Skinning framework support for skin versioning
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Key: TRINIDAD-1691
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/TRINIDAD-1691
Project: MyFaces Trinidad
Issue Type: New Feature
Components: Skinning
Reporter: Matt Cooper
UI designers periodically create new UI designs for various components with the
goal of these designs being applied to a specific skin. Although the visual
design might be completely new for a given component, it is really meant to be
available in context of other existing component designs of the same existing
skin.
UI changes like this are sometimes considered to jarring for some customers and
they would rather stick with the original designs. This means that skins are
eternally frozen after their first release so any new changes would need to be
made in a new skin even though that new skin might be 75% identical to the
original skin.
There is also a negative impact on customers that generate their own skin
definitions when we introduce a new skin name. Every skin (or skin addition)
that they have created won't be able to uptake the new designs unless they
physically go in and change all references from the old skin name to whatever
the new skin's name is. To remedy this while enabling the "frozen" state of
the original designs, the skinning framework must support a concept of
versioning. Since the nature of software means that code lines branch into a
vast tree structure, the version numbers of the skinning framework must fulfill
this need. A simple "x.y" will not be sufficient, we will require
"x.y.z.a.b.c.d.e.f.g" and so on where each "." represents another code branch
off of the previous code branch, e.g. there will likely be a version that looks
like "1.1.12.4".
Customers will then need a configuration option where they can specify which
version of the skin they want to use. (Presumably near the same location where
they specify which skin name they want to use.)
Business needs:
Some customers need new UI designs applied to existing skins but other
customers need the skin to remain unchanged. Versioning will allow customers
to optionally buy-into the new UI designs while other customers can happily
live with the past designs.
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