[TYPO3-hci] HCI for managing Templates

[Alexander Koger]

Hi List,

for me (as a programmer) managing Templates and TS, CSS and all the related
stuff
programmers do within the BE is still HCI. Maybe this fact gives me a more
human touch. ;-)

Managing Templates via Offline-Editor and ftp is a very basic thing.
So when working with the dmail-extension, i had an idea.
Why not build a template in the way dmail builds the content for
newsletters.

  SysFolder for Newsletters                ->               SysFolder for
Templates
      Page for Newsletter                      ->                   Page for
Template
          ContentElement for Content      ->
ContentElement for SubPart


Having some template files for every extension is neccessary but really not
comfortable.
You will always RTFM to find the location of the sample template files.
Within the template files you will find thousands of subparts and maybe you
have to handle a foreign language in parallel.
So translating dmail was really a pain.

So getting these templates into the db will give us :
- Support for Versioning
- Support for Backup
- Support for BE-User-Rights instead of stupid file access restrictions and
errors
- Support for Designworkflows
- Support for i18n

And this is how it could look like:

 Sysfolder "Templates"
     Sysfolder "News Templates"
         Template "Tpl with tables" (News Template)
             SubPart "List"
             SubPart "Archive"
             SubPart "Latest"
             ...
         Template "Tpl with divs" (News Template)
             SubPart "List"
             SubPart "Archive"
             SubPart "Latest"
             ...
     Sysfolder "Direct Mail Templates"
         Template "Tpl with tables" (DMail Template)
         Template "Tpl with divs" (DMail Template)
         Template "Tpl for Mails" (DMail Mail Template)
         ...
     Sysfolder "Calendar Templates"
         Template "Tpl for XHTML" (Calendar Template)
         Template "Tpl for PDA" (Calendar Template)

Every extension will have an own sysfolder.
When installing the extension, it could create default templates, which then
could be copied and modified.
When using an extension, just point to the Page and Subpart to use.
Or control the behaviour by using TS.


Ok, that's it.
Would be nice getting someone's  thoughts about this idea.

Greets,
Alex