Re: Webmin Framework

[Joe C. <jo...@sw...>]

I get your gist now, and you're right.  Themes in Webmin are new (they 
just arrived three releases back) and pretty rough around the edges.

I have made a theme myself, but it is primarily the default with all new 
icons (absolutely gorgeous icons--it makes all the difference in the 
world ;-).  I'm guessing Jamie is sympathetic, and would be willing to 
listen to reason in this area...He's done at least one theme for a 
proprietary company in the past, so I reckon he knows the difficulties 
of it.

I must admit there are some things I'd like to see made easier about 
theming.  Interestingly, one of the first projects in Webmin I embarked 
on, was making Webmin themable--luckily, Jamie came out with a themable 
version less than a week after I started hacking on it.  It's a bigger 
task than it seems...especially since Webmin wasn't designed to be 
themable from the beginning.

That being said, perhaps all of the folks who are doing Webmin themes 
(and there are at least a few), should get together and help Jamie bring 
Webmin page templating, or something similar, to life.  I'd like to see 
it, and would be happy to help make it happen.  (We just have to be 
careful not to volunteer Jamie into doing more work than he already 
does! ;-)  We could at least get the HTML out of the code, and into UI 
modules where it belongs.

But I still contend that even in the area of themes, Webmin isn't all 
that bad.

Nick Jennings wrote:

> Joe, I believe the fine manual you are referring to is in regards to
> writing a webmin module. This documentation is great, if all I wanted
> to do was write a webmin module. That's not all I need to do, and that
> isn't what I am having trouble with. I have several years of perl experience
> and have developed and contributed to several open source projects using
> my perl skills, so I don't think that is the issue either. 
> 
> Those docs don't cover "webmin development" as you say, they convert
> developing webmin modules, there is a very drastic difference.
> 
> What I am trying to do is change the webmin framework. (i.e. the stuff
> before the modules are called). There is no documentation on the layout
> of webmin (e.g. filenames & their functions, the full process from
> webmin being started (via. miniserv.pl) to webmin display and managing
> its modules. 
> 
> the "themes" in webmin are pretty much a complete hack in my opinion, your
> basically copying the webmin code into a different directory and then 
> recoding it to do what you want. Theres no code reuse at all, if the main
> webmin index.cgi is updated in a future release, those changes have to be
> interpreted into however the "theme" was modified, and it's just a mess.
> 
> The directory structure contains modules, themes, and core level directories
> all together.. the category tabs are hard coded etc.
> 
> I realize allot of the in-flexibility is due to the attempt at a cohesive
> internationalization method, but I think things could be design in a
> way that still allows flexibility and code re-use. 
> 
> I am not trying to just gripe out webmin's shortcomings, that isn't why
> I subscribed to this list. I would like help, direction, advice, documentation
> anything to help me do what I need to do, which is modify the core workings
> of webmin to allow me to do things that currently you just can't do.
> 
> I think this is a key reason why there aren't hardly any webmin themes at 
> all. You basically have to sit a recode the core handling of webmin's
> index.cgi in order to make a theme, and all of the HTML is embedded in
> the code instead of in templates.
 

                                   --
                      Joe Cooper <jo...@sw...>
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