[Typo3-dev] The future of typo3

[Peter Niederlag]

Hi Michael,

Michael Zedeler <michael at zedeler.dk> schrieb :

> My critique is broken down into items, that I will happily discusss
> with anybody reading this. I may sound very harsh, so please bear in
> mind that I do this for the better of typo3. Kill your darlings.

I dont know if I am eligable to answer your question since I am not one
of the developers but just can't keep my mouth shut. ;)

> Item 1: Outdated interaction paradigm
> [...]
> The new paradigm should be "everybody can edit - if permitted to".

Partly I agree with you here. Typo3 is not that much of an
"out-of-the-box" portal-solution or "wiki"-style System for many users
rigth now.
However there is an LDAP user-import, I think basicly for use in
intranets with a,lot of editors. To me the BE-Interface is very handy
and easy when setup correctly and serves as a good place to edit content
even for many users. It is weird that there is a difference beetween FE
and BE-Users which I don't really understand yet either, but is quite
easy to use the feAdminLib to allow FE-Users storing/editing some
special data. If you want them to be more general content editors you
will however give them access to the BE, which can be restricted to the
FE-View of course. To allow this move smoothly you could uses the FE/BE
Module of Ingmar. However there might be some lacks in the field of
permissions and access-control plus handling of large number of editors.
There should be improvements in the future on this, because I have heard
this being not sufficient quite some times.

item 1 is really something that is not easy to handle with and imposes
some restrictions.

> Item 2: Inconsistencies and loose ends in the system
> Typo3 does not seem very consistent to me. Most things seem to have
> been invented and implemented without thinking about the overall
> design. I haven't had time to dig around in the code for long, so I'll
> just mention the conflict between typoscript and the templates.
> Typoscript (which is destined to be misunderstood by every newbee,
> since it is *not* scripting language) is able to produce and
> manipulate page content. The same can be done using templates, so
> which one do you choose?

template here refers to a HTML-template?(That will be my assumption
right now)

Don't understand that. Typo3/Typoscript gives you most flexibility to
produce and manipulate content in any way you like. So you criticise
this flexibility? Once you know how to use it you might start to like
exactly that, at least I do.

> Typoscript has access to templating
> functions, so why not choose it as a basis for almost everything you
> do? That is not possible, because typoscript isn't complete with
> regard to the tasks you may have to solve. Putting data in a table in
> a database is one of those things not possible.

??
feadminLib most liekly does exactly this in conjunction with some
typoscript and a HTML-template for plain FE-Users.
I wouldn't know what you need "templates" for "putting data in a table
in a database" with BE-Users. Thats exactly what they do alle the time
when using the BE-Interface.

> So what is the alternative? The alternative is to switch to PHP, which
> has the effect that typoscript is hardly useful for any purpose
> besides simple configuration of the application you write, and nothing
> else. My conclusion is that most serious work cannot be done without
> coding something in PHP, so why promote Typoscript so strongly? Why is
> there almost no documentation of all the PHP-libraries for typo3, when
> this is actually what makes everything in typo3-world tick?

well, there are a lot of EXT, modules and features available with typo3
which you can use without one single line of PHP. If you need some
special stuff you might have to do that scripting with PHP, so whats
wrong with that? The source is very good documented inline, and there
have been most improvements on exactly that in 3.6.0-dev. Just let some
doc-generator parse the source and you will have a full class/functions
library with documentation. http://www.ueckermann.de/typo3doku/

> What I see when I look at the development plans is that there is a lot
> of effort put into developing new features. This is more fun for the
> developers, but please keep in mind that what I think is really
> neeeded is a big cleanup and a completely new set of documentation. I
> find it aggrevating to see little or no mention of theese problems on
> the website. Is it a "family secret"?

What exactly do you believe to be a "family secret"? I believe
kasper(and others) have done a great job with all the documentation
available! But that has been a topic for a long time. It is hard to get
into it, but then everything is clear and good documented. 

> Item 3: Lacking architecture documentation
> I have had a hard time trying to find a manual that explains the core
> of typo3. When developing typo3-plugins using PHP, I need some kind of
> roadmap that explaings how the most important parts of the system
> works. What it should cover is a description of the
> request-response-cycle, how parameters are passed to various parts of
> the system, user authentication and the properties and methods of the
> TFSE.

well have a look at the URL above and do some source-code
investigations, a good debugger helps very, very much with that.
Could be better documented but the people that are really developing
PHP-Code can probably figure it out themselves better than any
documentation could explain it?

> Item 4: Lacking best practise documentation
> There is no documentation specifying how to write a plugin from a-z
> with all bells and whistles - using best practise. New developers are
> left to reinvent their own best practise which can be very time
> consuming.

There is some and I don`t know if there is an overall "best practice"
since each EXT(plugin) might have a very different purpose. There is a
lot help available on the -dev list for questions. I expect this part to
grow over the time though. You can of course also examine the available
EXT's. There have been efforts on a review process for Ext' which would
help you on that. Hopefully this review will come into full work in the
future.

> Item 5: Kickstarting in the wrong direction (minor item)
> The kickstarter is a great tool for getting started, but I think that
> the code it produces is of very low quality. I have had to rewrite the
> class files for forntend plugins completely because they were really
> not very flexible or easilly extensible. Other wierd inconsitencies
> found were:

can't say to much on that.

[...]
> Summary:
> I think that the future development of typo3 should be focused on the
> following items:
> 
>  * Get to grips with the actual intensions of the different parts of
>  the system. What is typoscript supposed to do?

in my view It provides the "interaction" aka rendering beetween the DB
and the ouput on the website.
Details are here:
http://typo3.org/doc.0.html?&tx_extrepmgm_pi1[extUid]=264&cHash=3553a3af05

> Are developers
>  supposed to work mainly in PHP? If "yes", please provide
>  documentation!

What is a developer in your words? if it is the guy who has to get a
typo3 site up and running, no. You will mostly use typoscript and maybe
have to do some additional PHP-coding/adaption.

Maybe I am not a professional kind of programmer enough but to a
technical pretty much skilled person with little programming experience.
Typo3 makes it really a great job to get everything just exactly like I
want it very easily. It was a long period(~1 year  every once and then)
to get the "whole view" though.

Cheers,
PeterN

P.S.: I would be interested in your opinion which gpl'd system would
compare better than Typo3 then? 
-- 
Peter Niederlag
http://www.ikd01.de * Information Kommunikation Design *
http://www.clown-goli.de * Clown-Comedy-Jonglage-Animation *