Agenda for Mar 25th 2010 dev chat
- Feature status and schedule update – all
- Inline documentation of the twentyten theme – demetris
- Front end AJAX endpoint – best solution discussion (http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12400) – dd32
- Menus – Ryan
- Information provided for update checks from multisite installs (http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12672) – denis de bernardy
- Making the agregate stats data public – denis de bernardy
Andrew Nacin 10:09 pm on March 24, 2010 Permalink
Here’s a ticket to preempt discussion on inline docs, as I can’t possibly imagine objections: http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12695.
Alex M. 10:11 pm on March 24, 2010 Permalink
A good discussion to have is phpdoc vs. completely formatted-for-human style for TwentyTen though. While phpdoc is a good for the core and understandable by developers, we’ll have novices looking at twentyten. It might be worth leaving out any potentially confusing things.
Matt 10:35 pm on March 24, 2010 Permalink
Conversational inline documentation, “don’t remove this or the sky will fall on your head,” would be nice. It’s a chance to inject a little personality.
Of course we’re back to the theme needing to me manually translated to translate the comments, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
demetris 6:14 pm on March 25, 2010 Permalink
I’ve thought about what Viper says and I am not sure what I would prefer. I think the best would be a combination of the two styles, but achieving the right mix is more of an art than anything else; some people can do it, others not so well.
For what is worth, here is my personal experience on this:
I am not a coder but I understand just enough to be able to make a working WP theme from scratch by reading good howtos and by studying good implementations. The implementations that have been most helpful to me are those with good inline docs (like Tarski) — they have offered me the best insight into the working of the code: what each piece is there for, what it uses to achieve its purpose (which often also reveals the wealth of useful functions built-in in WordPress), what it gives you at the end, etc. etc.
Now, granted, Twenty Ten should be a straight and simple theme, and, as much as possible, it should be using stuff that is already documented in the core and not making up its own stuff. So, there is not as much space in it for phpdoc documentation as in themes that come with lots of functionality not directly provided by the core.
On the other hand, 2010 and WP themes in general are not just skins. They are integral parts of a flow that puts together web documents by using a programming language. So, from that point of view, I think we should not be shy away from making a theme’s internals appear a bit geeky and cody to the beginner’s eye.
I’m not talking too much, am I?
Jane Wells 8:07 pm on March 25, 2010 Permalink
Quick wireframe based on talk with markjaquith, usability testing, and discussion with rboren and UI group. Will discuss when we get to menus today.
http://wpdevel.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/new-menus-wireframe.pdf
Meeting notes for 3/25/2010, added live:… « WordPress Development Updates 8:46 pm on March 25, 2010 Permalink
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