Menu
▾
▴
Tree [ffbdaa] master / History
Read Me
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="application/xhtml+xml; charset=utf-8" />
<title>php2press - readme</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>php2press</h1>
<h2>CMS? DTP? Or both?</h2>
<p>The php2press project aims to create a web-based system by which one can create content only once, then distribute it in any number of ways. The project itself will focus on the php2press core and a basic set of modules. The modules will do the actual work, interacting with each other and the core to generate and manipulate a php2press deployment site. Following is the list of the basic modules this project will aim to create.</p>
<ul>
<li><b>MySQL Database Module</b> - written to leverage the capabilities of the MySQL server system within the context of PHP, the MySQL module will act as an interface between a php2press site and its database(s).</li>
<li><b>User Authentication Module</b> - in the interest of protecting a php2press site from unsolicited alteration, a user authentication system will be managed through the Auth module.</li>
<li><b>Content Management Module</b> - designed without a specific user interface in mind, the CMS module will provide properly authorized users the ability to manage a php2press site.s content.</li>
<li><b>Layout Management Module</b> - again designed without a specific user interface in mind, the LMS module will provide properly authorized users the ability to manage a php2press site.s layout.</li>
<li><b>php2press Output Modules</b> - a number of Out modules will be created to showcase the flexibility of the php2press output system.
<ul>
<li><b>HTML Output Module</b> - acting as the primary User Interface module, the HTMLOut module will combine a php2press site.s content with its layout, and format the result as CSS/HTML.</li>
<li><b>XML Output Module</b> - to ease import into other applications for which Out modules have not been written, php2press will include an XMLOut module, which will format a site.s content and layout using XML/XSLT.</li>
<li><b>PDF Output Module</b> - perhaps the most useful Out module for desktop publishing purposes, the php2press PDFOut module will format site content and layout using PDF.</li>
<li><b>WAP Output Module</b> - this module, which formats content and layout for use on mobile devices such as cell phones and PDAs, might be moved to its own project prior to the release of the basic php2press package.</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<p>The php2press core will act as a mediator between the various modules, coordinating the processing and output of php2press site pages. The core will provide a programmatic interface through which the various modules can access and manipulate the current page . both content and layout . from initial creation to final output. The current page will be stored in the core itself until the request for that page has been processed.</p>
<p>The basic principle of php2press is that you shouldn.t have to create your content four different times for three different output formats. Why redo the work of writing an article in a desktop publishing (DTP) application when you.ve already written it for the web? Why rewrite a website line by line for viewing on cell phones? Why not just create the content once, and have it automatically propagate through to all of your output formats? php2press promises to do a lot for those who would like to publish their work to multiple resources at once.</p>
<hr>
<p>If you check <a href="http://www.sourceforge.com/projects/php2press/">our SourceForge page</a>, you'll see that this project was started in 2004. If you check your calendar (or a nearby clock), you'll see that it is currently 2009. Yeah, it's been a few years.</p>
<p>php2press has been going through our minds for some time now, but other commitments have kept most of us from making any significant progress. This is not to say that no progress has been made - to the contrary, several pages of code have been churned out since the project's inception fourish years ago. Unfortunately, we may end up starting over from scratch.</p>
<p>The biggest challenge we've faced, after time itself, has been knowing what it is we're trying to accomplish. Our end goal was never written down anyplace where it could be referred to later. No summary of intended features was ever generated. Most of the development has been seat-of-the-pants output, generated as things came to mind - and this doesn't exactly help with creating a well-oiled, fully-integrated machine such as a CMS. So regardless of whether we decide to keep the existing code or not, we are going to sit down in the near future and discuss what exactly it is we're looking to do here, and from there we can figure out how.</p>
<p>How long of a wait can be expected? Your guess is as good as ours at this point. Hopefully our recent change in leadership will help move things along a bit, but we make no guarantees. If you wish to give things a bit of a nudge and make sure we're still working on the project, feel free to drop by <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/#php2press">our IRC channel on FreeNode</a>. You can also shoot me an email using the link at the bottom of this page.</p>
<p>Until next time:</p>
<p>- Richard Pisca</p>
</body>
</html>
