Skins

[Tim Williams <wi...@gmail.com>]

Are pelt, tigris, and common the only current skins?   The rest
(corium, forrest-site, krysalis-site, leather-dev, plain-dev) appear
to be either under development or deprecated.  Also, is there a clear
way to determine which skins are deprecated?

I'd like to take on FOR-508 and FOR-509  as they appear trivial enough
for me to grasp.

Thanks,
--tim

Re: Skins

[Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>]

Ferdinand Soethe wrote:
> Tim Williams wrote:
> 
> 
>>it got me thinking that maybe there
>>should be a little "skininfo.xml" in each skin directory where the
>>current status of the skin could be pulled
> 
> 
> Would it make sense to also pull a short description of the skin so
> that users can get a list of available skins including a short
> description (with the available-skins command).
> 
> That way we could perhaps stop maintaining the descriptions of skins
> on the web site and simply have each skin explain itself. Might be
> useful to include the development status of the skin in the listing as
> well.

Take a look at http://forrest.apache.org/0.7/docs/plugins/index.html

I would propose that the first stage is to generalise this code into a 
helper package and use tat to generate both the plugins and skins list.

As I said in an earlier mail, I think a later version should do as Tim 
suggests and have the individual skin/plugin details within the 
skin/plugin itself, but lets do one step at a time.

Ross

Re: Skins

[Ferdinand Soethe <sa...@soethe.net>]

Tim Williams wrote:

> it got me thinking that maybe there
> should be a little "skininfo.xml" in each skin directory where the
> current status of the skin could be pulled

Would it make sense to also pull a short description of the skin so
that users can get a list of available skins including a short
description (with the available-skins command).

That way we could perhaps stop maintaining the descriptions of skins
on the web site and simply have each skin explain itself. Might be
useful to include the development status of the skin in the listing as
well.

--
Ferdinand Soethe

Re: Skins

[Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>]

Tim Williams wrote:
> I just added a simple patch but it got me thinking that maybe there
> should be a little "skininfo.xml" in each skin directory where the
> current status of the skin could be pulled vs. maintained in
> skinlist2echo.  I see the skin-1.xml hanging out with testskin1 and 2
> but don't really understand how that works and if it could be adapted
> to existing skins.

That's for the skin download mechanism

http://forrest.apache.org/docs/skin-package.html

As I mentioned on the user list the plugin system works in the same way. 
Unfortunately the code is largely duplicated between the two.

I've been musing over having a plugin.xml file in the plugins that would 
be used to build the plugins.xml file (in other words, exactly what you 
propose for skins). The plugins system is a little more mature than the 
skins system, not in age but in debugging and use.

Perhaps the way forward is to add this functionality to plugins and then 
to rebuild the skin download mechanism with the improvements that are 
present in the plugin mechanism. I would like to encourage the 
availability of third party skins (which was Nicolas intention when he 
created the skin packaging system). Recently I came across 
http://oswd.org/ which should give you an idea of what we hope skin 
packages will become.

If you agree this is a good approach we can discuss how best to sit in 
with the plugin system and later look at getting it into skins. If you 
want to work the other way around that is fine by me, whatever itches 
you the most.

Ross

Re: Skins

[Tim Williams <wi...@gmail.com>]

I just added a simple patch but it got me thinking that maybe there
should be a little "skininfo.xml" in each skin directory where the
current status of the skin could be pulled vs. maintained in
skinlist2echo.  I see the skin-1.xml hanging out with testskin1 and 2
but don't really understand how that works and if it could be adapted
to existing skins.  There seems to be a need to capture skin metadata
based on the notes.txt and readme's laying around.  Perhaps this
skininfo file could wrap all of this stuff up in an xml file?
--tim

On 5/27/05, Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> wrote:
> Tim Williams wrote:
> > Is plain-dev really included by default?
> 
> Yes
> 
> > plain-dev - success, but no resources found, images, script etc. and
> > they don't exist in the skins folder either.
> 
> Well it is in development :-))
> 
> Ross>
> 
>

Re: Skins

[David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>]

Nicola Ken Barozzi wrote:
> Ross Gardler wrote:
> >Tim Williams wrote:
> >
> >>Is plain-dev really included by default?  
> >
> >Yes
> >
> >>plain-dev - success, but no resources found, images, script etc. and
> >>they don't exist in the skins folder either.
> >
> >Well it is in development :-))
> 
> Actually, it will never have images, scripts, etc. It's *plain*.

And we need to keep it that way.
> 
> The reason I did it was to convert the Incubator doc sources from 
> document-dtd to plain html, which Forrest can still render. It worked, 
> albeit with minor issues, that I have not fixed and probably will not in 
> the near future.

Maybe we should rename it to "plain".

This is a very import skin. I have used it a couple of times
to convert a set of documents into plain html, which are then
used as sources in another forrest-based project.

--David

Re: Skins

[Nicola Ken Barozzi <ni...@apache.org>]

Ross Gardler wrote:
> Tim Williams wrote:
> 
>> Is plain-dev really included by default?  
> 
> Yes
> 
>> plain-dev - success, but no resources found, images, script etc. and
>> they don't exist in the skins folder either.
> 
> Well it is in development :-))

Actually, it will never have images, scripts, etc. It's *plain*.

The reason I did it was to convert the Incubator doc sources from 
document-dtd to plain html, which Forrest can still render. It worked, 
albeit with minor issues, that I have not fixed and probably will not in 
the near future.

-- 
Nicola Ken Barozzi                   nicolaken@apache.org
             - verba volant, scripta manent -
    (discussions get forgotten, just code remains)
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Re: Skins

[Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>]

Tim Williams wrote:
> Is plain-dev really included by default?  

Yes

> plain-dev - success, but no resources found, images, script etc. and
> they don't exist in the skins folder either.

Well it is in development :-))

Ross>

Re: Skins

[Tim Williams <wi...@gmail.com>]

Is plain-dev really included by default?  I just took a spin through
each of the skins and here's what I've found from a fresh svn.

pelt - success
tigris - success
common - success, but images not found even though they appear in the
skins folder
plain-dev - success, but no resources found, images, script etc. and
they don't exist in the skins folder either.
leather-dev - build fails.

I've updated available-skins output to be what's below but I don't
know if that's desired since some of these don't appear to be working?

"Current:
* pelt - supported
* tigris - available
* common - available

Development:
* plain-dev - available
* leather-dev - available"

--tim


On 5/27/05, Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org> wrote:
> Tim Williams wrote:
> > Are pelt, tigris, and common the only current skins?   The rest
> > (corium, forrest-site, krysalis-site, leather-dev, plain-dev) appear
> > to be either under development or deprecated.  Also, is there a clear
> > way to determine which skins are deprecated?
> 
> The only officially supported skin is pelt.
> 
> I'm not exactly sure of the status of tigris, someone else will clarify
> I hope.
> 
> plain-dev is still in development, however, I actually use it as part of
> Burrokeet so I would be +1 for it being "officially supported".
> 
> Others are as you say.
> 
> > I'd like to take on FOR-508 and FOR-509  as they appear trivial enough
> > for me to grasp.
> 
> Excellent :-))
> 
> If you need any help just ask. We'll point in the right direction.
> 
> Ross
> 
> 
>

Re: Skins

[David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>]

Ross Gardler wrote:
> Tim Williams wrote:
> >Are pelt, tigris, and common the only current skins?   The rest
> >(corium, forrest-site, krysalis-site, leather-dev, plain-dev) appear
> >to be either under development or deprecated.  Also, is there a clear
> >way to determine which skins are deprecated?
> 
> The only officially supported skin is pelt.
> 
> I'm not exactly sure of the status of tigris, someone else will clarify 
> I hope.

It is a copy of the skin from style.tigris.org as mentioned at
http://forrest.apache.org/0.7/docs/skins.html#tigris
See also the notes in forrest/main/webapp/skins/tigris/README.txt

We can accept patches for the Forrest components of the skin.
The trouble is that the community is not providing many contributions.
Look at 'svn log' for the various files, there have been occasional
changes. I personally don't use it and would rather use pelt for now,
and later the viewHelper stuff, so i have no itch to enhance it.
However that does not prevent the community from enhancing it.

One thing to bear in mind is that the css files are not ours,
they are a copy from tigris.org site. If ever we update the tigris
copy then we need to be sure that we do not clobber our changes.
See the notes in 'svn log' and the README.txt

--David

Re: Skins

[Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>]

Tim Williams wrote:
> Are pelt, tigris, and common the only current skins?   The rest
> (corium, forrest-site, krysalis-site, leather-dev, plain-dev) appear
> to be either under development or deprecated.  Also, is there a clear
> way to determine which skins are deprecated?

The only officially supported skin is pelt.

I'm not exactly sure of the status of tigris, someone else will clarify 
I hope.

plain-dev is still in development, however, I actually use it as part of 
Burrokeet so I would be +1 for it being "officially supported".

Others are as you say.

> I'd like to take on FOR-508 and FOR-509  as they appear trivial enough
> for me to grasp.

Excellent :-))

If you need any help just ask. We'll point in the right direction.

Ross