[TYPO3-ect] tx_forms

[Elmar HInz]

Am Mon, 08 Jan 2007 09:26:41 -0600 schrieb Christoph Koehler:

> Hello all,
> 
> After a long time of silence, it looks like it's getting busier.
> I have had some help offers from a few people with the idea to take an  
> existing form generating package, html_quickforms being the #1 so far, and  
> integrating that into TYPO3. There is already an existing quickforms  
> extension, but I haven't got a chance to look at that yet.
> If you have ideas and want to help, I would like to hear them. So maybe we  
> can get this thing started again!
> You can fine me on skype, username thesquire.
> 
> 
> Christoph


Hello Christoph,

yes it's time to look what has been achived and what to do next. The
complete development of an own forms system came to stop in summer. It
seems the gap between the first steps and the first motivating
results is to big to get enough people involved. Also lib/div and the
party framework have to go this long, lonesome distances. 

When the calender project started I first came up with the suggestion to
take the - I think it was - the phpicalendar, wich took iCal as input and
provided a readymade output. So there was a defined standard and a
readymade gpl frontend available. My argument for this trak was that
this would lead to early results and early results would give motivation
for the rest of the project. I wonder if they today remember my
argumentation from the old days, but it seems that it worked pretty well.
Cal today has really become THE calendar. 

So I think is time to change the strategy for the forms project into a
similar direction and to build on an existing library. I reviewed
html_quickforms today a little and it looks quite usefull for our purpose.
Looks at least better then I remember it. I think we should quickly
integrate it into our setup of software. Maybe we can get it out in common
with lib/div going officially to beta. 

Unfortunatly we can't simply put PEAR packages into TYPO3 extensions. One
of the big disadvantages of TYPO3, it's proprietary path system. 

1.) PEAR need to be installed into a basedir.
2.) PEAR classes don't have XCLASS. The ext manager throws ugly errors.
3.) Older TYPO3 installations also complain of invalid classnames.

One way to solve this, ist to install html_quickforms into the appropriate
PEAR directory instead of using an extension. This setup doesn't work for
all installations. 

The other way is to put html_quickforms into an extension and to do some
adaptions, so that it works. Updates of html_quickforms become difficult
to integrate each time. 

I think the second option is the only one we can choose, else the forms
library would completly depend on certain server setups. You couldn't use
it as a real base for extension development then.

Can anybody propose further solutions for this problems? 

Another topic:

We could cover the classname HTML_QuickForm i.e. by tx_forms_quick 
using factory patterns that we could include into
tx_div::makeInstanceClassName. Don't know if there would by much use in
this.


For the roadmap: 

Using HTML_QuickForm directly in lib/div can only be one possiblity, also
it is a usefull one. The next step would be a layer based upon that, which
would enable auto Form generation based on TS settings and/or TCA settings.


Regards

Elmar