[documentation] [Drupal newsletter] Drupal Newsletter for Winter,
2005/06 -- FINAL DRAFT!
puregin
puregin at puregin.org
Fri Jan 27 22:05:19 UTC 2006
Looks great!
Another little bit of news that I think might be worthy of
reporting:
tostinni has been doing a lot of work on adding Oracle support
to Drupal. http://drupal.org/node/39260
He has translated the schema, and come up with a scheme
for dealing with reserved words and Oracle-specific behaviour,
and has succeeded in connecting to an Oracle-backed
Drupal. Lots of work still to do, but this seems very
promising - Oracle support is a pre-requisite to entry
in a significant percentage of Enterprise, government and
other large business operations.
On 27-Jan-2006, at 10:48 AM, Drupal.org newsletter wrote:
>
> ------------DRUPAL NEWSLETTER FOR WINTER, 2005/06 -- FINAL
> DRAFT!------------
>
> (*DOC TEAM*: This is your last chance for changes and/or
> additions. This
> newsletter ships in less than 24 hours!)
>
> Welcome to the Winter 2005/06 edition of the Drupal newsletter!
> We've switched
> our release cycle to quarterly now, but with enough content from
> the community,
> we'd happily put it back to monthly!
> There has been some exciting activity in the Drupal community over
> the past few
> months, including 4 beta releases of 4.7 [http://drupal.org/
> drupal-4.7.0-beta4],
> a bounty for a GPL'ed phpbb->Drupal converter [http://drupal.org/
> node/44368],
> Drupal's fifth birthday [http://drupal.org/happy-fifth-birthday]
> (and a cake
> [http://buytaert.net/happy-fifth-birthday-drupal] to match) and a
> great bugfix
> party [http://drupal.org/node/44182]!
> But don't let me bore you down with excitement, digg right on in...
>
> Robin Monks.
> Drupal Marketing Coordinator
>
> *In this issue...*
>
> * Upcoming Events – Learn about upcoming Drupal-lover events.
>
> * Drupal Interview – This month's interview with Drupal
> contributor, Angie
> Byron.
>
> * Module Spotlight - A look at "Views," a powerful new third-party
> module.
>
> * Drupal Development Quickies – What have the developers been
> working on
> lately?
>
> * Drupal Tips – Tricks to help you harness the full potential of
> Drupal.
>
> * Coming up in Drupal 4.7 - Find out why you should be excited.
>
> Special thanks go to Steve Dondley for his work on this issue.
>
> ------------UPCOMING EVENTS------------
>
> OPEN SOURCE CMS SUMMIT
>
> All Drupal developers should plan to make their way to the west
> coast of Canada
> for the event to kick off your year: the Open Source CMS Summit and
> DrupalCon,
> [http://www.oscms-summit.org] February 7th through 9th. As the
> event page says,
> this will be a developer-centric event focused on collaborating
> together on
> future directions and everyone's favourite topic -- APIs!
>
> With it being peak ski season, developers will get a chance to
> enjoy British
> Columbia's coastal mountains, including the famous Whistler, for
> some of the
> best slopes in the world. For those who don't ski, there will be
> plenty of
> beer going round at the lodge!
>
> Chad Phillips and Angie Byron are the two main Drupal organizers,
> with Boris
> Mann and Roland Tanglao doing the Vancouver local organizing and
> helping with
> the summit as a whole. Please join the Drupal conference mailing list
> [http://drupal.org/mailing-lists] and/or check out the wiki
> [http://2006.northernvoice.ca/wiki/open-source-cms-and-blogging-
> tools-summit]
> to add your own ideas to make this a great gathering of Drupalites.
> Oh, and of
> course, flip the switch in your user profile to get listed on the
> attendees
> page [http://drupal.org/profile/conference-vancouver-2006].
>
> ---------- Digitalclouds.Net - your Web Presence Provider ----------
> no more limits
> ... unlimited domains, unlimited MySQL dbs, unlimited e-mail ...
> 10% donated to Drupal, 1.5 GB extra disk space, 90 days money back
> http://www.digitalclouds.net/goto/xref/offers/supportdrupal/
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> ------------DRUPAL INTERVIEW------------
>
> For this issue of the Drupal newsletter, Robin Monks interviews
> Angie Bryon,
> (a.k.a. "webchick."). Angie came to our community at the end of
> June 2005
> through Google's Summer of Code [http://code.google.com/
> summerofcode.html]
> program designed to help bring new talent and support to important
> open source
> projects. Angie's current focus is improving documentation and
> generally
> helping out wherever she can with graphics work, user support, module
> extensions, and the countless other tasks that go into the Drupal
> open source
> project. Read on to learn more about Angie's self-styled "Winter
> of Code"
> program and what motivates her to stay involved.
> *So, how did you originally find Drupal?*
>
> Back a year or so ago, I came across the SpreadFirefox.com website,
> and was
> involved there for a little while making some posters. Their site
> was clean and
> easy to use, so I did some "homework" and determined that it was
> running
> CivicSpace, which is based off of Drupal. That's how I initially
> heard of the
> project. Then it kind of moved back under my radar again until
> Summer of Code.
> When I saw Drupal on the list of projects, I immediately wanted to
> get involved
> with something that was allowing a grassroots activism movement to
> work so well.
> And now I've had the opportunity to actually dig into Drupal's
> "guts" a bit. :)
>
> *So how did that opportunity actually come about?*
>
> One of my instructors from my college found out about the
> opportunity and
> e-mailed myself and a few other students from my class. Getting
> involved in an
> open source development project is something that's been on my
> "life goals"
> list for quite a few years, so when I saw the opportunity, I jumped
> on it. I
> was especially excited about helping with Drupal, both because a)
> it was being
> used as a tool in activism, so I feel like a contribution there is
> helping make
> the world a better place (very important to me), and b) the
> particular project I
> took on (quiz module) was to help further Drupal's ability to be
> used within
> education, another extremely important issue to me.
>
> *I understand you did some work on the forms API, would you care to
> comment on
> that?*
>
> While I've not done work with the Forms API directly (Adrian is the
> guru there
> who allowed it to come to be), I have been trying to do a lot of
> work in making
> the transition between 4.6 and 4.7 as easy for developers as
> possible, and a big
> part of that is the effort being put into the documentation for the
> new forms
> API.
>
> *What kind of documentation improvements have you been working on?*
>
> The first effort has been to try and centralize a "resource center"
> for
> developers to go to to learn everything they need to know to
> convert their
> modules to the new API. You can find the result of that here:
> http://drupal.org/node/33338. This area will include everything from
> step-by-step documentation to answers to frequently asked
> questions, to tips
> that have been submitted by other developers to aid people in their
> form
> conversions.
>
> The second area is the Forms API reference, available here:
> http://drupaldocs.org/api/head/file/contributions/docs/developer/
> topics/forms_api_reference.html
> which is a comprehensive listing of *all* form elements and
> attributes, along
> with descriptions about what they do, where they can/should be
> used, and "real
> world" examples from Drupal core on how they're used.
>
> The final piece of this will be a complete step-by-step run-through
> of how the
> Project module was converted (this module is particularly good for
> this because
> there is just about *everything* a module developer will run into),
> as well as
> documentation of the new hooks provided by the Forms API and that
> sort of
> thing. I'm working closely with Chad (hunmonk) on these, and Kieran of
> CivicSpaceLabs has a huge hand in helping fund their development.
>
> *Great! So what do you do when not working on Drupal?*
>
> Sleeping and eating. Every other waking moment is taken up by
> Drupal. ;) No,
> actually, I also do volunteer work with a few other online
> communities. One of
> these is CyberArmy.net, which is a community of primarily young people
> interested in open source, privacy, computer security/"hacking" and
> so forth
> and we try and hook them up with constructive opportunities to help
> out the
> Internet as a whole. I also enjoy playing video games, drawing/
> sketching, and
> doing logic puzzles and the like (yes, I'm a big nerd ;)).
>
> *Any final comments for our readers?*
>
> Only that I'd like to sincerely thank everyone in the Drupal
> community for
> really welcoming me here and making me feel like "one of the guys."
> I didn't
> have a lot of confidence initially when I first started with this
> project,
> since I was just kind of some mostly self-taught random girl coming
> from a
> community college. But everyone has been so supportive and
> encouraging to me,
> receptive to my input and feedback, and constantly throwing new
> opportunities
> my way. I've met so many friends and learned so many things since
> first coming
> here, that this experience has been literally life-changing. Thank
> you!
>
> ------------VIEWS MODULE EXTENDS DRUPAL FLEXIBILITY------------
>
> Anybody who's spent any time cruising Drupal's forums knows that
> one of the
> most commonly asked questions is something along the lines of "How
> do I display
> a list of nodes of a certain type on a page sorted by author and
> then by date?" The answer used to be "dust off your favorite PHP
> and MySQL reference works and
> get cracking."
>
> But a new module, developed by Earl Miles (a.k.a. merlinofchaos),
> promises to
> make customized displays of content much more attainable for the
> average user
> and save bundles of time for even the most experienced Drupal
> developer. It's
> called "views" and can be downloaded from http://drupal.org/node/
> 38878.
>
> The views module is feature packed, providing a whole host of
> options that
> allow site administrators to pull content from the database and
> display it in
> just about every conceivably useful way, all without knowing one
> line of PHP. Want your content paged so only 5 entries show up on a
> page at a time? No
> problem. Sorted by one, two, or more fields? Of course! Listed
> in a table? Yup, can do that, too. How about output to a block?
> Easy as pie. Can you filter output based on arguments supplied by
> the url? Yes, sir!
>
> And amazingly, all of this flexibility, and much more, is provided
> by simply
> selecting options on one single web-based form. And, yes, the web
> form can be
> a little intimidating, especially for newer Drupal users. But no
> worry here
> either. Views has an export/import feature that lets you share
> views with
> other users. If the views module takes off, and I think it will,
> there will
> soon be an entire library of views at the Drupal site which can be
> imported in
> a matter of seconds with a cut, a paste, and a click.
>
> If all that doesn't impress you, Earl has also thrown in some
> additional
> features to win over the hearts and minds of Drupal developers and
> designers. For example, views has its own API so that other modules
> can let views do the
> work of displaying output. This will save developers time when
> creating
> sophisticated modules needing to output data in many different
> ways. And views
> can even be themed so that designers can give them their own
> distinctive look.
>
> Just as the flexinode module created flexible ways for
> administrators to input
> data into nodes, views promises to do the same for node output.
> There's little
> doubt in my mind views will become a staple of many Drupal
> installations. The
> module is still in beta and needs testers to find any bugs and help
> improve
> usability. If interested, just download the module at
> http://drupal.org/node/38878 and report your findings at
> http://drupal.org/project/issues/views. Be one of the first to
> check it out
> this amazing piece of code!
>
> ------------DRUPAL DEVELOPMENT QUICKIES------------
>
> * DriesK separated introduced 'administer access control'
> permission which is
> now separate from 'administer users'. (Patch #32669
> [http://drupal.org/node/32669])
>
> * kbahey added 'site offline/maintenance' feature. (Patch #32622
> [http://drupal.org/node/32622])
>
> * Countless bugfixes against form API. Most of them by asimmonds,
> chx and
> hunmonk.
>
> * Steven made huge improvements to Drupal's search feature.
> Indexing has
> been made smarter and more robust and several advanced search
> operators (e.g.
> phrase, node type, ...) have been added. The result rankings are now
> customizable. (Patch #28159 [http://drupal.org/node/28159])
>
> * Steven introduced a user-friendly error screen for users with
> unsupported
> database software.
>
> * Stefan increased a designer's ability to theme Drupal. Chief
> among these
> improvements is the ability to theme poll results.
>
> * ax made blogapi autodiscovery (rsd) work with the Flock browser
> (and any
> other standards-chasing RSD using client). This lets desktop blog
> editors
> auto-detect your Drupal settings and post from your desktop. (Patch
> #34749
> [http://drupal.org/node/34749])
>
> * m3avrck and deekayen cured an immense number of PHP5 warnings.
> (Patch
> #30930 [http://drupal.org/node/30930])
>
> * the documentation team, Kieran and webchick introduced much
> improved admin
> help in core modules. This is the "mega patch" season... (Patch #26139
> [http://drupal.org/node/26139])
>
> * Richard Archer integrated primary links into the menu system.
> This was much
> needed. (Patch #22215 [http://drupal.org/node/22215])
>
> * Morbus improved handling of temporary files/directory. (Patch
> #26249
> [http://drupal.org/node/26249])
>
> * Cvbge did an awesome job to make pgsql and Drupal work better
> together. Too
> many patches to list.
>
> * Robert added permission to enable/disbale theme switching by
> users. (Patch
> #38981 [http://drupal.org/node/38981])
>
> * saerdna et al. added a 'change own username' permission. (Patch
> #39547
> [http://drupal.org/node/39547])
>
> * One of those rare moments when two maintainers work on one
> patch: JonBob
> and Richard separated callback handling from menu handling. (Patch
> #35768
> [http://drupal.org/node/35768])
>
> * Morbus optimized performance of URL aliasing for newly installed
> sites.
> (Patch #29326 [http://drupal.org/node/29326])
>
> * drumm introduced the first piece of an install: an SQL updater
> you can hook
> into. (Patch #35924 [http://drupal.org/node/35924])
>
> * Though we rarely mention fixes here, big kudos to Morbus,
> webchick and
> tangent for fixing the order of node(api) form fields. (Patch #34920
> [http://drupal.org/node/34920])
>
> * chx broke the record of 'added code' per 'comment needed for the
> code'
> ratio with #40886 [http://drupal.org/node/40886]. Reference
> counting is tricky.
> Thanks goes to Goba.
>
> * Richard and chx made it possible to link to the front page.
> (Patch #36465
> [http://drupal.org/node/36465])
>
> * Steven introduced some javascript to make textareas in forms
> resizeable
> (Patch #42446 [http://drupal.org/node/42446])
>
> * Richard and Steven made it possible to use external URLs in
> menus (and made
> url() more flexible). Extra Druplipoints to them for this. (Patch
> #32785
> [http://drupal.org/node/32785])
>
> What does the new Forms API bring? Security, expandability and
> themability.
>
> * Security: even if you manually create a POST data, only the
> fields defined
> by Drupal are taken into account. You can't choose something that's
> not listed
> with select, radios and checkboxes fields.
>
> * Expandability: you can chane any form, add callbacks at almost
> any point of
> the process.
>
> * Themability: you can have a theme function for any part of any
> form.
>
> Karoly Negyesi,
> http://drupal4hu.com/
>
> -------------SECURITY UPDATES-------------
> Get the latest security updates
> right in your inbox! Subscribe to the
> Security Announcements mailing list today!
> http://drupal.org/security
> ------------------------------------------
>
> ------------DRUPAL TIPS------------
>
> *Track activity and changes on your favorite projects with RSS*
> (Contributed by
> Bèr Kessels)
> The CVS log is often underrated as a means of tracking what happens to
> your favorite project.
>
> Let us take as an example the project named "shazamgallery": Visit
> the link
> http://drupal.org/cvs?file=/modules/shazamgallery/ to see the
> latest commits to
> that project. The /modules/shazamgallery/ in the url can be
> replaced by
> anyhting of your interest. You can even track changes to one file.
> For
> example, http://drupal.org/cvs?file=/modules/shazamgallery/
> shazamgallery.mysql
> lets you track changes to the database file only.
>
> The most interesting part, however, is the RSS feed that comes with
> that
> at http://drupal.org/cvs?rss=true&file=/modules/shazamgallery/
>
> Use this to track your own contribs (to see if some other contributor
> slips in features, or bugs, by accident). Or to track changes of the
> projects you use on your drupal site.
>
> *Module Linking* (Contributed by Heine Deelstra)
> When linking to a module-specific image or CSS file, do not
> use a hardcoded modules/name.module/ path, because this will break in
> multisite installations, where modules can be at site/sitename/
> modules/.
> Use drupal_get_path('module', 'name') instead.
>
> ------------COMING UP IN DRUPAL 4.7------------
>
> One of the most obvious changes involves the Menu module. No
> longer will the
> primary and secondary links be a custom template configuration
> issue. The
> control of these links has been moved into the menu module. After
> turning on
> menu module, you can go into *administer >> settings >> menu*
> ?q=admin/settings/menu You will find a new option Primary links
> settings. If
> you do not have separate menu's yet, you will need to create them
> and then
> designate them here. This will involve some minor code changes to
> any custom
> templates you have and you can see examples in the included Blue
> Marine theme. You will also have the option to add items directly
> to the menu when you first
> create them.
>
> In the aggregator module, the 'Allowed HTML tags' control has been
> exposed
> through the GUI so that you can edit for what html tags you will
> allow for in
> the rss feeds you pull from other sites. As an example, by default
> the tag is
> not allowed, but now you can change this through the *administer >>
> settings >>
> aggregator* settings instead of in the code itself.
>
> The configuration for your node type workflow (published, promoted
> to front
> page, etc) has been moved from it's semi-obscure location in
> content >>
> configure to a more sensible and consistent *administer >> settings
> >> content
> types*. This will help new neophytes and experienced admins all
> around.
>
> Some new settings have been added to the user module in access control
> *administer >> access control*. Added permissions are 'administer
> access
> control' and 'change own user name'.
>
> While it is exciting that blocks are now able to go into a number
> of different
> regions (left/right sidebar, header, content, footer) now, that is
> nothing
> compared to additional controls added to block configuration
> settings. You now
> have an experts mode option to control visibility based on php code
> added to the
> block configuration
> as well as some radio button options to control site wide user
> visibility
> settings.
>
> The help files have had a serious going over and many now include
> links back to
> the Drupal.org site so that you can take advantage of new and updated
> information from links right in your own installation.
>
> Contributed by,
> Steven Peck
>
> /For more information about Drupal, visit our website at http://
> drupal.org/.
>
> Content donations can be sent to the editor using the form at
> http://drupal.org/contact .
>
> This work is licensed under the Creative Commons
> Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. To view a copy of
> this license,
> visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.5/. /
>
>
>
> --
> Footer will be appended here
> --
> Pending work: http://drupal.org/project/issues/documentation/
> List archives: http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/documentation/
--
Djun M. Kim, President djun.kim [at]
cielosystems [dot] com
Cielo Systems Inc.
Strategic Software Research http://
www.cielosystems.com
164 - 4438 18th Avenue West Tel: (778) 895-1379
Vancouver, BC Skype: djun.kim
Canada, V6R 4R8
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