[RFC|Merged] Merge style components

[Arty]

Introduction

In phpBB 3.0 there are 4 cfg files per style:
- style.cfg that contains information about style: style name, style version, author name
- theme.cfg that contains same data as style.cfg + flag defining if css files should be parsed by style.php
- template.cfg that contains same data as style.cfg + defines template inheritance + bitfield for bbcode
- imageset.cfg that contains imageset data

All those files have duplicate data:
- Component name, that is always the same as style name
- Version, that is always the same as style version
- Copyright notice, that is always the same as in style.cfg

In 3.1 imageset is gone, so that's one cfg file less
In 3.1 css files are no longer parsed, so theme.cfg becomes useless
In template.cfg there are only two items:
- BBCode bitfield. It is the same in all styles. No designer has ever changed it and I doubt most designers even have a clue of what it is for. It can be removed.
- Template inheritance field. It can be moved to style.cfg

There are only two style components: theme and template.
All styles have their own themes, making style/theme separation pointless.
With implementation of template inheritance style/template separation also became pointless.

Then there is a confusion among users. Refresh style, theme, template... aren't they all the same? No, they aren't. Users get completely confused and stop trying to customize forum.

Proposal

I propose to:
- Merge style all components.
- Hard code bbcode bit field.

There will be only 1 part: style and 1 configuration file: style.cfg

style.cfg will include:
- Items that it already has: name, version number, copyright
- Template inheritance information

Pros

- No more confusion over styles, templates, themes, skins.
- Redundant information gets removed, leaving only one cfg file with style information.

Cons

- It won't be possible to create new style that uses template or theme from another directory. Template inheritance takes care of template part. Theme part cannot be solved, but nobody uses it anyway.

Patch
Ticket: http://tracker.phpbb.com/browse/PHPBB3-10632
Patch: https://github.com/phpbb/phpbb3/pull/625

Changes included in patch:
- Merging style components.
- Unlimited styles tree.
- New acp_styles, includes only basic style management functions.
- New style superclass. $style is used to setup style instead of $template

[jsebean]

I think it is an excellent idea because messing with all the cfgs is... a mess . Especially trying to explain it to new people designing who don't understand why you have to repeatdly enter in the style name, copyright, version over and over and they ask you why and you say "Well ummm because that's the way it is"

+1

[Mighty Gorgon]

I agree... I don't think there are so many users mixing up styles components to get new styles.

Also I think there is no "professional" reason to have hundreds of style installed on a board (unless is for test/demo purpose), so that feature shouldn't be so useful anyway.

[Oleg]

Seems reasonable, but I don't know much about styles.

What is the purpose of bbcode bit field?

[Arty]

What is the purpose of bbcode bit field?

I'm not sure about that. It is used by bbcode.php for something

[Jacob]

To tell the parser which bbcodes you want to replace? http://www.phpbb.com/kb/article/how-to- ... d-bbcodes/

[marian0810]

I don't think there are so many users mixing up styles components to get new styles.

I actually use that a lot

[Arty]

I actually use that a lot

What components are you mixing?

[bonelifer]

What is the purpose of bbcode bit field?

I'm not sure about that. It is used by bbcode.php for something

http://wiki.phpbb.com/Tutorial.Parsing_text

foo_bbcode_bitfield - a bit field containing the information which bbcode is used in the text so only the relavant ones need to be loaded from the database.

[naderman]

I'd say +1, if we implement some kind of theme inheritance, too and allow multiple levels of inheritance. Then you can do the same as now through inheritance, rather than combinations of theme/template.