[development] Drupal 5 Themer Pack

Tue Jan 23 18:08:38 UTC 2007

Op dinsdag 23 januari 2007 17:31, schreef Earl Miles:
> The fact that very few themers are even really aware that they could pull
> .tpl.php files out of the sympal theme tells me that this isn't the way to
> go for the purpose that I'm trying to serve. 

I am sorry about that. Though I /do/ beleive, that given some time people will 
be well aware of this. 
First: Sympal  Theme is Not For Sissies. If you don't know your CSS and don't 
know stuff like faux-colums/holygrail/horzintal-lists by heart, then *at this 
moment* its useless for you. I beleive that my target group is very well 
suited to pull out the bits they like and ignore the bits they don't need.

> No, the project can contribute code to that effort as well. As can Ber's
> project.

And how can we make sure we 'wtand on eachothers shoulders' rather then 
standing in eachothers shadow? My initial idea is: get this default XHTML 
structure right and settled. We can work from there. I, in the base-theme, 
ThemePack in patches for core.

> It will include no *.css files *at all*, to start with.

Neither does Sympal Theme, not in the sense you may think. If you had looked, 
you had noticed that the CSS is purely informative: it displays the node(as 
in XHTML node) details such as class and Id names in the browser. 
The other two CSS styles are there to prove to newcomers that it is not just 
academic babbling about semantics and SEO, but that it is very simple to 
build columned layouts with less then 10 lines of CSS.

So if those are the parameters, then Sympal theme is not a theme either.

> Its pieces should be droppable into *any existing Drupal 5 theme*, giving
> .tpl.phps to the theme developers for easy modification. It is extremely
> good for site designers and usable for general theme designers as well.

I come o this from a different angle: By setting a good structured, consistent 
and welldefined standard, its both easy to drop into any place, AND easy to 
override. 

> Attempting to improve upon it is different. Improving upon it requires
> changing things. If I drop a template in there and get a suddenly different
> HTML output, then the style.css that I already has may become invalid. That
> is what I want to avoid. I want the HTML to change from default Drupal
> *only* if the themer modifies the .tpl.php file.

90% of the upgrade work on a theme is fixing  the CSS: classes, IDs and 
nesting of modules and core that were improved during the release cycle. 
Unless we change the entire concept of Drupals tehme system (and I think the 
everythingAPI is actually gettign us there) this will always be the case. 

So: changed HTML is a fact we have to live with. 
But: if a theme layer above that maanges to keep consistency in place, then 
your CSS will not break. 
Say, hypothetical: Core returns
 <div class="login-block-form">...</div>
But in a new version, a better Fapi changes this into 
 <div id="login-block-form" class='form-element'>...</div>

But, in a theme that has a Grand View of the whole structure, we can change 
this back to the consistent HTML we had before. Then, when the core changes, 
we only need to change minor things in the .tpl.php file and/or the 
template.php file, so that at a new release our HTML, wih IDs and CLASSES 
remains the same as before the changes. 

> These are the points I want to address:

Nothing different from my points. 

> This project serves one purpose:

> So yes, just because I'm not already looking forward to Drupal 6 and
> thinking about how this should go into core, don't try to kill this
> project. I'm aware that Drupal has problems and issues, but I'm also
> looking at this with an eye for what can we supply people with NOW.

Then I fail to see how you want to do this. Patches for core to improve themes 
means waiting till 6. A base theme is not what you want either. But more 
important: I fail to see why my project is not what you really want. Is it 
merely the fact that I try to create a consistent, structured HTML and that 
we need to change what core outputs to get there? Or is there anyhting else I 
can do to make you like my project a little more? For example changing the 
name and stop calling it a theme?

Bèr
-- 
Drupal, Ruby on Rails and Joomla! development: webschuur.com | Drupal hosting: 
www.sympal.nl
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