[TYPO3-v4] Minutes from the 16th Skype meeting of the release 4.5 team

[Ernesto Baschny]

Hi fellow developer friends,

because of the holiday yesterday, we hold our 16th Skype meeting for the
4.5 release today on Tuesday. We were complete: Ben van't Ende
(community manager), Olly Hader (core team leader), Benni Mack (4.4
release manager), Steffen Kamper (4.5 technical leader) and Ernesto
Baschny (4.5 release manager).

Schedule of beta1
---------------------------

According to our release plan [1] we would ship beta1 and with that
start the *feature freeze phase* next week on November 10th (Wednesday).
Because some projects which will gain some special focus during the next
week (FAL with a Code Sprint from 11th to 14th) and after discussing
several alternatives, we decided to postpone the beta1 release for one
week. This will be announced separately as a news article explaining the
decision and also sketching the remaining roadmap.

Several projects will thus gain an extra opportunity to get finished in
time for the LTS 4.5 release, e.g:

* new Extension Manager: Steffen wants to finish it this week, but has
plenty of stuff on his list,
* "trees". Steffen worked with Steffen Ritter on the TCAtree, but maybe
we will be able to see more "trees",
* Super search: Jeff Segars has taken a look into the current code (from
the T3UXW09 from Michael Klapper) and would be ready to continue the work,
* Grid view: Thomas and Joey will have an extra week to get it "polished",
* Link validator: The code has already been reviewed (by Tolleiv), but
might be a candidate for an RFC in the next couple of days (Steffen K
wants to fix the warnings first).

[1] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v45-projects/wiki/Release_Plan

Swift Mail API
---------------------------

@Ernesto wants to make use of it throughout the core and also try to
make t3lib_utility_Mail::mail() work with Swift Mail so that it could
make use of the configured Transports.

Also there is work from Jigal pending to be reviewed: he extracted the
functionality from t3lib_htmlmail which can fetch an URL and transform
it into a mail.

Ben asked if Ivan from the Direct Mail project has been contacted on
that. Ivan is aware of the project, but hasn't been contacted lately.
Benni did some direct mail work these days so is also in touch with
Ivan. @Ernesto will try to get in touch with the direct mail guys soon.

UTF-8 by default
---------------------------

Benni contacted Stucki, and send him the latest patch, which is already
ready since the T3 Code Sprint. @Benni will post it on the core list on
Sunday, if nothing speaks against it.

Reports Module
---------------------------

Ingo Renner is still in the USA. Ingo had planned some improvements to
the reports module, which would include scheduler tasks to check the
systems health (and also update extension list and check for updates).
@Ernesto will contact Ingo to see if this is still feasible before
feature freeze.

Individual efforts
---------------------------

* Joeys is still hard at work adding stdWrap optimization everywhere.
Lots of very nice RFCs in the core list these days.
* Steffen met Rupi Germann on the weekend. Rupi is now settled in
Düsseldorf. He will attend the FAL code sprint (WMDB Düsseldorf) and he
still is available for "performance optimizations" for the 4.5 release.

Introduction package
---------------------------

Ben was in contact with the "French language" committee (relevant not
only in France but also parts of Canada and other countries). They would
love to have a Intro Package completely in French:

Alternative 1 would be a multi-language Intro Package, showing off also
these capabilities (German, French and English for example). Ernesto
things that would be cool anyway.

Alternative 2, which is what Ben desires, is a French language only IP,
which also means TypoScript with French comments, etc.

This leads to the necessity to have different "content masters" which
also enhanced complexity of the whole packaging. Ben mentioned GIT to
organize the branches for the content masters. Ernesto noted that the
versioning system is not the obstacle, but we need first to defined
*what* to version and how to handle different branches from the
different content masters. Peter Beernick was working on that area, so
@Ben will ask him directly.

FLUIDTEMPLATE
---------------------------

Bastian Weidlich made some refactoring on Fluid and FLUIDTEMPLATE
cObject. This was commited already.

@Benni will take care of the documentation of FLUIDTEMPLATE. There will
be an API documentation for the TypoScript part. The current Fluid
documentation [2] is very FLOW3 / MVC centric, and a typical TypoScript
developer will probably not be able to relate to that. So Benni will
also create a concise "guide" describing how to use it in TYPO3 v4 for
templating purposes.

Also this article [3] was mentioned.

[2] http://flow3.typo3.org/documentation/manuals/fluid/fluid.usermanual/
[3] http://typo3.org/development/articles/fluid-next-generation-templating/

New team: CSS
---------------------------

We now have a new team which will handle all CSS related tasks for the
backend. This team should be a bridge between the design and usability
team and the core.

-- Members --

Ben already got around 20 applications for team members, from which 5-6
seems promising. @Ben will decide tomorrow to recommend some people. He
keeps sending the applications to Steffen K.

Steffen Gebert which is doing most CSS in the backend lately will lead
this team, helped by Ernesto and the design team leaders (Lars and
Jens). Berit (v5 team) and Sven Wolfermann are already members. See the
teams forge project [4]. We will have around 5-6 other members and then
we will see in future which active people remains. :)

[4] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/css

-- Workflow --

Ernesto talked to Gebert about hosting solutions for the CSS
development. Gebert already added some info to the teams wiki [5]

Ernesto explained his proposed workflow:

1. a server with several virtual hosts is set up
2. each CSS team member gets an user (FTP / SSH) and a working
pre-installed installation of TYPO3 with the introduction package. The
typo3_src will be fetched via "svn" (by some admin which sets up the
account)
3. each CSS guys work their changes in their instances (by uploading via
FTP or SFTP). By sharing login-information to their instances they can
show the results of their work to the CSS team leaders, other core
developers or the design team easily.
4. when something is finished, the CSS team leadership can do a "svn
diff" on the instance to see what has changes, do the last "clean up"
and propose the RFC to the core list.

The idea is that the CSS guys don't have to know anything about
subversion or the core list formalism. Only required skills are:

* Handling issues on Forge
* Knowing the TYPO3 backend
* Applying CSS fixes to the typo3_src, and maybe to some PHP files if
some XHTML code has to be changed.

@Ernesto will ask the server team if they could set up such environment.

[5] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/css/wiki

-- Issue tracker --

Currently the CSS project issues also appear on the HCI issue tracker
[6]. This is due to the fact that the "CSS Team" is a subproject of
"HCI". Ernesto thinks that maybe the "Usability & Design" team has to be
only a framework for sub-teams:

* Design
* Usability
* CSS

Each with its own issue tracker. @Ernesto will also ask Sebastian if
this makes sense.

[6] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/hci/issues

Design Team
---------------------------

There was a Core vs Design Team meeting last week again. Lars, Ernesto,
Steffen K and Steffen G participated. This is also where the "CSS team"
was born. We talked a lot about Forge and its use by Lars and the
capabilities he needed (filtering, sorting by last update, ...). Steffen
K also showed the new feature we now have in redmine, a gantt diagramm [7].

Steffen also talked to Stefan Galinksi and they found the origin of the
problem in the new Viewport solution of the backend of the toolbar
"disappearing" to the top when updating Constants (or some other link
which has an anchor): Its caused by the 22px of border-top of the split
bar and ExtJS miscalculating the position in this case. Steffen Gebert
will work on it.

[7] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/extension-terfe/issues/gantt

Welcome Cambodia and "Khmer"
------------------------------

Olly announced that Dominik Stankowski from Web Essentials wants to
translate the core labels to the Khmer language. So we will see an RFC
shortly which adds this new language to the core and a request to add it
also in the translation servers (Dmitry). Plan is to have it finished
for 4.5.

As for a "flag" we probably have it in our "flags sprites" by now,
Ernesto noted.

Indexed Search
---------------------------

Currently no apparent activity on that project, Steffen will ask about
the status of it to Dmitry. There is a "branch" [8] but nothing happened
so far.

[8]
http://forge.typo3.org/projects/typo3v4-core/repository/show/branches/indexed_search_refactoring

Admin Panel design
---------------------------

Speaking of Dmitry, we also discussed the admin panel design refactoring
which Dmitry worked on (RFC #15853 [9]). The issue is currently in the
design team tracker (#10199 [10]) and there hasn't been a conclusion
yet. It would be a shame if this feature wouldn't make it into the core.

Friday at 11h there is a next meeting with the design team and we will
also discuss that issue and how to proceed.

[9] http://bugs.typo3.org/view.php?id=15853
[10] http://forge.typo3.org/issues/10199

Workspace improvements
---------------------------

Many action is going on right now. Tolleiv got many things done, Olly
will sit tonight with him to "wrap things up". Steffen K offered his
help also.

Steffen also noted that he is working on an ExtDirect provider for
changing be_users "uc" fields.  He will create an RFC for it soon. It
might also be used as a "state provider" which ExtJS uses to store the
state of certain widgets (e.g. rearrange columns in the grid, expand
certain trees, etc). ExtJS does it in cookie provider by default, but in
TYPO3 we could use the user settings for this. This might also be used
by the new WS module, so Steffen K will be on to help tonight.

Draft of TCEforms rearranging
-------------------------------

Ernesto started to document the changes done by Joey's usability
improvements of the "pages" and "tt_content" TCA settings. A draft is
available [11], Joey will add some info to it.

Steffen K mentioned that still missing is some handling when extensions
add custom fields to pages / tt_content TCA specifying a specific
location ("after" or "before" a field). Since now all fields are in
palettes, it might not even work. We'll have to fix it until release,
because it should work as before. Ernesto remembered that it has been
discussed during the Core Sprint, and Joey mentioned that this has to be
tested. Either the new field gets added to the palette at the desired
position (but then it might need a "--linebreak--" before and after) or
we add the field right after the palette where the desired field is in.

There are also some issues pending with the labels, which mostly a
native speaker should fix.

[11] http://wiki.typo3.org/TCEformsRecommendedLayout

Native English speaker
---------------------------

Which brought us to this topic. Ben has a meeting with three guys from
the US which will be working with the editorial team providing proof
reading for articles and text produced by our teams. Steffen wanted to
know if the labels of v4 are also a topic for that team and suggested
even to create a "native speaker team", which could support us all.

Ben will touch this topic on their meeting.

terfe and "Register ext key"
-------------------------------

Steffen noted that extensions starting with "u" were forbidden in the
TER until now. Nobody knows why, and we only think "user*" might be
prohibited. Since he is working on that code, he will then remove that
restriction (and restrict "user*" only).

Next meetings
---------------------------

* We'll meet again next monday (Nov 8th) at 14h
* Design vs Core team meeting is on friday 11h


Cheers,
Ernesto