[development] Node Rendering: the next generation

[Jeff Eaton]

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
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