[dev] Importan proposal to change Horde at User Interface (UI) Level

[Chuck Hagenbuch]

Quoting Elier Delgado <elier.delgado at gmail.com>:

> We was analysing with chuck, but we will appreciate the opinion of
> other core developer.
>
> This thread is continuation of "Cheking Joomla template" thread.
> http://lists.horde.org/archives/dev/Week-of-Mon-20080225/022756.html
> http://lists.horde.org/archives/dev/Week-of-Mon-20080303/022775.html
> http://lists.horde.org/archives/dev/Week-of-Mon-20080310/022793.html
>
>
> We get change completely the User Interface of Horde, using for
> example the pretty default template of Drupal!!
> Although I think that the wordpress' templates strategy is more
> flexible and will be a better solution.
>
> Here you can see the example:
> http://lists.horde.org/archives/dev/Week-of-Mon-20080310/022815.html
> http://lists.horde.org/archives/dev/attachments/20080312/5cb9e17d/attachment-0001.bin
> Download it and change the extension to .rar

So, here are my thoughts/comments on this:

- Files with PHP code in them should be named .php, not .tpl. Actually  
these should be named .html.php, since they are HTML templates  
processed by PHP (this will be the suggested/required standard for  
Horde_View as well)

- I don't understand the purpose of the Flex.php library. It seems to  
just be a place to hardcode the theme and template, and then it sets a  
global (which doesn't seem to be used anywhere?), and finally calls  
Flex_Layout to do the actual work.

- Why not just use Horde_View for this, esp. since you're using PHP 5?  
Views can just call render() with the names for different templates  
("zones", in your terminology), perhaps with a helper for rendering  
Blocks. This also removes a lot of hardcoded assumptions in  
Flex_Layout, like having to modify a library to set the zones...

- What is the difference between themes and layouts here? Seems  
duplicative to me.

To back up my comments, I added a Block helper to Horde_View  
(http://cvs.horde.org/framework/View/lib/Horde/View/Helper/Block.php)  
and ported your example app to it. The attached tarball can be  
expanded under /horde on any HEAD install with the latest Horde_View  
package, activated in registry.php as the 'flexdemo' app, and will  
render the same as your original demo, but all using Horde_View  
(index.php renders the main view, alt.php renders the secondary  
template).

> We have other proposals like: add plugins to Horde applications and
> allow multiple version of applications layout.

Do you have details for these? If you like, you could add them to  
http://wiki.horde.org/Projects (using the ProjectTemplate) for  
tracking/documentation/etc.

-chuck

-- 
"I have concerns that we are not behaving like a mature, responsible,  
collection of interdependent organisms." - Rick O.
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