Re: [Phpslash-devel] embracing the future

[Joe S. <joe...@us...>]

On Sun, Oct 26, 2003 at 11:24:18AM -0500, Luis M wrote:
> >I know nothing about the phpslash-dev site, but I am quite interested in
> >offering what Back-End has learned/used for adding/editing documents.
> 
> People should really start trying phpslash-dev module from the cvs. It's 
> pretty much "stable" enough right now to be used in replacement of 
> phpslash-ft. But, remember that's the "experimentation" module. We should 
> probably freeze it as it is right now and do a minor release based on it so 
> that people can try it and we can get an idea of how the migration will be 
> from -ft (current stable release) to -dev. From then on it will be downhill 
> with -dev.

Let's package a development release soon.  The related links need a
fixing.

> Remember that -dev is fully modularized. Everything, every block, story, 
> header behaves in this manner... Great level of "granularity" and also a 
> scary thought that if something goes wrong, it might be hard to know from 
> where the error is coming... that's why we need testing, to improve it to 
> the point that we know for sure we are not missing anything and start 
> replacing our own sites (first) with the minor release (fingers crossed) 
> and deal with possible pitfalls.
> 

I think maybe we can add a group and permissions to only allow certain
block editors the ability to change some of the module blocks.


> [snip]
> 
> >Why not give your users the option of entering/editing stories using the
> >editing syntax that they choose?
> >
> >Back-End has added a wiki text editor mode and an implementation of
> >htmlArea3 to psl's present options.  Giving users options is a good
> >thing.  Adding an option for phorum-like syntax could be a useful option
> >too.  For the wiki text we added an extra column for both the parsed
> >html as well as the original wiki content.
> 
> I really don't know much about what BackEnd is. I guess I jumped in late in 
> the phpslash-* discussions and didn't get the whole scope of it. I keep 
> reading your posts relating to it, but I don't know anything about it. 
> Besides the backend.php script in phpslash which I use for my syndicated 
> news and Mozilla tabs.
> 

Back-End - http://www.back-end.org.

A cms that has been in the top 9 sf.net projects.  Mike Gifford took the
task of using phpSlash as their development framework.

They've got some neat additions.  Peter C. has some base classes that
hopefully will be backported in some way.  Evan wrote an installer script.
Maybe you and he can get together to flesh one out for phpSlash.  wiki
markup understood ( similar to phpBB code or phorumcode).  Subsections.
etc.

> [snip]
> 
> >htmlArea3 is pretty good..  There's even a spell check module.  The best
> >thing is that it works in Mozilla & IE so I can actually test it.
> 
> Sounds like htmlArea3 is the way to go then... Giving users choices is 
> great, but if we could simplify things and at least choose htmlArea3 to be 
> the default and let users turn it off as they get better in using the 
> phpslash interface. Powerusers should be able to go to their own profiles 
> and turn on or off what they want or don't want. My concern is to make 
> things super clear and super simple for those users who don't have the 
> notion of how computer programs work -- or web interfaces for that manner. 
> Users who simply have not been exposed to those conventions might not find 
> certain things too intituitive when they first see it. I think, for 
> instance, that php Phorum achieves this instantly. Once you install it and 
> use it, you don't have to know how to do anything (i.e. read any manuals or 
> help), so, users start instantly interacting with others in the site. As an 
> example of this. I setup a Forum using Phorum (redundant sound uh?) here: 
> http://foro.latinomixed.com. In my regular site, dealing with news and 
> howto articles in general, users rarely register as new users or for the 
> mailing list or anything. Whereas within days of activating the forum I got 
> about 27 users registered (and counting). In my case, my site aims at those 
> who need help (non-power users) who are looking for ways to improve their 
> computer knowledge. In reality, even power users benefit from having things 
> simpler; that's why Linux users buy Mac laptops with MacOS X on them :-D
> 
> >I also like the idea of being able to just upload the html of a story
> >rather than having to copy/paste it.
> 
> That has already been added to phpslash-dev and it works fine. I ported 
> that from my own site which was based on phpslash-0.6.x and updated the 
> code so that it works with php 4.1  and up -- the reason for this is that 
> I'm using the _FILES array to avoid having users specifically changing 
> their php.ini's or anything else. It works perfectly for as long as you 
> have file upload on in php.ini (of course). Read the comments in 
> include/modules/story/Story_base.class of the phpslash-dev cvs module.
> NOTE: that makes me wonder if there is a way to use Oxygen to generate 
> documentation for php source code the same way that it's used for C++? We 
> should have documentation for the developers as well as for regular 
> users... just a thought...
> 

So far this is what we've  got:

	http://phpslash.sourceforge.net/phpdoc/phpslash-ft/

I'll add one for the -dev tree up soon.


A developer's reference has been started, but not worked on much.  It's in
the doc directory or online:

	http://phpslash.sourceforge.net/doc/psldeveloper.html

> >Would be also useful to allow folks to turn on/off modules through the
> >web interface rather than through the config.ini.php
> 
> Wonderful idea. The problem would be where to put the config.ini.php then 
> so that it's writeable by the user that runs the webserver or in the 
> database itself. Maybe we should get rid of the file config.ini.php 
> altogether and put this whole file in a compressed format into a record in 
> the database... gzip compression is done on the fly these days, why not 
> take advantage of that. We could even use jp_cache to cache it for X number 
> of minutes... Joe?
> 

Matthew was working on getting the PSL array sessionized some.  


A couple of other wishlist items - webmin module ( perl based), a debian
package.

Joe

> >Also, we had talked about an installer in the past for psl/be..
> >Wondered if you had a chance to check out Back-End's new installer
> >script.  Makes an installation pretty quick.
> 
> The script is written in php and runs as a cgi? or is it a Perl script? I 
> did a setup.php script for parsing the config-dist.ini.php file so that 
> users can edit it in their browsers and save this file to a file in their 
> workstations for then uploading that to whatever server they will use... 
> long procedure uh? but works.
>
> ----)(-----
> Luis Mondesi
> System Administrator
> LatinoMixed.com
> 
> le...@ho...
> 
> "...The Mac does this so smoothly, it feels like an extension of your 
> mind." - Paula Speer, MacWorld Magazine 2003-04
> 
> Public signature: http://www.latinomixed.com/lems1/public-a.asc
>