OK, seems that I didn't explain myself fully, so let me clear things up a bit, by providing a bit of background to the node type system changes in Drupal 5. I was one of the (several) main people that worked on the CCK-partially-in-core patch for Drupal 5 <http://drupal.org/node/62340>. When I first got involved in this patch, the plan had been for it to remove hook_node_info() from core completely, and to only allow node types to be defined directly in the 'node_type' DB table. That is, it was essentially going to nuke module-defined node types, and make all node types user-defined (or at least make it difficult to have module-defined node types). I thought that this was a bad idea, because like you (Chris), I thought that module-defined node types were very important and very useful, and I didn't want to see them disappear. So I reworked the patch, so that it kept hook_node_info() in core, and allowed it to co-exist with the new user-defined-centric 'node_type' DB table. Hence, both variations of node types are fully supported in Drupal 5. BUT: remember, I was in the minority on this issue! Most people didn't care about hook_node_info(), and didn't see the point in keeping it. That's why I said: "it's LIKELY that before long, there will be no such thing as module-defined node types". I didn't say this because I want it to happen; I said it because a lot of other people want it to happen, and so that means that it probably WILL happen. Because we have both options in core now, Drupal 5 is going to be a time for us to 'test run' with user-defined vs module-defined node types. If people decide that module-defined node types are still very much needed, then I guess that they'll remain in for Drupal 6, and they'll still be used by developers. If, OTOH, people don't see the point, and don't use them, then they'll probably be taken out for Drupal 6, and the dual-options support in Drupal 5 will have been little more than a 'friendly transition period' for developers to get used to the new ways. Cheers, Jaza. On 1/5/07, Chris Johnson <cxjohnson@gmail.com> wrote:
In a thread on hook_nodeapi, Jaza wrote:
"With the new CCK-partially-in-core features, it's likely that before long, there will be no such thing as module-defined node types. There will only be user-defined node types."
Either I grossly misunderstand things, or ... the hell you say? (American idiom for disbelief or roughly "no way!")
CCK may be regarded as the greatest thing since sliced bread by users, site admins and even many developers, but I may not want to use CCK to define nodes when I've got some special data I want to use efficiently as content in a module I'm writing. CCK is inefficient *by design* in order to purchase its flexibility.
Drupal is a framework. It shouldn't force content creation modules to use one and only one method.