[Typo3-dev] Core or extension? was: IMAGE.alttext RC2 possible bug

[Robert Lemke]

Hi Martin,

On Mon, 2004-04-05 at 14:04, Martin T. Kutschker wrote:
> > I still think that this is the job of an extension like the
> > dmc_image_alttext plugin. Such an extension only has to create two new
> > fields and add some TypoScript to use them.
> 
> Oh come on, accessability is a top priority issue for some sites. This 
> is really something that belongs to the Core and not some extension that 
> has to use hacks (ie use the class extension mechanism) to get something 
> like this done.

Well, please have a look at the current class.tslib_content.php. Using
XCLASSES or even any PHP is not neccessary in order to get a new title /
alt attribute. Everything is accessible either through TypoScript or by
calling the function getAltParam.

> But it seems we have different opions on alt/title anyway.

No, I don't think so. I personally use alt / title properties by default
in my projects. But using an extension has different advantages:

- It's not neccessary to change the core, if something should be changed
for the creation of alt / title tags. That is important, because many
sites won't update their core for one and a half year or so, until the
next stable release comes out

- The core becomes more generic and works more as a framework rather
than a HTML render engine. I know of projects using TYPO3, who don't
produce HTML at all - they use it for generating reports or even PHP.

- This paticular core feature would depend on a correct implementation
of another extension, namely css_styledcontent. It's no problem to
change the TS configuration of that extension too, but while we're at
it: Why is css styled content an extension? Or templavoila?

Imagine that someone would like to force his backend users to always
fill in the description (alt / title attribute) of all images being
uploaded. Implementing that as an extension is fairly easy now because
no strict default implementation is done yet.

But away from that: Why not do it as an extension, if it's possible
without getting such problems like using XCLASSES etc.? You could argue
that you want it to be a default behaviour. But then why not create a
package which contains certain "shy" extensions by default?

Just to emphasize that: I'm not against putting this feature into the
core in general, but I'd like to be convinced before I do that.

-- 
robert

"They placed me on this earth without a manual. 
 And I dare to say, I’m doing just fine without ;)"