[MTOS-dev] proposal: page layout blog setting and accompanying template tags.

[Bud Gibson]

Tim, your blunt commentary was echoed by many in July and August once they
saw the modular templates in action.

At any rate, I'd like to see a community templates repository.  Right now,
we have a wiki page that Mark Carey created for his initial plug-in.  Byrne
has suggested using the service Mihai has offered here:

http://www.movabletype4.org/

for previewing.  I'd suggest just making your template sets available for
use and download on the wiki page.

Bud

On Jan 25, 2008 10:38 AM, Timothy Appnel <tim at appnel.com> wrote:

> On 1/25/08, Beau Smith <beau at sixapart.com> wrote:
>
> > We had the page_layout setting implemented on the publishing settings
> > screen exactly as you have suggested... but removed it because of
> > lack of time and resources during 4.1 development... and because we
> > figured that this variable could be easily set at the top of any
> > index, archive, or system template (Notice that the Universal
> > template set sets a different page_layout variable on different
> > templates). I assure you that this setting will be added in upcoming
> > release... and I'm hoping that we can allow users to define custom
> > layout ids.
>
> Fair enough. I suppose the old consulting adage "it didn't happen if
> the customer doesn't know" applies here though. ;) This is why I look
> forward to the opening (widening?) of communication channels between
> Six Apart's engineering and developer like myself and others.
>
> The setting as I had suggested is for the basic to intermediate
> templates. Setting the page_layout on a per template basis starts to
> sound complicated or tedious though. I haven't had time to dissect the
> Universal Template Set templates yet -- is there some type of
> relationship that could be built-in? "If the page layout is X the
> front page is this and the archives use that" sort of thing? I guess
> that needs to get worked out through a different thread in the near
> future.
>
> > I'm sad to hear that the modularized templates are difficult and
>
> I'm sorry you feel that way.
>
> > scary and intimidating. As a "pro" I found that the redundancy in the
> > MT3 flattened templates was a major barrier to efficient editing of
> > the templates. I hope that the documentation that I'm working on will
> > assist in making the modularized templates easier, less scary and
> > less intimidating.
>
> I absolutely agree with you on the redundancy part. I had may one
> system for reducing a lot of that for years:
> http://timaoutloud.org/2003/08/hacks-object-oriented-weblog-publishing
>
> I'm not sure when you joined the team Beau, but there was a big debate
> in the community about the template sets back in March or April of
> last year when modularized template sets where floated. I recall a
> couple of pieces of feedback that seemed to have reached consensus --
> too many class & ids  (verbose) markup and don't modularize them like
> TypePad. OK, the latter one was mostly me and my blunt commentary was
> taken poorly by Six Apart, but the few others who had done TypePad
> customization did seem to agree with me that TypePad modularization
> was really really tedious and difficult to work with.
>
> That feedback seems to have gotten overlooked somehow that I'm not to
> surprised at where things ended up.
>
> > Over the past year the MT team has tackled some major code re-
> > factoring and large features within Movable Type. I'm very excited to
> > keep up the momentum and focus on more polish, optimization, and
> > features. I'm particularly excited our ideas around templates,
> > themes, and general construction of Movable Type powered websites.
>
> Agreed.
>
> > and looking
> > forward to collaborating with ProNet--to make it happen! =)
>
> Likewise. Now that we have one stable version out there let's get this
> party started.
>
> <tim/>
>
> --
> Timothy Appnel
> Appnel Solutions
> http://appnel.com/
> _______________________________________________
> MTOS-dev mailing list
> MTOS-dev at sixapart.com
> http://www.sixapart.com/mailman/listinfo/mtos-dev
>



-- 
Bud Gibson
cell:  734-657-4800
web:  http://michiganinnovators.org
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