Email sent 16 March 2006. Please help by refactoring into a new core message that can go out.

To skin authors:

One of TWiki's core value as an open source project is the diversity it offers. People have differenr needs, skins offer flexibility in look and feel. So, it is of value to have many skins available on TWiki.org.

Please consider updating your skins to take advantage of the new features of TWiki 4.0, such as css, login, jump & search functionality, twisty sections etc.

A clarification on Martin's message:

My criteria was not > 2 years. TWiki should be a stable enough platform where 2 year old extensions should work just like that!

I only obsoleted skins that do not have a Skin Table with the standard screenshot, e.g. the skins that did not show up properly in the SkinPackage directory on TWiki.org and in the SkinBrowser. I asked skins authors in July 2004 to update their skins, I think 1.5 years should be a long enough notice

Regards, Peter

MartinCleaver wrote: > To all addressed on the To: line,
> As you may have noticed, Peter recently retired (obsoleted) all skins
> that had not been updated for > 2years. The purpose of this was to help
> new users decide how best to develop a look and feel best suited to
> their needs and which skins are a good starting point for further
> development. This recognises that many skins look great but have become
> harder to maintain with TWiki's growth.
>
> Your's stood Peter's 2 year test - so still shows on
> http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/SkinPackage
>
> However, if you feel that:
> 1) your priorities have changed and you are unlikely to
> further work on your skin, or
> 2) your skin should not be the basis for further work by others, or
> 3) PatternSkin or NatSkin usefully contain enough of the flexibility
> you would have needed such that your look would actually best be served
> today as a just a theme (set of CSS files) sitting on top of one of those
>
> Then please take the time to consider whether your skin should also be
> obsoleted, and if you think so, mark it as such. (Contact me if you need
> help).
> We thank you for your past efforts and hope you appreciate that for
> TWiki to move as fast as possible we need a rationalised and simplified
> skin system.

--

• Peter Thoeny Peter Thoeny.org
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MartinCleaver

MartinCleaver to twiki-dev More options 16-Mar

Peter - ok, my turn to clarify.

My point is that TWiki cannot afford the effort needed to maintain multiple streams of skin development. There is NO POINT adding CSS and the rest of it to old skins. They should be migrated to sit on an extensible platform.

No disrespect to any of those skin authors - most of them look great. But most skins are not suitable for building on.

Building everyone on all skins just wastes everyone's time. It just serves to fragment the effort available.

M.

- Show quoted text - On 16/03/06, Peter Thoeny wrote: To skin authors:

One of TWiki's core value as an open source project is the diversity it offers. People have differenr needs, skins offer flexibility in look and feel. So, it is of value to have many skins available on TWiki.org.

Please consider updating your skins to take advantage of the new features of TWiki 4.0, such as css, login, jump & search functionality, twisty sections etc.

A clarification on Martin's message:

My criteria was not > 2 years. TWiki should be a stable enough platform where 2 year old extensions should work just like that!

I only obsoleted skins that do not have a Skin Table with the standard screenshot, e.g. the skins that did not show up properly in the SkinPackage directory on TWiki.org and in the SkinBrowser. I asked skins authors in July 2004 to update their skins, I think 1.5 years should be a long enough notice

Regards, Peter

MartinCleaver wrote: > To all addressed on the To: line,
> As you may have noticed, Peter recently retired (obsoleted) all skins
> that had not been updated for > 2years. The purpose of this was to help
> new users decide how best to develop a look and feel best suited to
> their needs and which skins are a good starting point for further
> development. This recognises that many skins look great but have become
> harder to maintain with TWiki's growth.
>
> Your's stood Peter's 2 year test - so still shows on
> http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Plugins/SkinPackage
>
> However, if you feel that:
> 1) your priorities have changed and you are unlikely to
> further work on your skin, or
> 2) your skin should not be the basis for further work by others, or
> 3) PatternSkin or NatSkin usefully contain enough of the flexibility
> you would have needed such that your look would actually best be served
> today as a just a theme (set of CSS files) sitting on top of one of those
>
> Then please take the time to consider whether your skin should also be
> obsoleted, and if you think so, mark it as such. (Contact me if you need
> help).
> We thank you for your past efforts and hope you appreciate that for
> TWiki to move as fast as possible we need a rationalised and simplified
> skin system.

--

• Peter Thoeny Peter Thoeny.org
• Is your team already TWiki enabled? http://TWiki.org
• This e-mail is: (x) public () ask first () private

http://sel.as-us.falkag

https://lists.sourceforge

--

MartinCleaver

toby cabot to Peter, twiki-dev, asvravi, thorsten, cbs, dale ... More options 16-Mar

On Thu, Mar 16, 2006 at 12:39:22PM -0800, Peter Thoeny wrote: > Please consider updating your skins to take advantage
> of the new features of TWiki 4.0, such as css, login,
> jump & search functionality, twisty sections etc.

Hi Peter and TWiki developers,

Thanks for writing TWiki and making it Free Software. I look forward to installing 4.0 soon (at home and work) and intend to update the Caboteria skin at that point.

Regards,

Toby Cabot

- Show quoted text -

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MartinCleaver to twiki-dev, Peter, asvravi, thorsten, toby, cbs ... More options 17-Mar

Pattern Skin is now a misnomer - its not a skin, its a foundation on which skins should be layered.

Toby - if you can, please build your next iteration of CabotSkin on top of the Pattern foundation.

The effect will be smoother and less prone to wrinkles as TWiki ages.

M.

- Show quoted text - On 16/03/06, toby cabot wrote: On Thu, Mar 16, 2006 at 12:39:22PM -0800, Peter Thoeny wrote: > Please consider updating your skins to take advantage
> of the new features of TWiki 4.0, such as css, login,
> jump & search functionality, twisty sections etc.

Hi Peter and TWiki developers,

Thanks for writing TWiki and making it Free Software. I look forward to installing 4.0 soon (at home and work) and intend to update the Caboteria skin at that point.

Regards, Toby Cabot

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--

MartinCleaver

Crawford Currie to twiki-dev More options 17-Mar

MartinCleaver wrote: Pattern Skin is now a misnomer - its not a skin, its a foundation on which skins should be layered.

Toby - if you can, please build your next iteration of CabotSkin on top of the Pattern foundation. Martin, great work, and long overdue!

One word of warning; while Arthur has written some excellent support topics, Pattern is poorly documented within the templates, and very, very complex. I had a terrible time extracting the simpler base templates currently in DEVELOP branch. If you want existing and budding dermatologists to build their skins over it, I would recommend that:

You significantly improve the inline documentation of the Pattern templates. TWiki-4 supports the %{...}% comment construct, which postdates most of Arthur's work. or You build on the base templates in DEVELOP instead. They are a grossly simplified, CSS based, derivative of Classic.

Just a thought,

C.

Colas Nahaboo to twiki-dev, Peter, asvravi, thorsten, toby, cbs ... More options 17-Mar

On 3/17/06, MartinCleaver wrote: > Pattern Skin is now a misnomer - its not a skin, its a foundation on which
> skins should be layered.

Note that some skins have goals that may be in contradiction with the pattern skin foundation: for instance for Koala: efficiency, handling of 100+ webs, centralized management and upgrade across multiple twiki servers.

So there is not a clear-cut answer, it depends of the design goals of the skins, one size may not fit all...

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toby cabot to me, twiki-dev, Peter, asvravi, thorsten, cbs ... More options 17-Mar

On Thu, Mar 16, 2006 at 11:57:21PM -0500, MartinCleaver wrote: > *Pattern Skin is now a misnomer - its not a skin, its a foundation *on which

> skins should be layered.
>
> Toby - if you can, please build your next iteration of CabotSkin on top of
> the Pattern foundation.
>
> The effect will be smoother and less prone to wrinkles as TWiki ages.

Martin,

Cool, thanks for the tip. Looks like there's good docs on how to customize PatternSkin so I'll plan on using that approach and we'll see what happens.

Cheers,

Toby

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AJA+TwikiDev to twiki-dev More options 17-Mar

Martin quite correct.

I've used the VIEW_TEMPLATE and Patternskin components and bit of CSS (for the menu and 3-panel) to implement what amounts to a new skin. I took Arthur's examples of hiding the left and top bar, developed my own and Lo!

http://www.infosecwiki /bin/view/CISSPForum/NewHome

Still a few IE hiccups.

MartinCleaver wrote: > */_Pattern Skin is now a misnomer - its not a skin, its a foundation

> _/*on which skins should be layered.
>
> Toby - if you can, please build your next iteration of CabotSkin on top
> of the Pattern foundation.
>
> The effect will be smoother and less prone to wrinkles as TWiki ages.

-- "On two occasions I have been asked (by members of Parliament!), 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. - Charles Babbage 1791-1871), English computer pioneer, philosopher

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MartinCleaver to twiki-dev, Peter, asvravi, thorsten, toby, cbs ... More options 17-Mar

Unless we get features such as "handling of 100+ webs, centralized management and upgrade across multiple twiki servers" (like each other Skin's unique selling functional points) into a foundational layer that can be used by all skins we will continue to defend multiple, duplicate, overlapping, redundant, incompatible solutions that lead to design compromises in point solutions, positioning of skins to vie for attention, confusion among people who just want a new look and feel, argument about which is best, and general disappointment and disheartenment by those of us who just TWiki should stick to its topic-knitting and who just wish TWiki used an out of the box skin templating system such as TT2.

Understand that I don't care which foundational classes we use as long as TWiki steps up to some commonality and prunes back all the growth that detracts us from moving at a decent pace. If we can't afford to design the foundation ourselves, or there are tactical or strategic reasons for doing so.

Its only by feedback that we are freed from the constraints of our own thoughts. Arthur's pattern foundation needs feedback and builds from other skin authors. In the first instance Skin authors need to be pointed at the foundation, not at raw TWiki.

TWiki's skin system is more complex than the competition. This makes it less attractive than say Wordpress, which has a famously easy http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/WordpressThemeEditor ; providing such a ThemeEditor that used the foundational layer for TWiki would be a boon to ensuring people follow the new way. Meredith had a plugin that could help with that.

For as long as TWiki provides no financial reward, only strong leadership can motivate us to work together.

M. -- MartinCleaver MSc MBA - Show quoted text -

On 17/03/06, Colas Nahaboo wrote: On 3/17/06, MartinCleaver < mrjcleaver gmail > wrote: > Pattern Skin is now a misnomer - its not a skin, its a foundation on which
> skins should be layered.

Note that some skins have goals that may be in contradiction with the pattern skin foundation: for instance for Koala: efficiency, handling of 100+ webs, centralized management and upgrade across multiple twiki servers.

So there is not a clear-cut answer, it depends of the design goals of the skins, one size may not fit all...

http://sel.as-us.falkag

https://lists.sourceforge

--

MartinCleaver

Meredith to twiki-dev More options 17-Mar

- Show quoted text -

On Mar 17, 2006, at 3:13 AM, Crawford Currie wrote:

> MartinCleaver wrote:
>> Pattern Skin is now a misnomer - its not a skin, its a foundation
>> on which skins should be layered.
>>
>> Toby - if you can, please build your next iteration of CabotSkin
>> on top of the Pattern foundation.
> Martin, great work, and long overdue!
>
> One word of warning; while Arthur has written some excellent
> support topics, Pattern is poorly documented within the templates,
> and very, very complex. I had a terrible time extracting the
> simpler base templates currently in DEVELOP branch. If you want
> existing and budding dermatologists to build their skins over it, I
> would recommend that:
> You significantly improve the inline documentation of the Pattern
> templates. TWiki-4 supports the %{...}% comment construct, which
> postdates most of Arthur's work. or
> You build on the base templates in DEVELOP instead. They are a
> grossly simplified, CSS based, derivative of Classic.
> Just a thought,
>
> C.
>

I'm confused now. Is patternskin in DEVELOP different from patternskin in TWiki4?

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Crawford Currie to twiki-dev More options 18-Mar

Meredith wrote:

>
> On Mar 17, 2006, at 3:13 AM, Crawford Currie wrote:
>

>> One word of warning; while Arthur has written some excellent support
>> topics, Pattern is poorly documented within the templates, and very,
>> very complex. I had a terrible time extracting the simpler base
>> templates currently in DEVELOP branch. If you want existing and
>> budding dermatologists to build their skins over it, I would
>> recommend that:
>> You significantly improve the inline documentation of the Pattern
>> templates. TWiki-4 supports the %{...}% comment construct, which
>> postdates most of Arthur's work. or
>> You build on the base templates in DEVELOP instead. They are a
>> grossly simplified, CSS based, derivative of Classic.
>> Just a thought,
>>
>> C.
>
> I'm confused now. Is patternskin in DEVELOP different from patternskin
> in TWiki4?

No.

PatternSkin is an Extension. It happens to be installed in the default TWiki release, but it is not part of the core. Neither is ClassicSkin. The idea is that the core ships with a set of base templates. Skins layer on top of these templates to give an alternate look and feel.

In future there are likely to be TWikiFor releases that do not include any part of PatternSkin.

On TWikiRelease04x00 branch the base templates are a copy of the ClassicSkin templates. On DEVELOP branch they have been grossly simplified and had CSS support added. The only reason we have not merged these across to TWikiRelease04x00 is risk reduction.

It is perfectly reasonable to ask skin authors to derive from Pattern skin, and indeed it should be fairly easy for them as long as they stick within the documented customisation boundaries. However IMHO some skins would be much better deriving from a simpler base. For example, a skin for mobile computing users. Or a skin with significantly different structuring goals (I think KoalaSkin is in this set).

C.

-- Contributors: MartinCleaver

Discussion

-- MartinCleaver - 08 Apr 2006

If PatternSkin is not in the core, what is? What can be put in there to make it the foundation for others to build upon?

-- MartinCleaver - 08 Apr 2006

Peter said: "TWiki should be a stable enough platform where 2 year old extensions should work just like that!"

It isn't and they don't. Most plugins needed to be updated to work with Dakar, since previous to that there wasn't an API to use and so they incompatibly reached into the core. Just because a product has ben around for 4+ years doen't inherently make it "mature" in the sense you describe. Dakar was an excellent first step with TWiki::Func providing much of the necessary API. (Not nearly all, mind you, but an excellent first cut!)

While PatternSkin is an excellent foundation for customisation, it is complex. ClassicSkin is too minimalistic to use.

It sounds like one of the goals of Edinburgh need to be a either a clear spec for dermatologists to build on or a switch (augggh!) to a standard templating system.

-- MeredithLesly - 08 Apr 2006