Coa support

[plue]

After "Coa" has been deleted, Chris asked me to upload it again. I'm sorry if anybody had problems with it.

You can find examples and detailed information on http://plue.me/coa/ and I'll do my best to give you a great support right here.

[Connie]

plue,

I took off your theme from the GetSimple EXTEND because it did not follow the theme-requierements (and it was published without any documentation and support thread, and you had not posted any post anytime here in the forum ;=( )

Your theme does not follow the getsimple standards, it is absolutely "non-standard" and as GS is a user-orientated and not a developer-orientated system, I doubt that it is useful instead of confusing.

A website built with Coa is split up into 'constant.coa', which contains the header information and a bit of configuration, and 'page.coa', which contains the body section of the website.

That is your description. But GetSimple-websites are built with GetSimple, and templates add the layout and use of the template-hooks, componentes

so what is the essence of capsulating everything again?
Why there is a need for a templating system "inside a templating system"?
If there were a need why not use smarty, which is a stable and reputated template system?

Can you show please a working GetSimple-Installation with that system?
Does it work with GS 3.1?

If you present here such a new structure can you guarantee that you will be available for support here ?

Can you please tell me where is the header, where is the footer, how does it work with the most common plugins?

What does COA mean? Why a new extension ?

Please, give a precise documentation how to use your theme with GetSimple, don't send the users to a non-GetSimple, abstract documentation

Don't take me wrong, but templates / themes for GS should be transparent and easy to handle, your theme is a complete riddle for a user or a web designer (the target group of GS)

Cheers, Connie

[plue]

Hello Connie,

I know that my theme is non-standard and I did not develop it to fit a target group's taste. I created a product that fits best to my needs. And for me it's doing a great job.

I just do love to experiment, so I'm not just using smarty or doing "the most common" thing.

If you need support with a specific problem, I'd love to help. But don't just throw as much questions as possible, just to say something against. You can take a look at http://get-simple.info/extend/theme/coa/375/ and see that my description is a bit more than you quoted

A working example is www.plue.me with GS 3.1

Cheers!

[ccagle8]

Thanks for the innovation Plue. I think that since your theme is so off-the-wall, as much documentation as possible is needed to people can grasp it.

[plue]

I'll make a little video tutorial to show you how to install, understand and use it.

Best regards

[shawn_a]

I have encountered these framework themes alot in other CMS theme systems.
Usually it helps to specify that it is not a theme but a theme framework.

These popup alot as base themes, html5 boilerplates, grid systems, 3 col fluid.

It would be great to have these specified as base themes, o seperated somehow.
They are basically themes for themers, not users.

[plue]

You're right, I added this to the Coa description. A specification as base theme would be cool.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Connie]

But don't just throw as much questions as possible, just to say something against.

I asked my questions to push a little bit to get as much information as possible for the users. Because this theme framework is nothing what you can understand immediately and use out of the box.

My main question is: which plugins work with it. I activated and got so many errors (12 plugins installed) that I did not find time to investigate any further
and I fear that this will happen to many users

that's why I asked ;=)

[plue]

I asked my questions to push a little bit to get as much information as possible for the users. Because this theme framework is nothing what you can understand immediately and use out of the box.

My main question is: which plugins work with it. I activated and got so many errors (12 plugins installed) that I did not find time to investigate any further
and I fear that this will happen to many users

that's why I asked ;=)

Connie, thanks a lot for the explanation.

In Coa 1.0 the get_footer() function is missing. I didn't use a plugin which hooks into it, so I just noticed it yet. I'm sorry for that!

I will release an update to fix it this week.

[plue]

Connie,
there's an update available which includes the get_footer() function. I'd be happy to hear if this solves the problem.

[reff]

plue I find Coa an interesting piece to play with but detailed wiki (or working examples at least) would be so much desirable.

[plue]

plue I find Coa an interesting piece to play with but detailed wiki (or working examples at least) would be so much desirable.

reff, i already began to make a video tutorial and i'm pretty sure i can finish it this week. there are working example templates included, or do mean something else? great to hear from you!

[plue]

There's a brief video overview available to get started now: http://youtu.be/qm6DRPlqeUk

[Mark Nielsen]

I quite like the Coa concept, and with the documentation and video I found it quite easy to grasp.

It makes a few things easy in Get Simple that seem to be really hard without it. One example is conditional templates. Without Coa, I'm not sure how I can check to see if I should be displaying a sub-menu, and provide extra markup around it if I am.

I don't like the obfuscated code in template.php. It causes a problem in the Theme Editor, because the template.php is an unreadable compressed nightmare that should never be presented to any user for editing, no matter how skilled they are.

I do wonder why the template.php file needs obfuscating. At a first glance, this strikes me as antithetical to open-source software as code inspection or modification is close to impossible. I might try running it through something like phptidy to see if that makes the code useable.

So, on some levels, I think Coa could be awesome. In my Coa themes, I'm going to try moving the code soup into an include that is hidden from the Theme Editor, leaving just a PHP include in template.php, and helpful comments about why the file is almost empty with links to the Coa documentation.

[edit] Thanks very much plue, for your work on this. It is a really innovative and interesting system.

[ccagle8]

I do wonder why the template.php file needs obfuscating. At a first glance, this strikes me as antithetical to open-source software as code inspection or modification is close to impossible.

I completely agree.

[Mark Nielsen]

I've just re-organised the files in my developmental Coa theme as follows:

• template.php - code soup replaced with include. Also changed file permissions so it can't be opened/written by GS, and added comments explaining the editing ban and pointing to Coa documentation.
  
• coa/coa.inc - includes the code soup that is the Coa engine - included in template.php
  
• coa/constant.coa
  
• coa/page.coa
  
• Also other directories: css, img, js
  

I also hacked a core GS file (naughty, I know!) to allow .coa files to be edited by the Theme Editor. I changed line 89 of admin/theme-edit.php to:

Code:

$allowed_extensions=array('php','css','js','html','htm','coa');

I think this might allow me to build something I can unleash on a client now

[ccagle8]

@plue - i think it would be great if you took some of Mark's changes and put them into your theme.

Also, guys, why cant you change the ext to .coa.php - that way the theme editor would pick it up automatically without any core changes?

[Mark Nielsen]

I've done a bit more tidying/hacking this morning - aiming to implement Chris's suggestion.

To start with, I ran some rough find/replace actions to make my new coa/coa.inc readable - basically the following in vim:
%/{/ {\r/g
%/}/ }\r/g
%/;/;\r/g

I tried phptidy, but it didn't do anything useful for me, and I decided it was quicker to do some dirty find/replace than learn how to use phptidy - especially as I hope plue will soon provide the unobfuscated code

Tab indenting was still non-existant, but I soon found four 'coa' strings in the code - the first being part of the opening comments. So I then replaced this:

Code:

$pathPage=$pathTemplates.'page.coa';
$pathConstant=$pathTemplates.'constant.coa';

with this:

Code:

$pathPage=$pathTemplates.'page.coa.php';
$pathConstant=$pathTemplates.'constant.coa.php';

That means I can now use .coa.php files which remove the necessity to hack GS core.

I also modified the function placeObj as follows, although I'm not yet using Coa in a complex enough way for me to test if this works.

Code:

function placeObj($OA) {
  global $pathTheme;
  echo $OA['wrapB'];
  $last4=substr($OA['file'],-4);
  $last5=substr($OA['file'],-5);
  $last8=substr($OA['file'],-8);
  if($last8=='.coa.php')makePage($pathTheme.$OA['file'],1);
  elseif($last4=='.php'||$last4='.htm'||$last5=='.html')include_once($pathTheme.$OA['file']);
  echo $OA['wrapA']."\n";
}

Hope this helps others make Coa a little more GS-friendly.

[Mark Nielsen]

Further feedback - trying to customise the <html> tag and conditional comments to bring in line with HTML 5 Boilerplate just proved Hard Work.

Could there be a configuration setting to replace the doctype statement with, say, the contents of a text file? If the setting isn't present, Coa builds the doctype and <html> tag internally, otherwise the contents of a text file are used?

[Connie]

I still want some answers which I asked some time ago.

1)
"What does COA mean? Why a new extension ?"

This is not answered. I also can create files with some extension like CMG and only my best friends or collegues notice that these are my initials.
Please do tell me what this extension means

2)
"Please, give a precise documentation how to use your theme with GetSimple, don't send the users to a non-GetSimple, abstract documentation ""

A video is not a precise documentation, there are many people like me who cannot watch a video AND configurate or modify some templates etc.

So I am still missing step-by-step-documentation, and I do not like that you refer to a documentation at your server.
Why not add a readme to the ZIP??? Is this so difficult?
I don't think so


3)
you write:

Take a look at the included examples

I was lost with that. It seems not enough to me.

[plue]

mark, thanks a lot for the detailed feedback!

the obfuscating isn't needed, that's right. being able to customize the code is important – so i'm going to use the "real" and commented code in the next update.

i'd also love the theme editor to pick up the coa files. the problem with .coa.php is that it wouldn't be possible to use syntax highlighting and autocompletion in ftp editors, which i really appreciate. i'm not quite sure what would be the best here.. does the coa.php solution works great for you?

about the html tag: did you try the "ieClass" attribute, which uses the conditional comments automatically?

[plue]

Connie,

1. "Coa" doesn't mean anything. I found the name because I needed a new extension to add autocompletion and syntax highlighting to it.

2. I will add a readme file to the next update, of course that is no problem. but the documentation is really precise, i don't think this is the problem. a step-by-step tutorial as TEXT is a good idea, i'll also add this with the next update.

[plue]

Coa 1.1 is now available

What's new?

• Optional template suffix .coa.php
  

• Custom HTML tag (new attribute 'htmlTag')
  

• Reset and base CSS
  

• Readme file with the documentation
  

Thanks again for the feedback!

[Mark Nielsen]

I'll have time for some more experimentation with Coa in a couple of weeks' time (I've just moved house!). I'll check out the changes and offer a bit more feedback then. Thanks, plue, for continuing to work on this - I still think it's a promising idea.

[plue]

Coa 1.2 is ready to use

Now there are tags available to insert a lightbox, images or thumbnails from directory.

• Use [lightbox: path_to_folder] for the Coa Lightbox
  

• Use [images: path_to_folder] for an image list
  

• Use [thumbs: path_to_folder] for a thumbnail list
  

Paths always start at 'data/uploads/'.
Image captions, titles and attribute 'alt' come from the file title.

All the best