[Typo3-dev] Articles on typo3.org / extension programming

[Robert Lemke]

Hey folks,

maybe some of you remember the discussion about manuals about extension
programming in this list. 

Some of you wished that there was a huge manual which would answer
almost any question regarding extension programming and website
development with TYPO3.

One result of this discussion was the TYPO3 wiki, which Sebastian
Kurfürst and I installed on my server (available at wiki.typo3.org).
Sebastian took the initiative for setting up that wiki so we would be
able to build a structure for some new manual.

I think that this is an ambitious initiative and it will be great having
such a document. However I also expressed my doubts that it would be
possible to write and maintain a manual of that size just in your free
time. Whenever I talk to René, Daniel or Werner, who are working on the
upcoming TYPO3 book for months now, I realize how complex and time
consuming work on such a document can be.

What I suggested earlier was to publish articles on typo3.org dealing
with specific topics of extension development (of course other topics
are possible too, like community gossip etc.). They are not meant as a
replacement for proper API documentation like "Inside TYPO3" or "TYPO3
Core APIs" but rather server as some sort of tutorial which, I think,
have several advantages compared to big documents:

- They are much faster to prepare, typically it will take 2-3 hours to 
  write them. Therefore it is more realistic that someone will actually
  do that.

- It can be more fun reading an article than a big reference. But of 
  course that depends on the style of writing as well ...

- You see changes more easily: Try to search in changes in a big   
  document! 

- Distributing work might also be easier because instead of a group of
  people working on a big document who has to merge changes from each 
  other, articles are written independently by different authors.

However, I know that suggesting something in the TYPO3 project doesn't
really count if you don't do it. That's why I prepared a first article
and some framework to put it on typo3.org.

But before I continue with my work on a fancy articles plugin with
categories and such, I would like to get some feedback of you, the
developers. 

What do you think about it? Will it lead to somewhere? Are you
interested in writing / reading such articles?

As long as it's not published on typo3.org, my first article is
available at this location:

http://robertlemke.de/de/typo3/hooks/

-- 
robert

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