Re: [wgo] i18n && skin

["Ricky Zhou" <ricky zhou gmail com>]

On 12/5/06, Simone Deponti <shywolf9982 gmail com> wrote:
> I guess that by "completing the HTML" we mean writing down the templates.
> Well, they're almost there, the only thing missing is the correct way to
> handle the secondary navbar (not as in "structure", but as in content: we
> must write down the correct script because right now the content is the same
> as the primary navbar), among all the templates defined for the special
> content (like, the central part of the mainpage, the products etc etc).
I don't think we're anywhere close to completing the template.  None
of the semantic markup requirements are really present (see the layout
table) and what we currently have in SVN is basically a
thrown-together refactoring of the original default, with tons of
irrelevant markup.  As I said, we need to have to markup and script
done in order to start adding content, so this should be top priority
right now.

> Anyway, if by completing the HTML we mean having the HTML for every single
> page type that can ever be displayed by the wgo written out, tested, and
> all, it will take a lot of time. We don't even have many products (enhanced
> plone-softwarecenter with DOAP support, mainpage, and others I might be
> missing). In my experience as plone developer, skinning and CSS'ing usually
> goes along with the creation of the HTML, and has happened many times we
> decided to reorganize the markup a bit in order to make something render as
> the markup showed (adding a container div, mostly).
Writing semantic markup is supposed to be an easy job (the markup at
http://test.riczho.dyndns.org/wgo/ took less than 10 minutes to put
together, and most pages wouldn't differ much from that main
template).  Not to mention: If you don't have good HTML yet, it's
impossible to start on CSS, so this is absolutely necessary anyway (no
matter what order you do it in).  As for the CSS/templating issues,
the markup changes are minimal and generally don't affect the content
(like you said with container divs).  Because of this, we can still
work on content and CSS at the same time if we get the basic HTML done
(I don't mean that we have to completely finalize and lock it in).

> Said that, the HTML should be done by the same person that creates the
> style, so i don't think it's a matter of the developer. This because if we
> want to reach the optimal tradeoff between visual appealing and semantic, we
> should have someone who's able to see both sides of the problem.
For any large project (such as this), it's blatantly inefficient (and
a waste of our volunteer resources) to have one person take on all the
CSS/HTML.  The one-person thing is only necessary because of the
disorganization of the "everything-at-once" method.  If we have some
base HTML done first, CSS people will be able to see both sides (since
the HTML won't be changing on them frequently).

Overall, although the one-person approach may work for smaller/simpler
jobs, we have the resources to do this in a much more efficient way,
particularly one that involves completing components in an orderly
way.

Final note about CSS/HTML at the same time:  To create semantically
correct markup, it's usually neccessary to see a page as a whole.  As
the HTML structure should be completely indenpendent of the styling,
there isn't a single reason that it should be done along with the CSS
(it might actually lead to a lower quality of semantic correctness).

In conclusion, you're going to have to make the HTML at some point
anyway (whether you do it first or at the same time as CSS), so to say
that it'd take too long is completely irrelevant.  However, we must
finish the HTML first in order to allow maximal efficiency in allowing
many developers to work together (content and CSS people).

Thanks,
Ricky