Ticket #8805 (closed PLIP: fixed)

Opened 7 years ago

Last modified 6 years ago

Do not ship with NuPlone anymore

Reported by: hannosch Owned by: robzonenet
Priority: minor Milestone: 4.0
Component: Templates/CSS Version:
Keywords: Cc: rossp, davisagli, plip-advisories@…

Description

Overview

Since Plone 3.0 we ship with two themes - the default Plone theme and NuPlone.

NuPlone isn't maintained as actively as people had hoped for. At this stage there is no apparent reason why Plone should ship with one additional theme, which is not maintained by the community. Themes are perfect examples of add-on products.

Progress

NuPlone isn't a dependency of the Plone egg anymore.

Change History

comment:1 Changed 7 years ago by hannosch

  • Owner set to hannosch

comment:2 Changed 7 years ago by hannosch

  • Component changed from Visual and templates to Templates/CSS

comment:3 in reply to: ↑ description ; follow-up: ↓ 4 Changed 7 years ago by tonim

Replying to hannosch:

> NuPlone isn't maintained as actively as people had hoped for.
> At this stage there is no apparent reason why Plone should ship
> with one additional theme, which is not maintained by the
> community. Themes are perfect examples of add-on products.

I agree that Themes are perfect examples of add-on products. However, the problem is that most themes I ever saw are technically even worse, and that making a really good - fully functional (!) - Plone theme that really departs/not inherits from "Plone Default" appears to be only theoretically possible, as is imho also spectacularly demonstrated on the new plone.org site.

comment:4 in reply to: ↑ 3 Changed 7 years ago by hannosch

Replying to tonim:

I agree that Themes are perfect examples of add-on products. However, the problem is that most themes I ever saw are technically even worse, and that making a really good - fully functional (!) - Plone theme that really departs/not inherits from "Plone Default" appears to be only theoretically possible, as is imho also spectacularly demonstrated on the new plone.org site.

If you argued for any particular point relevant to this ticket, I missed that. Note that the entire theming story is going to be changed for Plone 4, in a more Deliverance-style fashion and the administrative UI parts are going to be much more constrained and not jumbled over the entire screen, making it vastly easier to do theming for Plone.

comment:5 Changed 7 years ago by rossp

  • Cc rossp added

comment:6 Changed 7 years ago by limi

  • Milestone changed from Trunk to 4.0

This removal is now part of the Plone 4.0 changes.

comment:7 follow-up: ↓ 8 Changed 7 years ago by alecm

This PLIP badly needs assessment of risks/mitigation, particularly for those sites that are using NuPlone or have based themes on it. Perhaps such issues can be addressed by documentation, but there needs to be a plan.

comment:8 in reply to: ↑ 7 ; follow-up: ↓ 9 Changed 7 years ago by rossp

Replying to alecm:

This PLIP badly needs assessment of risks/mitigation, particularly for those sites that are using NuPlone or have based themes on it. Perhaps such issues can be addressed by documentation, but there needs to be a plan.

I agree that there needs to be docs saying "If you're using NuPlone, be sure to add the Products.NuPlone egg to the buildout" or somesuch. And we should probably try to make NuPlone compatible with Plone 4 if it's not. But I do think that if we can't then that's a bad sigh and wholesale removal *is* appropriate for a major release.

comment:9 in reply to: ↑ 8 Changed 7 years ago by davisagli

  • Owner hannosch deleted
  • Cc davisagli added

Replying to rossp:

And we should probably try to make NuPlone compatible with Plone 4 if it's not. But I do think that if we can't then that's a bad sigh and wholesale removal *is* appropriate for a major release.

If nothing else is possible, we should at least make sure that it's possible to uninstall NuPlone in a sane way to get back to a base system where a different Plone 4-compatible theme could be installed. (I have no idea whether this is the case now or not.)

Unassigning from hannosch because he's not planning to work on Plone 4.

comment:10 Changed 7 years ago by hannosch

  • Milestone changed from 4.0 to 5.0

I won't sign up to make this a proper PLIP for Plone 4. If someone wants to push this forward, please do and change the reporter accordingly.

comment:11 Changed 7 years ago by pupq

Just a minor point that there is value in having Plone ship with at least one other theme than standard Plone. Yes, themes can and should be add-on products. But during the early evaluation stage, it is extremely important for an evaluator to be able to switch themes and see that this works--don't discount how significant that is.

Adding a new product to a Plone site, at the moment, is quite a hassle for a newbie (add these magical lines to this file, run this weird command, restart server, pray it works, etc.)--they'll have to learn that sooner or later, of course. But their desire of "understanding that Plone is themable" is an earlier requirement than "learn how to add products". It would be great if we could meet that expectation.

comment:12 Changed 7 years ago by vincentfretin

  • Milestone changed from 5.0 to 4.0

NuPlone is removed from Plone 4.0

comment:13 Changed 7 years ago by smcmahon

  • Cc plip-advisories@… added

comment:14 follow-up: ↓ 15 Changed 7 years ago by davisagli

My FWT vote: +1. We should make sure that NuPlone works with Plone 4, but no longer support or maintain it if no one steps forward to do that work.

I took a quick look at the NuPlone code and I doubt it will take much if any adjustment to make it work with Plone 4. Additionally, I was pleased to see that it does include an uninstall profile.

Joel's point about the value of shipping an alternate theme is a good one, but since PLIP #9315 proposes creating a new theme, perhaps that and the "classic" Plone theme would be a better set of alternatives then including NuPlone.

comment:15 in reply to: ↑ 14 Changed 7 years ago by rossp

Replying to davisagli:

Joel's point about the value of shipping an alternate theme is a good one, but since PLIP #9315 proposes creating a new theme, perhaps that and the "classic" Plone theme would be a better set of alternatives then including NuPlone.

I'm -1 on letting NuPlone fall out of compatibility before we have a new theme, such as with PLIP #9315. I think it's very important to keep an alternate theme in Plone's batteries-included story. I also know NuPlone is widely used in the wild so I think it's important that if nothing can motivate someone in the community to bring it forward, that the release of 4.0 be help up until someone does bring it forward. :) Especially considering that it's apparently pretty easy to bring it forward.

That said, I'm +1 on moving NuPlone out of the Plone egg dependency so long as it, or some other alternate theme, is added to the Plone installers by default. IOW, so long as somone who clicks "Download" on plone.org can subsequently install an alternate theme Through The Plone, I'm +1.

comment:16 Changed 7 years ago by hannosch

Sorry for the rant:

I'm not sure why anyone thinks NuPlone would be currently maintained or it would increase its chances of being maintained if it stayed in the core distribution (no matter if that's just installers or egg dependencies). It's neither maintained nor has the fact that we shipped it to lots of people changed that in any way.

NuPlone has never left a draft state and has been included in the core way too early. After it was included it hasn't seen any real contributions nor have any of the bugs been fixed. It's a dead end that has been lurking around for too long.

If something is as much of a dead end as NuPlone, then there's no point in arguing about it and trying to talk live into it. A comment about how a mystical "we" should ideally maintain things, doesn't fix bugs. The foundation cannot command or pay anyone to maintain things. Either the community picks things up or it doesn't. If it doesn't than there's really no point in shipping and advertising dead ends to end users.

There are lots of arguments to be had about shipping multiple themes and the pros and cons of it. Those are to be had, but if we don't have multiple maintained themes they are rather pointless. The job of the framework team is not to create sustainable communities around packages, but to evaluate the reality of how they are maintained and act based on that.

comment:17 Changed 7 years ago by jonstahl

Hanno-

I agree with your "rant" in the main. However, I do think the FWT has a lot of "bully pulpit" power as a group and as individuals to highlight work that needs to be done and recruit champions/communities. I hope that you all consider putting a call out to the various folks who contributed to the "OOTB Themes" project (for example) to say "Hey, we'd love to ship Plone 4 with 2-3 generic, well-maintained themes. Can y'all rally to that?"

IOW, people like/need to be asked. ;-)

comment:18 Changed 7 years ago by MatthewWilkes

FWT Vote: +1

comment:19 Changed 7 years ago by raphael

FWT vote: +1

It's available as an egg. That should be sufficient.

comment:20 Changed 7 years ago by calvinhp

FWT Vote: +1 but only because #9315 proposes an additional theme for Plone as I also share Joel's opinion that we need to ship with more than one theme. It does make a very strong demo when showing decision makers (even if they never use it).

comment:21 Changed 7 years ago by erikrose

+1 as long as we ship with some installable-through-the-Plone theme, a la #9315. Also, for upgraders' sake, NuPlone must be made compatible with 4.0 or be able to be uninstalled cleanly (if it isn't already).

comment:22 Changed 7 years ago by esteele

  • Status changed from new to assigned
  • Owner set to esteele

Approved by FWT vote.

comment:23 Changed 6 years ago by limi

Quoting Eric Steele:

The one bit left is to make sure it works with 4.0.

Since #9315 is done and merged, we're almost ready to close this one too — but it needs testing.

comment:24 Changed 6 years ago by kleist

Haven't we tested enough?

comment:25 Changed 6 years ago by limi

I haven't done any testing of NuPlone in 4.0, feel free to see if it works when you add it as an egg to a 4.0 instance.

comment:26 Changed 6 years ago by dukebody

I've tested it and it gets installed but it doesn't look right... For example, plone_control_panel is broken, and a weird text "Close" appears misplaced.

Moreover, if one checks the NuPlone add-on only in the Add Plone Site view ( http://localhost:8080/@@plone-addsite?site_id=Plone&advanced=true):

2010-01-06 00:49:56 ERROR Zope.SiteErrorLog 1262735396.910.614459963784 http://localhost:8080/@@plone-addsite
Traceback (innermost last):
  Module ZPublisher.Publish, line 127, in publish
  Module ZPublisher.mapply, line 77, in mapply
  Module ZPublisher.Publish, line 47, in call_object
  Module Products.CMFPlone.browser.admin, line 153, in __call__
  Module Products.CMFPlone.factory, line 77, in addPloneSite
  Module Products.GenericSetup.tool, line 331, in runAllImportStepsFromProfile
   - __traceback_info__: profile-Products.NuPlone:nuplone
  Module Products.GenericSetup.tool, line 1085, in _runImportStepsFromContext
  Module Products.GenericSetup.tool, line 999, in _doRunImportStep
   - __traceback_info__: cssregistry
  Module Products.ResourceRegistries.exportimport.cssregistry, line 14, in importCSSRegistry
  Module Products.ResourceRegistries.exportimport.resourceregistry, line 28, in importResRegistry
  Module Products.GenericSetup.utils, line 509, in _importBody
  Module Products.ResourceRegistries.exportimport.resourceregistry, line 80, in _importNode
  Module Products.ResourceRegistries.exportimport.resourceregistry, line 168, in _initResources
  Module Products.ResourceRegistries.tools.BaseRegistry, line 685, in moveResourceBefore
  Module Products.ResourceRegistries.tools.BaseRegistry, line 801, in getResourcePosition
ValueError: list.index(x): x not in list

Also, but not directly related to this ticket, it's quite confusing that both the Plone Classic Theme and the Sunburst Theme themes are checked by default to be installed in a new Plone site. The user will think "Two themes? Why two instead of only one?".

comment:27 Changed 6 years ago by esteele

  • Status changed from assigned to new
  • Owner changed from esteele to robzonenet

Assigning the task of fixing NuPlone in 4.0 to Rob. Free lunch if he finishes it by the end of the day. ;)

comment:28 Changed 6 years ago by esteele

  • Status changed from new to closed
  • Resolution set to fixed

NuPlone has been updated, I think we can consider this one closed.

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