[TYPO3-doc] TypoScript reference

[Francois Suter]

Hi all,

> http://wiki.typo3.org/index.php/TYPO3.org_-_Online_TSRef

Thanks to those who posted requirements there (and thanks to Daniel for 
properly dressing up the page).

I would like to pursue some discussions here. I have added some comments 
to the discussion page, but there's one topic which I think is too 
important to discuss in the wiki (which is not really appropriate for 
long discussions).

We should define the level of granularity/detail that we want. This is 
related to what is on a page, which itself will influence the URL.

Looking at the TSref, I would think of having one data type, function or 
object per page. This may sound ridiculous for simple data types, but is 
definitely with it for data types like "getText". The fact is that the 
XML will have to be formally structured, even if it doesn't always make 
sense. Without a formal structure, we'll not be able to automate the 
online reference. I guess this is exactly the same problem that the 
t3editor team encountered.

So I would go for one data type, function or object per page. The 
structure would be something like:

TSref > Data types > (some data type)
TSref > Functions > (some function)
TSref > Objects > (some object)

We'll need to handle the special cases of GIFBUILDER and HMENU, which 
have sub-items. How did the t3editor team handle that?

This would lead to the following speaking URLs, for example:

http://typo3.org/.../tsref/datatypes/gettext (or maybe just "types")
http://typo3.org/.../tsref/functions/stdwrap
http://typo3.org/.../tsref/object/image

When that is in place, we can even hope to have some Apache rewrite 
rules in place, which would make it possible to skip the "..." and the 
"current" parts above and have a function very close to what php.net 
does, but that's not a functional requirement.

I'm not positive about having the version number in the URL. I think the 
online TSref should always be up to date and the versions in which a 
given property is available should be an information displayed in that 
property's description.

Properties of the data type, function or object, would be reachable as 
anchors, e.g.

http://typo3.org/.../tsref/functions/stdwrap#typolink

What do you think?

-- 

Francois Suter
Cobweb Development Sarl - http://www.cobweb.ch