free (as in speech) software that are based on their experiences of commercial software. I don’t think that’s the case with Drew, though. He seems willing to contribute if he knew what direction he should work toward. I doubt he has the time and energy to manage a fork, however.

colak · 2007-05-16 16:09:24

I agree with Logoleptic

What I would like to know is whether those who complain are mac or pc users…
My experience in both platforms indicates that pcs need daily updating: system bug fixes, antiviral software, security fixes, anti-spyware, etc…
Mac’s? Updating the sys security and virus sw once a month is enough….

To me txp is a mac. It does not need the daily patches. It just works.

Every time there is a new txp version out I found that there are minor bugs which have always been fixed very quickly and efficiently. If the releases were more frequent those bugs would keep on manifesting in different parts of the code and we would be doing nothing else except uploading txp via our ftp clients… Is this what people want?

I used to want to have the latest and the newest… Now, I think that this rat race is pointless and I am looking for reliability and stability. TXP gives me both. I don’t give a s*** if there’s going to be a new version anytime soon. What I do care about is for that version to offer me a seamless upgrade. This will not be possible if things are rushed. Updating is not an ends in itself. Content is. If people here focused more on the content of their websites as opposed to what happens in the back end, maybe this discussion would never happen.

Most of us are probably using about 50% of txp’s possibilities anyway.

Speaking for myself I cannot think of more than a handful of ~~improvements~~ feature ideas which, at the moment, they are available as plugins anyway…

This does not mean that i want txp development to stop… What I do want is for the software to thoughtfully expand. And this is only possible if sufficient time and support is given to the devs.

Last edited by colak (2007-05-16 16:12:28)

Logoleptic · 2007-05-16 17:31:51

What I would like to know is whether those who complain are mac or pc users…

Well, I’m a PC user. I’m not sure the expectations for Web software are necessarily the same as those for desktop software.

One thing people should keep in mind is that no one CMS is perfect for everything. Some things are possible with Drupal that I’d never try to attempt with Txp. If you’re only making a straight-up weblog, WordPress is great. And so on. If Textpattern tries to be all things to all people, it runs the risk of being nothing to nobody.

Last edited by Logoleptic (2007-05-16 17:32:09)

Mary · 2007-05-16 21:47:58

If anyone has any further questions or comments, they can be directed to the usual places:

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

#25 2007-05-16 03:15:16

Re: [feedback] Drew Mclellan on the state of Textpattern

#26 2007-05-16 06:59:42

Re: [feedback] Drew Mclellan on the state of Textpattern

#27 2007-05-16 15:00:49

Re: [feedback] Drew Mclellan on the state of Textpattern

#28 2007-05-16 15:10:12

Re: [feedback] Drew Mclellan on the state of Textpattern

#29 2007-05-16 16:09:24

Re: [feedback] Drew Mclellan on the state of Textpattern

#30 2007-05-16 17:31:51

Re: [feedback] Drew Mclellan on the state of Textpattern

#31 2007-05-16 21:47:58

Re: [feedback] Drew Mclellan on the state of Textpattern

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