[Typo3-dev] TS inconsistencies...

[dan frost]

Here's my suggestion - and bear in mind, I think this is a _long-term_ 
aim for the good of TS.

TypoScript should be entirely defined in objects. Each datatype, content 
object and all other TS 'things' should be defined by inheritance in a 
properly organised object-oriented structure. I'll explain why at the end.

For example:

Datatypes - because these generally define the way a "thing" works, 
datatypes could be implemented as interfaces (if available in PHP5 - or 
psuedo-interfaces, if no).

The parent object - would look be very based. It would probably contain 
just a simple interface and a "debug" function.

E.g. TEXT - would inherit from the parent, adding methods and interfaces 
as needed.

E.g. HTML - would inherit from TEXT, also adding as needed.

E.g. IMAGE - would inherit from a 'graphics' object (probably also the 
parent of gifbuilder and the like), which would use HTML (to fake 
multiple inheritance).

The point of this is three-fold:
1. Objects and easier extensible. Datatype, content-type and 
whatever-extensions could be written to extend _just_ the necessary class.
2. Any PHP-object analyser (e.g. http://www.ueckermann.de/typo3doku/) 
would automatically act as a TS reference, showing what methods, 
functions and properties are available to any "thing".
3. Inconsitencies would be explainable in terms of this structure.

Also - it's more organised, and (if it's of interest) would make it 
(relatively) trivial to implement a TS-debugger, or to port TS (e.g. a 
Java TS rendering engine; or native-code, for bigger sites).

Again, I emphasise that this is a long-term aim. Organising TS like this 
makes sense, long term, especially with the explosion in the number of 
extensions (each adding more "things" to the language). Implementing 
this needn't be hard, though - it would start by moving all the code to 
properly organised objects-files (which are include()'d by the existing 
TS-rendering file).

If anyone's not convinced, I could mock-up a few examples.

Any thoughts?

dan



Peter Niederlag wrote:

>Hi Dan,
>
>dan frost <dan at danfrost.co.uk> schrieb :
>
>  
>
>>I haven't been doing TS for as long as many of you, but compared to 
>>learning PHP in a few days, TS is taking an age to master...
>>    
>>
>
>I partly agree on that but to me it seems that this is rather due to the
>fact that the overall picture of Typo3 was missing to me.
>Toplevel-object Config, BE-TsConfig, PageTSConfig.
>TS-Setup/TS-Constants...Static Templates...Include before Static,
>isRoot, ...
>
>with just about half a year of PHP-experience, that was driving me nuts
>at first!
>
>But hey, if you have ideas for improvements, that would be great!
>
>PeterN
>  
>