Quote from: BobRay at Feb 03, 2008, 06:42 PM
Also, I have to point out that "outerTpl = outer template" might not actually mean anything to a MODx newbie and, although Kyle has done a great job with Ditto, there’s no general documentation on the use of tpls in MODx snippets that I know if. I remember spending a fair amount of time looking for it when I started out with MODx.
That’s a very good point, but I would say that there never will be general documentation that covers add-on specific features and functionality, like Wayfinder’s internal templating model is. It does not work the same as Ditto’s templating. And when I deploy sites on MODx, I’ve used a number of different techniques to solve the same problem myself, trying out each to find strengths and weaknesses. In this experience, we’ve collectively found strengths and weaknesses in the framework regarding the way add-ons handle internal templating needs, and likely found several new ways to do something else on the way. These in turn are directly affecting the development of future releases of the product. I think this is a healthy cycle that needs to be encourage and nurtured so that more developers can provide solutions targeted at less DIY-inclined end-users.
An important point to keep in mind: Ditto and Wayfinder and whatever other snippets or techniques you adopt for use in your MODx site are user-contributed, and they do not define MODx. The development of these add-ons certainly helps to evolve the core framework, improving the way developers interact with it. But, MODx itself will never provide end-user targeted solutions directly to people who do not already have some level of knowledge of standard web development techniques. This is the core competency of MODx; enabling the deployment of user-maintainable web sites without sacrificing web standards.
Some of the more popular add-ons that individuals have developed and contributed to the community, just like Ditto and Wayfinder, are included in the current release of MODx because, well, it is easier to have them installed and demonstrated in the sample site than give people pages of instructions on how to manually install all the add-ons the sample site uses. In fact, in the future, the main distribution of MODx will include nothing but the core, the setup interface, and the default manager interface.
As a team and community, we specialize in providing a content management framework on which web designers and developers can collaboratively build sites to spec using accepted techniques and standards. And beyond that, we offer suggestions and assistance to each other as we use the framework to deploy and maintain our own or our clients’ sites. But MODx does not, and will not, prescribe add-ons or change focus to developing/supporting a specific component. MODx will not arbitrarily impose standards on users either, but will instead encourage the developer community to use competition and consensus to drive the creation of best practices that potentially could become standards where appropriate. There are simply too many ways to solve the same problem in MODx and saying that all snippets must provide a certain parameter to do it’s work just because another popular one was successful with the technique is not sufficient consensus to establish a standard upon.
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