On Dec 31, 2009, at 7:57 PM, andrew morton
<[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, Dec 31, 2009 at 4:53 PM, Domenic Santangelo <[email protected]
> wrote:
As to overengineering in general, I think Drupal as a whole would
be in a much better place if we called each other out on it more
often (imagefield+imageapi+imagecache+upload+cck required for
images in a node, anyone?). Food for thought.
Okay given that lead-in then I'll call you out on a factual error
since upload is a core module and not needed in the imagefield+cck
stack you outline.
I was just talking about the difference between what you get out of
box (enabled) and what it takes to implement this basic feature. Since
you mention it though, imagefield actually depends on yet another
module, filefield, that superscedes core upload. IIRC, upload.module
is disabled by default anyway meaning that at very least you have to
switch it on out of the box if you go another route.
the image handling methods that dopry established have been
tested and proven, that's why they're in core in D7.
I'm not arguing this point. Look, complicated (to the newbie)
implementations are what pay my bills. It's in my personal best
interest to keep things complex, and the fact that I've used these
solutions scores of times means that a) they work well and b) I get to
charge people to do what would be almost insurmountable -or at least
impractical - for them to do themselves and is easy for me to do.
However, Drupal's growth will - and I argue has been - hampered by
usability issues for the beginner. I mean, seriously consider what a
rank beginner has to go through to be able to do such a basic thing as
putting a picture in a blog post in D6 and below! I'm stoked beyond
belief that fields and images are in D7, for this reason.
I used images as an example intentionally, because I think it's a
salient example of building to meet engineering requirements and not
user requirements. As a piece of technology, the image stack is a work
of art; as a usable solution for a beginner, it's pretty rough.
I guess the point I'm trying to make is that engineering should follow
the use case, and I hope that we as contributors to the community can
consider that. I hope I don't come off too harshly; like I said, my
interests are best served by complicating things further :). But I
love the vision of Drupal and the community and want it - us - to be
as awesome as possible.
D
