What would it take to remove the calendar?

[Angelina Belle]

Wedge has decided it doesn't want a calendar.
So they took practically all trace of it out of the code.
Turns out, the calendar is so entwined with SMF 2.0 that this was more difficult than anticipated.

Interestingly, they've put in enough code hooks to allow the re-introduction of a calendar plugin at a later date.
I was going to give a count of files involved, but I gave up. Interested readers can count for themselves:  http://wedge.org/pub/feats/6108/new-revs/msg270398/?topicseen#new

The team does publish an amazing amount of detail about every rev as they check it in.  I think it is part of the fun for them.  It's documentation, too.

Hmm..  Now I have to wonder what interesting things the other forks are up to...

[Matthew K.]

I've completely removed the Calendar from SMF 2.0, before, as I believe it should be an official modification, with a completely new system in itself.

[Angelina Belle]

I guess it was a lot of work.

And I think it is worth putting forward what you learned in the process. Because, whether or not it is being considered for 2.1, it will certainly be worth considering for SMF 3.0.

[Illori]

i believe once we start using smCore for 3.0 it is norv's plan to have things like the calendar has a mod or plugin and the default forum will be all you get and the rest will be extra that has to be installed later.

[青山 素子]

Rules of this board
* This board is for discussion of open-source forks of SMF 2.

http://wedge.org/pub/faq/6358/faq-is-it-a-friendly-fork/
the license we chose is set to prevent SMF from re-using our implementations

http://wedge.org/license/
1(d): Any Distribution of this Package, whether as a Modified Package or not, requires express written consent from Wedgeward.
1(e): Your name is not Jonathan Valentin (aka "vbgamer45") or Alex Kühne (aka "Akyhne"), and you don't work with any company associated with them, including but not limited to Samson Software of Bloomingdale, Illinois.

http://opensource.org/docs/osd

1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

License term 1(d) violates OSD #1, term 1(e) violates #5. If we take the OSD as the general guide for what it means to be "open source", then Wedge is not open source and discussion of it is not allowed per the rules of this board, even if you try to sneak it in tangentially.

(Yeah, we can argue that as the source code is available to view, it's "open source" as was the argument for SMF itself for many years, but given that the Simple Machines Board Chairman has refuted that argument at least once since the license change to BSD, it would be silly to jump back to that argument now.)

[Illori]

how is this *discussion* a tip or a trick?

[Oldiesmann]

I moved it here because it's a "tip" on how to remove the calendar if you really want to... Wedge does not fit the criteria for the SMF Forks board.

[Illori]

there is no code provided on how to do it, so it is not a tip.

[Matthew K.]

It's definitely not fit for the Tips and Tricks board, imo.

[Angelina Belle]

Rats. It is so useful to discuss what is going on in other forks, because of what this reveals about SMF.

Maybe "development" would be a better place for it, instead of in forks.

[Illori]

how about we try the feature requests board i think this would be a better place to talk about this.

[Norv]

[off topic now]

http://wedge.org/pub/faq/6358/faq-is-it-a-friendly-fork/
the license we chose is set to prevent SMF from re-using our implementations

http://wedge.org/license/
1(d): Any Distribution of this Package, whether as a Modified Package or not, requires express written consent from Wedgeward.
1(e): Your name is not Jonathan Valentin (aka "vbgamer45") or Alex Kühne (aka "Akyhne"), and you don't work with any company associated with them, including but not limited to Samson Software of Bloomingdale, Illinois.

http://opensource.org/docs/osd

1. Free Redistribution
The license shall not restrict any party from selling or giving away the software as a component of an aggregate software distribution containing programs from several different sources. The license shall not require a royalty or other fee for such sale.

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
The license must not discriminate against any person or group of persons.

License term 1(d) violates OSD #1, term 1(e) violates #5. If we take the OSD as the general guide for what it means to be "open source", then Wedge is not open source

This is correct. Not only from OSD criteria (strictly), this kind of license (in particular the discriminatory part) will never be considered [Free and] Open Source under more than one possible definitions of FOSS.

[/off topic]

Please, feel free to share ideas on calendar. Ideas are always valuable, and thank you for taking the time to bring them up. There are also enhancements on the current calendar feature that have been brought up (and we'll take them all into account). I will be back on this.

[live627]

Interested readers can count for themselves:  http://wedge.org/pub/feats/6108/new-revs/msg270398/?topicseen#new

And even then, there were about four follow-up commits.

Hmm..  Now I have to wonder what interesting things the other forks are up to...

Most forks have already died off. Apparently, only Wedge and EoS are still alive.

[Angelina Belle]

So true! I think a fork is more work than most people realize.

[bloc]

Hey, i'm still alive.. But then I don't have a demo up or code to show yet, so maybe i'll shut up now lol.. Still going strong though, but have to admit while mine will be proper BSD in the end,  I reeeally enjoy being the sole dev on it.

Anyways...

Removing the calendar I think is a mistake, for Wedge(or SMF in the future) part. Events, in the broadest sense , is very useful in a forum enviroment IMO, its just that the calendar of SMF was always considered more of a "birthday thingie"..but turn it onto "events manager" and you have more use for it. It should have more options, like attaching files(well, the topic already does that, but more could be used with strictly "event" attachments), attendance features and history, and past events tied to profile for example. And of course, if enough playground is given, one can also let users dable with easy todo-lists, or private calendars of whatever they like.

It seems such a underdeveloped feature..and such were doomed to be cut out at one point or other(by SMF or forks) perhaps. I think its better to expand it though. And in ViennaBBS it will. (if not in the absolute first release, surely in the following)

[Angelina Belle]

Wedge actually stuck in hooks for later development. So we may see later what ideas they have for expanding on events management.

It is a natural componant of a community-building website.

When you've got a repo or demo or something to link to, we'll be sure to list your fork.

[Kindred]

Oh, we have a whole list of things that were planned to add to the calendar


recurring events
event times
attendees
limited attendence/signups
load holidays via upload of CSV
download iCal/vCal for events


I actually has all of those in a 1.1.0 mod that just got to be too much for me to maintain.
(borrowed from Jack's Phat Cal Pack for 1.0 and Grudge's holiday import)

All of that, plus some other goodies are planned to be added.
the goal, however, was to make the calendar a fully functional add-on (see above) rather than an inherent part of the core product because adding all that could increase the code significantly. Additionally, only about 50% of the forums actually USE the calendar for anything other than birthdays.

wedge isn't breaking any new ground with their actions... it's something that we've been planning for 2.++ even while 2.0 was being finished (as Arantor is quite aware)

[Angelina Belle]

I'm sure he knows he was involved in lots of features and priorities discussions. By working on a fork, he is able to prioritize things the way he wants.

Seems to suit him.

[Kindred]

so, it's been brought to my attention that some people may read my previous statement as yet another attack....   it was not intended as such.
Just a comment and that we actually intended to do the same thing (and yes, we are aware that it is not a minor un-raveling)....


as for suiting him....   I haven't been over there for a while, so I'll take your word for it. Hopefully both he and Nao are happy.

[~DS~]

as for suiting him....   I haven't been over there for a while, so I'll take your word for it. Hopefully both he and Nao are happy.

Oh, I'm sure they are, I sure am as well. They are both the most active developers I've ever see...

[OCJ]

What would it take to remove the calendar? ... my dead body. 

smf users dont know how lucky they are ... phpbb has a half-hearted calendar mod, mybb just trying to do the same as smf from April 2011 with 2 or 3 mods piggy-backed.
invision PB has commercial mods to go with a useless calendar etc etc. Only smf has a built in event calendar that work without error - perfect.

Ive posted about this before but Bloc said it here ...

Removing the calendar I think is a mistake, for Wedge(or SMF in the future) part. Events, in the broadest sense , is very useful in a forum enviroment IMO, its just that the calendar of SMF was always considered more of a "birthday thingie"..but turn it onto "events manager"

This is a big thing now for all CMS's - people are paying a fortune to manage events and get them announced to members - I did with Joomla (300$ and every day on support forums) and people are with Wordpress - its a money making project out there that people want.
Seems crazy to me to throw it way as a message board like SMF is a community tool.
I left Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal and after testing many other systems that couldn't do what SMF does for event management (calendar,list, announce, reliable mailing, reply and discussion to events). For all its ... what I consider basic faults, and lack of 'professional' polished portal system, it does a good job at event management... and I should add - message board 

Addition:
I wonder if it were a mod that it would function as it is now - as a topic post that could be announced, or more as a calendar post that would be separate from message board topics - not a good idea if not integrated as it is now.

[Matthew K.]

I'm almost positive if the calendar was ever removed from the core, a very powerful calendar mod would be written for those who wanted it.

[Kindred]

quite...   I use the calendar on one of my sites, but not on the others...   However, the calendar is very useful when it's needed so we'd have an "official package add-on" if it was to be removed from the core product.

[OCJ]

Thats my worry ... when its out of the core, what will happen 5 years down the road. Mods are troublesome at the best of times.
In the core at least it feels like it will be maintained properly.
It seems like the extended time to get smf to 2 lost momentum the smf 1 mods had for the calendar - true there were a lot of useful features like registration for events - not much these days.

[Illori]

it would be an official mod so the team would take care it and keep it updated as needed, it would get as much attention as it does now as part of the core.

[OCJ]

I hope that will be the case - its a great part of the system for clubs and groups. Theres a lot more than birthdays to show on a calendar 

[Matthew K.]

Mods aren't really troublesome if done right...it would be an official modification managed by the team.

[OCJ]

If done properly ... community projects never run smoothly to the course they plan eh? 

But I hope it turns out ok. I will never understand cutting it out for the sake of saving/streamlining a bit of code when other boards are actively developing inferior products. Maybe it wont make any difference but 5 years using many cms's I learnt that too many mods bundled together dont work - Joomla event management needed mods piggy-backing on top of other mods with total chaos - that you pay good money for and wasted your life finding solutions (a calendar 100$, that needed a 3rd party mod to make replies to events, a newsletter mod 100$ to make a duplicate copy and send it out reliably - a joke).

I hope in 5 years Im not here saying the same about smf ... paying for a bug ridden mod to do what it used to do perfectly for free 

[Angelina Belle]

So far, nobody has threatened to get rid of SMF's calendar.
I agree it is very useful for club websites.

The folks at Wedge decided to pull theirs out, and stick in hooks to make it possible to put it back in later.
Turned out to be a lot of hooks, too!
Would be interesting to see what anyone makes of the hooks.  Write a newer, even-better calendar? Hook into a google, MSN, or Yahoo calendar? Who knows!

[OCJ]

There was some (old) discussion about getting rid of it for smf 2 I think - I posted somewhere on it. 

Uhm, made by no other than Norv!
2010
http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=205558.msg2856103#msg2856103

Seem to be a lot of people out there like me that worry once its out of the core then later on it wont get so much attention.

[Angelina Belle]

Since Norv posted that in November 2010, after SMF 2 was feature-locked, I am pretty sure he was not considering such a change for SMF 2.

Here's the thing about the Simple Machines core that SMF3 is meant to be built on.  Suppose you don't want the forum at all? You just want a blog, a calendar, and maybe a portal.  Developing the calendar as a separate module means you can have the calendar without even having the forum.

And a separate calendar module will make it easier than ever for customizers to develop a slightly different calendar -- perhaps with the features you've already said you'd like to see in the SMF2 calendar.

I can understand your concerns about SMF team support of official mods. The SMF team is concerned about this, too, and has been discussing how to keep "what must be maintained" balanced with "who is available to maintain it".
The discussions are on-going, but I am pretty sure that the "must have" list will include the forum and the calendar.

[Akyhne]

i believe once we start using smCore for 3.0 it is norv's plan to have things like the calendar has a mod or plugin and the default forum will be all you get and the rest will be extra that has to be installed later.

Hmm, that will be a nightmare for themers!

[bloc]

i believe once we start using smCore for 3.0 it is norv's plan to have things like the calendar has a mod or plugin and the default forum will be all you get and the rest will be extra that has to be installed later.

Hmm, that will be a nightmare for themers!

I am curious..how will that be a nightmare for themers..? AFAIK all plugins/mods come with default templates anyway, its no different than current setup where brand new functions from mods, also come with a template. If they stick to the common css styles it should not present any major problem.

[Akyhne]

It's already a nightmare with portal mods and other mods.

[bloc]

Elaborate please...in what way is it a nightmare? If a mod supplies a template, which DOES use the common CSS styles that default theme sets a precedence for, how is that a nightmare? You already defined those styles in the theme, normally anyway.

If the mod isn't, then sure..but that is selling many, including portal mods, a bit short. Portal mods is, well, a mixed experience lol, but is IMHO a result of using styles creatively and RELYING on those styles being built in a certain way. If they didn't, if they only assumed "a" style was used, then it would be no problem.

But again..I am curious on how you find it being a nightmare.

[Akyhne]

Problem is there's no "straight line" in Curve. And if you make a new theme from scratch, you can't as well know how it will turn out. You need to install all official modifications to make a theme.

[bloc]

Well, I won't disagree with that lol, since its also something I don't particular like. BUT, you can make complex and new themes if you keep the style names and at least the header and container markup, and change some of the underlying CSS instead. Problem is that the CSS is very complex to start from scratch. So the freedom to do what you want isn't there, but its not impossible to make new things either. The main problem is, or has been lol, that mods also want to mod the templates, which makes creating new markup impossible.

But theres no need to install mods to be sure it works. I never do, nor should any theme designer have to, simply because its the MOD's responsibility to adhere to presentation logic/classes/styles/markup - not the other way around.

[Akyhne]

Someone should rewrite Curve from scratch to make it more easy to modify.

[Angelina Belle]

There are so many new ideas since CURVE was first designed, and there were so many changes to CURVE before it was released, that starting over is a very good idea.

I am sure it will happen for the next major version of SMF.

[Norv]

igirisjin,
You're right. In the current state of SMF 2.0 and the ecosystem of official mods and themes we're barely starting to have around it (please do note: I meant intently "official" mods and themes, not third-party only), we wouldn't have good support for all we're thinking of.
But the issue is not really about "removing" anyway: it's about modularity. At the level of the code (I actually mean architecture of course), SMF should have its components written in a modular way, loosely coupled with the rest, not embedded one in another in a too messy way. And this *is* the clear goal of future versions of SMF: to separate components such that we are able then, to simply tick a box in the installer, and have a calendar - for example - with the forum, or not have it. As a good example there may be some of the current core features in Admin panel: coming by default, but able to be enabled/disabled anytime, perhaps including at installation stage.

For SMF 3.0, we do aim to disentangle the *code* of the calendar from the rest of the code, and reimplement it in its own files (no, not parts of the calendar code in the post function, parts anywhere else, but a module containing the calendar implementation on its own). Once that is done, the calendar means a piece of functionality which can then be simply added to a forum or a blog, without direct code modifications. So, no "mods" involved, only the right design and implementation for the functionality, such that it is loosely coupled with the rest. No issue with the download package either: the download package can very well contain the calendar, or the installer can download it on the fly (such as the next webinstaller should be able to do ), and enable it on the forum at admin's choice.

[OCJ]

I think some people (Kindred as well) suggested in a calendar thread that the team needed to reduce the code base to something more manageable - so the resources available could keep it maintained. If that's the case it sounds like it will end up collecting dust in the corner.
Hopefully, if it's just that SMF is to become more modular, then the calendar will be maintained by someone?

Maybe the thread title is a wee bit misleading " ... remove the calendar".



Its a pity that there was so much squabbling over the future of SMF. Isn't there a democratic way of  getting end users needs and developers ideas voted on. At least it goes through a process that way so might not attract as much strong feeling when things dont go their way.

Developers decide on the best/top improvements that end users voted for. Maybe even a dedicated developers set of ideas.
At the moment it seems like the unhappy ones (forks) have divided and conquered themselves. The mods community anyway looked more active  say 4 years ago.

[青山 素子]

I think some people (Kindred as well) suggested in a calendar thread that the team needed to reduce the code base to something more manageable - so the resources available could keep it maintained. If that's the case it sounds like it will end up collecting dust in the corner.

You've got to think about modularity. Basically, the core codebase is very large from a lot of features. By making the features modular, you can (hopefully) increase security by thinking more about the coupling and interaction between the now-distinct pieces. Also, it means that security issues will be more compartmentalized. Issues in the calendar module would only necessitate an update of that module, not the whole SMF package.

Also, if done right, it means that the whole is actually more manageable than if everything was kept tangled together. Since you will have to enforce strict boundaries you only have to worry about the inner workings and how to implement those. Less side effects will occur. Overall, this means it's easier to manage the large codebase.

Hopefully, if it's just that SMF is to become more modular, then the calendar will be maintained by someone?

See above in that by breaking things into distinct pieces, it actually becomes easier to deal with all the code. This assumes that this modularity is done properly and maintained.

The mods community anyway looked more active  say 4 years ago.

At least part of that is due to the very long 2.0 development cycle causing those modification developers to lose interest or just become frustrated and leave.

[Arantor]

It's not really misleading. It was simply 'if the calendar were to be removed from the core distribution, how much effort is required'. The answer is... about a day's worth of effort if you know the code base, and the source of this post was to highlight the fact that it is doable and provides some insight on where to start to do so, because it's already been done.

Its a pity that there was so much squabbling over the future of SMF. Isn't there a democratic way of  getting end users needs and developers ideas voted on.

Without wanting to get political, my view is that democracy in software development doesn't work because you have more people involved in the decision making process than the people who actually have to make the decision happen, and that the best approach is for benevolent dictators to ask for feedback, then go away and implement it, much as XenForo is doing in terms of how they approach development.

I would be very biased if I were to dwell on the squabbling, as one of those directly involved. There was a time when I nearly ended up on the dev team, but in hindsight, I'm very glad that didn't happen.

At least it goes through a process that way so might not attract as much strong feeling when things dont go their way.

That's the problem with democracy, you get so many more voices that you can't hear when something important is being said, and it has a habit of sucking all the productivity out of things.

Developers decide on the best/top improvements that end users voted for. Maybe even a dedicated developers set of ideas.
At the moment it seems like the unhappy ones (forks) have divided and conquered themselves. The mods community anyway looked more active  say 4 years ago.

There's a reason why there's only two properly active forks at this time when at one point there were about 8.

[Angelina Belle]

Actually, this thread started in the forks discussion board. It was a good fit there. It was moved here because many team members would prefer not to devote too much space to a fork with a restrictive license (somewhat like the one the SMF team struggled so hard to move away from in the last couple of years).

The difficulties the Wedge team had extricating the calendar functions is an object lesson on what happens when a nice little forum software like SMF grows organically.
The Wedge fork team was frequently confounded by knock-on effects of removing calendar functionality, and errors in places they would not have expected them as a result.
This is because so many features of SMF are so intertwined.

So I thought it was a pretty interesting read.
The idea is to build the next SMF with the basic idea that different functions are actually separable things, not all mushed together like a plate of stoemp.
Not that there is anything wrong with a plate of stoemp. Especially with an egg on top.

But you can imagine it would be difficult to improve the carrots after they've already been mashed in with the potatoes.
It's part of the evolution of SMF.

[.Vapor]

It would be nice to add an option to "enable" and "disable" the calendar. Some of us do not use it...in the first place.

[青山 素子]

It would be nice to add an option to "enable" and "disable" the calendar. Some of us do not use it...in the first place.

You can disable the calendar functionality already. This topic is about removing the actual code from the software.

[kat]

* K@ watches the Spamtard...