[TYPO3-community] tx_community and tx_party

[David Toshack]

Ingo Renner wrote:
> David Toshack wrote:
> 
> Hi David,
> 
>> Forgive me if this isn't the case but I was hoping tx_community would 
>> be "the" TYPO3 community extension and not just another one of the many.
> 
> who said it's not going to be "the" community extension of TYPO3?

I guess that was a bit of a sarcastic stab at your "this won't be 
happening" line without discussion. I apologise for that.

What's been done so far is actually very impressive and IMHO definitely 
does deserve the merit of "the" community extension. I have been eagerly 
updating my svn checkout quite regularly to follow its progress.

> 
>> I don't mean to suggest extra work. Ok, I do :-) ... 
> 
> right ;)

lol  sorry about that. But I'd like to offer my help if I may.

> 
>> but I'm also putting my hand up to help. In any case, for the sake of 
>> TYPO3 keeping up with this social networking revolution, I do believe 
>> "party centric information" is a big part of this extension and its 
>> worth an open discussion rather than such an abrupt reply.
> 
> I really don't believe in"party" yet even though I know it's a published 
> standard... It's just not wide spread enough yet to justify the effort 
> integrating it. If there's a point in time when it becomes wide spread 
> enough one could still do something about it like developing an exporter 
> or a connector or something the like.

True. Wide spread implementations are a great reason for using 
standards. The other big advantage though is that so much thought and 
consideration has gone into such a model that it has become very stable 
and very flexible.

Agreed though, it would take quite some effort to integrate. Maybe more 
effort than benefit for now. Particularly since the tx_party 
implementation is also still in early stages and that OpenSocial has a 
nice semi-standard model to work from.

> 
> What I see as a better fit for that community/social network stuff are 
> standards like OpenSocial, OpenDataDefinition and their friends. Those 
> are on the roadmap for later versions BTW.

Now you're talking! These are the standards that will really make a 
difference in social portability! I was going to bring up OpenSocial in 
my last post but didn't want to come across as some sort of standards 
nazi after my tx_party rant  :-)

Matter of fact, I already see a lot of similarities between Apache 
Shindig[1] and tx_community. Partuza[2] is a great example of Shindig in 
action. Is that where you see tx_community headed on the roadmap for 
later versions? A TYPO3 implementation of Shindig?

OpenDataDefinition I'm not so familiar with but I came across the ODD 
implementation Elgg[3] recently and it all sounds pretty interesting. 
APML[4] would also be a good portability standard to support through the 
Engagd SDK[5]. Attention Profiling IMHO is where lies the real magic for 
monetising these social networks. But that is probably getting a bit out 
of scope for now.

All good stuff Ingo. I'm really glad you brought up OpenSocial and I'm 
really glad the project is in such good hands.

I do have a few questions about how much you envision OpenSocial being a 
part of tx_community. Shindig's main application focus is of course the 
client-side google gadgets. Which looks to be not the case for tx_community.

The new beta RESTful[6] and RCP[7] Open Social APIs help a little with 
gadget access from the server-side but they're still essencially 
client-side applications. Are you considering both a TYPO3 server-side 
MVC approach to widget building _and_ support for client-side google 
gadgets? ... Or are you considering one or the other? ... Or is it too 
soon for these sorts of questions?


Cheers,
David


[1] http://incubator.apache.org/shindig
[2] http://code.google.com/p/partuza
[3] http://elgg.org
[4] http://apml.org
[5] http://engagd.com
[6] 
http://www.opensocial.org/Technical-Resources/opensocial-spec-v081/restful-protocol
[7] 
http://www.opensocial.org/Technical-Resources/opensocial-spec-v081/rpc-protocol