Textpattern roadmap: 4.6 and beyond

gaekwad · 2015-10-18 21:27:49

About a week ago, I met up with Stef and Phil to talk Textpattern.

We ended up making a Textpattern roadmap.

You can read more about it here: textpattern.com/weblog/386/textpattern-portishead-meet-2015

Can you help make this a reality? Let us know below.

Last edited by gaekwad (2015-10-19 09:32:02)

gomedia · 2015-10-19 00:12:06

Looks like you had a very productive session. Great to get a peek into the crystal ball. Congrats & thanks.

jakob · 2015-10-19 11:57:42

Thanks all of you for the informative update. Great to see the priorities mapped out and great to see concrete steps amidst all the discussions of late. Thank you for your hard work and for making the time to meet up in person.

Dragondz · 2015-10-19 13:01:20

Thanks for the news and for the works guys.

I got time to make a quick hi to Stef and Phil by Skype and happy to see them.

Cheers.

etc · 2015-10-19 13:06:42

First of all: thanks! Second: are the articles unlimited custom fields postponed to 4.8 too? If so, any plans of merging various content units (articles, images, files, …) into one content concept, i.e. introducing custom content types?

philwareham · 2015-10-19 13:32:12

Hi Oleg,

Changes to custom fields are postponed to 4.8 – but the release cycle will be sped up (e.g. you won’t need to wait 3 years between releases). This was decided so we can get 4.6 released sooner to all users, with all the goodness that is already in there. Once the admin layout update branch has been merged into master Stef is going to work more on his themes and custom-fields branches I believe.

gaekwad · 2015-10-19 13:32:26

etc wrote #296009:

First of all: thanks! Second: are the articles unlimited custom fields postponed to 4.8 too? If so, any plans of merging various content units (articles, images, files, …) into one content concept, i.e. introducing custom content types?

One of the (many) discussions we had centred around Stef trying a number of approaches to address the unlimited custom fields in articles, but none were the right fit across the board. Rather than delay the release of 4.6, it was decided to push it back to post-4.6 with a view to having a meeting-of-the-minds between the more prolific PHP developers around here (your name was mentioned, along with ruud, makss and someone else whose name I didn’t note) to figure out the best way to implement it.

With the (huge) amount of new stuff in 4.6 already, some things had to be moved in the interests of releasing and minimising feature creep, and this was one of those things.

With a more clearly-defined roadmap, the road to 4.7 is open after 4.6 is released. If something built, tested, ready and viable for 4.7 when it’s in the roadmap for 4.8 (as an example), I can’t see any practical reason not to include it in a minor (not patch) release ahead of time. The roadmap will change, that’s inevitable — while I can’t speak for either Stef or Robert, I am almost certain a pull request or brain dump on how to achieve unlimited custom fields in articles (or other content types) would be gratefully and graciously received.

Edit: Phil beat me by 14 measly seconds. Bah.
Edit #2: typo.

Last edited by gaekwad (2015-10-19 14:14:48)

philwareham · 2015-10-19 14:11:18

One thing to add to what Pete said: major feature additions can only happen at point releases (such as 4.6, 4.7, etc) and not at minor point releases (such as 4.6.1, 4.7.3, etc). Minor point releases are for bug fixes, minor improvements to existing features and security fixes only. This is to adhere to the semantic version model.

That being said, if a feature becomes available a point release release earlier than the roadmap then that’s fine.

sacripant · 2015-10-19 14:15:26

Thank you for sharing this roadmap with the community.
I support the idea to release more often new versions, even if there are fewer improvements.

Two questions :

1/ If unlimited custom fields for articles are not OK for 4.6 release. A core dev or another plugin dev volunteered to patch glz_custom_fields ? If not, I think many plateformes wil not pass to 4.6.

2/ I don’t see ‘unlimited categories’ in your roadmap, This improvement is abandoned ? if yes, why ?

michaelkpate · 2015-10-19 14:19:29

I notice one issue isn’t on the roadmap.

Bloke wrote #283591:

However, one of the major stumbling blocks is the fact we’re using MySQL exclusively and PHP has deprecated the mysql_* calls (see Issue 426). That means we’re on borrowed time. Moving to PDO is the way forward, imo, and some of the work is swapping out the calls to use the newer syntax in txplib_db.php.

hcgtv · 2015-10-19 14:20:29

A Roadmap? Is this Textpattern, or have I landed on the wrong forum?

Glad to see a Roadmap, glad to see all the activity of late, go Robert!

Phil’s admin-layout-update branch is what I’ve been using locally to create Themes, with it’s larger text areas for Pages and Forms, it’s great for working on the Presentation. So I’m glad to see it slated for 4.6, so I can upload it to my production sites and speed up my online activity.

Let me just touch on my workflow in regards to Themes and launching sites. I use a text editor to prepare the HTML template by injecting Template Tags and Header, Footer standards. Then it’s copy/pasted into my local Themes TXP 4.6dev install for massaging and testing. Right now most of my Themes are 1 Page and 1 Style, Forms has proven to be a bear to juggle with 12 Themes.

Once the Theme is ready, I can launch a site with it. At this point, the Page is sliced and diced into Forms: Header, Footer, Sidebar, etc. From that point on, I have no use for text editor, I do all my work on the backend. Call me old fashioned or whatever, but I’m lightning quick on the backend.

What does all this have to do with a Roadmap? Simple, the Backend work that Phil is doing is going to get Textpattern more users, and they will use the Presentation section to adjust their sites, not a text editor.

There’s two audiences for TXP, the web designer and the end user. There’s no reason we can’t please both.

ruud · 2015-10-19 14:26:55

michaelkpate wrote #296023:

I notice one issue isn’t on the roadmap.

4.6 has already switched from mysql_ to mysqli_, so the switch to PDO can wait.

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#1 2015-10-18 21:27:49