[Koha-devel] Koha.next: Consolidate OPAC themes?

[Ian Walls]

I think the key thing to do is to provide a consistent and well documented
set of template variables that do not change within any given version.
This is a pretty common practice for many CMS and other templatable
systems.  That way, we always know what parts we have to work with.

This would greatly increase the flexibility of Koha, as multiple templates
(including local ones) could be developed and maintained by consulting only
a single, slowly changing resource (the template API documentation).  We
should also keep an eye here towards backwards-compatibility, so template
maintainers have more time to adapt their work.

Out of the box, I think Koha should support a single template.  Any other
templates that other entities wish to maintain are just fine, but I think
the release team shouldn't have to split their attention between multiple
templates.

My $0.02, adjusted for their recent market value.


-Ian

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 11:45 AM, Galen Charlton <gmc at esilibrary.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> At present we distribute two OPAC themes with Koha, "prog" and CCSR.
> I like both of them, though it is nice having a mobile theme in the
> shape of  CCSR.
>
> That said: in my view having two stock themes is going to present us
> with a long-term maintenance problem, even nightmare.  Any template
> change to one *must* be applied to the other.  Inevitably, one theme
> (most likely prog) will fall off the radar of most Koha developers.
> Also inevitably, functionality differences will creep in between the
> two themes. Furthermore  the prog theme will continue to have users
> who will justifiably complain if a stock theme becomes a second-class
> citizen.
>
> How do I know this will happen?  The Evergreen community went through
> a similar experience with its old-style OPAC, which at one point had a
> stock theme and a visually more modern theme called Craftsman.  Since
> the underlying templates were duplicated, a point came where Craftsman
> accrued functionality gaps, but still had its adherents who preferred
> how it looked.
>
> I would like to avoid that risk.
>
> Consequently, I think the next version of Koha should unify the
> templates of the prog and CCSR themes.  If we decide to continue
> offering both appearances as stock options, the visual and layout
> differences between the two should be managed strictly through the use
> of CSS.  One way to do that would be to offer stylesheets that can be
> managed via the opaccolorstylesheet sysprefs.  We could also decide to
> add support for skins (which would be a named set of stylesheets) or
> perhaps redefine OPAC themes to be just named sets of stylesheets, not
> separate sets of templates.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Regards,
>
> Galen
> --
> Galen Charlton
> Manager of Implementation
> Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
> email:  gmc at esilibrary.com
> direct: +1 770-709-5581
> cell:   +1 404-984-4366
> skype:  gmcharlt
> web:    http://www.esilibrary.com/
> Supporting Koha and Evergreen: http://koha-community.org &
> http://evergreen-ils.org
> _______________________________________________
> Koha-devel mailing list
> Koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org
> http://lists.koha-community.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/koha-devel
> website : http://www.koha-community.org/
> git : http://git.koha-community.org/
> bugs : http://bugs.koha-community.org/
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.koha-community.org/pipermail/koha-devel/attachments/20130408/d34b05ef/attachment.html>