[TYPO3-english] worried about 4.x (6.x)

[Christian Müller]

Hi all,

On 09/10/12 13:14, Thomas Skierlo wrote:
> Hello Stefano,
>
> no, you are not the only one who is worried about TYPO3. Over many 
> years TYPO3 was a perfect base for integrators to build up powerful 
> websites. Most extensions worked properly up to the 4.5 branch. Today 
> some very important extensions don't. While more and more old school 
> extensions are getting lost, too few new extensions are being 
> developed for TER. Tried developing the extbase way myself, but didn't 
> succeeded because of lack of documentation or help in forums or 
> mailing lists. Today we have markers, TemplaVoila (which is 
> excellent), a little bit Fluid while beeing a little bit pregnant with 
> Extbase - not knowing where this ship will be heading for.
Let me try to say a few things from my perspective. First of all TYPO3 
needs to move forward in terms of code otherwise it will be left behind 
by developers at some point. Problem is that currently new stuff is 
pushed into TYPO3 coming from Flow (like Extbase) and also driven by 
current PHP versions (namespaces) with which I am perfectly happy but 
the changes are probably too fast for many developers. So at that point 
extensions won't be maintained any longer. Either is bad, not moving the 
framework/system forward because it will be dusted and old soon and new 
developers don't want to touch it or in the other case leaving 
developers, that are used to certain things, behind because of the 
changes. I won't decide which is better but in the long run standing 
still wouldn't work out...

As for Flow/Neos for me that is absolutely needed for the future. Yes 
TYPO3 is the tool for many years and for many people there were a lot of 
changes, but overall some parts of the core are quite old by now and I 
am not even sure that refactoring the whole thing to a cleaner and more 
flexible approach would be feasible at all. So there was bound to be a 
new development in my understanding and just speaking for myself I 
probably wouldn't have contributed so much to TYPO3 CMS Core to become a 
Core Team Member, but for Neos I did, just because I saw the future. 
Don't misunderstand me, I earn money with using TYPO3 CMS and not so 
much Neos but I see that there is a future in which Flow and Neos make 
more sense for new applications and websites and TYPO3 has quite some 
contributors but such a new system needs to prove itself before people 
start contributing to it. I suspect that it is the same for some other 
Neos Core Team members, you just want to do something fresh and new at 
some point, the same energy wouldn't simply been gone into TYPO3 CMS.
>
> For me it is not the problem to learn new paradigms, but to acquire 
> information about the very basics, like documentation.
I admit Extbase docs in english are not that available but looking at 
the code and existing extensions already makes up a lot, also looking at 
the Extension Builder and the recommended literature. All in all I would 
say that starting with Extbase is well possible.
> The concept of FLOW3 and Fluid is excellent, but Zend Framework or 
> others are excellent too. Was there really any need for another full 
> grown development framework or would a module or two for an existing 
> one have done the same job? Why not use Doctrine from the very 
> beginning? It's mature, reliable and under permanent devolpment. I'm 
> not talking about simple things, like changing localization files from 
> XML to XLIFF - that's peanuts. Currently I don't see any real 
> strategies for TYPO3. I spent my last 3 month in the migration of 
> TemplaVoila funtionallity to Fluidtemplates and extbase based FCE 
> replacements. Parts of the results are working properly, others are 
> not, mainly when it comes to localization. I am truly getting tired.
Well, you must see that there is a history. At the time the project 
started many of the things you mention were not in a state to consider 
them. Zend Framework is not at all compatible with the ideas of Flow and 
Symfony wasn't far enough then, also Doctrine wasn't. Now it might have 
been a possibility to use Symfony + Doctrine and build on top of that, 
but now we already have Flow and it has a right on its own because it 
has features others have not.

Regarding TemplaVoila to Fluidtemplates I think that is mostly a 
question of being used to it. Of course if you worked years with TV it 
will take some time to reach the same level of sophistication with 
Fluidtemplates. I would also recommend to take a look at gridelements, 
which work well with Fluidtemplates and are a good way to do certain 
types of FCE.

My two cents...

Cheers,
Christian

-- 
Christian Mueller
TYPO3 Core Team

TYPO3 .... inspiring people to share!
Get involved: typo3.org