Re: Re[6]: [GEN] Template Handler
- Posted by Derek Parnell <ddparnell at bigpond.com> Sep 28, 2001
- 416 views
Hi Dan, I'm not sure if I really understand this Template concept. What problem is it solving? What is it good for? ------ Derek. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dan Moyer" <DANIELMOYER at prodigy.net> To: "EUforum" <EUforum at topica.com> Subject: Re: Re[6]: [GEN] Template Handler > > Thomas, > > You wrote: > > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Thomas Parslow (PatRat)" > > > > > Thomas, > > > > <snip> > > > > > I can think of these problems, though: > > > 1. there is a possibility/likelihood of duplicate filenames with > different > > > people submitting various template files, not sure exactly how to > handle > > > that; > > > > Maybe encouraging version numbers in the filenames would go some way > > to helping with that... Of course it wouldn't really matter what the > > files were called, but I guess it would be a bit of a pain for the > > user to have to rename files before placing them in the directory. > > Yeah, I *don't* want people to have to rename files, especially if they're > from a zip! The best solution I thought of so far is that Robert put all > user contributed templates into one folder for download, so if the file > names conflict he could change them right there, but that doesn't work if > they're already inside a zip, which they probably would be. Maybe a > downloadable "list of already used template filenames", so contributors > could see what not to use, but then "email passing in the night" could mess > that up too, plus it puts an inappropriate burden on Robert to maintain such > a list. > > > > > > 2. it ends up putting potentially lots of little files on peoples drives > > > instead of a smaller number of larger files. Of course, the user could > > > relatively easily manually combine files of identical categories into > one > > > file, but I'd hoped to make that kind of thing unnecessary. Or I could > make > > > the handler discern when there are multiple files of the same category, > and > > > ask the user if they want them combined into one file, maybe. > > > > I'm not sure that's such a bad thing, depends how many it gets to be I > > guess :) > > Well, that a kind of a "reverse" problem: there's no problem at all if > people don't submit templates, but that's a worse problem, from my > perspective! > > > > > > 3. and there's a kind of "general" problem of how would a user easily > know > > > which templates are really new and which might they already have, > perhaps in > > > a file with a different name or something; I really want to make the > process > > > of adding (& fixing buggy templates!) *very* easy for the user. > > > > Maybe each template should have a identifier (name) and version > > number, if 2 clash then the one with the highest version number is > > used. Would be cool to have an option to see older versions :) > > Didn't want to have to do that, but may have to at least consider it. > > > > > > But other than that it sounds like a good, simple idea which I should be > > > able to implement fairly easily (& that's a big plus too!). > > > > > > I'll probably give it a try, thanks! > > > > It's so easy to make suggestions when your not the one who has to > > implement them :) > > Yeah! :) > > Thanks, > > Dan > > > > > Dan > > > > Thomas Parslow (PatRat) ICQ #:26359483 > > Rat Software > > http://www.rat-software.com/ > > Please leave quoted text in place when replying > > >