[Draft] State of the Ditto

Some exciting things are coming in the near future! I have 3 weeks off for Winter Vacation and its time to put the coding engine into high gear! What follows is a brief of what is coming down the pipeline.

Documentation:
There is much work needed on this subject. I have deemed that screencasting is the best way for me to make the documentation. It is quick and efficient --- no screencapture torture. Recently, I moved all of my development to the Mac platform (Thanks Ryan ) which means that I need to acquire an OSX screencapturing app. After some discussion on the forums I have decided that iShowU is the best app for the job. It retails for $19.99. I would greatly appreciate any donations to cover the cost, nomatter how small. Anyone who donates will get their name mentioned in the screencast. I will setup a donations page in the next few days for this purpose.

Planned Tutorials:
I hope to use iShowU to create the following tutorials. Disclaimer: These are in no particular order.

How to setup a basic blog
How to setup tagging
How to setup filtering
How to setup archives using Reflect
How to create a custom template
How to create an RSS, JSON, or XML feed

Releases:
Ditto 1.1 (now in Beta 2) will be released featuring a revamped document parser, re-architected codebase for maximum performace, phx support, new template placeholders, new Reflect archives, and an enormous amount of bugfixes

The Ditto TRAC site will be turned public simultaneously with the 1.1 release.

About 3 weeks after Ditto 1.1’s release Ditto 2.0 should go into alpha. It will feature a completely new filtering system which allows for conditional templating and much more. It will also have an Ditto Extenders (name TBD) which will allow users to create simple addons that alter Ditto’s behavior. Finally, the parameter list will be pruned and refined so that there are no superfluous parameters.

There is a thread for Ditto 2.0 Feature Requests [HERE]

This release will be accompanied with a migration guide so that upgrading from 1.x insulation will be a breeze.

Stay tuned...

Great news Mark ! This will no doubt lighten the load of support
Since I am going to buy iShowU, it would be great to be able to do a french version of the screencast if you don’t mind (I don’t know if the audio can easily be separated from the video and then re-dubbed in french though...).

I agree about screencasting, though I still need to provide a doc for my clients, I’ll make screencasting myself as tutorials for users...
Anyway you can count on me to donate !

I didn’t want to put this into the brief but for those who want the tutorials in a text format they can just do freeze frames of the screencast and then type out my narration.

As for French dubbing that should be a piece of cake. Since you are on a Mac you can just import the screencast into iMovie, delete the audio track, and use the record narration tool to dub your voice onto it.

Is there anything that I should revise before posting this on the MODx blog? And should this be posted in Important News?

I really feel like asking for a $20 donation is not a great idea, and would come across as quite petty. Especially given that monthly hosting costs are still not being covered for the project. Let me contact the author of iShowU and see if I can work something out.

I also really think that written documentation will be necessary as well. It’s hard and could be frustrating to quickly glance through a screencast to find that one bit of information you’re looking for. I suspect your Trac site contains the bulk of the work honestly.

In my opinion, written documentation should be the primary documentation method, but screencasts are certainly great with which to add to the knowledgebase, and encouraged! I’ll be picking up a copy of iShowU myself.

Lastly, I really think that instead of having the ditto documentation in yet another location, it should be ported over to the MODx wiki.

Does anyone else have opinions or thoughts along these lines?

Quote from: rthrash at Dec 17, 2006, 02:22 PM

Lastly, I really think that instead of having the ditto documentation in yet another location, it should be ported over to the MODx wiki.

Does anyone else have opinions or thoughts along these lines?

It is definitely more convenient to have a central location for documentation. I would like to see ditto documentation in the wiki. I would be willing to help in any way I can (I sort-ah like putting stuff in the wiki ).

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, Scientist.

Quote from: Dr. at Dec 17, 2006, 02:33 PM

Quote from: rthrash at Dec 17, 2006, 02:22 PM

Lastly, I really think that instead of having the ditto documentation in yet another location, it should be ported over to the MODx wiki.

Does anyone else have opinions or thoughts along these lines?

It is definitely more convenient to have a central location for documentation. I would like to see ditto documentation in the wiki. I would be willing to help in any way I can (I sort-ah like putting stuff in the wiki ).

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, Scientist.

I’m of the opinion that the wiki and all of the MODx web site and resources should be devoted to the MODx core framework, and add-ons should provide additional resources either within what the MODx web site has to offer (the Add-On Resource Repository, dedicated sub-forums, and wiki space) OR within whatever external project hosting they want to use. In this case, Ditto has it’s own CVSDude account, SVN space, and Trac Wiki. That’s awesome; it reduces the burden on this open-source project to support major add-ons. The MODx resources should really be more focused on the core IMO anyway.

But the really important thing to me is that the separation and isolation of components like Ditto is not forced; we offer a place to present your add-ons, but if you want to supplement that with additional resources, that is certainly not going to be discouraged by me. Use GoogleCode or another free open-source project hosting facility if you want. Add-ons are like sub-projects and, like I said, deserve some isolation and separation from the main project. Ditto is a perfect case in my mind.

Why not keep the Ditto site and add a Wiki page that points users to it?

I don’t agree there at all Jason. The reason MODx is remotely as popular as it is today is because of the system as a whole and the flexibility of core components. There’s enough complaints (warranted) about the documentation not being totally up to date... no sense in asking folks to bounce around the internet trying to find nuggets hidden in various corners.

Quote from: rthrash at Dec 17, 2006, 02:08 PM

Let me contact the author of iShowU and see if I can work something out.

Sounds great. I would be happy to include a "Made possible by iShowU" bit in there.

Quote from: rthrash at Dec 17, 2006, 02:22 PM

I also really think that written documentation will be necessary as well. It’s hard and could be frustrating to quickly glance through a screencast to find that one bit of information you’re looking for.

I hate taking screenshots and writing up long articles--- 2 things that good documentation requires. Thus, I figure if I make the screencast someone can simply take screengrabs from it and then write up the instructions I give. That way there is less of a burden on me and I can spend my time coding.

Quote from: rthrash at Dec 17, 2006, 02:22 PM

Lastly, I really think that instead of having the ditto documentation in yet another location, it should be ported over to the MODx wiki.

Well, I can put the documentation on the Wiki but then I have to say the bugtracker is over here and the cvs over there. It just makes sense to have everything Ditto in one place IMHO.

Now I’m having second thoughts about releasing 1.1 and 2.0 so close. Should I just forget 1.1 and release what was planned for it as well as the 2.0 plans as 2.0?