April 2005 - Development - lists.drupal.org

[drupal-devel] RFC, Help: Drupal for ambitious Campus-Wide Blogging project
by Leonard Lin 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

Hi, I've been working on a plan for campus-wide blogging at USC using Drupal and am hoping to get some feedback, especially on the technical implementation side. Plan, documentation: https://w3.usc.edu/display/blogs/Home Clickable partial wires: http://w3.usc.edu/blogs/site/ I'm working from the latest Drupal 4.6.0 release (am keeping a separate svn vendor branch, as I think some core modifications will be unavoidable) The focus for the blogging functionality are: * formal and ad-hoc group forming - I think this will be done primarily through the organic groups module * fine-grained, layered, per-entry privacy control - throwing an interface on top of the by-node privacy * emergent taxonomies (freetags) - looking at Julian's Folksonomy as well as the new 4.6 Folksonomy module I'm not sure how roles plays with all this yet, I think since a lot of the control I'm looking at is group-based rather than traditional roles, I may just skip that entirely? Here are the issues I'm encountering so far that I'm hoping to get suggestions on: * webserver_auth - I'm kicking the wheels on the webserver_auth module (http://drupal.org/project/webserver_auth) right now (we use Shibboleth for our WebISO/SSO, but it's basically a form of Apache authentication). There seems to be an issue with how it processes the REMOTE_USER though. Can someone point me to docs or explain how the authmap works w/ the external user calls? I don't mind just hacking in there, but if possible, I'd like to do things the 'right way'. * first-login - is there a first-login module? basically, we need to create a step-by-step process for when users first sign-in: http://w3.usc.edu/blogs/site/Step%201.html * theming - this is perhaps a biggie. Drupal currently seems to work on a per-user basis for theme selection. We're looking to allow users to choose their own themes for their own blogs, that will apply on a per blog/space basis (and in the future customize w/ coloring, images): http://w3.usc.edu/blogs/site/My%20Blog.html Any suggestions? Are we going to have to write (adapt) our own theme engine? * friends view - one of the other big pieces is a creating a personal aggregator view (http://w3.usc.edu/blogs/site/My%20Favorites.html) sort of like a mega-livejournal/y!360 friends view. Is there anything out there that does this? * blog view - I've seen some earlier posts about adapting the 'blog' view to handle all types of content types. We're definitely interested in doing that. Any thoughts beyond the hacks that people have done already? * aggregation - one of the things we're trying to do is have a graceful way of handling users who already have their own blogs. I'm looking into the idea of using the rss aggregation solely for importing a user's external blogs into nodes for a user (see blog view for displaying all content types by a user) * major changes to input forms - I don't think there's any other options besides hacking away at the node and filter modules? * Dashboard - the main page view, once logged in and first-logged in'd, is for a Dashboard - does something like this exist? in the past, I've hacked things directly into the theme templates, but the 'right' way to do it is through a module (and then change the front-page setting from node to dashboard?) A lot of functionality is there, I think a fair bit of this is wrapping my head around the best way to implement within Drupal. As mentioned, any feedback, suggestions, pointers would be appreciated. (should I also post to the forums, or is that redundant?) .l

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[drupal-devel] [feature] _system_zonelist should return locale names
by crunchywelch 27 Apr '05

27 Apr '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/21343 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: system.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: crunchywelch Updated by: crunchywelch Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/system_6.patch (4.87 KB) This patch adds locale names to the timezone offsets provided by system.module. Currently, the function returns an array with offsets for keys and formatted 'local' times for the values. With this patch, the function will return an associative array with two keys 'times' and 'locales'. Each key has an array with the offset values for keys, and thier associated local time value, or locale name. This patch provides a standard place to retrieve timezone values when developing with them, improves useability when displaying timezone select boxes, and updates the timezone offset values. This patch will be utilized immediately by event.module, which currently uses an almost equivelant function, event_zonelist. crunchywelch

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[drupal-devel] [task] Make posting permission more granular.
by Cvbge 26 Apr '05

26 Apr '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/10426 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: comment.module Category: tasks Priority: normal Assigned to: killes(a)www.drop.org Reported by: killes(a)www.drop.org Updated by: Cvbge Status: patch Hello I need to be able to a) post/reply etc on forums as anonymous user b) do not anon users to edit it's own (probably made by other anon users) forum posts c) do not allow anyone to post comments to any other node types AFAIK currently it's not possibile, but it'd be possibile with this patch, so I'd be glad it it was accepted. Cvbge Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 29, 2004 - 05:55 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node-access-comment.patch (5 KB) There have been requests to private forums. I think the most straightforward way to allow them is by extending the node_access hook. The attached patch tries this. It assumes that my node object caching patch got committed. Afterwards loading a node twice won't be a performance issue anymore. The patch is untested, I'd like to get feedback on the implementation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ August 31, 2004 - 15:53 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node-access-comment_0.patch (5.02 KB) The patch is now tested. I think this needs a better explanations: The patch isn't only for forums (which still need some kind of taxonomy permissions) but applies to all nodes. You can set individual nodes to be commentable through the _access hook. This would be helpfull for a forum where only a selected role should be allowed to post, but others should read the announcements. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 4, 2004 - 07:57 : killes(a)www.drop.org The patch has a small problem: We need either to move this check <?php if ($op == 'comment' && $node->comment == 2 && user_access('post comments')) { return TRUE; } ?> before the db query (and thus taking away a bit of the power from that patch) or add a grant_comment column to the node_access table: alter table node_access add grant_comment tinyint(1) unsigned NOT NULL default '0'; ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 5, 2004 - 09:42 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node-access-comment_0_0.patch (4.78 KB) Keeping up with CVS. I'd like to receive some feedback on the resolution of the problme mentioned above. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 13, 2004 - 01:25 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/module_0.patch (7.1 KB) Keeping up with cvs. Node modules should implement _access('comment'). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ September 14, 2004 - 05:38 : killes(a)www.drop.org Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/commentable.patch (7.89 KB) Had forgotten blog.module ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 4, 2005 - 23:19 : Steven Is this patch still needed? Doesn't it tie comment.module unnecessarily into node.module? ------------------------------------------------------------------------ February 7, 2005 - 23:01 : killes(a)www.drop.org Yes, the patch is still needed. The patch actually removes more code from node.module than it adds. Both modules are essential to Drupal and some degree of interaction is tolerable, I think. You can still disable comment.module withou any ill effects.

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[drupal-devel] Database analysis of CivicSpace/Drupal
by Kieran Lal 26 Apr '05

26 Apr '05

There are currently 107 database tables in the latest release of CivicSpace. I believe there are 55 in Drupal core. One of the most important things you can do in improving database performance is to make sure you have the right indicies for your database. Currently we do not use foriegn keys to enforce relationships between database tables. I did an analysis of the CivicSpace code base and found that there was 156 SQL statements with at least one JOIN. We can consider these as application level relationships between tables. Here is a visual representation of those JOINs: http://civicspacelabs.org/home/files/schema.png I also analysed the indicies of the current database schema. There are 182 indicies. The question was do they match? The answer was no. There are at least 68 fields that are joined which do not have indicies from my initial analysis. Here are the fields in my blog post: http://civicspacelabs.org/home/node/12245 The scientific method teaches us that results are useless, unless you have a repeatable method. I am going to explain in this book( http://civicspacelabs.org/home/node/12246 ), Drupal-Docs folks, how I conducted this analysis and it needs to be repeated and verified before being acted upon. I built several tools with help from Drumm, Ankur, Tom Eliaz, and Chris Johnson(cxj). It's possible those tools ran amok. This is the first step in what I hope will be a continued analysis of the database layer in Drupal. The next step will be to extend devel.module to do batch updates of page executions times and mysql query times. I have several theories about how to do this properly and would appreciate your input. The final stage will be to create a documented database schema that allows for external application integration with common labels. If we want to integrate with non-drupal applications we will have to allow for semantic mapping of our database schema to a common database bus architecture(See Ralph Kimball http://www.rkimball.com/) But I'lll leave that for another discussion. Cheers, Kieran P.S. I am off to go mountain biking, hiking, and kayaking in Hawaii for a week so don't expect too many responses from me.

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[drupal-devel] FLOSS and community groups June 20-21 Sheffield, UK
by Kieran Lal 26 Apr '05

26 Apr '05

Is anyone available to attend a workshop on FLOSS and community/voluntary groups in Sheffield, UK? CivicSpace Labs would be happy to spend time with you in advance bringing you up to speed on how the Drupal platform is meeting these needs so that you could represent our interests at this two day workshop. Please get in touch if you are interested and available. Details are in the forwarded note below. Cheers, Kieran Begin forwarded message: > From: "Dearden, Andrew M" <A.M.Dearden(a)shu.ac.uk> > Date: April 26, 2005 10:18:46 AM PDT > To: <kieran(a)civicspacelabs.org> > Subject: Communities & Technology / June movements > > > Hi Kieran > > It was good to meet you at the CHI BoF. (I'm the guy with the > pony-tail & moustache - see www.shu.ac.uk/schools/cms/teaching/amd ) > > I was wondering whether you or one of your CivicSpace colleagues was > planning to attend Communities & Technology in Milan, Italy > (June 13th - 16th). > > I am planning a small workshop for the week after that (20th & 21st of > June) in Sheffield, UK to look at the relationship between > FLOSS and the needs of community / voluntary groups. We are aiming to > bring people from the voluntary sector in UK together with > people with an interest in FLOSS to both map out what is already > available, and to identify requirements / issues for future > development / ways to get over any barriers to uptake. It would be > great to have someone from CivicSpace at the meeting. > > We have some funding to meet expenses (not necessarily a full > transatlantic flight, but at least the costs for staying in Europe > for a few more days). Alternatively, you may already have some > Europeans who are already involved in CivicSpace who I could get in > touch with. Any suggestions, let me know. > > Details of what we are doing are at: > http://otho.cms.shu.ac.uk/pmwiki/pmwiki.php > (though I haven't put up the details of the June meeting yet!) > > > Thanks > > Andy > > > >

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[drupal-devel] juicy studio's readability test
by Charlie Lowe 26 Apr '05

26 Apr '05

Via designexperience.org, I found Juicy Studio's readbility test. Might be useful for testing drupal.org and other Drupal sites: http://www.juicystudio.com/fog/ Charlie Lowe

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[drupal-devel] Another CVS problem
by Sheldon Rampton 26 Apr '05

26 Apr '05

I'm trying to upload a revision to the 4.6 version of my interwiki module. I was able to upload the revision to HEAD, but when I try to upload it to 4.6, I get an error message. This is the command I'm entering: cvs ci -m 'fixed help text' interwiki.module And this is the error message I'm getting: cvs commit: sticky tag `DRUPAL-4-6' for file `interwiki.module' is not a branch Can someone tell me what I need to do? P.S. I hate CVS. --Sheldon Rampton

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[drupal-devel] Event changes
by Boris Mann 26 Apr '05

26 Apr '05

After looking at the event code for 4.6, and also the upgrade path, I want to discuss the idea of perhaps creating a simple event node type. I reallize that long term flexinode-like concepts will go into core, but flexinode is not an ideal solution for *simple* event needs -- it's not simple to theme, the upgrade path is horribly complicated, and it (unnecessarily) places a requirement of using flexinode if you want an event that doesn't "use up" a core node type. So, my suggestion is as follows: * create an event.module that is the *real* 4.6 version and duplicates the functionality of the 4.5 events module (i.e. a location field) but ties into the new event code * move Aaron's event API stuff to a module called eventapi.module An alternative would also be to make event + eventapi a bundle: this would mean a single download enables a basic event node type. -- Boris Mann http://www.bryght.com Vancouver 778-896-2747 / San Francisco 415-367-3595 IM boris_mann(a)jabber.org / SKYPE borismann

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[drupal-devel] [bug] aggregator_menu too aggressive with caching
by walkah 25 Apr '05

25 Apr '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/21304 Project: Drupal Version: 4.6.0 Component: aggregator.module Category: bug reports Priority: normal Assigned to: walkah Reported by: walkah Updated by: walkah Status: patch Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/aggregator-menu.patch (5.35 KB) aggregator_menu caches 4 or so menu entries for each source and each category. Thus, on a site with lots (i.e. > 500) feeds, the menu cache chokes. attached is a patch that removes these entries from the cache to be only used (for tabs) when relevant - similar to how the user and node tabs are handled. walkah

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[drupal-devel] [feature] Enable multiple block regions (not just "left" and "right" sidebars)
by chx 25 Apr '05

25 Apr '05

Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/16216 Project: Drupal Version: cvs Component: block.module Category: feature requests Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: paragkenia Updated by: chx Status: patch I spoke with Moshe, Steven, JonBob and the result is: keys shall be numbers, and themes shall define the values. We will make region zero and one required. There will be a define('REGION_CONTENT', 0) and a define('REGION_SIDEBAR', 1); so you can have readable code still. Either wait for me to code it or feel to do it yourself, just drop me a mail via the contact form if you are doing it. chx Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ January 26, 2005 - 11:27 : paragkenia I read the comparision discussion between *Drupal* and *Mambo*. In several messages it was outlined that Drupal can place blocks only in right and left and not flexible to put them on anywhere where one want. It will be great if this can be changed in upcoming versions. I am no pro at PHP, so don't know how much time this task will take, but I think it is very important. parag ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 15, 2005 - 02:44 : nedjo This issue was apparently partially addressed in issue http://drupal.org/node/19694 [1]. [1] http://drupal.org/node/19694 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 01:24 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions.patch (8.17 KB) This much-requested functionality - to have the ability to place blocks in more than the two predefined regions - was partially addressed in issue http://drupal.org/node/19694. [2]. But "blocks" are still limited to the "left" and "right" sidebars (hard-coded in block.module). This patch is a first step designed to enable multiple (eventually, admin-definable) regions for blocks. I've moved the existing "left" and "right" block regions to a 'region' table (with ids of 0 and 1, as currently used in themes). Then all references to the regions are drawn dynamically from the table. This way, if further records are added, they will appear in the list of available regions for block placement. Doing this actually reduces some duplicated code, since it's no longer necessary to repeat code blocks for each of "left" and "right". As it stands, the patch doesn't add any new functionality--but I don't think it breaks anything either. New functionality would need (a) new regions defined, and (b) changes to themes. A simple first step might be, e.g., to add a "footer" region and then add a call in the footer generation to append any blocks assigned to the footer region there. I'm setting this to patch, but I'm aware that it needs some discussion and refining before it'll be ready to apply. [2] http://drupal.org/node/19694. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 02:05 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block_regions.png (5.65 KB) Here's a screenshot showing the block admin page, with drop-downs for region placement (the options are dynamically generated based on defined regions). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 03:57 : adrian The biggest problem with this is that you can have multiple themes, and each of these themes can have different regions available. Also, the method of defining which regions are available needs to be standardised. Some of the work that me and Vlado are working on for the install system would go towards solving that problem (ie: meta information for modules, themes and styles). This has been discussed to death, but the general consensus has been that we _want_ to do this, but we need to solve a few other problems properly first, the most pertinent being the interface issue. Chris (factoryjoe) recently did a whole mess of workflows for something related to this. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 05:09 : syscrusher The first paragraph of adrian [3]'s post is a point that occurred to me also, as I read this thread. One suggestion would be to separate the definition and configuration of blocks, on one hand, from the placement of those blocks, on the other hand. In other words, Drupal core provides a mechanism defining what blocks exist, which of these are on by default or off by default and user-selectable vs. which are forced on for all users, and the configuration (if applicable) of specialized blocks defined by particular modules. Each theme provides a standard hook function that returns an array of region names and help/description text, e.g., array('left'=>t('This vertical region is left of the main content area'), 'right'=>t('This vertical region is right of the main content area'), 'footer'=>t('The footer is below the left, right, and main content areas of the page')). The theme part of Drupal core (i.e., theme.module itself, not the individual themes) provides a standard UI that is displayed within config of *each theme* (but is one physical code base within theme.module) that allows the administrator to map blocks defined by Drupal core into regions defined by the theme, and storing that mapping as an theme-to-block_ID-to-region_ID (with weight) table in the database. From there, the actual page rendering is similar to what's being done now, but there is more of it. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the key to solving this problem is breaking it along its degrees of orthogonality, and there are three -- two in Drupal core and one in the individual theme. Scott [3] http://drupal.org//user/1517 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 08:14 : Dries Scott, is right. The theme should export its available regions. Then the administrator's task is to assign blocks to regions (not to setup regions). A theme could have configurable regions, but that internal to the theme. To me, the real challenge is the UI and the interaction design. Configuring blocks could easily become a real pain (while most themes continue to use 'left' and 'right'.) Of course, we can implement all the functionality, default everything to 'left' and 'right', and worry about the UI later. This should be fairly straightforward to implement and nedjo's patch looks like a first step in the right direction. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 22:09 : nedjo I agree with the suggested approach of themes registering their regions. I'd see this happening when a particular theme is activiated (or upgraded). Regions would be an array of names (e.g., 'left', 'right', 'footer'). New records would be created in the region table only for region names not previously registered. Some areas I'm not clear on, or that need further work: Table naming Should a new table be 'region' or 'regions' (I've used 'region')? I don't see a convention among existing table names, some of which are singular and others plural. Default values I've kept the existing '0' and '1' ids for regions (left and right, respectively), for backward compatibility. But this means we can't use autoincrement for the region id (rid), since autoincrements seem to begin with 1. Likely we should change to autogenerated ids. Initial records Using the INSERT INTO statements as I've done for the initial region entries is probably counterproductive, since sooner or later they'll have to be dynamically generated. I was hoping this could be a preliminary patch, with the main work coming later, but likely we need to solve region registration by themes before this patch is applied. I don't have a good idea of how region registration by themes would be implemented (a hook on theme activation?), and invite suggestions or implementations. Theme system changes Besides region registration, the other change I'm seeing that would be needed in the theme system is loading blocks by region name, rather than region id. This is because the ids currently used ('0' and '1') in theory might be diffferent on a particular install. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 22:18 : syscrusher Instead of having themes "register" their regions, why not just add a theme API hook called them_regions() that returns an associative array of $region_name=>t($region_helptext)? This would be in keeping with other similar API functions, such as those that return what permissions apply to a module or what node types are defined by a module. Most themes are going to define only a small number of regions (two being the typical case now, but I could see five or six in a complex theme), so returning a constant array will be faster than querying SQL to obtain an array of rows. There could be (optionally, at the discretion of whoever builds this thing) another API hook like theme_region_properties($region_name) that returns an associative array with detailed info for a given region, such as extended help text with recommended usage instructions for the region. Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 22:19 : syscrusher s/them_regions/theme_regions/g ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 17, 2005 - 23:47 : adrian Because. The most common 'theme' is a phptemplate theme. And there needs to be a generic method for specifying the regions available, in a non hook_function format.. Themes get their names from the directory in which they are contained.. when copying the theme to another directory, there must be _no_ modifications necessary to allow normal usage. This is one of the tenets of the new template system I designed. You would need a standard way to define meta-information for themes, that does not need to be modified when copied to a new directory. We are working on this in the install system work, as you need a way external of Drupal to define the module dependencies and some other things. My approach would be to add a theme.dsc text file to the directory, which would allow you to specify meta-information. For instance : ---- regions: left, right, footer, center, mountie author: Johnny McAngstyPants ---- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 03:00 : syscrusher Adrian wrote: " Themes get their names from the directory in which they are contained.. when copying the theme to another directory, there must be _no_ modifications necessary to allow normal usage. This is one of the tenets of the new template system I designed. " A very good point. But region names don't have to be unique across different themes, so my hook function wouldn't have to be modified. The suggestion I made for the mapping metadata was three factors: theme ID or name, region ID or name, and block ID (plus one non-key weight value to order the blocks within a region, but this is not relevant here). I'm not familiar enough with PHP template to be able to respond to your comments on that one, so if you say it's not feasible to work with my schema, then I'll take your word for it. :-) Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 03:03 : syscrusher Oh, wait.....I see now what you mean! It's not the output of the function that is the problem, but the *name* of the function. Never mind. I concede your point. Scott ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 08:44 : Jaza I'm probably jumping ahead a bit here... but something that this patch will have to eventually account for, is how to allow regions to be defined as inline. Allowing a theme to define a region's position as being anywhere on the edge of the page (i.e. top, left, right, bottom, corners, etc) is relatively easy. But what about having a region that's in the middle of a node's body, or somewhere else that's not the edge of the page? What I'm thinking of, is eventually allowing the custom region system to integrate with the CCK. Like I said, I admit that I'm jumping ahead into the future - the CCK still has a long way to go before it's ready. But ultimately, it would be cool if a theme could define a region as being after, say, the "rating" field in nodes of type "movie review". This would make the region (and the blocks in it) truly inline and in context with the actual content of the node. This would be a huge step forward compared to the current block system, which doesn't allow you to mix the presentation of blocks and nodes at all. In Drupal ATM, blocks and "the rest of the page" are totally separate, and really you have no choice but to display them as such. The result of this is that information in blocks that really should be displayed as part of a node, gets literally "pushed to the side", and always seems secondary to the actual content. Often the block has content that is just as important as the content of the node itself. Another option (of less merit, IMO - because of the extra maintenance work, and lack of enforced consistency) would be to have a region filter. You could then choose where to place an inline region on a per-node basis, by entering text such as [region:2] (example based on image_filter syntax) into the node body. Anyway, just thought I'd throw that idea into the open. I don't expect it will be implemented any time soon, but it's something to think about. Jeremy ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 09:54 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png (1.29 KB) Imo the 'regions' are more than you guys name here.. FOr example I attached 2 screens which only shows you the regions.. What I think is that it should always be possible to have free names for the regions. No matter if i call - the region where my content appears in - 'content' or 'site items'.. See attached screens.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 09:56 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-2.png (1.39 KB) And the second... See these links: - http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png - http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-2.png ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 16:22 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions2.patch (13.39 KB) Here's a revised patch implementing some of the ideas so far. I've used the theme engine - rather than individual themes - to generate the list of available regions. I know this isn't ideal, but e.g. for xtemplate it's at present the only option--no logic is possible in the individual theme. region is changed to a varchar field from the current tinyint. I've roughed in several regions--really just for demo purposes. More thought and work would be needed to refine them (e.g., styling, etc.). But this maybe moves the conversation forward. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 22:26 : Dries This patch enables different regions to be used. That is a good thing. The next question is: should we take into account that different themes could assign blocks to different regions? Lots of problems would be solved if (i) there could only be one active theme on a website or (ii) if all themes would have a common set of regions. (This "let users select their own theme"-thing is a left-over from the early days, except for WAP stuff maybe.) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 22:37 : killes(a)www.drop.org Giving up multiple theme support would be a great thing. People could still select from multiple style sheets. WAP shoud not be a user preference setting, but automatically detected and redirected to a special site with a WAP theme. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 18, 2005 - 22:48 : adrian You would then lose the ability to make a special front page theme for use with the sections module, for instance. Also, currently styles exist in the same namespace as themes, and we would have to make more a distinction of styles vs templates (or themes), but I do think this could help simplify things. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 17:54 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block-dynamic-regions3.patch (15.69 KB) The main issue raised, if I'm understanding well: if a theme or theme engine is present that offers regions other than those available in the default theme, any blocks assigned to those regions will be invisible to most users. Here's a revised patch addressing the concern. I've added a test for each region to see whether it's also available in the current default theme. (Actually, I'm realizing as I write this, I've used the theme engine--so it would need to be updated to test first if an engine is being used.) In any case, any regions not available by default are starred, and a message text appears (only if necessary). If there's support for the approach, I'd be happy to finish the patch. Remaining work: * extend to work with non-engine themes * finalize base set of regions to implement * implement common region set in all core themes (for now I've only done xtemplate) * work on CSS display (how blocks in each region should look) This last point I'm not too confident on and would look for help/suggestions. Screenshot to come. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 17:56 : nedjo Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/block_regions_message.png (12.34 KB) Screenshot showing starring of non-default regions plus message. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 18:19 : killes(a)www.drop.org I like that approach. +1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 18:23 : resmini My two cents. If this has to be done (and it should), better get rid of spatial definitions for areas such as left, right, top, bottom, etc. Use semantic names related to content and let the theme take care of their positioning interely. Also note that there in an ongoing debate in IA trying to build up a standard naming convention for page regions in a way that is semantically (and logically) correct. Just for the sake of it, you can check http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/whats_in_a_name.html http://www.stuffandnonsense.co.uk/archives/whats_in_a_name_pt2.html with follow-ups, including Eric Meyer's. There are more substantial contributes in the AIfIA web site, but I can't seem to find them now. I'll post a link or an abstract if I manage to. -- vector at exea dot it ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 19:15 : nedjo Good points, useful references. The default regions I'm thinking of are: 'banner' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), 'footer' => t('footer') Perhaps "body" would be better as "content"? It would be easy enough to add in more regions, e.g., within the content (after title, after help, etc.) One issue is that many of these regions will already have rendered content. Should the blocks come before or after that other content? I've assumed after for banner and footer, while giving both options in body. In any case, refinements or suggestions would be great. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 19:56 : resmini Well, 'banner' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), 'footer' => t('footer') The classic (as far as classic goes for something Web related) scheme comprises 5 spatial regions, much like stefan's http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions---possibility-1.png with a left area mirroring the one called 'blocks'. Call them top, left, center, right, bottom. Variants usually exclude one or more of these, layout-wise. If we talk content (semantic) instead, things get a bit more complicated, as these spatial regions normally include more than one content-area. The top, for example, could include ad banners and the site's header, or the main menu. But these merge seamlessly with CSS definitions, which are definitely something that should get properly standardized (most of the errors / inconsistencies I'm encountering with Drupal today are related to this), but this is out of scope in this thread. What I somewhat object to the definitions above is that it mixes the two approaches. 'banner' is not spatial, is content, as it is the distinction between body top and bottom. If 'banner' goes there, it is 'top', whatever that might be. I designed a couple of web sites which had headers/logos/banners at the bottom of the page, and I'm not exactly the wildest designer you'll probably meet. And if we include body_top and _bottom, we should also add 'navigation', or 'menu' and some other content-related semantic region (impressum, or company_data, or whatever). I suggest that either we go along 'top' => t('banner'), 'left' => t('left sidebar'), 'center' => t('body'), 'right' => t('right sidebar'), 'bottom' => t('footer') or we dedicate some time to detailing what could possibly fit there semantically, which is perfectly possible without limiting design freedom or whatever, since the vocabulary is not infinite, but not something you do out of the blue. Please note that I understand t('something') to be an example, since such a layout only defines regions on the page, not semantic regions. My main content could fit nicely in the bottom region. As for the names for the regions, they are not important, as much as they are coherent and enforced. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 22:16 : stefan nagtegaal Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions-final.png (2.39 KB) Maybe something like this??? But, I have to say that I _really_ liked the solution to split the 'content'-region into the 'content' and 'beneath content'.. I love that! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 23:20 : resmini Stefan, yes. That's basically what you can build if you stick with spatial, and this layout can generate quite an amount of (sane) layout variations even if you interpret it strictly (suppose a default) as <div id="header"> </div> <div id="left-bar"> </div> <div id="content"> </div> <div id="right-bar"> </div> <div id="footer"> </div> What you can do with this is left basically to the theme designers and their use of CSS, CSS-P or tables (brrr), but this could be an easy and proper way to identify macro-regions in which more accurate positioning happens at a more specific level. I'm all in favour of subsequent identification of sub-areas (top and bottom in body), but I don't think it would be a good idea to mix the different approaches I mentioned in my previous post. A site with lots of things going on or which is not just blogging surely has the need to use its content area in a wiser manner than just putting there 'content', the number of modules doing precisely this is more than proof, but that falls more in a 'Drupal definitive guide to semantics', in which CSS selectors are used or suggested strategically for such a scope. >From this point of view and for the sake of this thread, any unique area / div (#name) could (should?) be a target for blocks, and this in my opinion (*) would be the perfect solution, but I do not know if and how this is even remotely possible in the current Drupal. (*) It's quite late, local time, and it was a looong working day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 23:38 : resmini Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/regions-final-variation.png (1.9 KB) Just to be clear, I add a variation of stefan's scheme that shows how this is *not* by any means positional, but spatial, or better relational. Use your CSS imagination to take out regions, reduce them to empty containers, enlarge them, make them taller, shorter, whatever. 5 regions, do what you like. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 21, 2005 - 23:44 : resmini Sorry, I forgot. And this is also why I'm not too keen on calling anything 'content'. If I enlarge my right region enough, why not put my content there? Shouldn't this be a theme-level concern? It's nothing serious, but if my center area is called 'center' (or something similar and more sexy), I won't confuse anybody. This is left, center, right: do with them what you prefer. Content in the bottom? Show me. If I call something 'content', I'm more than suggesting that content goes there, and only there. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 09:17 : stefan nagtegaal Resmini, maybe it is only me but I think that you are making a mistake in your way of thinking.. I get the feeling that you're mixing the 'regions' and 'divs'.. the 'regioins' should have meaningfull sentences, but the divs shouldn'thave.. As an example: $region_name => $content_body here we go: 'header' => $logo 'left sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'left') 'right sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'right') 'content' => $content 'footer' => $footer. So, $region_name does not have to be equal to the id or class of the divs.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 10:27 : resmini Stefan, >So, $region_name does not have to be equal to the id or class of the divs.. Yes, absolutely. I probably didn't make myself very clear: what I'm trying to point out is that in 'header' => $logo 'left sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'left') 'right sidebar' => theme('blocks', 'right') 'content' => $content 'footer' => $footer. there is no reason at all to call 'content' the region that holds $content. nedjo asked in #24 'body_top' => t('body top'), 'body_bottom' => t('body bottom'), if /Perhaps "body" would be better as "content"?/ and all my reasoning is simply that no, that is not content, or it shouldn't be (or better: it may happen that main content is elsewhere). As a matter of fact, even the connotation 'sidebar' doesn't fit very well logically. To make it short: Today's method works, but has limits. Mambo, which paragkenia quotes at the beginning, handles more 'user regions' but in pure Mambo style conventions are so loose that they are hardly useful. If we define regions, as in nedjo's example, in my opinion these regions shouldn't imply informational layouting, only relational positioning (that is, where they stay in the browser viewport). I know it may look like overdesigning, but Drupal constantly enforces conventions and coding guidelines everywhere: this is one of the best aspects of the project and I think it should carry to the layout. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 22, 2005 - 10:32 : stefan nagtegaal While I think that 'body_*' is not as self explaining as 'content_*' I vote for using 'content_*'.. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 25, 2005 - 18:48 : chx Let's get back to the code. If my understanding is correct the big discussion is about how to name potiental rectangular areas _after_ this is commited. So, first get this committed. What's need to make that happen?

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