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Posted to user@forrest.apache.org by Claudia Könnecke <cl...@verit.de> on 2005/05/25 15:52:49 UTC
Forrest Example Sites
Dear project-team,
we would like to announce that our website at http://www.verit.de is now
running on Forrest 0.6 (eagerly awaiting the 0.7 release). Please feel
free to add it to your growing list of example sites.
Thank you all for that wonderful piece of software!
Regards,
Claudia Könnecke
Re: Forrest Example Sites
Posted by David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>.
Claudia K?nnecke wrote:
> Dear project-team,
>
> we would like to announce that our website at http://www.verit.de is now
> running on Forrest 0.6 (eagerly awaiting the 0.7 release). Please feel
> free to add it to your growing list of example sites.
>
> Thank you all for that wonderful piece of software!
Thanks, and your site is now added.
--David
Re: Forrest Example Sites
Posted by Cyriaque Dupoirieux <Cy...@pcotech.fr>.
Ok, I think we are all interested with this skin !
Regards,
Cyriaque,
Peter van de Hoef a écrit :
> Very beautiful site indeed! I am also interested.
> Peter
>
> Ferdinand Soethe wrote:
>
>> Hi Claudia,
>>
>> Claudia Könnecke wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>> we would like to announce that our website at http://www.verit.de is
>>> now
>>> running on Forrest 0.6 (eagerly awaiting the 0.7 release). Please feel
>>> free to add it to your growing list of example sites.
>>>
>>
>>
>> I really like your skin design. The clear typographically structuring
>> of the menus, the use of color and the placement of logos and
>> background image would make it very useful for commercial and private
>> sites.
>>
>> Would you consider donating it to our skin pool? Or short of that share
>> the code so that others can copy bits and pieces of it?
>>
>> --
>> Ferdinand Soethe
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
Re: Forrest Example Sites
Posted by Peter van de Hoef <pv...@springsite.com>.
Very beautiful site indeed! I am also interested.
Peter
Ferdinand Soethe wrote:
>Hi Claudia,
>
>Claudia Könnecke wrote:
>
>
>
>>we would like to announce that our website at http://www.verit.de is now
>>running on Forrest 0.6 (eagerly awaiting the 0.7 release). Please feel
>>free to add it to your growing list of example sites.
>>
>>
>
>I really like your skin design. The clear typographically structuring
>of the menus, the use of color and the placement of logos and
>background image would make it very useful for commercial and private
>sites.
>
>Would you consider donating it to our skin pool? Or short of that share
>the code so that others can copy bits and pieces of it?
>
>--
>Ferdinand Soethe
>
>
>
>
>
Re: Forrest Example Sites
Posted by David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>.
Claudia K?nnecke wrote:
> First of all thanks for the praise - we feel flattered :)
>
> We see no problem in sharing our skin-code, but beware - we had to bend
> some rules in certain areas (e.g. changing stuff in skins/common/xslt)
> to achieve what we wanted. There possibly are ways to prevent these
> changes (especially in the 0.7 codebase - which we haven't looked at yet).
>
> We started the website in December 2004 where documentation was rather
> sparse and spent a lot of time learning things the hard way so possibly
> not all of our solutions are 'by the book'.
>
> Our skin is based on the 'pelt' skin codebase which was mercilessly
> ripped apart where we felt the need to do so. We dropped support for
> things we didn't need (e.g. project/group logos, collapseable menues,
> etc.) and changed the layout of the top-strip.
>
> So if this hasn't scared you yet, please contact us on how we may give
> back to the community.
Lets take it gradually. With those changes that you say you
needed to make to the "common" section, if there are any
that you can contribute, then that would make it easier
for your updating later.
However as Ross indicated in another thread, the skin system
is designed to be able to over-ride xsl templates in the
"common" with templates in the skin. There are many examples
of this in the existing skins.
--David
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages (was Re: Forrest Example
Sites)
Posted by Torsten Stolpmann <st...@verit.de>.
Ross Gardler wrote:
> Torsten Stolpmann wrote:
>
>> As Claudia already pointed out, most work done on pelt was rather
>> destructive (disabling/removing features we didn't need/like/got in
>> the way) than constructive.
>
>
> I've often wanted to disable certain features in our skins, but never
> found the time to do it. The diffs between your work and pelt will
> clearly indicate where the code is that should be disabled for various
> features. With the use of some extra skin config and <xsl:if > elements
> those with a strong enough itch should be able to add at least some of
> your changes into pelt.
>
>> So in conclusion: I don't see our work as a new 'skin'. It is too
>> narrow and specialised for that to be in it's current state. Then
>> again it might serve as a showcase on *what* visuals can be achieved
>> and especially *how* they may be achieved.
>
>
> I agree with your conclusion. If you are still willing please add your
> skin to an issue, if possible add a few notes about the major changes
> you made (in terms of functionality, i.e. added an image to tabs, people
> can look at the code to see how)
>
Added to Jira as FOR-504. Sorry for the delay. I hope the comments
inside are sufficient. If not - just ask.
> Finally, may I take this opportunity to thank you and your company for
> your offer to donate your excellent work on this skin, it is very much
> appreciated by the community.
>
Glad to be of help.
> Ross
Torsten
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages (was Re: Forrest Example
Sites)
Posted by Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>.
Torsten Stolpmann wrote:
> As Claudia already pointed out, most work done on pelt was rather
> destructive (disabling/removing features we didn't need/like/got in the
> way) than constructive.
I've often wanted to disable certain features in our skins, but never
found the time to do it. The diffs between your work and pelt will
clearly indicate where the code is that should be disabled for various
features. With the use of some extra skin config and <xsl:if > elements
those with a strong enough itch should be able to add at least some of
your changes into pelt.
> So in conclusion: I don't see our work as a new 'skin'. It is too narrow
> and specialised for that to be in it's current state. Then again it
> might serve as a showcase on *what* visuals can be achieved and
> especially *how* they may be achieved.
I agree with your conclusion. If you are still willing please add your
skin to an issue, if possible add a few notes about the major changes
you made (in terms of functionality, i.e. added an image to tabs, people
can look at the code to see how)
Finally, may I take this opportunity to thank you and your company for
your offer to donate your excellent work on this skin, it is very much
appreciated by the community.
Ross
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages (was Re: Forrest Example
Sites)
Posted by Torsten Stolpmann <To...@verit.de>.
Hi!
I drop in for Claudia here, since I did most of the skin modification
stuff for the website myself. But yes, Claudia is reading this as well.
First of all: The modification of common skin elements is definitly
reversable as already pointed out by several people here. It was done
the way it is to have a smaller patchset, were changes are more obvious
to spot in our CVS diffs (For the inquiring mind: We changed the default
cellspacing for 'ForrestTable' and added images to the tab-menu items).
Secondly: IMHO this is not a new skin but more of a showcase what can be
achieved by modifying an existing skin like in this case, pelt. Pelt (as
of 0.6) doesn't gave enough configuration leeway to reach the visual
effects we wanted to, so we practically branched from there and molded
it to our needs.
As Claudia already pointed out, most work done on pelt was rather
destructive (disabling/removing features we didn't need/like/got in the
way) than constructive.
So in conclusion: I don't see our work as a new 'skin'. It is too narrow
and specialised for that to be in it's current state. Then again it
might serve as a showcase on *what* visuals can be achieved and
especially *how* they may be achieved.
Regards,
Torsten
Ferdinand Soethe wrote:
> Note: Perhaps I also have a slightly different view on this in the sense
> that I'm not aiming at building and maintaining a collection of
> skins but would rather like to have a quick and easy way to see
> and learn about other people's skins.
>
> And although I'm not opposed to working with them on improving
> their skin, I'd like to make that first step very easy.
>
> My comments below reflect this intention.
>
>
> Ross Gardler wrote:
>
>
>>I think Forrest should accept your skin package in one form or another,
>
>
> +1
>
> I'd like to ask Claudia to upload her skin into the issue tracker
> (or make it available on their website) so that interested people can
>
> - look at it
> - understand it
> - work with her to improve it
> - use it for their own projects
>
> While this is happening there is plenty of time to deal with any
> concerns and work out the general solution.
>
>
>>1. Forrest accepts the skin and keeps it in SVN
>
>
> I agree for all the reasons you mentioned.
>
>
>>2. We make all non-core skins available via a skins sub project within
>>Forrest
>
>
> 0 Because I don't think that the benefits will balance
> the administrative overhead involved. And - see below - I think
> we should minimize the effort required by anyone wanting to donate
> their skins.
>
>
>>3. The skin author makes it available via a ZIP download using the
>>skin-package system
>
>
> I don't think that this is such a bad solution
>
> - it is easy for the donator (they don't have to learn about our
> versioning systems or get a committer account) which might encourage
> more people to make their skin designs available to others.
>
> - the donator maintains full control over changes and releases. If
> people don't like that, they can always create a skin of their own
> from the downloaded package.
>
> - it is very clear that Forrest is not maintaining that package.
>
>
>>I am +0 for this. I would prefer to see a solution that makes the skin
>>available through a version control mechanism to simplify patches. If
>>only a skin-package zip is provided it will make it difficult for people
>>to contribute to the skin.
>
>
> I can see your concern. On the other hand I think that it would make
> people work more closely with the donator of the skin because they
> would be the ones who have to understand and implement changes. (Which
> does not mean that these discussion have to or should happen
> Off-List!)
>
>
>>4. The skin author donates the skin to an external Open Source project
>>and uses that projects CVS/SVN etc.
>
>
> -1
>
> This I think would make the issue far too complicated and will
> discourage people from donating skins for sure.
>
>
>>Whatever we do, we should encourage the use of skin packages and we
>
>
> Or at least encourage people to make them available to learn from
> them.
>
>
> David wrote:
>
>
>>Concentrate our energy on developing one very useful skin.
>
>
> True. This is the impression I had from the recent discussions on
> this.
>
>
>>Actually there is another option that comes before
>>all of these. We enhance Pelt skin to be able to address
>>these needs, hopefully with patches from the community.
>
>
> I'm all with you on this in principle. Though when I think about
> details, three more considerations come to my mind:
>
> - trying to adapt pelt to address all needs might make use and
> maintenance a very complex issue (if we are not talking about moving
> or hiding certain elements). We might reach a point where different
> simple skins might be easier to maintain (also because it can be
> done by people on an entry level understanding).
>
> - Skins like Claudia's will likely be maintained as long as her
> company uses Forrest. So spending a lot of resources on integrating
> these functionalities with pelt might be nice from an architectural
> point of view, as far as resources are concerned it might not make so
> much sense since the resources saved on maintaining their skin will probably
> not go towards Forrest.
>
> So I'd rather accept a donation of a well done and well maintained skin.
>
> - Even if Pelt integrates all functionalities, there is still the
> issue of styling. If styling is completely configurable we'd
> need a new repository of styles because a lot of work goes into
> making the skin look good with colors, fonts, sizes etc.
>
> And not all styles fit all purposes.
>
>
>>We have tried to encourage this option, but few people
>>are interested.
>
>
> or able! For my skin design is still something I hesitate to tackle.
> Discussing other peoples solutions on list might help me and others
> learn more about it ...
>
>
>>I think it is the best option (apart from the views plugin).
>>We work as a community to develop one really good skin that
>>can address most needs and enables people to configure it.
>
>
> -1
>
> Until 'views' is available it would really help to make other peoples
> skins available. As doing so would open Forrest to a whole lot of
> people who do not have developer skills but might be able to convince
> their management to fund development if they can demo a great looking
> site like Claudia's.
>
> It might not be the perfect final solution but it is a great way to
> start ...
>
>
>>It is my opinion that the Forrest project is not yet ready
>>to cope with the extra work of overseeing people who are
>>not interested in the Forrest project itself.
>
>
> So let's keep the involvement optional. If a developer has good
> reasons (like a paying client) to work with Claudia on improving her
> skin, great! If not, let's just accept what is there.
>
>
>>I am very concerned that we told Thorsten that we had no time
>>to review the "views" plugin proposal, which i gather will
>>address many "skin" needs, yet we are finding time to revisit
>>the skins situation.
>
>
> I think these are really two different issues. Thorsten's views are
> a longer term solution for a more flexible skinning system (and I
> really look forward to that) whereas Claudia's skin is more about
> excellent UI-design.
>
> Both will improve Forrest in different ways but this skin is available
> at very little cost in resources and might help a lot of people
> use Forrest now.
>
> I might help to learn what Claudia and her company thinks about all
> this. Claudia: Are you following the developer list as well?
>
> --
> Ferdinand Soethe
--
Torsten Stolpmann
verit Informationsysteme GmbH
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages (was Re: Forrest Example
Sites)
Posted by Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>.
Ferdinand Soethe wrote:
> Ross Gardler wrote:
...
>>I think it is the best option (apart from the views plugin).
>>We work as a community to develop one really good skin that
>>can address most needs and enables people to configure it.
>
>
> -1
>
> Until 'views' is available it would really help to make other peoples
> skins available. As doing so would open Forrest to a whole lot of
> people who do not have developer skills but might be able to convince
> their management to fund development if they can demo a great looking
> site like Claudia's.
(I've switched "sides" due to the comments from David and Thorsten)
If we make Claudias skin available in its current state it will cause a
problem for people wanting to convert from skins to views because she
has stated it is a heavily customised skin (parts ripped out, changes to
common etc.) The ease of upgrade between versions is very important to
keeping our users.
Thorsten has indicated that if an "old fashioned" skin has heavily
customised XSL rather than CSS enhancements the upgrade to views will be
difficult. We should not be encouraging people to use skins that will
make their upgrade path difficult.
If we are to accept Claudias skin as a donation we have to spend the
time adding her improvements into pelt and instead of ripping out
sections we should add configuration options. This may be a difficult
task that takes too long, we won't know until we see it. However, I, and
others really like the skin. I, and hopefully others, will find the time
to do this integration if they have a use case for it.
Therefore, I think the best thing is for Claudia to add the skin to the
issue tracker where, as you say elsewhere, those with time can look at
it and work with it into the "official" Forrest skin. Hopefully Claudia
will help us with this work as it will make her companies eventual
migration to views smoother, of course this is not *expected* of Claudia.
Ross
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages (was Re: Forrest Example Sites)
Posted by Ferdinand Soethe <sa...@soethe.net>.
Note: Perhaps I also have a slightly different view on this in the sense
that I'm not aiming at building and maintaining a collection of
skins but would rather like to have a quick and easy way to see
and learn about other people's skins.
And although I'm not opposed to working with them on improving
their skin, I'd like to make that first step very easy.
My comments below reflect this intention.
Ross Gardler wrote:
> I think Forrest should accept your skin package in one form or another,
+1
I'd like to ask Claudia to upload her skin into the issue tracker
(or make it available on their website) so that interested people can
- look at it
- understand it
- work with her to improve it
- use it for their own projects
While this is happening there is plenty of time to deal with any
concerns and work out the general solution.
> 1. Forrest accepts the skin and keeps it in SVN
I agree for all the reasons you mentioned.
> 2. We make all non-core skins available via a skins sub project within
> Forrest
0 Because I don't think that the benefits will balance
the administrative overhead involved. And - see below - I think
we should minimize the effort required by anyone wanting to donate
their skins.
> 3. The skin author makes it available via a ZIP download using the
> skin-package system
I don't think that this is such a bad solution
- it is easy for the donator (they don't have to learn about our
versioning systems or get a committer account) which might encourage
more people to make their skin designs available to others.
- the donator maintains full control over changes and releases. If
people don't like that, they can always create a skin of their own
from the downloaded package.
- it is very clear that Forrest is not maintaining that package.
> I am +0 for this. I would prefer to see a solution that makes the skin
> available through a version control mechanism to simplify patches. If
> only a skin-package zip is provided it will make it difficult for people
> to contribute to the skin.
I can see your concern. On the other hand I think that it would make
people work more closely with the donator of the skin because they
would be the ones who have to understand and implement changes. (Which
does not mean that these discussion have to or should happen
Off-List!)
> 4. The skin author donates the skin to an external Open Source project
> and uses that projects CVS/SVN etc.
-1
This I think would make the issue far too complicated and will
discourage people from donating skins for sure.
> Whatever we do, we should encourage the use of skin packages and we
Or at least encourage people to make them available to learn from
them.
David wrote:
> Concentrate our energy on developing one very useful skin.
True. This is the impression I had from the recent discussions on
this.
> Actually there is another option that comes before
> all of these. We enhance Pelt skin to be able to address
> these needs, hopefully with patches from the community.
I'm all with you on this in principle. Though when I think about
details, three more considerations come to my mind:
- trying to adapt pelt to address all needs might make use and
maintenance a very complex issue (if we are not talking about moving
or hiding certain elements). We might reach a point where different
simple skins might be easier to maintain (also because it can be
done by people on an entry level understanding).
- Skins like Claudia's will likely be maintained as long as her
company uses Forrest. So spending a lot of resources on integrating
these functionalities with pelt might be nice from an architectural
point of view, as far as resources are concerned it might not make so
much sense since the resources saved on maintaining their skin will probably
not go towards Forrest.
So I'd rather accept a donation of a well done and well maintained skin.
- Even if Pelt integrates all functionalities, there is still the
issue of styling. If styling is completely configurable we'd
need a new repository of styles because a lot of work goes into
making the skin look good with colors, fonts, sizes etc.
And not all styles fit all purposes.
> We have tried to encourage this option, but few people
> are interested.
or able! For my skin design is still something I hesitate to tackle.
Discussing other peoples solutions on list might help me and others
learn more about it ...
> I think it is the best option (apart from the views plugin).
> We work as a community to develop one really good skin that
> can address most needs and enables people to configure it.
-1
Until 'views' is available it would really help to make other peoples
skins available. As doing so would open Forrest to a whole lot of
people who do not have developer skills but might be able to convince
their management to fund development if they can demo a great looking
site like Claudia's.
It might not be the perfect final solution but it is a great way to
start ...
> It is my opinion that the Forrest project is not yet ready
> to cope with the extra work of overseeing people who are
> not interested in the Forrest project itself.
So let's keep the involvement optional. If a developer has good
reasons (like a paying client) to work with Claudia on improving her
skin, great! If not, let's just accept what is there.
> I am very concerned that we told Thorsten that we had no time
> to review the "views" plugin proposal, which i gather will
> address many "skin" needs, yet we are finding time to revisit
> the skins situation.
I think these are really two different issues. Thorsten's views are
a longer term solution for a more flexible skinning system (and I
really look forward to that) whereas Claudia's skin is more about
excellent UI-design.
Both will improve Forrest in different ways but this skin is available
at very little cost in resources and might help a lot of people
use Forrest now.
I might help to learn what Claudia and her company thinks about all
this. Claudia: Are you following the developer list as well?
--
Ferdinand Soethe
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages
Posted by Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>.
Thorsten Scherler wrote:
> On Thu, 2005-06-02 at 10:08 +0100, Ross Gardler wrote:
> <snip/>
>
>>I should have made the subject "attracting skins/views developers
>>through skin-packages"
>>
>>Thorsten, does this make any sense or am I going down a dead end here?
>
>
> IMO part 1 no, part 2 yes.
>
> View development is different from skin development this is why I think
> we will hardly attract new view devs through skin-packages. We only will
> have more work but hardly any benefit out of it. That is my *personal*
> opinion.
OK. I'll "cease and dissist" your *personal* opinion is all that counts
on views right now since we don't know them well enough yet.
Ross
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages
Posted by Thorsten Scherler <th...@apache.org>.
On Thu, 2005-06-02 at 10:08 +0100, Ross Gardler wrote:
<snip/>
> I should have made the subject "attracting skins/views developers
> through skin-packages"
>
> Thorsten, does this make any sense or am I going down a dead end here?
IMO part 1 no, part 2 yes.
View development is different from skin development this is why I think
we will hardly attract new view devs through skin-packages. We only will
have more work but hardly any benefit out of it. That is my *personal*
opinion.
salu2
--
thorsten
"Together we stand, divided we fall!"
Hey you (Pink Floyd)
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages
Posted by David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>.
Ross Gardler wrote:
> David Crossley wrote:
> >Ross Gardler wrote:
>
> >Why have you called this thread a Random Thought? It sounds
> >like a proposal. Be aware that people often ignore RT threads
> >until they have time to investigate, whereas proposals need
> >the attention of committers.
>
> Because there are a number of options available and I am sure I missed
> some. Furthermore, with the move to views in 0.8 this "proposal" may be
> seen as a waste of time.
I reckon that that is exactly what a Proposal is. Other
options will come out during the discussion, some will
be shown to be ineffective. At the end of the Proposal
discussion we will probably already have the final solution.
> >>2. We make all non-core skins available via a skins sub project within
> >>Forrest
> >>
> >>In this instance we would create a new project for contributed skins.
> >>Anyone donating a skin will automatically get commit access to this
> >>sub-project (but not to Forrest itself).
> >>
> >>I am +1 for this if it is possible within the Apache Infrastructure. It
> >>ensures that there will be at least one person with commit access with a
> >>vested interest in maintaining the skin and in applying any contributed
> >>patches.
> >>
> >>Does the way our SVN is set up allow this?
> >
> >This option does not absolve us from needing to oversee
> >all the commits and collaborate to keep the skin maintained.
> >
> >It is my opinion that the Forrest project is not yet ready
> >to cope with the extra work of overseeing people who are
> >not interested in the Forrest project itself.
>
> My intention was to have a lower barrier to entry for committers working
> on skins. These are the kinds of developers who will take an active
> interest in views.
>
> It is possible to work on skins without knowing the internals of
> Forrest, this will also be true of views once we get time to assist
> Thorsten in finishing them off. As these developers become more familiar
> with Forrest as a whole they may eventually become full committers.
>
> >As far as i know, the ASF is still geared towards having
> >full committers. This concept of partial committer i have
> >not heard of before, other than some discussions here at
> >Forrest when we were establishing our project guidelines
> >to be sure to enable that possibility in the future.
>
> OK, I thought that would be the case, so this is not an option.
This is a great idea that we have talked about in the past.
When the dust has settled after releasing 0.7 we can
work towards eanbling that.
--David
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages
Posted by Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>.
David Crossley wrote:
> Ross Gardler wrote:
>
>>I would love to see your skin made available (I too like it a great
>>deal). However, we need to discuss exactly how to accept this donation
>>over on the dev list (this mail is copied to the dev list and replies
>>will be sent there).
>
>
> Could we please keep such discussions on the dev list.
> The replies to the user list do not automatically come here.
Hmmm, I was setting the reply-to header thinking that this would
override the users mailing list reply-to. However, you are right, this
is not the case. I'll change my method for moving to the dev list.
> Why have you called this thread a Random Thought? It sounds
> like a proposal. Be aware that people often ignore RT threads
> until they have time to investigate, whereas proposals need
> the attention of committers.
Because there are a number of options available and I am sure I missed
some. Furthermore, with the move to views in 0.8 this "proposal" may be
seen as a waste of time.
...
>>The hope was that we would be able to encourage people, such as
>>yourself, to make their skins available via a zip download from their
>>sites. The benefit would be more eyes on the skin and thus improvements
>>would be sent back to you.
>>
>>Unfortunately, we have not exploited this feature. Now is the time for
>>us to do so, and your skin can be the first example of that feature
>>(would you believe it was added in 0.5 and we still don't use it - shame
>>on us)
>
>
> Steady on. No-one has bothered to contribute a skin
> via the download mechanism. So there is no shame on us.
I believe some will donate their skins if we ask them to, we haven't
been asking, so shame on us (or me if you prefer, since I think this is
important, I've been here since 0.5 and *I* haven't been asking ;-)
>>I think Forrest should accept your skin package in one form or another,
>>the question is how, I see our options as:
>>
>>1. Forrest accepts the skin and keeps it in SVN
>>
>>I am -0 on this. We need to would then be forced to maintain the skin
>>and ensure that it is "correct" in the sense of everything is done the
>>right way. I would prefer we only maintain the one skin in our core and
>>utilise the skin packaging system in order to add more skins.
>
>
> Actually there is another option that comes before
> all of these. We enhance Pelt skin to be able to address
> these needs, hopefully with patches from the community.
> We have tried to encourage this option, but few people
> are interested.
>
> I think it is the best option (apart from the views plugin).
> We work as a community to develop one really good skin that
> can address most needs and enables people to configure it.
Yes, in the case of this particular skin we can probably work the
changes back into Pelt. However, could does not mean should. I would not
propose doing that since it will take developer effort and, as you point
out later in your reply, our developer effort should be on the
forthcoming views. This particular skin is already working and looks
great, so why not use it as-is (well with the removal or the committing
back of changes to common).
Perhaps this point indicates we should just ask the author to make it
available as a skin package for download. It's the simplest solution
with the least developer effort.
>>2. We make all non-core skins available via a skins sub project within
>>Forrest
>>
>>In this instance we would create a new project for contributed skins.
>>Anyone donating a skin will automatically get commit access to this
>>sub-project (but not to Forrest itself).
>>
>>I am +1 for this if it is possible within the Apache Infrastructure. It
>>ensures that there will be at least one person with commit access with a
>>vested interest in maintaining the skin and in applying any contributed
>>patches.
>>
>>Does the way our SVN is set up allow this?
>
>
> This option does not absolve us from needing to oversee
> all the commits and collaborate to keep the skin maintained.
>
> It is my opinion that the Forrest project is not yet ready
> to cope with the extra work of overseeing people who are
> not interested in the Forrest project itself.
My intention was to have a lower barrier to entry for committers working
on skins. These are the kinds of developers who will take an active
interest in views.
It is possible to work on skins without knowing the internals of
Forrest, this will also be true of views once we get time to assist
Thorsten in finishing them off. As these developers become more familiar
with Forrest as a whole they may eventually become full committers.
> As far as i know, the ASF is still geared towards having
> full committers. This concept of partial committer i have
> not heard of before, other than some discussions here at
> Forrest when we were establishing our project guidelines
> to be sure to enable that possibility in the future.
OK, I thought that would be the case, so this is not an option.
...
>>Comments, ideas?
>
>
> I am very concerned that we told Thorsten that we had no time
> to review the "views" plugin proposal, which i gather will
> address many "skin" needs, yet we are finding time to revisit
> the skins situation.
See above comment about 0.8 development. My hope is that we can get more
people with a personal interest in the skinning/views aspect of Forrest
to have a more direct involvement with Forrest. That is those who can
achieve what they want in terms of functionality, but desire their own
look and feel.
In other words I am hoping to attract people who can assist Thorsten. In
the meantime there is nothing stopping us from extending the range of
skins available through the skin packaging system. We have many users of
0.6 and they will take some time to upgrade to 0.7 (yet to be released)
and then 0.8 (which is when views are introduced).
I should have made the subject "attracting skins/views developers
through skin-packages"
Thorsten, does this make any sense or am I going down a dead end here?
Ross
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages
Posted by Ferdinand Soethe <sa...@soethe.net>.
Thorsten Scherler wrote:
> IMO the only thing that we can and should accept is the CSS of Claudia.
> Skins ("old fashion" - the ones we have right now) are horror for
> maintainment (and there are only few that really maintain them). More so
> if they change common skin stylesheets.
I'd like to talk about 'making available' rather than 'accept' here to
make it clear that Forrest Project is not responsible or has to
maintain these skins.
But having said that, I suggest that we leave that decision up to the
people wanting to look at and use that skin? If at some point they
find that this skin does not follow Forrest's improvements anymore,
they can still opt out of using it.
> Per definition the result of a skin is a html skeleton that contains css
> markup and features. Features of skins are contracts. A skin provider
> can decide which contracts to offer (Claudia stated that they riped
> parts out of the skin). Now using this beautiful skin of her would mean
> we have to add this parts again and create a new "old fashion" skin.
> That leads to an endless circle of work on "old fashion" skins.
I don't see why we have to do any of that. Just add a short
disclaimer the way Claudia did and let people make up their own mind
about it.
> IMO we should focus to implement views and not adding more (endless)
> work with "old fashion" skins. In views Claudia would provide a
> default.fv, the default.css and a couple of new contracts (if needed,
> which can either override the common ones by providing new
> implementations of them or providing new contracts), which all are
> easily maintainable. I am -1 for dedicating any energy on "old fashion"
> skins that are in my eyes a dead end.
Great! If that is so, then Claudia and other people wanting to use
that skin will probably go for it as soon as views is stable and
available.
Pls. try to look at it from a users point of view. People who want/need
a nice design now cannot not use views (alpha) at such an early stage
for a production site.
And if they work on tweaking pelt to look that way it will probably
take a lot more time than using or improving Claudia's skin.
So can we please not stand in the way of these people?
--
Ferdinand Soethe
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages
Posted by Thorsten Scherler <th...@apache.org>.
On Thu, 2005-06-02 at 15:49 +1000, David Crossley wrote:
> Ross Gardler wrote:
<snip>
> >
> > 1. Forrest accepts the skin and keeps it in SVN
> >
> > I am -0 on this. We need to would then be forced to maintain the skin
> > and ensure that it is "correct" in the sense of everything is done the
> > right way. I would prefer we only maintain the one skin in our core and
> > utilise the skin packaging system in order to add more skins.
>
> Actually there is another option that comes before
> all of these. We enhance Pelt skin to be able to address
> these needs, hopefully with patches from the community.
> We have tried to encourage this option, but few people
> are interested.
>
> I think it is the best option (apart from the views plugin).
> We work as a community to develop one really good skin that
> can address most needs and enables people to configure it.
>
IMO the only thing that we can and should accept is the CSS of Claudia.
Skins ("old fashion" - the ones we have right now) are horror for
maintainment (and there are only few that really maintain them). More so
if they change common skin stylesheets.
Per definition the result of a skin is a html skeleton that contains css
markup and features. Features of skins are contracts. A skin provider
can decide which contracts to offer (Claudia stated that they riped
parts out of the skin). Now using this beautiful skin of her would mean
we have to add this parts again and create a new "old fashion" skin.
That leads to an endless circle of work on "old fashion" skins.
IMO we should focus to implement views and not adding more (endless)
work with "old fashion" skins. In views Claudia would provide a
default.fv, the default.css and a couple of new contracts (if needed,
which can either override the common ones by providing new
implementations of them or providing new contracts), which all are
easily maintainable. I am -1 for dedicating any energy on "old fashion"
skins that are in my eyes a dead end.
It makes more sense to finish views and address the skin package
facility for views.
<snip>
> >
> > 4. The skin author donates the skin to an external Open Source project
> > and uses that projects CVS/SVN etc.
> >
> > This is kind of a half way house between option 2 and option 3. In the
> > past we tried to set-up a Sourceforge project for this, but it was
> > rejected as the project would not generate program code. I will offer
> > the Burrokeet project on SF since this uses Forrest at its core so the
> > housing of Forrest skins is appropriate within that project. I do not
> > have any problems adding skin contributors to that project to ensure
> > they have commit access. Of course, there may be other projects that are
> > appropriate.
> >
> >
> > ---
> >
> > Whatever we do, we should encourage the use of skin packages and we
> > should extend the system to list "official" skins in the same way the
> > plugin system does, see
> > http://forrest.apache.org/0.7/docs/plugins/index.html
> >
> > Comments, ideas?
>
> I am very concerned that we told Thorsten that we had no time
> to review the "views" plugin proposal, which i gather will
> address many "skin" needs, yet we are finding time to revisit
> the skins situation.
Yeah, you hit the nail on the head.
IMO we should *not* encourage the use of skin packages but rather the
development and usage of views. I started views firstly only to address
"skin" needs. That means we are splitting our resources apart where we
should bundle them by talking about and encouraging the outdated "old
fashion" skins.
...and sure you only can encourage something that you have reviewed.
Just my 2 cents.
--
thorsten
"Together we stand, divided we fall!"
Hey you (Pink Floyd)
Re: [RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages
Posted by David Crossley <cr...@apache.org>.
Ross Gardler wrote:
> I would love to see your skin made available (I too like it a great
> deal). However, we need to discuss exactly how to accept this donation
> over on the dev list (this mail is copied to the dev list and replies
> will be sent there).
Could we please keep such discussions on the dev list.
The replies to the user list do not automatically come here.
Why have you called this thread a Random Thought? It sounds
like a proposal. Be aware that people often ignore RT threads
until they have time to investigate, whereas proposals need
the attention of committers.
> In the past Forrest has not wanted to accept new skins because we do not
> have the resources to maintain them. Consequently, we added a
> skin-packaging system that allowed people to develop skins and make them
> available via an automatic download mechanism.
There were two reasons for not accepting new skins:
Need interested committers/developers to maintain them.
Concentrate our energy on developing one very useful skin.
> The hope was that we would be able to encourage people, such as
> yourself, to make their skins available via a zip download from their
> sites. The benefit would be more eyes on the skin and thus improvements
> would be sent back to you.
>
> Unfortunately, we have not exploited this feature. Now is the time for
> us to do so, and your skin can be the first example of that feature
> (would you believe it was added in 0.5 and we still don't use it - shame
> on us)
Steady on. No-one has bothered to contribute a skin
via the download mechanism. So there is no shame on us.
> I think Forrest should accept your skin package in one form or another,
> the question is how, I see our options as:
>
> 1. Forrest accepts the skin and keeps it in SVN
>
> I am -0 on this. We need to would then be forced to maintain the skin
> and ensure that it is "correct" in the sense of everything is done the
> right way. I would prefer we only maintain the one skin in our core and
> utilise the skin packaging system in order to add more skins.
Actually there is another option that comes before
all of these. We enhance Pelt skin to be able to address
these needs, hopefully with patches from the community.
We have tried to encourage this option, but few people
are interested.
I think it is the best option (apart from the views plugin).
We work as a community to develop one really good skin that
can address most needs and enables people to configure it.
> 2. We make all non-core skins available via a skins sub project within
> Forrest
>
> In this instance we would create a new project for contributed skins.
> Anyone donating a skin will automatically get commit access to this
> sub-project (but not to Forrest itself).
>
> I am +1 for this if it is possible within the Apache Infrastructure. It
> ensures that there will be at least one person with commit access with a
> vested interest in maintaining the skin and in applying any contributed
> patches.
>
> Does the way our SVN is set up allow this?
This option does not absolve us from needing to oversee
all the commits and collaborate to keep the skin maintained.
It is my opinion that the Forrest project is not yet ready
to cope with the extra work of overseeing people who are
not interested in the Forrest project itself.
As far as i know, the ASF is still geared towards having
full committers. This concept of partial committer i have
not heard of before, other than some discussions here at
Forrest when we were establishing our project guidelines
to be sure to enable that possibility in the future.
> 3. The skin author makes it available via a ZIP download using the
> skin-package system
>
> I am +0 for this. I would prefer to see a solution that makes the skin
> available through a version control mechanism to simplify patches. If
> only a skin-package zip is provided it will make it difficult for people
> to contribute to the skin.
>
> 4. The skin author donates the skin to an external Open Source project
> and uses that projects CVS/SVN etc.
>
> This is kind of a half way house between option 2 and option 3. In the
> past we tried to set-up a Sourceforge project for this, but it was
> rejected as the project would not generate program code. I will offer
> the Burrokeet project on SF since this uses Forrest at its core so the
> housing of Forrest skins is appropriate within that project. I do not
> have any problems adding skin contributors to that project to ensure
> they have commit access. Of course, there may be other projects that are
> appropriate.
>
>
> ---
>
> Whatever we do, we should encourage the use of skin packages and we
> should extend the system to list "official" skins in the same way the
> plugin system does, see
> http://forrest.apache.org/0.7/docs/plugins/index.html
>
> Comments, ideas?
I am very concerned that we told Thorsten that we had no time
to review the "views" plugin proposal, which i gather will
address many "skin" needs, yet we are finding time to revisit
the skins situation.
--David
[RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages (was Re: Forrest Example
Sites)
Posted by Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>.
Claudia Könnecke wrote:
> Ferdinand Soethe wrote:
>
>> I really like your skin design. The clear typographically structuring
>> of the menus, the use of color and the placement of logos and
>> background image would make it very useful for commercial and private
>> sites.
>>
>> Would you consider donating it to our skin pool? Or short of that share
>> the code so that others can copy bits and pieces of it?
>
>
>
> Hi Ferdinand!
>
> First of all thanks for the praise - we feel flattered :)
>
> We see no problem in sharing our skin-code, but beware - we had to bend
> some rules in certain areas (e.g. changing stuff in skins/common/xslt)
> to achieve what we wanted. There possibly are ways to prevent these
> changes (especially in the 0.7 codebase - which we haven't looked at yet).
There is no need to change the common files, simply override the
templates you need to change in your own skin. We can show you how to do
this when working on your skin package donation.
> We started the website in December 2004 where documentation was rather
> sparse and spent a lot of time learning things the hard way so possibly
> not all of our solutions are 'by the book'.
The Open Source way is to take code and polish it, so no worries there.
> So if this hasn't scared you yet, please contact us on how we may give
> back to the community.
I would love to see your skin made available (I too like it a great
deal). However, we need to discuss exactly how to accept this donation
over on the dev list (this mail is copied to the dev list and replies
will be sent there).
In the past Forrest has not wanted to accept new skins because we do not
have the resources to maintain them. Consequently, we added a
skin-packaging system that allowed people to develop skins and make them
available via an automatic download mechanism.
The hope was that we would be able to encourage people, such as
yourself, to make their skins available via a zip download from their
sites. The benefit would be more eyes on the skin and thus improvements
would be sent back to you.
Unfortunately, we have not exploited this feature. Now is the time for
us to do so, and your skin can be the first example of that feature
(would you believe it was added in 0.5 and we still don't use it - shame
on us)
I think Forrest should accept your skin package in one form or another,
the question is how, I see our options as:
1. Forrest accepts the skin and keeps it in SVN
I am -0 on this. We need to would then be forced to maintain the skin
and ensure that it is "correct" in the sense of everything is done the
right way. I would prefer we only maintain the one skin in our core and
utilise the skin packaging system in order to add more skins.
2. We make all non-core skins available via a skins sub project within
Forrest
In this instance we would create a new project for contributed skins.
Anyone donating a skin will automatically get commit access to this
sub-project (but not to Forrest itself).
I am +1 for this if it is possible within the Apache Infrastructure. It
ensures that there will be at least one person with commit access with a
vested interest in maintaining the skin and in applying any contributed
patches.
Does the way our SVN is set up allow this?
3. The skin author makes it available via a ZIP download using the
skin-package system
I am +0 for this. I would prefer to see a solution that makes the skin
available through a version control mechanism to simplify patches. If
only a skin-package zip is provided it will make it difficult for people
to contribute to the skin.
4. The skin author donates the skin to an external Open Source project
and uses that projects CVS/SVN etc.
This is kind of a half way house between option 2 and option 3. In the
past we tried to set-up a Sourceforge project for this, but it was
rejected as the project would not generate program code. I will offer
the Burrokeet project on SF since this uses Forrest at its core so the
housing of Forrest skins is appropriate within that project. I do not
have any problems adding skin contributors to that project to ensure
they have commit access. Of course, there may be other projects that are
appropriate.
---
Whatever we do, we should encourage the use of skin packages and we
should extend the system to list "official" skins in the same way the
plugin system does, see
http://forrest.apache.org/0.7/docs/plugins/index.html
Comments, ideas?
Ross
[RT] Accepting and managing Skin Packages (was Re: Forrest Example
Sites)
Posted by Ross Gardler <rg...@apache.org>.
Claudia Könnecke wrote:
> Ferdinand Soethe wrote:
>
>> I really like your skin design. The clear typographically structuring
>> of the menus, the use of color and the placement of logos and
>> background image would make it very useful for commercial and private
>> sites.
>>
>> Would you consider donating it to our skin pool? Or short of that share
>> the code so that others can copy bits and pieces of it?
>
>
>
> Hi Ferdinand!
>
> First of all thanks for the praise - we feel flattered :)
>
> We see no problem in sharing our skin-code, but beware - we had to bend
> some rules in certain areas (e.g. changing stuff in skins/common/xslt)
> to achieve what we wanted. There possibly are ways to prevent these
> changes (especially in the 0.7 codebase - which we haven't looked at yet).
There is no need to change the common files, simply override the
templates you need to change in your own skin. We can show you how to do
this when working on your skin package donation.
> We started the website in December 2004 where documentation was rather
> sparse and spent a lot of time learning things the hard way so possibly
> not all of our solutions are 'by the book'.
The Open Source way is to take code and polish it, so no worries there.
> So if this hasn't scared you yet, please contact us on how we may give
> back to the community.
I would love to see your skin made available (I too like it a great
deal). However, we need to discuss exactly how to accept this donation
over on the dev list (this mail is copied to the dev list and replies
will be sent there).
In the past Forrest has not wanted to accept new skins because we do not
have the resources to maintain them. Consequently, we added a
skin-packaging system that allowed people to develop skins and make them
available via an automatic download mechanism.
The hope was that we would be able to encourage people, such as
yourself, to make their skins available via a zip download from their
sites. The benefit would be more eyes on the skin and thus improvements
would be sent back to you.
Unfortunately, we have not exploited this feature. Now is the time for
us to do so, and your skin can be the first example of that feature
(would you believe it was added in 0.5 and we still don't use it - shame
on us)
I think Forrest should accept your skin package in one form or another,
the question is how, I see our options as:
1. Forrest accepts the skin and keeps it in SVN
I am -0 on this. We need to would then be forced to maintain the skin
and ensure that it is "correct" in the sense of everything is done the
right way. I would prefer we only maintain the one skin in our core and
utilise the skin packaging system in order to add more skins.
2. We make all non-core skins available via a skins sub project within
Forrest
In this instance we would create a new project for contributed skins.
Anyone donating a skin will automatically get commit access to this
sub-project (but not to Forrest itself).
I am +1 for this if it is possible within the Apache Infrastructure. It
ensures that there will be at least one person with commit access with a
vested interest in maintaining the skin and in applying any contributed
patches.
Does the way our SVN is set up allow this?
3. The skin author makes it available via a ZIP download using the
skin-package system
I am +0 for this. I would prefer to see a solution that makes the skin
available through a version control mechanism to simplify patches. If
only a skin-package zip is provided it will make it difficult for people
to contribute to the skin.
4. The skin author donates the skin to an external Open Source project
and uses that projects CVS/SVN etc.
This is kind of a half way house between option 2 and option 3. In the
past we tried to set-up a Sourceforge project for this, but it was
rejected as the project would not generate program code. I will offer
the Burrokeet project on SF since this uses Forrest at its core so the
housing of Forrest skins is appropriate within that project. I do not
have any problems adding skin contributors to that project to ensure
they have commit access. Of course, there may be other projects that are
appropriate.
---
Whatever we do, we should encourage the use of skin packages and we
should extend the system to list "official" skins in the same way the
plugin system does, see
http://forrest.apache.org/0.7/docs/plugins/index.html
Comments, ideas?
Ross
Re: Forrest Example Sites
Posted by Claudia Könnecke <cl...@verit.de>.
Ferdinand Soethe wrote:
> I really like your skin design. The clear typographically structuring
> of the menus, the use of color and the placement of logos and
> background image would make it very useful for commercial and private
> sites.
>
> Would you consider donating it to our skin pool? Or short of that share
> the code so that others can copy bits and pieces of it?
Hi Ferdinand!
First of all thanks for the praise - we feel flattered :)
We see no problem in sharing our skin-code, but beware - we had to bend
some rules in certain areas (e.g. changing stuff in skins/common/xslt)
to achieve what we wanted. There possibly are ways to prevent these
changes (especially in the 0.7 codebase - which we haven't looked at yet).
We started the website in December 2004 where documentation was rather
sparse and spent a lot of time learning things the hard way so possibly
not all of our solutions are 'by the book'.
Our skin is based on the 'pelt' skin codebase which was mercilessly
ripped apart where we felt the need to do so. We dropped support for
things we didn't need (e.g. project/group logos, collapseable menues,
etc.) and changed the layout of the top-strip.
So if this hasn't scared you yet, please contact us on how we may give
back to the community.
Regards,
Claudia
Re: Forrest Example Sites
Posted by Ferdinand Soethe <sa...@soethe.net>.
Hi Claudia,
Claudia Könnecke wrote:
> we would like to announce that our website at http://www.verit.de is now
> running on Forrest 0.6 (eagerly awaiting the 0.7 release). Please feel
> free to add it to your growing list of example sites.
I really like your skin design. The clear typographically structuring
of the menus, the use of color and the placement of logos and
background image would make it very useful for commercial and private
sites.
Would you consider donating it to our skin pool? Or short of that share
the code so that others can copy bits and pieces of it?
--
Ferdinand Soethe