Topic: What would it take to remove the calendar?

[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.