I've been sitting on this one for a while, because I've been waiting to finish a few features. This one feature is still not complete, but I did something today using Google's new Coop system that merits a little attention.
You may have visited RedAlt before for various reasons. RedAlt houses a cross-reference of WordPress source code, not just for the trunk (current in-development code), but for both the 2.0 branch (which is the current in-release version), and 1.5.2. These are generated with PHPXref, a tool (written in Perl?) that parses the PHP source code and creates all the links to output and such. So that's pretty cool. There are a few installations of the XRef'ed WordPress code in various places on the net, but I'm not sure that all of those sites provide XRefs for prior WordPress versions, which may be of use if you're still using the stable versions of old.
Also on RedAlt you can find the brand new Developer Function Reference. There are a few unique things about the function reference that set it apart from the XRef. First, one goal of the Reference is to provide documentation for the WordPress functions, which is something that an XRef alone doesn't do. ...
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With the looming release of WordPress 2.0, there are a bunch of folks that are submitting bug fixes that say things like, "I would submit this to Trac, but I don't know how."
I think even more people are suggesting that writing to the mailing list with their bugs to "confirm" them is better than submitting them directly to Trac. I suppose if you're not sure something is a bug, it might be worthwhile to ask someone else (I would ask on IRC at #wordpress on irc.freenode.net) but it really is better to have a formal record of an issue, even if it turns out that what you're experiencing is expected behavior. If you really fear that it's something to do specifically with your installation, check on IRC or maybe try a fresh install.
Nevertheless, it might be useful to folks to learn how I do it. I'm not saying my method is correct, just that it seems to get the job done with few complaints from the devs who commit my patches. It's also a good method to use on Windows. (Sorry, someone else can document command-line Subversion use - not that I don't know it, I'm just lazy.) Here we go... more
Sometimes I wander into unknown web territory and discover things I really shouldn't. Today, it's the knowledge of the upcoming release of Movable Type 3.2. I read through Jay Allen's list of a few of the new features, and thought I would compare some of them to what's already available in WordPress, and in what's to come.
First, I want to mention that I'm getting tired of disclaimers, but if I don't add one then I'll needlessly get my butt handed to me in comments. Yeah, it's likely to happen anyway. Second, the actual disclaimer: I'm not proposing that one tool is better or worse than the other. If one tool is better for you, then I would expect you to ignore any bias I might subconsciously instill in this comparison.
Here we go. more
Hmm... You have to be careful talking about something in general terms which you don't seem to have specific knowledge. Martin Geisler wrote an incendiary post about the WordPress codebase, and while I will admit that the code isn't perfect, it's far from the beast that he implies lies behind the label.
Allow me to refute certain points directly: more
A project I'm currently messing with for WordPress has me delving more deeply into the XmlHttpRequest arena looking for something standard and well-maintained that I won't have to tweak to incorporate. Matt suggested I try Dojo for this purpose. After speding a little more time looking it over, I was impressed enough with the workings of the library to attempt a test project (yet another WordPress plugin) using Dojo to do transparent server commuincations from the browser. This is that story.
Before I continue, note that I have been working completely on my own on this for less than 24 hours. These are initial unedited impressions of the whole toolkit, which I find (when I do finally get it working the way I want) should work marvelously for what I want to do. I haven't bothered to contact the developers (yet) nor have I tried to read through all of the weightier (code-wise) mailing list archives. I don't want to get on anyone's bad side (particularly the Dojo devs) for saying bad things about anything, so I want to say explicitly that this is my story, as daft as I might have been following the path I did, and not a conclusion about how good/bad anything is. Your mileage will vary as a result of not following in the path of my own stupidity. Learn from my experience and avoid suffering. more
