Need the ability to upload templates, snippets etc from existing files ...

The New template process is a little clunky.

Lets face it, no one is ever going to type a complete xhtml template into that editor from scratch. It will have been created and (hopefully) tested elsewhere and then cut and pasted.

How about an "insert file" button which lets you insert a source file into the current position within the editor. This should of course work for all material which can be created in the editor.

Actually the ideal is some kind of one-shot installer where you specify a bill of materials and the appropriate set of files are uploaded. This would make template distribution relatively painless.

Happy to file this as an improvement request if there is support for the idea,

Ed

Quote from: ed at Aug 02, 2006, 03:32 AM

The New template process is a little clunky.

I am not sure what is "new" there... new compared to what ?

Quote from: ed

Lets face it, no one is ever going to type a complete xhtml template into that editor from scratch.

Personnally, that’s the way I do it... I am probably not the only one. Lots of webdesigner are xhtml fluent and don’t need an editor anymore.

If you miss syntax highlighting you should try the CodeHighlighter hack for MODx

Quote from: ed

It will have been created and (hopefully) tested elsewhere and then cut and pasted.

You’re right, many people work that way. If the CodeHighlighter above became "live preview" enabled, maybe they would not

This being said, Copy/Paste is a pretty quick operation, and the way most things work with MODx (take snippet, plugin and module installation for instance, which are part copy/paste, and for some part FTP upload of assets).

Quote from: ed

How about an "insert file" button which lets you insert a source file into the current position within the editor. This should of course work for all material which can be created in the editor. Actually the ideal is some kind of one-shot installer where you specify a bill of materials and the appropriate set of files are uploaded. This would make template distribution relatively painless.

Now that’s an interresting idea.

I think there are two separate things here : the insert file part and the installer part.
I guess the insert file will be simpler to implement than the one-shot installer (and probably, the latest will come much later, but I’ll let the dev team answer this one).

Quote from: ed

Happy to file this as an improvement request if there is support for the idea,

Those are very nice ideas, indeed you could file this. Maybe elaborate a bit more on how both ideas would work... e.g what would the user do and what MODx operations are expected.

Quote from: davidm at Aug 02, 2006, 04:10 AM

Quote from: ed at Aug 02, 2006, 03:32 AM

The New template process is a little clunky.

I am not sure what is "new" there... new compared to what ?

Quote from: ed

Lets face it, no one is ever going to type a complete xhtml template into that editor from scratch.

Personnally, that’s the way I do it... I am probably not the only one. Lots of webdesigner are xhtml fluent and don’t need an editor anymore.

I should have written it as "New Template", i.e. the process for creating templates. I also feel that any web designer coming to MODx from another CMS/way of working will have their own way of working/favourite editor (e.g. I use emacs, others prefer nvu ...). Hence it is natural (or so it seems to me) that they will create and test material ’offline’ as far as possible before incorporating it into MODx.

The issue of version control arises which I will introduce in a separate topic.

Ed

Quote from: ed at Aug 02, 2006, 05:54 AM

I should have written it as "New Template", i.e. the process for creating templates. I also feel that any web designer coming to MODx from another CMS/way of working will have their own way of working/favourite editor (e.g. I use emacs, others prefer nvu ...). Hence it is natural (or so it seems to me) that they will create and test material ’offline’ as far as possible before incorporating it into MODx.

OK that clarifies it, I thought it was related to MODx and didn’t see what had changed...

Quote from: ed

The issue of version control arises which I will introduce in a separate topic.

Interresting too. I don’t know if the future revisionning feature of 1.0 could be extended to have version control for templates, or even chunks/snippets... hmmm, that would be nice

I also tend to edit within the box; if I want syntax highlighting I’ll copy paste in and out of my preferred text editor (Notepad++) - often I won’t even save it. And sometimes I’ve loaded up the snippet from a .zip file, and I’ll only have extracted it temporarily so I couldn’t really benefit from "Insert File".

Frankly, I’d benefit more from a "always get this from file" option - for local development it would be much quicker to edit and save live templates rather than keep editing them in MODx (particularly annoying if you’re flipping between that and snippet calls).

My view is that if a web application provides a textbox, and the user wants to insert the contents of a file into that textbox, then this sounds like a job for a Firefox plugin.

Quote from: ed at Aug 02, 2006, 03:32 AM

Actually the ideal is some kind of one-shot installer where you specify a bill of materials and the appropriate set of files are uploaded. This would make template distribution relatively painless.

Could you elaborate on this? Certainly an installer would be useful - it would be worth looking at the MODx installer (which optionally installs various snippets) for inspiration.

Quote from: PaulGregory at Aug 02, 2006, 06:47 AM

Quote from: ed at Aug 02, 2006, 03:32 AM

Actually the ideal is some kind of one-shot installer where you specify a bill of materials and the appropriate set of files are uploaded. This would make template distribution relatively painless.

Could you elaborate on this? Certainly an installer would be useful - it would be worth looking at the MODx installer (which optionally installs various snippets) for inspiration.

Will do, I have realised that I have opened up a can of worms here and the issues of work flow/revision control/component reuse need exploring, if only to make them explicit in the documentation. I will put down my thoughts (editing them offline) and post here in a day or so.

Ed