Hello :)

[bloc]

Indeed.

Tino, are you also "tinoest" on SMF site? I have not been paying close attention to this site or SMF for that matter..but it seems SMF 2.1 is still the version in development? 

Anyway, its great to see SMF team members working on TP I believe also Illori is currently a team member there.

[tino]

Tino, are you also "tinoest" on SMF site?

I am indeed tinoest, although I don't do much on SMF anymore as I got disillusioned with the SMF team and their ineptitude. I think I'm still a developer contributer and I occasionaly give my opinion but don't really contribute code anymore.

I have not been paying close attention to this site or SMF for that matter..but it seems SMF 2.1 is still the version in development? 

It is, although there is only a few developers working on it. Most have left to do their own thing, Arantor, emanuele, spuds, norv, nao, etc

I contribute more towards Elkarte now as I think that's what SMF 2.1 should of been if it wasn't for the fighting and 'feature freeze' to get an RC out ( which was mentioned about 2-3 years ago... )

I've changed a bit with here, got the responsive version out and fixed some bugs, also added a few features like the new wysiwyg, started on a big change then decided my time was better spent doing a portal like mod for Elkarte.

[bloc]

I see. This portal mod for Elkarte, is it official yet or just at the developing stage?

About SMF team, sad to hear its not gotten anywhere. Elkarte is something I looked at earlier, themes for it anyway, but my opinion then became that its template system was still rooted too much into a set look for it. It was not loosely coupled enought with the backend IMHO, so when I wanted to do something new I ended up rewriting the whole theme - again, as for SMF. That took away the motivation after a while I guess.

But thats not saying Elkarte isn't great otherwise.

[tino]

I see. This portal mod for Elkarte, is it official yet or just at the developing stage?

Just development, it's got the features I want in it. i.e. I can write articles/pages and display them on the front page. I've recently started to add the side bars after I discovered the css grid and flex attributes a few months ago. So I'll be adding blocks as they are called here at some point.

Elkarte is something I looked at earlier, themes for it anyway, but my opinion then became that its template system was still rooted too much into a set look for it. It was not loosely coupled enought with the backend IMHO, so when I wanted to do something new I ended up rewriting the whole theme - again, as for SMF. That took away the motivation after a while I guess.

But thats not saying Elkarte isn't great otherwise.

I think that's due to their not really being a front end dev on the project, so it incorperates a back end kind of approach to front end work. Same as all the css I do does aswell tbf. I started to make a simple template system in TinyPortal then stopped. That was in this commit; https://github.com/tinoest/TinyPortal/commit/c1fc66ce642c6861417d87300680bdb502f3c41e

It's nothing like twig, Mustache, smarty or Blade mind. But did start to decouple the front end from the back end to a certain degree, although everyone has different idea's on what that actually means. Can you give me a example of what you mean?

[bloc]

Sure. The idea I had and still have, is that the templates 1) are more uniform, that is, re-use index pages more instead of having one per every major part of the forum for example. You end up having to rewrite for all of them, instead of a smaller(sized) ones that call smaller subtemplates fraom a general template.(Nao was on the right track there incidentally) But mostly 2) that the theme(default theme of course) isn't so rigidly tied in with the core output. For example, don't load javascript for displaying items in a click-based menu for the mini-profile on top of the page..and dynamically fetch some alerts there too. It means that if a designer do not want to use it, its loaded anyway in the javascript. Instead, perhaps build libraries that separate the code that MUST be in the code from whats usable by themes, give it a choice and don't force-load it in. (because "we can't possibly trust designers to handle it" :/ )

Other things like "cooking" together information into a compact variable to be displayed in a single point in the template..SMF have so far tried mostly to also supply all the ingredients of that variable - so at least the theme maker can extract that and use that(I know I have).

I guess the whole idea behind default theme is to make a impressive bullet-proof theme, and then just CSS-colorize that in other themes. But whats the point with a rather versatile theme/template system when you can't do anything with it anyway?

If I wanted to re-shape SMF - or Elkarte for that matter - it is to do exactly this, break up templates into re-usable subtemplates, provide switches that provide more or less information fetched(especially good if you want to make a lean mobile-first theme) and in essence let the theme decide how it will look. Be bold!

I know, it seems like devs have to release their full control, well, thats how every dev I've encountered reacted when I proposed this. But look at the projects now..how are they going to accumulate back the users that have vanished? Certainly not by just keep adding features. Today its about presentation, presentation, presentation. People know things can be powerful, they are used to complex systems with lots of features. Whats more important is HOW you present it, a bad experience in software can uproar and sink it(unless you are Google, Facebook or Apple, then you do anything ) . I think SMF will continue to lose users as long as they still cling to one theme, one way of doing things.

[rant over]

Sorry, you asked.

[bloc]

Looking at your commit for TP, it looks good, breaking up things into smaller tpl files. You could also just let them be PHP template files..but I guess its easier to differentiate with the tpl extension.

The code for articles layout use more or less the same idea, having keywords for bulks of code. If it hasn't been changed since I worked on it.

[tino]

Sorry, you asked.

Not really, you've described in some parts what I started to do with that template I linked to. I had a header template and a footer template which I just included in the page I was actually displaying. It meant that I had to only define it once and could change it easily. Most of the other logic was smaller subtemplates if I needed them, I just included them.

Unfortunately unless you start to make the change in the templates on either Elkarte or SMF ( I think Elkarte are more likely to accept the change mind for Elkarte 2.0 ) I can't see it happening. It does make life alot easier for the designer, especially when there are a fair few whom don't even know php now. Arantor touched upon this on SMF I think in this thread; https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=556516.0

[bloc]

Just read that topic..nothing has changed since I was a bit more active on there, about 3-4 years ago. Actually, just reading it brought back memories and emotions that directly made me so furious the last time, that I have no desire to be in *that* state again. It kills every positive and motivating factor of doing anything for SMF ever again.

I can see your enthusiasm for moving TP forward though, and it reminds me why I did work on TP all those years ago Maybe I'll do some themeing with these new CSS stuff ..but it will certainly not be to those people's benefit - holding SMF stagnated for 10+ years really says it all... and to be frank, I don't think my themes are really so good that users will simply use them now anyway. Tried about a year ago last time, and there were no interest to speak of. (Always grateful for those that do enjoy the themes of course  )

[tino]

I can see your enthusiasm for moving TP forward though, and it reminds me why I did work on TP all those years ago

Unfortunately that enthusiasm is waning when I don't see a future for SMF, well at least not a good one. MyBB and PHPBB are moving forward a fair bit with modern design, SMF is just stuck without a decent project leader.

Nice to see you around though, if you want to rewrite the front end of TinyPortal, or work on a completely new varient I'm happy to work with you to get that done, doing it on your own can be a bit daunting and I really struggle with the current db structure of TinyPortal as it doesn't have IMO sensible naming conventions for the column names. 

[illori]

SMF is just stuck without a decent project leader.

you do know who i am right? your post is really insulting. it is not just the project managers job to keep SMF moving forward.