[TYPO3-ect] Your feedback for lib/div forms / cherries

[Elmar Hinz]

Am Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:15:26 +0200 schrieb Fabien Udriot:

> First of all I would like to say, I like the lib/div approach. The main 
> advantage in my opinion, is that it gives a clear coding guide line to 
> the developers. The consequence is a cleaner and more maintanable code 
> for all !
> 

Hi Fabien,

thank you for all the nice proposals. I would like to implement them all.
There seems to be a mystical rule, that every T3 project is mainly done by
one person, wich makes development slow. I am working on lib/div
over a year now and it's still alpha. :-( Didn't expect it would take so
long.

It's the same with CAL and the PARTY frameworks. This projects could be
done faster ... but that's an old story. There are some nice contributions
by others, but there could be more cooperation. 

On the other hand the coordination itself takes time and contributers are
frustrated if their patches are implemented with a long delay. Guess
that's one of the main problems and realy difficult to solve. Anyway, I
encourage you and others to drop in your privat lib/div improvements as
branch into SVN or as patches into the bugtracker. Or like
kickstarter__mvc as an own extension addon.

Have some month of patience then. Until now I have digested all
contributions in the one or other way. I.e. you will find many ideas of
the forms research
<http://svn.t3.digitaldistrict.de/cgi-bin/trac.cgi/browser/typo3xdev/tx_forms/trunk>
in lib by now.

> Here are a few things that I would like to point out :
> 
> 1) Add some static (?) methods to manipulate *external* *flexform*. I 
> have to add manually thoses functions in my classes (pi_getFFvalue - 
> pi_getFFvalueFromSheetArray). tx_lib_switch could use thoses static 
> methods as well (suggestion).
> 

Drop your proposals into bugs.typo3.org. => div

> 2) Provide some useful method to convert SPL object from model > 
> controller > view. It is a bit anoying to do all theses loops again and 
> again. Furthermore, I am wondering about the performance's cost.
> 

Indeed this loops are an important point to solve. There are already some
loop functions in tx_lib_object. But I need some inspirations how it
could be solved the easy way.

> 3) a question : how SPL objects are handle with PHP 5. I am wondering if 
> PHP 5 could be detected and if the default compiled library could be 
> used, instead of tx_lib_spl_ArrayIterator and tx_lib_spl_ArrayIterator.
> 

That is also a task to solve. We could distribute a PHP5 branch by SVN,
but we can't distribute different branches by TER. So a concept for an
intelligent PHP4/PHP5 switch would be welcome.

> 4) About the template engine... long issue... It would be a good thing 
> to have an official template engine. Personnaly I don't like very much 
> the TYPO3 template engine. I would rather use a "Smarty like" template 
> engine. But as Smarty is not included and used in the Core, it's maybe 
> too big to add X thousand of lines for just one an extension. What about 
> Typo3 5.0 ? Do they have already discussed to reconsider the default 
> template engine ? It can make the difference !
> 

Yes long issue. The "official" temple engine of lib are PHP templates.
They simply cause ZERO work for me and can compete with most other engines.

I would like to see other engines as addons. Suggested keys:

lib__smarty, lib__t3templates, ... 

For the double underscores see a voting in this list some monthes ago.

There are some interesting slim alternatives to smarty around.

I also remember that many modern PHP libraries are available via PEAR
channels and it would be usefull if we could easily import them by this
channels into TYPO3, so that we don't need to maintain an own extension for
each PEAR library.

> 5) Show in your demo extension / documentation how to include templates 
> in other templates. <?php require('htmlTemplate.php'); ?>
> 
> 6) Have you ever tried lib/div with ajax calls ? It could be a cool 
> example as well. (I need it ;)
> 

Yes eFAQ :-) with xajax and jquery.


> 7) Do you know somthing about the MVC model in TYPO3 5.0 ? My 
> preoccupation is to make the 2 MVC implementations as compatible as 
> possible !! According to the last T3N, the TYPO3 5.0 team have made 
> progresses. It could be a question to them.
> 

I simply hope that lib/div is that clean, that it will be easy to
migrate extensions to V5 as long as we do a clean work. But it is diffcult
to plan details.  

Best to have a look into Roberts V5 coding guidlines. They have a lot in
common with lib/div although lib/div is older. There are a few
differences, that we should implement into lib/div as far as
possible, before it goes to beta.

Regards

Elmar