[dev] New giapeto block

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting Roel Gloudemans <roel at gloudemans.info>:

> Blocks are used on the portal page and in Giapeto. But what is Giapeto?
> It's just a structured collection of text blocks augmented with some
> dynamic content provided by the Blocks.  Actually it is not much
> different from the portal page. The portal page just lacks some
> navigation structure and access to giapeto's text blocks.

And those text blocks could be provided by Wicked with some work on  
the "attachments" concept and on supporting wiki pages with multiple  
formats (wiki text, xhtml, etc...).

> This could be a nice setup for Horde 4. Something like Giapeto becomes
> the root. Users can then build their own portal by creating their own
> naviagation structure and create pages to which they add only the
> blocks they need. In this way every user can create their own Horde
> with only the functionality they need. (Combine it with some Ajax code
> to let you actually drag your page together and you really have a
> killer app.)

:) I've been working on making the block rendering code more generic -  
I just introduced it into Jonah to replace the old subscription  
mechanism there, and I want to use it in Whups as well.

> But back to the current situation. I see Blocks as plugins for the
> various apps. Therefore it would be only logical to make installing and
> (de)activating possible via the administrative interface (maybe using
> the same mechanism as the ftp'ing of the conf.php files). And indeed;
> all blocks should be moved from various the lib/Block locations to one
> central location. (We may even speed up Horde a bit in the process,
> since those directories don't have to be checked anymore).

Definitely makes sense in an installation context; harder in a CVS  
checkout context, but that really shouldn't be driving our development  
decisions.

> Application and version dependencies should noted in the header of the
> block. And a Block should be just one file (from the top of my head all
> of them are at the moment). Maybe we should also think of a better
> name. When I think Block, I think brick and that something to throw
> trough a Window (take that Bill ;-) )

Heh. Do you like "chunk" better perhaps?

If you want to start writing some of this up on the wiki pages,  
perhaps under Rampage, that'd be great.

-chuck

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