From: Jesse E. <je...@er...> - 2007-02-05 19:02:47
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Hi Sam --=20 > This sounds like a good idea to me, and I know it's something you've > had on your mind for a long time. What do you have in mind as far as > the UI/API? First, I'm not sure what to call these. Components? Containers? Modules? Units? Snippets? What I'm imagining is a new module, "Krang::Snippets" (or, whatever) for finding these objects at the API level, and a CGI module "Krang::CGI::Snippets" for accessing them via the UI. Krang::CGI::Snippets would function very similarly to Krang::CGI::Story. It would have a find mode, and when a user clicks "Edit", Krang::CGI::Snippets would leverage the ElementEditor. Snippets would behave more or less like stories. They could be checked out, moved to desks, and versioned. I suppose they ought to be able to be scheduled, too, but as their output is not a published page, I'm not sure what this would entail. (Just updating the "published version" of the snippet? Maybe.) Snippets should be programmable via the element system. They should have the capacity for a fill_template method, as all element libs do, though which is only used in the context of another story being published. How should Snippets be uniquely identified? Should they be given fake URLs? How do we uniquely and easily locate a particular Snippet? How do we restrict access to them, if not by category? Maybe, like templates, they are "meta data" to a published site? Automatically included under certain circumstance? (Or, as Bodo hinted, maybe they're just "named"?) Questions, questions, questions! To me, the following three use-cases should be satisfied by any solution: 1. A user, separate from the user who edits a particular story, should be able to completely manage a part of a page through this system without touching the story which publishes that page. 2. This system should obviate the need to create "mini stories" to contain bits of data used exclusively by other stories. For example, one Krang system we're creating has a concept of an "event" with a date. These events are published on various story pages, but have no page of their own. Right now, we create them as stories and "lead into" them. This system should eliminate this abuse of Krang. 3. Generally, Snippets should be more about the data (fields, values), whereas Stories should be more about the layout of the pages. Sam: How useful would something like this be to your work at P3? Do you have any other use-cases to add? TTYL, -Jesse- -- =20 Jesse Erlbaum The Erlbaum Group je...@er... Phone: 212-684-6161 Fax: 212-684-6226 =20 |