Last week I
blogged about complex node theming, and underlying problems in Drupal's node
rendering system (ie, node_view()) that are brought to the surface by CCK.
Currently, complex node rendering breaks in the the same ways that our 4.6 era
form building mechanism broke. We've talked about it before on this list, though
4.7 was still getting rolled up and no one wanted to tackle another change like
that at the time.
Our current
form rendering system was originally designed to support not JUST forms but any
kind of content. I've created a patch with help and advice from dopry, RobRoy,
chx, and a few others that leverages the advanced form rendering system to build
node bodies.
The change
would force some (very minor) changes to every module that implements hook_view
and nodeapi's view operation, but the payoff for themers and designers of
complex modules would be considerable. Reshuffling the contents of a node,
inserting content *between* existing node elements, and different theming of
different parts of a node's content -- stuff we now take for granted with forms
-- would all be possible.
http://drupal.org/node/74326 is the
location of the patch, and anyone willing to chip in with reviews, testing, or
thoughts on this approach... well, the input is greatly
appreciated.
--Jeff