“Customizable template option variables”

[yellowled]

So I came up with another weird thing for which I don't have a name yet which would in my opinion make for an awesome feature in S9y. You guys all know the drill, right? First I explain this in a clumsy, elaborate, extensive manner, and then Garvin goes: “Oh, we already have that.”

Here's what I'd love to have:

Our style.css is being “parsed” (or whatever you crazy PHP guys call it) by serendipity.css.php. Among other magical things, this process substitutes {TEMPLATE_PATH} by the actual path to the templates directory, making it possible to reference CSS assets like background images properly.

What if there were other template-based variables like this which would also be parsed there?

Example: in a template's theme options, I could have an option “Primary color” which would contain a corresponding input field with the default value of, say, #ff0000. But users could change this to, say, #0000ff, because nobody really likes red anyway, right? Blue is much cooler. And what if in the style.css the template author could use something like

Code: Select all

a,
a:visited {
    color: {PRIMARY_COLOR};
}

and serendipity.css.php (or the template's config.inc.php or whatever) would just replace that by whatever value a corresponding theme option would hold?

That way, users could very easily tweak templates to their liking without having to edit code or having to use a user.css. (And I would never have to write a user.css generator like the one for 2k11 again, which would be super awesome, because seriously, that was a major pain in the ass.) And I can think of some more things to do with this …

Is this doable, reasonable, does it even make sense? Anybody up for this?

YL

[Timbalu]

Yes, possible!
The only limit is the horizont, I'd say... (and the much of requests taking this, I presume)

[Timbalu]

Couldn't we do this possibly in that template config.inc.php file too, somewhere like this:

Code: Select all

       $tfile = serendipity_getTemplateFile('style_dynamic.css', 'serendipityPath');
       if($tfile) {
           $search = array('{PRIMARY_COLOR}', '{SECONDARY_COLOR}');
           $replace = array('templates/' . $serendipity['theTemplate'] . '/', $serendipity['aPluginName']['optionPluginPath']); (this as an example on how to include from different contents)
           $tfilecontent = str_replace($search, $replace, @file_get_contents($tfile));
       }

(slight modified example taken from https://github.com/s9y/additional_plugi ... .php#L1096)
and then append this to the serendipity.css file stream somehow?

[onli]

Code: Select all

function serendipity_printStylesheet($file, $dir = '') {
    global $serendipity;
    return "/* $dir  */\n" . str_replace(
             array(
               '{TEMPLATE_PATH}',
               '{LANG_DIRECTION}'
             ),

             array(
               dirname($dir) . '/',
               LANG_DIRECTION
             ),

             @file_get_contents($file, 1));
}

That is the code currently replacing {TEMPLATE_PATH} (https://github.com/s9y/Serendipity/blob ... ss.php#L36). I think to implement a feature like this, it would be best to include the template-variables there - the name as the identifier, the value as the replacement.

It sure would impact performance a bit.

[Timbalu]

and then append this to the serendipity.css file stream somehow?

I bet this would actually be a nice delegation for the "faked plugins" usage (search that thread) combined with the 'css' frontend hook, to do this right now! (*)

I leave the for Garvin...!

(*) and also the new template hook with 1.7.1

[kleinerChemiker]

Why not useing Smarty for the css files? Smarty can even cache the file/output.

[onli]

Yes, that surely is an option (and coherent with the serendipity_editor.js.tpl), but maybe a bit too expensive when we only need to replace a few strings. CSS should be cached anyway.

[Don Chambers]

..... and also the new template hook with 1.7.1

I have been "out of the loop" for awhile. What new template hook?


Its probably not as pretty, but you can do something like this inline in a template's index.tpl:

Code: Select all

<style type="text/css">
     a,
     a:visited {ldelim}
         color: {$template_option.PRIMARY_COLOR};
{rdelim}
</style>

[yellowled]

Its probably not as pretty, but you can do something like this inline in a template's index.tpl:

That's what I want to avoid. Inline styles are bad.

YL

[Don Chambers]

Its probably not as pretty, but you can do something like this inline in a template's index.tpl:

That's what I want to avoid. Inline styles are bad.

YL

I know, but if someone else was following this thread, and wanted the ability RIGHT NOW, then this was a way to do it.

I just thought of something else somewhat related... {TEMPLATE_PATH} only works (AFAIK) in a template's style.css file. It might be nice if this, as well as any future {TEMPLATE_CSS_OPTIONS} also worked in additional css files should a particular template wish to include them.

[Timbalu]

I have been "out of the loop" for awhile. What new template hook?

http://board.s9y.org/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=19454

[yellowled]

It might be nice if this, as well as any future {TEMPLATE_CSS_OPTIONS} also worked in additional css files should a particular template wish to include them.

Multiple CSS files are bad as well.

But if we some day get a feature to combine multiple CSS files in serendipity_css.php, then this could be useful.

YL

[Don Chambers]

Multiple CSS files are bad as well.

Not always. Sometimes for code maintainability, or logical understanding, the benefits of using multiple files could out weigh the negatives. This is also true for including a secondary file within a primary file, rather than having all the code in a single, larger file.

But if we some day get a feature to combine multiple CSS files in serendipity_css.php, then this could be useful.YL

Definitely!

[yellowled]

Has anyone ever actually tried to implement this or has it gotten under the rails? I'd still like to see this in s9y.

YL