Re: [phpslash-users] Contributing...?

[nathan r. h. <nh...@ar...>]

On Tue, 3 Apr 2001, Midnight Ryder wrote:

> Hi all -
> Well, now that I got the site back up and running again, I was looking at
> finally contributing some things back to PHPSlash - IF anyone is interested
> in what I have to offer.
> 

Great!  Contribs are always a wonderful thing!

> I'm wanting to put in some new variables - some of them other people might
> or might not like.  I'd like to add:
> 
>     remove_department    bool    when true, the "From the [x] dept." is no
> longer displayed.
> 

Ok.

>     remove_section_display    bool    when true, things like "Home" from the
> main page (since it's really not nessisary, and a more appropriate path is
> displayed just below the topic bar now (ie, Home -> JumpmanGames)
> 

?  What exactly are you removing here?  I'm not sure

>     remove_sitename_display   bool   when true, the site name + ":" is not
> display.  (Sorry, I've always thought that was ugly, and if you already have
> the site logo above it, what's the point?)
> 

Ok.

>     remove_edging    bool   when true, removes the normal edging that
> appears on the left hand side of all articles and blocks.
> 

?  What's edging? The curve?

>     remove_search    bool    when true, removes the 'search' at the top of
> the page
> 

Ok

>     remove_topics    bool    removes the topic displays
> 

You men the topic block on the side?  Or something else?

>     default_width    int    sets the default width for the PHPSlash site
> table (IE, so the bloody thing can be set to take 100% of the browser
> window!)
> 
> 

That's an html specfic thing and belongs in the .tpl files.  Pushing the
pages out to the extreme side I think is quite ugly, and for those with
resolutions >1024x768 100% wide tables make the site hard to read 'cause a
story is on one line.  We worked real hard to get as much actual php code
out of phpSlash to make templates easy to use.  Yep, it means having to
edit a few .tpl files, but having to maintin the code to mess with
presentation is much worse.

> To the blocks I'd like to add:
> 
[snip]
> 
> And to the stories I'd like to add:
> 
[snip]
> 
> Ok, why in bloody hell do I want to add this?  Well, I'd really like to be
> able to make certain stories have certain colors, ditto with blocks.  By
> doing this, it's fairly simple to do - the script checks to see if (for
> instance) bodybackcolor is empty, and if so, it just uses the site defaults.
> If it does contain a value, it does the appropriate things and gives the
> story the proper background color from bodybackcolor.  (And, doing it this
> way, no one needs to change all of thier current stories - they just use the
> existing colors.)
> 

Hack on the Block.class and make this an option value.  Same with the
Story.class, though you'd need to add a option handling to that class...
This is really a API thing and (technically) shouldn't be really happening
till we're a bit closer to 1.0.

The stories Classes should (I belive) take template files to parse into as
part of the process, so you may just need to find a way to check the topic
and use "topicXXXarticle.tpl" (or whatever set of templates) inseatd of
the default. This would be a quick addition to the base Story class and
should be easy to implement.  IS would also (I think, Ajay, will need to
confirm this for me) be most "phpSlash" way of doing things.

> However, there are three problems here...
> 
> 1)  Would this potentially cause problems with 'skinning' PHPSlash later
> when users are allowed to select thier own schemes for the site?  (Something
> I really could care less about, because of what I'm using PHPSlash for, but,
> I can see why some people might like it ;-)
> 

You might care if you wanted to add a "light" version or an AdvantGo
version, or test out a new layout before taking it public :) Besides,
wouldn't it be nice to re-skin your site to support the launch of a new
game?

Not sure how bad it would be for skinning, so long as the .tpl files  had
the proper html in them and the logic could override as needed.

> 2)  I don't do CVS, and don't have developer access anyway - but, who would
> I submit changes to?
> 

A game desginer who doesn't do CVS?... *gasp* :)

Patches can be sent to the SourceForge Patch Tracker on our SourceForge
project page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpslash/).  You can submit
as many as you'd like, and developers can accept them if they want to or
just leave them there for the community to grab at will (or both).  If you
have stuff you want to see incoperated,  send it there, we'll leave it
there, even if it's not something we'd like to see in mainline CVS.

> 3)  If everyone likes the idea - are the variable names of liking to
> everyone?
> 
> I also thought about instead of doing it this way, creating another table
> called psl_quickstyles which contains the actual styles, and just giving the
> blocks and stories an entry to look up the information from psl_quickstyles
> (that way, you don't have to enter the information by hand each time you
> want to change the color of a new story) - but, that requires another lookup
> from the DB from a new table for each story or block display.  Yucky.
> 

Well yucky sure, but with the amoutn of DB calls we make per page
iteneration, one more is hardly going to tip the scale :)  This would be a
good way to, but I think this would get in the way of the skin engine,
though it could be part if it.

> And, as for the other changes that I'm proposing there - I'm using PHPSlash
> for a commercial site, so I've got a slightly different expectation than
> most people do for what it should look like.  The variables that I've
> proposed (and the minor code changes) are designed so that they are by
> default going to work with everyone's site. (Er, besides the width one...
> <GRIN>)
> 


> Any comments?  Should I do it?  (I'm trying to avoid making changes unless
> they are going to be in the normal PHPSlash - that way I don't have to fool
> with too many changes when upgrading... like I just did.  Blew away a bunch
> of custom changes that I didn't bother to track... <GRIN>)
> 

Send the patches to the Patch tracker, and we'll take a look, I don't
think the specfic block and article / story suggestions you made will amke
it, we had alot of stuff like that in 0.5x, it's one reason why we went to
templates.

-n
-- 
......
nathan hruby - nh...@ar...
computer support specialist
department of drama and theatre
http://www.drama.uga.edu/
......