[Typo3-shop] How to create new shop extension using tt_news instead of forking it

[JoH]

Hi, fireworkers!

In my previous posts I tried to explain the idea behind the subject of this
post.
But maybe I wasn't clear enough to make you understand my vision of how it
could be done.

First of all take a look at a news item.
It has almost anything you need for a perfectly working shop item except ERP
functionality and pricing.
You can add
- a text using the RTE
- pictures
- links to related items or pages
- one or more categories
- information about the distributor (author and e-mail)
- keywords
- files (i.e. a PDF describing details of the item)

And best of all: You can select the "type" of the item which changes the way
it is displayed in BE and FE.

IMHO the new shop extension should do the following:

Create a new table "shopitem_info" with at least one field that contains the
UID of the corresponding tt_news item.
Create a new type "shopitem" for news items.
Create all fields and labels for "shopitem_info" that are needed to make
this item a fully working shop item with ERP and pricing.
Change the labels of the existing fields in tt_news that will be displayed
when type "shopitem" is selected.
Fill in all additional BE fields into the type "shopitem".
Create some classes for BASKET, CALCULATION, SHIPPING and all other features
from the wishlist.
Create a new table "shoporders" ( in this case I would prefer the way it is
done in current tt_products by using true MM relations to the items to keep
the order entries as small as possible)
Create some additional objects or properties for the "view" in the news
plugin (at least SHOP and BASKET would be necessary)
So if the user selects LIST and SHOP he gets a list of all items of the type
"shop".
Same thing for LATEST, SINGLE, SEARCH ...
BASKET has to be a "standalone" view, since it is not available in current
tt_news.

Reasons:
tt_news is an extension with one of the most active maintaining and
developing team.
It's very stable and already has all the functions described above.
If we fork it to create a completely independent extension, any further
development of tt_news had no effect on this new extension.
This means: Double work for the shop developers to implement code that would
improve "our" new extension.

And there are some other advantages, that you should consider:
Imagine a user of the shop plugin that has a bunch of new items for his
shop.
Usually he will use tt_news too to inform people about the arrival of these
items.

Something like:

17.09.2004 -> Completely new Shop system for TYPO3 available
All the features you already know from tt_news plus a bunch of extensions
>Click here to buy it!<

A click will take his customer to the shop where he will see just another
layout of the same item.
This user will only do half of the work he had to do with an independent
extension, since every item only has to be created once.
There are many other scenarios where it makes sense to have one
"master-extension" handling any possible kind of items.

So what do you think of my "vision"?

Have a good night

Joey