[EventCalendar] Re: ec3 development

[Alex Tingle]

On 20 Sep 2007, at 23:51, Dr. Peter Troxler wrote:

> Hey Alex
>
> glad to hear back from you.
>
> And good to hear that work's busy, always helps.
>
> So what I'd suggest for now:
>
> I'd be more than happy to check-in stuff I'm reasonably happy with

Send me a patch.


> (well, even the gCal stuff has reached a stage where I think we're  
> almost doing what we can, except that I think the initial idea of  
> having times as UTC is much more reasonable than to muck about time  
> zones -- I filed a bug with gCal, waiting to see how it comes along).

Life tends to be much easier if you can store everything in UTC and  
then just convert into whatever timezone as necessary.


> The customization of date display -- I'd actually like to launch  
> that to the community for them to test & come back with issues and  
> improvements

Show me what you have.


> re wp2.3 I'm sort of clueless, too -- the main change seems to be  
> "abolish categories, switch to tags" which is at the same moment  
> extremely powerful and damaging,and I'd have to think it over,  
> however would be available to toss around ideas -- from going  
> "separate" for ec entries (ie creating our own "category" stuff) to  
> integrate into categories ... or even offer both options

The EC3.1 stuff doesn't *really* have an event category - that's just  
a hold over from the earlier implementations. Any post can  
potentially have an associated event. So I think moving to just  
having an event tag should be straightforward. The main problem will  
be the howls of protest from all the users who have got used to how  
it works now.


> re wp hooks -- yeah, you're probably right there, however I'm not  
> totally up to speed with all the hooks available and they even seem  
> to be either undocumented or duplicate or obscure or all of these  
> together ;-)

Well the idea is to make our OWN hooks, so that other plugins can use  
them and build on / customise the EC. The customised date display  
seems like a good candidate.

I'd also like to get rid of the various ways of listing events, and  
replace then with a single event-list mechanism, based around WP's  
custom query function (can't remember what it's called). That way, we  
could have a *core* EC plug-in, and sub-plugins that *use* it to  
implement things like the Upcoming Event Widget, the Calendar Widget,  
or whatever else people's imagination can come up with.

I could probably maintain the core, while other people would be free  
to experiment with plug-in widgets.

-Alex

--


>
> cheers
>
> / Peter
>
> On 21-sep-2007, at 0:37, Alex Tingle wrote:
>
>> Hi Peter. I hear you.
>>
>> Work's been really busy for a few months now, so EC has slipped  
>> down the priorities. I'll certainly try to pay a little bit more  
>> attention to it, but I don't think I'm going to have a lot of time  
>> for working on it.
>>
>> I'm more than happy to apply patches, or to give check-in rights  
>> to keen and competent contributors.
>>
>>> - syncing to gCal &c.
>>
>> Sounds like a great idea.
>>
>>> - customizing date display
>>> - conflicts with other plugins
>>
>> Most conflicts in the past have revolved around mutually  
>> incompatible changes to the SQL. There are ways of coding it to be  
>> as cooperative as possible (assign an alias to new joins). I think  
>> that's all done in EC now, but it took a long time, and other plug- 
>> in authors need to be educated.
>>
>>> - compatibility with wp 2.3
>>
>> This has got to be top priority. I'm massively behind the times  
>> with this - if someone can point me to a problem list, then I'll  
>> try to find some time for it.
>>
>>
>>> However, I'd love to be able to add my 'extensions' in a sensible  
>>> way to ec ... how would we go about it?
>>
>> So many people want to customise EC that I think it needs to start  
>> using WP's own action hooks framework. That would enable  
>> additional plug-ins to come along and extend EC in a controllable  
>> way.
>>
>> -Alex
>>
>> --
>>
>> On 20 Sep 2007, at 23:19, Dr. Peter Troxler wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Alex
>>>
>>> there's been quite some stuff going on on the mailing list re ec3  
>>> development
>>>
>>> - syncing to gCal &c.
>>> - customizing date display
>>> - conflicts with other plugins
>>> - compatibility with wp 2.3
>>>
>>> I was able to help out with some of the issues, as have been  
>>> quite some other ppl on the mailing list.
>>>
>>> however, I noticed a distinct silence from your part, and no  
>>> updates on the website since february.
>>>
>>> with wp 2.3 pending on us I am a little worried if you (or your  
>>> guys) are planning to keep up development of ec3.  I would not  
>>> have, most probably, the resources to support you on that (other  
>>> than testing),  and I feel a little bit left alone, if you know  
>>> what I mean.
>>>
>>> However, I'd love to be able to add my 'extensions' in a sensible  
>>> way to ec ... how would we go about it?
>>>
>>> Further, I'd suggest, if that's not too much to ask, that you'd  
>>> give a short update to the community where we're at and what  
>>> steps are planned for the future.
>>>
>>> Best
>>>
>>> / Peter Troxler
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> :: Let me solve your problems: http://www.firetree.net/consulting/
>> :: alex.tingle AT firetree.net  +44-7901-552763
>>
>