Your Basic Xaraya Theme Tutoral

Jonathan:

I've been posting often in the xaraya.org forum (name =3D'Shoq') about =
getting
some better documentation for Xaraya newbies.
I can't 'wait to read yours. Previews by email welcome! I thought I =
would
offer some of my thoughts on Xaraya tutorials, and using Word as your
authoring tool.

Your basic theme tutorial sounds right on the money. Such basic steps =
can be
fairly onerous to understand when written by experts/developers, who =
take
much for granted about what is comprehensible to beginners. They will =
often
provide far too much detail about details, and far too little =
step-by-step
instruction about fundamentals.

With the help of some forum posts by the awesomely awesome Jojo, I am =
just
now wrestling with themes, and struggling with the most basic aspects, =
like
copying a block to use as a model for a new variant of it (while leaving =
the
original intact).  While I can program, and have a lot of experience =
with
various CMS systems, I remain a GUI designer who is more like a PDU
(plain-dumb-user), than a developer when it comes to learning new =
products.
In fact, I try to keep myself in that PDU paradigm deliberately, so I =
don't
lose the perspective of my PDU++ customers.  I am lazy, always in a =
hurry,
and intolerant of anything that isn't focused on my present problem in =
the
here-and-now. =20

When learning something advertised as easy to use by non-programmers, I
expect to achieve many things quickly and without much learning curve or
drama. When someone sits down to explore Xaraya, they aren't thinking, =
"Hey,
I think I'll spend two weeks learning the intricacies of template logic =
and
implementation, the nature of blocks and module instances, or the =
nuances of
installing a pre-beta WYSIWYG editor."   More often they are thinking
something like: "What do I need to know to get this product looking like =
my
new project by tomorrow morning before I take the kids to soccer =
practice."

Xaraya isn't remotely close to that ideal yet, but I have hopes it will =
be.
The good news is that it's early enough that perhaps some constructive
nagging from semi-system-literate people like me can help to focus that
effort productively, before it gets totally lost, as so many open source
projects have.

As for your current effort, and without having seen it, let me urge you =
to
keep focused on one basic given. The person reading your document will
probably jump into it after having spent precisely 30 minutes installing
Xaraya, and know almost nothing about it. Many will be total system =
novices
who are still glowing with pride over having installed it properly (thus
far). They will have no clue about what an XD or XT template extension
means, nor which directories are for what. Nor will they have much =
patience
for learning that logic at this "1st effort" stage. In fact, many will
probably not even have decided to settle on Xaraya as a solution yet. =
They
are "experimenting," and will be loathe to invest too much energy in
learning Xaraya in detail at this early stage.  While I'm sure you have
invested much thought in this already, let me give you what might be my
approach to a tutorial, in case it's useful to you.  I would start with =
a
very simple project that achieves immediate gratification, and shows the
user that it's not as tough as it all might sound in the current Xaraya
guides. My chapter outlines would approach it something like this (just =
some
sketch headings, and hardly massaged):

1 Basics of Xaraya Themes for Dummies.=20
  -- Why are there are no "pages" in Xaraya. Understanding dynamic =
sites.
  -- What is a Block?
  -- What is a Module?
  -- What is a Template?
2 Your first block. =20
  -- Copy a working page element and moving it around
   --Modify the "inner" content of your block
3 Your first module
4 More Advanced Templates
Etc, etc.


As for using MicroSloth Word,=20

While I'm sure some might disagree, I would strongly suggest you give up
using it altogether, unless you can find a word-to-strict_HTML converter
that works. I've never tried one that worked well, but that doesn't mean
there isn't' one (I haven't looked in awhile.) Most of those that do =
exist
always created more problems than they solved.

This article explains the problem pretty well
http://www2.essex.ac.uk/wag/guides/office2000/default.htm

Doing cross-browser documents is a royal pain, and Word just makes you
miserable (it's loaded with proprietary word style info that drives
non-Microsoft browsers nuts).  I've learned to stick to basic editors =
and
control all my own style info manually (not hard with a power editor =
like
Homesite, but not word-easy either).

When I have had to use word, I do my own linked myWordCSS.css style =
sheet
that overrides the Microsoft mess (keeping their paragraph/element style
names). Unfortunately, there is still a lot of code-bloat in the Body =
that
has to be stripped, if you really want to avoid problems, but it's =
easier to
work this way for me (I then add to my CSS sheet over time when new
documents have new elements, but I try hard to keep things simple).

Time for more coffee, and getting started with my latest JoJo tutorial =
on
Blocks :)
This is it:  http://www.xaraya.com/index.php/xarbb/topic/512

Good luck, and thanks!

-Shoq

=20
"linoj" <[email protected]> wrote in message=20
news:[email protected]...
> Hi,
>
> I have been writing a new document, "Howto / Tutorial: Creating an=20
> Xaraya Theme from Scratch" which I would like to submit for peer=20
> review soon. Presently it's in Word doc format. I'm new to open source =

> development. What process do you recommend for this?
>
> thanks
>
> linoj