Archive for July, 2006
A new extension has joined the contributions on ez.no: datatypes (pubsvn). It contains a datatypes module with
- a view to list the datatype usage (how many and which class attributes use the datatype) and
- a view to convert class attributes (and the content of it’s corresponding content attributes) from one datatype to another.
The datatypes extension is still in alpha state, don’t use the datatype conversion feature on a production site!
Already identified improvements are:
- a command line conversion script
- support for some standard datatypes (eztext <> ezxmltext, ezdate <> ezdatetime)
These features will be implemented when I need them at my work or when I have some spare time and I don’t know anything else to do (but since I’m involved in a lot of stuff, this doesn’t happen very often). Feel free to contribute and make your own conversion plugins.
July 25th, 2006
On ez.no I recently announced a documentation site based on eZ publish 3.8. It’s just one of the solutions that can be used to write additional documentation for eZ publish and for free community extensions. In this article I will explain the basic approach of this solution.
Goals
- replacement of README files: plain text documentation files are hard to read and navigate through
- uniformity: currently the documentation of most extensions is written add hoc and does not comply to any predefined structure
- interlink eZ publish documentation and extensions: when an extension offers an alternative to existing funtionality or complementary features, it should be linked to on the appropriate places in the eZ publish documentation
- multilingual
- discussion
- traceability
Technical implementation
The documentation site uses the general approach of a wiki, with single pages (of the content class Wiki page) linked to each other without a real tree structure. Instead of Wikitext markup, I’ve chosen to use an eZ publish ezxml attribute together with a WYSIWYG editor (SJSD or the eZ publish Online Editor). An attribute with the changelog datatype will be used to add changelog notes to a wiki page.
Each page belongs to a namespace (of the content class Wiki namespace). The content root node will act as the main namespace. Other namespaces are placed directly beneath the content root node.
When a wiki page is published for the first time, a workflow event (SCK-CEN create copy) will create a dedicated discussion forum for it.
For each language there will be a different URL based site access, e.g. http://pubsvn.ez.no/wiki/en for English and http://pubsvn.ez.no/wiki/fr for French. On each wiki page there will be a toolbox with a list of links to the same page in other languages.
The diffing functionality introduced in eZ publish 3.8 will be used to track changes between versions.
Layout
The site’s layout is loosely based on MediaWiki. On top you will find a small bar with account-related links (login/logout, notification settings, etc.). The main content is on the right side. On the left side there’s a logo, context-related toolboxes and toolboxes with other general functions (like search) or information (like the current visitor count).
What’s next?
Before we proceed with this project, we’d like to know who would like to join:
- further developement of the documentation site
- defining uniform structures for the documentation of extensions and eZ publish components (modules, template operators, template functions, etc.)
- using this solution for writing documentation for extensions
If there are enough people who want to get involved, we can start with:
- documenting the documentation solution itself (installation, how to use it, …)
- this will help us to find inconsistencies and must-have features that are still missing
Contact
Send an e-mail to kristof [dot] coomans [at] telenet [dot] be, with the subject “eZ publish community documentation”.
July 20th, 2006
I’ve made a small extension for Mozilla Thunderbird. It allows you to open all links in an e-mail with one single click, which is especially useful with services like SpamCop. The extension is called Open all links and is registered at Mozilla Add-ons.
July 14th, 2006
This is a listing of the tests done by the setup wizard of eZ publish 3.8. You can use this list to predict if eZ publish will run on a specific web host or not.
Continue Reading July 7th, 2006
Recently I started reporting spam to SpamCop with the Okopipi Thunderbird extension. With a single click, all mails marked as spam can be reported in batch with one single e-mail to your SpamCop submission e-mail address. You’ll get a mail back from SpamCop with a list of links to reporting forms, one for each spam mail you submitted.
I didn’t found a way to open all these links in the e-mail with one click. If you have a solution, then please let me know.
Also the reporting process is a bit slow. You either have to scroll or click on an anchor to go to the submit button at the bottom of the page. So I made a small bookmarklet which will submit the reporting form for me.
SpamCop submit reporting form bookmarklet (right-click, and choose “Bookmark this link…” or drag & drop it to your bookmarks toolbar)
Finally I only have to open the list of links in the e-mail, switch between the tabs in Firefox by using Ctrl+Tab and clicking the bookmarklet once for each tab.
Maybe the bookmarklet can be automatically executed with Greasemonkey, but I didn’t try this yet.
July 6th, 2006
