[Typo3-dev] ExtDev Guide, Articles and Tutorials

Kevin Draper kdraper at wildcanary.ca
Mon May 17 14:08:37 CEST 2004


I'm afraid I disagree.  As a relative newbie, I want to see one document
that comprehensively covers extension programming.  At the moment, I keep
half-a-dozen (or more) tutorials open at any time looking for different
facets of front-end or extension programming.  I would much rather have one
a single comprehensive manual.  The document outline, as I've seen on the
Wiki, looks very good.  If I had had that document before I had started, it
would have saved me "oodles" of time.

As for documents being out-of-date, we already have that problem.  Every
tutorial was written in a different era, and some are more current than
others.  But, I would rather have one "true" doc that everyone strives to
keep up-to-date than a bunch of articles that are quickly allowed to go out
of date.

My $.02 - not sure how many Euros that is ;-)

Kevin.

"Robert Lemke" <rl at robertlemke.de> wrote in message
news:mailman.99.1084789051.242.typo3-dev at lists.netfielders.de...
> 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 ;)"
>
>






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