Difference between Modx and Tattoo

Moderator’s note : This thread was originally posted in the french forums (in the FAQ, since I am often asked about this), where I answered a question of a french user regarding differences between Tattoo and MODx. This dicussion between me and silent ensued. As it’s in english, it should rather be in the english forums than in the french forums. I retitled it and moved it to the general MODx dicsussion board.

Hi David,

Effectivement cela peut porter à confusion... Pour bien comprendre comment se déroule le développement de MODx, il faut d’abord rappeler qu’il y a deux branches principales :

This is a very instructive explanation of how things stand. I think you should provide that in English too.
(I do not feel authorized to translate foreign messages.. )

Speak both french and english ?

Well, I answered the question since it was asked, and did just give a rough outline... on the english side of things, I wouldn’t want to overlap the dev team, who are much more qualified than I am to elaborate on this... I think Jason has offered info many times on 1.0, though I agree those post are scattered on the forums...

Quote from: davidm at Aug 14, 2006, 04:32 PM

Speak both french and english ?

"Speaking"? No, not really. But I have some reading knowledge in French. (I even did some french-german translations for a german publisher. But that was more than 15 years ago. And my french has not improved since... )
I had the feeling that you reveal some interesting stuff here (the EnterpriseCM thing and the compat issues relating to PHP 4/5. I wish that the majority of the community could read that. If you think otherwise, no problem. It’s your post, not mine

regards!

Quote from: silent at Aug 14, 2006, 04:58 PM

I had the feeling that you reveal some interesting stuff here (the EnterpriseCM thing and the compat issues relating to PHP 4/5. I wish that the majority of the community could read that. If you think otherwise, no problem. It’s your post, not mine

I am not sure I am revealing anything, Jason has posted here and there about the future of MODx and Tattoo (there are other threads, such as :
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,4034.msg29423.html#msg29423
or http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,2135.msg41016.html#msg41016
or http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,6063.msg42909.html#msg42909
or http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,4076.msg29787.html#msg29787... there are certainly more...)

But you’re right maybe we should have a summary of some kind somewhere.

Since I splitted and moved this thread to the english board, let me translate antoine’s question on the french board was

I am a new member and I have often encountered references to Tattoo, is it the new name for MODx 1.0 ? How does it differ exactly ? Is the brand changing or is the project forking into two different branches ?

My answer was :

I understand how you could be confused about this... First, to have a good grasp of how things are going on as far as dev is concerned, you’ll have to keep in mind that there are two main branches :

• the 0.9.x branch, which I could call the Eto legacy branch, with many improvements over Etomite
• the 1.0 branch, which is a total rewrite of the core, based on OO

This being said, the 1.0 branch splits into two different versions of the application (so to speak, forgive me if I am making improper use of language here, I am no dev ) :

• MODx 1.0 will remain compatible with PHP 4.x, and will probably target individual or small companies (due to the price / scarcity of PHP5 hosting)
• Tattoo, which will be a "PHP5 enhanced" version of the above (will require PHP 5.1+), targeted at corporate websites and possibly the ECM segment.

The new branch will bring a lot of improvement to the existing features :
- database abstraction layer, which will open the use of DB other than MySQL
- a new much more powerful API
- a new permission system
- revisionning
- mutli-lingual capability
- workflow
- and many other....

I’ll let the dev team correct me where I am wrong or not precise enough there.

There will be a lot to say about that after we get the next 0.9.5 release out as that’s our primary focus right now.

Thanks for the translation, David!
And I apologize for having posted in English to a French thread. If I had been able to write in French, I surely would have done so...

Très bien David!

Very good summary for non-tech people. We should put some of this in the FAQ I think.

Actually, I think the biggest difference right now with MODx (in retrospect) is that it’s a shipping product!

(And everyone always knows that non-shipping software is always late...)

Moral of the story: enjoy what’s here today, what’s going to be released in the immediate future (0.9.5) and get ready for a lot of fun down the road with the 1.0 branch(es).