On 6/16/06, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
comments below ...
Dave Johnson wrote:
> On 6/15/06, Allen Gilliland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Dave Johnson wrote:
>> > If we do things right we can completely avoid the problem you mention.
>> > Here's a slight adjustment to the options I presented before. With
>> the part
>> > I added about the theme chooser, I don't think there is any room for a
>> > theme/model mix up here.
>> >
>> > 1 - Turn on Atlas, completely turn off old model
>> > site.macromodel="roller_3.0_only"
>> > Velocity context loaded with only NEW model stuff
>> > Create weblog page shows only NEW themes
>> > *** Theme chooser shows only NEW themes based on website.macroVersion
>> > This is the default for new installations
>> >
>> > 2 - Turn on Atlas, but continue to support old model
>> > site.macromodel=roller_3.0
>> > Create weblog page shows NEW themes only, defaults to new model
>> > Velocity context loaded with either OLD or NEW model stuff,
>> > website.macromodel
>> > *** Theme chooser shows OLD or NEW themes based on website.macromodel
>> > This is the default for upgrades
>>
>> How do you know if a theme is old or new? I can imagine a way to hack
>> some knowledge about what is new/old for themes Roller ships with, but
>> not custom themes. If I have a custom theme called "xxx" in my
>> installation, how do you know if it's old or new?
>
>
> Hmmm....
>
> All existing weblogs are marked as weblog.macromodel=roller_2.0
> And they can only pick old themes.
>
> New weblogs get weblog.macromodel=roller_3.0
> And they can only pick new themes.
right, that's the easy part.
>
> So there's no quesiton there, we know what type of themes blogs are using.
>
> So how do we know which model a given theme uses?
>
> New themes files are placed in a new directory or we put a marker file
> into new theme directories. Perhaps we have a convention that new
> themes must contain a preview image file named preview.jpg. Or perhaps
> we introduce a theme.xml file that goes into each theme direcory. Or
> maybe just a theme.properties file.
>
> <theme>
> <name>ThemeName</name>
> <link>ThemeName</name>
> <description>Theme description, blah</description>
> <content-type>text/html</content-type>
> <page-type>page</page-type>
> </theme>
That works, but it's another layer of complexity being added to the 3.0
release. I was planning to do something like this after 3.0 as part of
an effort to refine the theme system and make it easier to plug in new
themes. If we do this now I'd like to keep it as simple as possible
rather than try and come up with a full new metadata format for
describing themes, I think that's starting to get a little out of scope
for this release.
Something simple that just marks which themes are 3.0 should be enough.
>
> How do you allow users to convert from 2.0 to 3.0? With the
> arrangement I've outlined above, they must make a clean break. The
> migrate to 3.0 UI must warn them, you will lose all customizations and
> you must start fresh with a new theme. Sounds harsh, but If we allow
> them to have access to both models, then I bet we'll see lots of
> themes stuck half-way between 2.0 and 3.0.
Right, this is the most difficult part. The other difficult part is how
do you deal with users who have CUSTOM themes? Even if we start all
existing weblogs with macromodel=2.0 how do we get CUSTOM theme users to
upgrade without having to choose a new theme? What if the user just
wants to use some of the new macros but not have to redo their whole theme?
I also think that even if we ensure that technically users can't mix the
2 models, they are going to try anyways and it's going to be confusing
for them. There's also potential issues where if users have custom
non-theme templates in their weblog then those will just suddenly stop
working properly if they upgrade to a 3.0 theme.
I suppose we can just say "too bad", but that's rarely an option that
users like to hear. My feeling is that sites like jRoller, with 10k
blogs?, would have a pretty strong opinion about this.
I think it would be very helpful if more people could be involved in
this decision.
Yes. I totally agree with that.
I could go either way at this point. On one hand, I really like the
clean break and avoiding the confusion of mixed themes. But on the
other hand, I don't want to make the transition from custom 2.0 theme
to custom 3.0 theme into a nightmare.
So JRoller guys and others, speak up.
- Dave
