[TYPO3-core] TemplaVoila ... what to do with it?

[François Suter]

Hi Tolleiv,

> seems that TemplaVoila is (still) a very popular part of the TYPO3 CMS
> world and I don't think that it is healthy to keep such an important
> part unmentioned when it comes to discussing the future.

Absolutely. In our case we use it on all of our sites, so it's 
definitely a critical asset.

> As I'm personally loosing confidence in the TYPO3 CMS atm, I don't want
> to decide anything important within asking the actually *active* people.
> So in case you consider yourself an Active Contributor (in the
> definition of http://goo.gl/77iZi ) please share your ideas on how this
> extension should be treated.

My hope - of course - is that it will be maintained as long as all of 
its features are not provided by the Core. I know many people don't like 
TV, in particular because of the way is stores relations (in XML 
structures) - which is indeed bad, but I think it leads those some 
people to not know properly the feature set of TV. I feel recent debates 
mostly focused on BE layouts (now it TYPO3 Core) and flexible content 
elements (still not part of Core, but apparently provided by 
"gridelements", which I didn't test). That's too short. For example, one 
feature that we use a lot is references. It exists in the Core as 
"Insert records", but TV usability is IMO far superior in this case.

I haven't yet tested more modern ways of templating using FLUID objects, 
so I can't really judge how the situation has evolved, but I don't think 
that the whole feature set of TV is yet covered by the Core and other 
extensions. I would gladly be proved wrong on that point, as I think it 
is a good thing to have alternatives. However it's true that the 
"official-but-not-really" status of TV is a cause of confusion, 
especially for newcomers.

> there is
> no other *active* maintainer other than me atm

That is definitely a worry. I hope you can keep up your excellent work 
for some more time. Being the author of many extensions myself I know 
how hard it is to keep up with the 6-month release cycle of the Core, 
even if a lot of care is taken about backwards-compatibility.

Cheers

-- 

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