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In order to start shaping the final requirements document, I’d like to start focusing on each section of the document, ensuring that it contains the correct information. The idea here is that we keep iterating on each section until we consider it complete, and then we’ll move onto the next.
So the focus of this meeting, and it’s recap post, will be on the section titled “Objectives”. The general agenda of the meeting will be as follows:
Opening and welcome
Reviewing and updating the requirements document: Objectives
Open floor
If you have anything else to propose for the agenda or specific items related to those listed above, please leave a comment below.
The whole team should be assembled by the end of the week. There is a fewer roles than in 5.3, because it’s a shorter release. The first Beta release is in 3 weeks from now.
@davidbaumwald expects to release the bug scrubs schedule by the end of the week.
@karmatosed added that Core design triages (on Mondays) for a few weeks can also focus on 5.4 to boost things.
@audrasjb noted that depending on the number of accessibility related tickets, the Accessibility Team can organize some extra accessibility focused bug scrubs. He will check the milestone to see if there is a need for more accessibility bug scrubs.
As @azaozz stated, hopefully component maintainers will take bigger and bigger part in “driving” 5.4, and releases in general.
@pbiron asked if there is a specific focus for 5.4. @francina answered that in general, 2020 is going to focus on one big goal: full site editing with Gutenberg. @dingo_d noted that it would need some coordination with the Theme Review Team.
@paragoninitiativeenterprises noted that #49200 needs feedback from anyone interested in WordPress security, or who develops plugins/themes.
@audrasjb is working on two tickets related to Themes and Plugins auto-updates: #49199 and #48850. This is one of the 9 projects for 2019-2020. The design team already provided some helpful feedback. These tickets are now waiting for technical review so they could hopefully land in the next couple of releases.
@marybaum noted her availability for copy review on 5.4 features.
@francina mentioned that development on 5.4 should have started the day 5.4 was branched, back in October. In fact, many people wait for the kickoff to start working. With Beta release scheduled in 3 weeks, it’s not really the time to add not fully ready features to the scope. However, WordPress 5.5 agenda is already known, so there is no need to rush things.
@azaozz and @francina pointed out that as soon as a release’s code is moved to a branch, trunk is back in business for the next release.
@xkon noticed that the “Current Release” widget on Make/Core might be confusing for newcomers as it’s still indicating 5.3 as the current release in progress.
Calls from component maintainers
Media:@azaozz is looking at couple of small enhancements for the uploader changes from 5.3, specifically adding a link in the UI to the original image (if it was scaled), and looking at some of the edge cases when creating image sub-sizes, file size for large PNGs, etc.
Widgets & Menus:@audrasjb will coordinate with @welcher to identify priorities for an eventual specific bug scrub.
Build tools:@johnbillion is going to look at getting several of the Composer related tickets into 5.4 (like using Composer for external libraries and phpunit). @desrosj and @johnbillion to synchronize their work at some point as @desrosj is working on backporting the local Docker environment.
Comments:@imath committed to look at each ticket involving comments in 5.4.
Open Floor
Some new contributors asked about how to start with core contribution. Worth noting the next New Contributor Meeting is scheduled for next Wednesday at 20:00 UTC in #core Slack channel. This is a great opportunity to ask for help or to learn how to contribute to WordPress Core.
The WP Notify feature project continues in 2020, with our first meeting of the year to be held on Monday, January 13, 2020, 14:00 UTC. We will take this opportunity to review the current status of the project, determine where we are at, where we need to go, and how we need to get there.
As the project has been on hiatus since late 2019, there is no fixed agenda, but I’ve listed a few items below we will be discussing.
Current status of the requirements gathering process
@francina reminded the main feature of 2020 will be full site editing. All component maintainers received a ping before Christmas to put together a scope for WordPress 5.4. An open call for tickets was also published on Make/Core. While @francina noted there were mostly bugfixes and not so many new features, @audrasjb raised ticket #48850 from the comments of this post. This ticket is related to automatic updates for plugins (with manual opt-in), which is one of the 9 projects for 2019-2020.
@azaozz noted that the media component team plan to continue with image post-processing. It looks like it will need couple of small UI changes/enhancements.
@audrasjb added the accessibility team will probably focus on bugfixes on both Gutenberg and Core for 5.4, and target the next major (5.5) for bigger new features.
Comments: @imath is working on #35214. Feedback welcome.
Core privacy: @xkon said the privacy team won’t have any specific focuses for 5.4, only bugfixing & enhancements on existing parts. Some of them need backward compatibility review, especially #44038 and #44176. Both tickets have a patch and are ready for further iterations if needed.
Media: @azaozz is experimenting with #44427. Seems a very worthwhile enhancement for 5.4.
Open floor
In the agenda comments, @justinahinon pointed out some editing needed in the roadmap, and highlighted reactions of the community concerning handling of big media on WP 5.3. @azaozz noted most comments are about “missing” the original image in some way. The initial plan was to have a link to it in the user interface. It should be added in 5.4. Another enhancement for the UI would/may be to show when an image is missing some of the sub-sizes and have a way to create them. There are plugins that handle this, but may be time to have it in core. There are couple of pre-existing edge-cases that need fixing too. Most notably increase of the file size for indexed PNGs when resized to smaller dimensions.
@timothyblynjacobs shared #47192 as a possible 5.4 feature. It’d bring a pretty often requested feature to Recovery Mode. It would need design and copy input as well as a security review from people familiar with the intricacies of the Users/Capabilities API.
Here’s a summary of the #core-media chat from January 9, 2020. Weekly media meetings happen on Thursdays at 14:00 UTC; see the full transcript here, in the Make WordPress Slack.
Happy 2020! Because of the holidays, the group postponed chats until Thursday, January 9.
This morning, the group also discussed moving the regular time, so more people can join the chat – particularly people working on critical tickets in the 5.4 release cycle.
Here are three options. Vote for your favorite in the comments:
Move the current Thursday 14:00 UTC time to 15:00 UTC
Move the date to Tuesday at 21:00 UTC (this option works well for the three who came to today’s meeting.)
Multiple meetings, to account for both sides of the world. This option would likely require a push of the currently scheduled meeting to 15:00 or 16:00 UTC as well as an agreed time and date for the second meeting. @joemcgill suggested that multiple meetings not be forced to cover the same agenda items. Some items will overlap where it makes sense, but, for example, if one meeting has cleared the ticket queue, it would be pointless for the next meeting to consist largely of a triage.
New Media ticket triage
#48194 – Unregistered image sizes used for IMG tag “srcset”
As @joemcgill pointed out: “The problem here seems to be that someone has deleted image files that are still referenced in the database in attachment metadata. Regenerating image sizes ( wp media regenerate ) would fix this problem, but should we only use registered sizes in `srcset` attributes if there are other sizes available?”
#48321 – Hotswapping featured image with gallery images
It seems the ask is for (after creating gallery) the option to click on one of the gallery items and set as featured image of the associated post. It was agreed by attendees that this may not be best fit in the gallery block UI and perhaps would be better fit as an option within the media modal when creating galleries, images, etc.
The group changed the ticket to ask for reporter feedback.
@karmatosed made another point. The “Uploaded to this post” filter, in the Set Featured Image modal, does give the reporter part of what they’re asking for.
#48325 – Additional filter in media-template.php. Let developers hide attachment page link.
@joemcgill pointed us to the code that creates the attachment link: https://github.com/WordPress/WordPress/blob/master/wp-includes/media-template.php#L511 and said, “At minimum, I think that template should check that data.link is actually a URL before displaying [it]. [Developers] could filter the data that is used by this template.”
WordPress 5.4 Media Focuses
While it didn’t come up in the meeting, notes are a great place for all of us to develop ideas for Media focuses in 5.4.
If you have any media-related focuses you’d like to work on in the 5.4 cycle, and that you’re ready to work on, please leave a comment.
That helps the Media maintainers gather and prioritize the work. Plus, it would be great if you’d come to next week’s chat so we can all discuss your idea!
In a continuous effort to improve the accessibility and the usability of the Gutenberg design based on user feedback, an updated Block UI design is being explored. 18667.
The first item of the agenda is Gutenberg 7.2.0! @ella is working on the final release. The release candidate was published on Monday and is available here. It is a bigger release than usual because of the pause we had for the holidays.
The final release will contain fixes for four regressions that we caught since Monday.
Weekly Priorities
The post with the priorities for the month will be published soon and we can discuss the bigger picture in more detail in the comments when it is ready. Based on conversations we had in the past and in the general direction of the project it looks like these are the main things we should focus on during the next week:
FSE work (namely: separate edit UI and implement/merge additional blocks),
Updates to the block UI, namely the lighter block dom and the new improvements to the UI,
PR 18055 Close to shipping Page Templates/Block Patterns
PR 17335 I’d like to know more about the plans for that on the web and how we can consolidate the implementations better (or at least the parts that overlap)
Project 31 Focusing primarily on enhancements and fixes to the Nav Block.
PR 19387 UI (and accompanying REST API endpoint) to allow look-up of details about remote URLs (such as <title> tag) for display in hyperlink creation UI (LinkControl).
This week — a script to automate WordPress core package updates and committed the first automatically generated package upgrade patch. I reviewed some PR’s and worked on some bugfixes (two were cherry-picked into the release).
Next week — Automating package updates, namely by moving the script to core. I will explore dividing the way styles are loaded in core to unblock a challenge we have on the mechanisms to simulate media queries.
Reviewing PR’s and working on my current PR’s/fixes.
Currently focussing on lightening the block DOM and performance.
Open Floor
Adding ColorControl component
@welcher is looking for review of PR 19288 Adds ColorControl component introducing a color picker without a pallet
@jorgefilipecosta pointed out the component “PanelColorSettings” is used in core blocks. At first sight it seems this component would allow everything the new component ColorControl allows with the primary concern being this solution includes a component that core itself does not use yet.
@chrisvanpatten pointed out the main difference is that ColorControl could really be described as “ColorPickerControl” for cases where we don’t want to offer colors from a specific palette
Introduce PluginManager class
@welcher asked for input on PR 19485 Introduce PluginManager class
This PR proposes disconnecting the plugin API function calls from direct access to the low-level datatype. This intermediary makes the API more semantic, allows for future changes/updates more easily and is meant to address @youknowriad ‘s concerns about the API not being fully semantic. This PR would be a precursor to changes to the API such as #16384. Also it introduces a new filter to allow the PluginManager class to be filtered allowing for ease of testing new API features and underlying data types. This last item is not the main purpose of this PR and is easily removed.
@welcher indicated this is a larger conversation to get started as the issue of the API not being semantic enough has blocked enhancements as seen in PR 16384. @jorgefilipecosta suggested allowing time for people to review the PR asynchronously and adding discussion to a future agenda.
Cover Block Background Image Size Selector
@paaljoachim asked for design feedback on PR 19223 “Cover Block: Add Background Image Size Selector”. @karmatosed suggested and added labels so it doesn’t get passed over for review
The first issue is UI and is labeled for feedback, so it should soon be discussed/reviewed.
The second issue is technical the images are loaded as css property `background`. Due to limitations of CSS not having an equivalent to srcset( possible work around https://drafts.csswg.org/css-images-4/#image-set-notation), the browser will always download the same image size regardless of device.
A possible fix is to use an image element but use CSS to mimic look of background as done for video backgrounds. Post comments on this solution option in Github.
@jeffreycarandang made a similar suggestion as @jorgefilipecosta using absolute positioning <img /> instead of background-image for Cover Block which would allow responsive image sizes, noting the biggest issue to solve is the Focal Point Picker.
Image Handling
This is a related issue to the Cover Block Background Image Selector
@azaozzIssue 6177 offers a “mini-proposal” on how to handle images in the editor and the front-end (follow-up from #4914).
Looking for design feedback or propose a potential design for the block.
Triage PRs
@mkaz requested self-triage because the issue count is almost 2,000 with 400+ open PRs. If you have opened an issue or PR, please confirm they are still valid. You can see your list by filtering by Author. @Jorgefilipecosta agreed and pointed out a good way to contribute is by reviewing with the added bonus that you also learn with what other people have done.
I think we’re in a position to make a decision on how to proceed here. From the feedback to the post, there are some general thoughts around improvements to the standard, but not any reluctance to Prettier specifically (quite the opposite, in fact!)
It would seem to me that most people are on board with this. Does anyone have any last-minute thoughts on this, or would it be fair to say we can move forward with adopting Prettier?
Based on the comments of the PR and the conversation in the chat, it seems we are in a position to merge this work.
@jsnajdr referred that the PR adds a format-js script to wp-scripts, and provides support for IDE integrations. Well-behaving Prettier editor integrations should pick up the config and the fork binary automatically.
The conversation went on @jsnajdr noted that the PR does not yet format the code, but we can easily format it with `wp-scripts format-js`.
@gziolo showed availability to collaborate/discuss with @jsnajdr how format-js will operate after the PR is merged.
@gziolo noted that having prettier code formatting will alow inline snapshots on the test cases https://jestjs.io/docs/en/snapshot-testing#inline-snapshots.
Create a pull request to apply formatting to the entire codebase
Explore options for automated formatting.
Participants agreed on the plan.
Block Scaffolding
@gziolo shared the following GIF showing block Scaffolding working:
Block Scaffolding Tool
@gziolo managed to implement ESNext template support with wp-scripts integration and is wondering if this scaffolding mechanism should be part of the Gutenberg repository.
Participants started discussing if this solution is part of the Gutenberg repository, what will happen to the current “official” scaffolding solution offered in WP-CLI. There are technical restrictions in making something equivalent to the solution @gziolo proposed on WP-CLI because WP-CLI should not depend on node.
@gziolo will continue iterating on the new scaffolding solution and, once tested, will import it into Gutenberg.
I have a PR that adds SVG support to it which is a handy addition, but not sure if we want to add it without having the same support in core Gutenberg: https://github.com/WordPress/gutenberg/pull/18243
For core blocks, we don’t inline SVG, we always code them, so this mechanism would not be used by core blocks, but it may be helpful for third party block developers.
@gziolo said Parcel 2 is heading in the direction of supporting CSS and SVG imports. @aduth said Parcel faces a similar challenge, and it may be a useful reference of how to address this problem.
Because of a lot of people being AFK for their holidays we’ll skip the next two meetings and plan the next Gutenberg release (and #core-editor meeting) for January 8th, 2020.
Considering our consistent bi-weekly release schedule, there were 23 Gutenberg versions released in 2019.
Thanks to everyone who made this possible!
Task Coordination
Note: Anyone reading this summary outside of the meeting, please drop a comment in the post summary, if you can/want to help with something.
I migrated the MediaReplaceFlow to the video, audio, file and media+text blocks and the PRs are waiting for a review. They’re all pretty small code wise: 19198, 19174, 19162, 19158.
I have one small tweak left for adding background color support to the columns block. Refactored it to use the ‘useColors’ hook. Next I’ll do the same for the Column block on a separate PR 17813
I’ve been working on making the editing canvas resizable, PR in progress here: 1908
Branching off from that, I’m starting to look at how we might optimise default block styles with CSS variables without breaking things completely in IE.
Open Floor
There was a lot of discussion on improved revision control. The main point raised by @Carike was that by using branched revisions, with minor and major designations, users will be able to use block based themes more easily. @epiqueras offered that branching or minor/major revisions are too complicated and a better improvement to revisions si to have them support block level changes.
The general agreement was that we need better revisions performance and UX.
A second discussion happened about adding pagination to the latest posts block. There was a heated debate on whether pagination is a stand-alone block or simply a feature of blocks that need pagination. @karmatosed argued that pagination is not an option that an user might think as requireing inserting a block. @epiqueras argued pagination should be a block and be developed in such a way that if it is used standalone it would default to paginating the default post loop in the page, while other blocks might opt to use it by default (e.g. the latest posts block).
The issue is still up for debate, UX and technical solution in the GH issue #13584.
On a final note, happy holidays for those who do that and happy new year!
