Addons vs Styles

[Aivaras]

it's definately not a black-and-white situation. But the principle is still there: generally speaking, using add-ons incur more risks to admins than editing templates themselves.

(Sometimes requiring to much accuracy for what is a practical choice is like trying to determine where exactly one color ends and the next starts on a color spectrum.)

 

[Steve F]

XF brings so much customization possibilities to the table for designers that it seems everyone wants to have their own framework to build off of and while this is quite handy for us (designers) in can present problems in templates for add-ons. We do our best to not totally kill entire templates with conditionals and options but sometimes to get the options customers ask for or to achieve certain functions we have no choice. We do (and have) worked with add-on developers and customers to remedy any conflicts that may arise though I can say it has been very limited for the need to do so.

So the whole point of this thread is an add-on developer can't replace the template contents on their own add-on but style developers can without abiding by the Resource guidelines, specifically rule #18?

I think add-on developers have many more options than designers do, regex and template modifications specifically. There is no way for a designer to export template mods with styles so I'm not really sure what we could do any different.

 

[Snog]

@Steve F you and ThemeHouse were always more than cooperative with me while I was doing add-ons, there's no doubt about that.

But, I can understand where @ozzy47 is coming from with rule 18. There are instances where an add-on may need to replace large parts of template code in order to function/display as intended. Even if that's by regex with a template insertion. But, rule 18's "Template modifications must be careful not to replace too much of a template." tends to be interpreted as anything larger than a line or two by quite a few people because they don't understand or don't read beyond that for what's required.

I also think there might be some confusion as to what should be replaced via a template modification. A modification should only target a give area and not contain all of the original template's code. That can affect more things down the line if it does. In other words, don't "find" the entire template, copy the entire template into the "replace" and only change one or two items in the "replace". That could be disastrous for other add-ons and XF.

 

[Chris D]

But, I can understand where @ozzy47 is coming from with rule 18.

But in his specific example, we've discovered that actually, he doesn't need to replace large parts (OR THE ENTIRE) template at all.

So, realistically, it's discussion over, unless you have very specific examples.

 

[DragonByte Tech]

I'm late to the party but I think it's worth also bearing in mind that it would (likely) also be possible to accomplish complex rewrite tasks in fewer template modifications by using regular expressions.

Regexp is also useful if you do multi-line searches, since not every custom style uses the same amount of spacers (or may use spaces instead of tabs) for any given template.

Regular expressions are scary, though, and can be hard to get right. It's totally understandable how some people might prefer multiple smaller modifications