Re: [Phpwiki-talk] Is there a flow diagram for the components?

[Reini U. <ru...@x-...>]

Whit Blauvelt schrieb:
> Probably this is just a documentation request, but it would be really
> helpful if there were a good visualization of the inter-relation of
> PhpWiki's components, particularly the plugin design. 

That would be indeed  very helpful. Once you are in it, you will admire 
it, but it needs some time to get into it...
I think only three of use are really into it now (jeff - who wrote it, 
carsten and me). Some others caught the edges. Could be much more.
And it changes so often.

After this release I'll try do come up with a understandable code 
flowdiagram. Anyone please feel free to create a new PhpWiki page for 
this, like PhpWiki:CodeFlowDiagram.

There's a static diagram needed (easy), like the map for the templates, 
but also a dynamic diagram, how and when the libs are processed.
(main loop => page)

> The more I study it,
> the more I can sense that there's something really elegant here - but also
> the more it looks like any hacking of it requires an unusually thorough
> overview, since the simplest actions are atomized so as to involve a dozen
> files, so from the standpoint of wanting to add what in most scripted
> applications would be a simple hack in an obvious place -- well, here it
> requires a multi-layered appreciation of the design philosophy rather then
> just grepping for the obvious code that does something and then changing it.
> 
> Well-written procedural code reads like a natural language, so doesn't need
> extensive visualization. (Okay, very little of it is well-written, but in
> principle....) Well-written OO like PhpWiki is much less
> natural-language-like and much more like physical devices, so we could
> really use a visual map of components, inheritences, dependencies, and
> what's alterable by plugins, as compared to what's hard-wired by the base
> code. I'd guess every member of the core team has a good visual map of the
> whole territory in mind. But has anyone committed that map to a sketch that
> can be shared?
-- 
Reini Urban
http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/home/rurban/