[daisy] [skin2] Poll for participation and input

Tue Sep 25 06:38:39 CDT 2007

Andreas Deininger wrote:
> 2007/9/25, Marc Portier <mpo at outerthought.org>:
>> Hi all,
>>
>> Daisy's 1.5 release introduced a new skin with many advantages to the
>> previous one. I've got the feeling some new work in this area is due,
>> and I'm hoping to tap into the available graphical design expertise
>> available here on the list.
>>
>> For those that fit that description the motivation to participate should
>> come from some OSS logic that predicts that those that influence this
>> work most (by injecting their experience, ideas, needs, code,..) will
>> gain the most...
>>
>>
>> So here's the open goal:
>>
>>    Anyone some ideas for a new daisy skin?
> 
> Are you aware of YAML: http://www.yaml.de/en/home.html ?

nope I wasn't
will have a deeper look, at first it looks a it like yahoo's YUI grid stuff.

> YAML based templates are available for quite a few other CMS, so why
> not implementing it for Daisy, too?
> http://www.yaml.de/en/community/cms-templates.html
> I recently used these a YAML based template for a TYPO 3 based site,
> and that worked out quite well.
> 

cool, anyone else with similar experience?
maybe a comparison/preference over Yahoo's solution?

>>    Success/horror stories with skinning Daisy or other systems?
>>    Suggestions on things to be changed/added/... ?
> 
> Above your are talking about a new daisy skin. Wouldn't it be better
> to implement something like a skinning or templating system, maybe

I'm not sure what you refer to:
Technology-wise I think we have everything in place with XSLT and the 
daisyskin: technique, no?

Bad point for the current default base-skin though is that it provides 
too little chunk-size callable xslt templates.
(see http://issues.cocoondev.org/browse/DSY-542)

So IMHO xslt is an acceptable base for a templating system (it provides 
clear pull-mode operation. The endresult could be something like

<html>
   <xsl:call-template name="insert-daisy-header"    />
   <xsl:call-template name="insert-my-extra-header" />

   <body>
     <div id="grid">
     ...
       <xsl:call-template name="insert-daisy-navigation" />
       <xsl:call-template name="insert-daisy-breadcrumb" />
     ...
       <xsl:call-template name="insert-daisy-part" >
         <xsl:with-param name="partName" select="'SimpleContentPart'" />
       </xsl:call-template>

The difference with <? INSERT_SOME_TAG ?>  is then only syntactical IMHO.

> with a default (official) skin provided from the daisy developers? My
> vision is that others from the community can contribute their skin(s)
> too, so that the daisy user has the choice between different skins. If
> I look at the Drupal site, they have a broad variety of themes
> available (http://drupal.org/project/themes). Right now, I don't see
> how one could easily contribute his own template to the daisy
> community.

mmmm

I don't agree, since:

- anyone today can zip up his own resources/skins/* directories and 
share them easily.
- even if your skin is reacting on
   - certain schema types: then the import/export format can be used to 
share those
   - custom publisher requests: then those can be zipped up as well

However I must agree that there is no sharing of skins today and have to 
witness that everybody doing daisy skinning is somewhere up on his own 
island of techniques and stuff their (probably) reusing from previous 
projects.

Basically I think this is because the current skin is laying down way 
too little common ground for people.

So if we would have a new base 'skin2' that provides
- a clear guideline of howto organize (and name) xslt and css
- clear documentation of provided css and xslt
   (and obviously provide more css and xslt hooks then what is available
    today)
- clear guidelines howto extend/reuse css and xslt
- guidelines on how to organize the skinconf
- ...

Then we should be able to reach the mark where:
- css-only skinning (like at http://www.csszengarden.com/ ) is feasible
- sets of reusable extra xslt-templates can be dropped in

... people with other goals/aspirations?

Again, I might be missing something, but I really think 'just' having a 
better base-skin would solve most of what you mention...

regards,
-marc=