[Typo3-dev] ExtDev Guide, Articles and Tutorials

[Robert Lemke]

Hey Martin,

> Articles and tutorials are great. But you won't find anything if you're 
> looking for a particuar question.
> 
> Samples for simple how-to items (part of a FE programming section):
> 
> Q: How do I get the current page id?
> A: $GLOBALS['TSFE']->id;
> 
> Q: How do I get the current FE user id?
> A: $GLOBALS['TSFE']->fe_user->id

I wouldn't compare it with howtos we have right now. Because you're
right, they a are really specialized and you'd have to browse through
many of them in order to find what you need.

We'd write articles by providing open office documents which could be
downloaded and read offline. But an average article / tutorial would
maybe consist of 10-15 pages.

> I'm not very fond of an article approach to documentation. Things get 
> scattered. Usually I'm looking for a centtal place to answer all my 
> questions. I'm not really interested in a doc (the wiki) whill only 
> direct me to other docs.

Yes, you're right. But then we'd have to create a big document in
different variations for different people.

What if you see the articles / tutorials as some virtual chapters of a
big book called Extension Programming? The difference to ordinary
articles would be that they fit better into the overall structure of the
ExtDev documentation than independently written articles (like on
zend.com). On the other hand they are still small portions which are
easy to maintain (by different people) and easy to digest for the one
who's reading it.

When I started with extension programming I didn't want to learn
*everything* at the same time, but I had certain things I needed in
order to implement an extension for my project. Maybe I already now
*some* things but some others are missing, so for an accommodation
database, I'd of a selection of documentation like this:

- Introduction to programming frontend plugins (kickstarter, pi_base)
- FE plugins -> Implementing links the right way
- Using TypoScript in your own extensions (for using GIFBUILDER)
- Protecting your server: Programming FE plugins the safe way
- TYPO3_DB: Implementing database access in extensions using the DBAL

I know that this is not the most comfortable way, it would be nicer to
have a book / document describing just what I need.
But I think this approach is more realistic to handle, because we could
create such smaller documents right away with many people working on
them at the same time.

-- 
robert

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