[Koha-devel] Koha Themes Howto

[Roger Buck]

Replying (long) to himself!

Roger Buck wrote:
> 
> I am attempting to create a new theme for purpose of creating a "Koha
> theme howto" document.

Please see first draft of the documentation on wiki (OK Nick?):

 http://www.saas.nsw.edu.au/wiki/index.php?page=ThemeHowTo

All are invited to add/delete/modify as they see fit.


Thoughts so far:

Important to standardise file structure ASAP (my usual hobby-horse!)

I have trialled most of these ideas from Dorian:

Dorian Meid wrote:
> 1st:
> koha/opac/htdocs is not true for everybody,
> I'd prefer to say serverroot.

> 2nd:
> The designer of a theme has his/her theme-directory as a theme-root.
> All theme related data resides below this directory.
> All language-specific theme data goes in <theme>/<language>/ .
> All language-independent theme data goes in <theme>/all/ .

> 3rd:
> For the ease of theme-design a 'templates'-subdirectory below htdocs (or
> public_html) makes no sense.
> We still are lacking a decision wether to mix the templates with the
rest of the website-stuff or not.
>

After trialing, all of the above now makes much more sense to me  -
Thanks Dorian, I agree.

> In my opinion storing the templates together with images, css and so on
> is not a big problem but it increases the html-like-aproach to designin
> a theme (some tags in the html get replaced automatically by the
> scripts). I think this is what html::template was made for.

I still am not convinced about the last paragraph. From my trials , use
of .css seems to offer some major advantages. I also see advantage to
storing templates along with everything else in a single tree structure
in the webspace? - see wiki for example code simplification when using
.css combined with HTML::Template.

As I NOW see it, the web space file system might look like:

<serverroot>/<theme><lang>/
                         ./images
                         ./includes
                         ./styles
                         ./jscripts
                         ./help
                         ./catalogue
                         ./members
                         ./whatever...

This means that each theme is effectively almost a virtual server  in
terms of file structure (I think I have this right Dorian?). This would
require a change in current CVS thinking.

I know there are arguments in support of alternative structure(s)... but
I have no specific information to work on. Suggestions are invited as I
would like to trial them.

I have constructed an embryonic trial site for this stuff at:

  http://www.library.nsw.org.au/

Please bear in mind that this is just purely alpha and I only get
limited opportunity to work on this.... but I will try and make time to
develop it so I can trial any suggestions that come in over over next
few days :)

Don't forget that the main link to Koha Templating is at:

 http://koha.org/contribute/templating/ 

I am still hoping to get some feedback on the following:

Roger Buck wrote:                        
> 1. I am using Steve's RC14 as the base distribution - is that OK?
> 
> 2. I need to know how the theme variable is set. Do I need to create a
> new table... do I need to creata a new entry in ssytempreferences (if
> so, then what syntax)... do I need to make an entry in koha conf (if so
> then what syntax) or should I make a temporary entry in Output.pm... or
> should I do something else?
> 
> 3. I need to create a structure to hold templates and related content.
> 
> I am asking for specific guidance on 1 and 2 above.
> 
> Following Dorian's response below, I am seeking general guidance on two
> other points:
> 
> 4. Where to place all supplementary files associated with a particular
> theme.
> 
> 5. What design approach to use with themes
> 
> My understanding is that the reason for using using HTML::Template is
> mainly to "separate design - the HTML - from the data, which you
> generate in a Perl script" ...and.. "it does just one thing and it does
> it quickly and carefully. It doesn't try to replace Perl and HTML, it
> just augments them to interact a little better." [1]
> http://www.perldoc.com/cpan/HTML/Template.html
> 
> Based on the above, I assumed that designing a theme is little different
> to designing "normal" HTML. Based on Dorinas comments below about
> "html-like-aproach to designing a theme", it seems that themes may
> require a different design methodology?
[--snip--]

R.