On Sun, Jan 28, 2007 at 02:18:10PM -0800, Earl Miles wrote:
cl@isbd.net wrote:
So your saying basically that all that Drupal is doing (I realise that 'all' is a very great deal) is to separate the structure from the content and that the content is still the same as it every was. It ca be 'masked' behind something like TinyMCE but that really loses as much as it gains.
OK, I can understand that but it isn't what a lot of CMS systems seem to be trying to sell me. *Lots* of them are saying that once you have set up your structure the 'designers' can relax and the non-techie members of staff can do all the data entry. What you're saying above is that the data entry is still really HTML and the non-techie users are going to have as much trouble as always (well, nearly, you have taken away the problems of creating a nice menu structure and a consistent look).
I wouldn't say as much trouble as always, for three reasons.
- The 'content' generally doesn't need the positioning details that make
working with web stuff hard. In general, CMS' expect the content stream to be just a stream.
Yes, I agree it is somewhat easier but I think I am arguing that the content (at least for the sorts of things I want to do) is actually *more* than a stream.
- The markup set you need for content is minimal, and if you look in the
filter tips, there is some documentation to help non-techies understand what they can mark the content up with. I'm not convinced that "non-techies" can't cope with the few tags that are used, such as the <a>, <b> and <i> tags which are still very common within content.
- A lot of the hard work is taken away. Titling is taken care of and
paragraphs are dealt with.
'Titling' is where I take issue with you, titling is part of the content. This I think is why this whole thread started with 'how do I get headings in the content?'. Someone entering content (well me anyway) *does* want control of titles and paragraph layout.
It's the 'provided by the structure' headings that irritate me, OK, they're consistent but I simply don't want them! I know they can probably be removed but it's the assumption that they're provided by the structure seems strange to me.
But yes, at some level there has to be, still, some kind of markup. TinyMCE can do some of this for you, if you can get it configured to work the way you like it, but things like TinyMCE are worlds away from the editors we are more familiar with.
Yes, I know, however I use Mozilla (i.e. a previous incarnation of what is now SeaMonkey) for editing web pages at work and find it very good at what it does. That's a WYSIWYG HTML editor but it gives me a totally different feel of what I'm doing than TinyMCE does within Drupal.
I'm not sure that CMS' are steering you wrong; I do feel you have a couple of errant assumptions about what you'll be getting, and certainly if you NEED those assumptions, you may be in the wrong place, but there may not be a right place.
Quite agree, I'm not saying that Drupal is wrong, I'm saying that I don't think it's what I want. What I want is a non-browser based CMS that probably creates static HTML (I think!).
And on most sites, non-technical people do the data entry. But even non technical people have to learn a few technical things. Even in Word. Heck, I'm a technical person and I can't figure out Word most of the time. =)
I have that problem too! :-) However you may have greater insight than you think there, it's partly the similarities between Drupal (and many similar CMS) and Word that annoys and confuses me I think. It's the 'second guessing' of what I want to do and the (what feels like) its rules impopsing themselves on what I'm trying to do. It's like when Word decides to capitalise a word you don't want capitalised or turns something into a month superscript when you don't want it to. These things *can* be changed but the default is annoying/confusing.