We publish here the chat log from our last "Ask The Joomla Team" Session.

Next Session will be happen on 9th June 2010 12 UTC with Sam Moffatt and Elin Waring.

How Can You Join Ask the Joomla Team

You can meet us in the #joomla-ask-the-team chat room on irc.freenode.net

One very easy way to join is to visit this link: http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#joomla-ask-the-team

Chat log

[9:02pm] severdia:Gooooooooooooooooooooooood Morning, Vietnam!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[9:03pm] severdia:Ian?
[9:03pm] JulioPontes:Hi
[9:03pm] severdia:Howdy
[9:08pm] severdia:Unless I've made a grave error, it's Ask the Team time...
[9:08pm] severdia:Hopefully, Brad is on his way..
[9:08pm] severdia:Has anyone tried the Beta 2?
[9:09pm] JulioPontes:I´m use beta2 for studies, dev. extension incompatible encoding
[9:09pm] JulioPontes:and test anothers things that i´m coding incompatible encoding
[9:09pm] severdia:Cool...
[9:09pm] ian_mac:hey
[9:09pm] severdia:It's obviously still in beta state... but it's progressing
[9:10pm] severdia:Howdy ian
[9:10pm] ian_mac:i suppose it is ATT time
[9:10pm] ian_mac:I can fill in for brad if yo want
[9:10pm] severdia:Sure
[9:10pm] severdia:I just saw him online so not sure what happened to him
[9:10pm] ian_mac:something seems to be wrong with my u key though
[9:10pm] severdia:u key?
[9:10pm] ian_mac:yeah
[9:11pm] ian_mac:so if a word I type doesn't make sense
[9:11pm] ian_mac:try adding a u and seeing if it helps
[9:11pm] severdia:Ah... well we're used to have to decipher your messages anyway..
[9:11pm] severdia:having
[9:11pm] ian_mac:well, sure... translating from Canadian to USian language
[9:12pm] severdia:Yeah.... thank Heavens for Google Translate
[9:12pm] ian_mac:indeed
[9:12pm] ian_mac:so
[9:12pm] ian_mac:does anybody have any pressingly urgent questions to ask?
[9:12pm]  Gemclip joined the chat room.
[9:13pm] ian_mac:well...
[9:13pm] ian_mac:for those that are here
[9:13pm] ian_mac:I'll let the cat out of the bag on the 1.6 beta 3 release date
[9:13pm] severdia:No!!!
[9:14pm] ian_mac:so
[9:14pm] severdia:
[9:14pm] ian_mac:don't tell anybody else it was me that told you
[9:14pm] ian_mac:but we're planning for June 14th
[9:14pm] severdia:Just don't tell them when the beta 4 will be out.
[9:15pm] ian_mac::x:
[9:15pm] ian_mac:my lips are sealed
[9:15pm] severdia:So are there any others besides Julio that have downloaded and played with the beta2?
[9:16pm] JulioPontes:What the vision devs. are expecting from from community while they are developing 1.6?
[9:16pm] Gemclip:no betas scare me lol
[9:16pm] ian_mac:can you elaborate on that Julio?
[9:17pm] Gemclip:how is ACL implimented in 1.6?
[9:18pm] ian_mac:ummm
[9:18pm] ian_mac:that is a rather vague qestion
[9:18pm] Gemclip:I mean
[9:18pm] ian_mac:is there something specific yo want to know?
[9:18pm] JulioPontes:What the vision Joomla! core team, have from community?
[9:18pm] severdia:@Julio I think what would be great is to report bugs and provide patches.
[9:19pm] Gemclip:in the last ver it was pretty limited. Have they added the ability to do custom levels etc
[9:19pm] ian_mac:Gemclip: yes, that is one of the new main featres in 1.6
[9:19pm] ian_mac:Julio
[9:19pm] severdia:@Gemclip In what sense do you mean custom levels?
[9:19pm] ian_mac:as you are probably aware, the community (whatever that word means) is driving the pace of development of 1.6
[9:20pm] ian_mac:we've had great participation levels in JBS and IMO have made good progress towards a stable release
[9:20pm] ian_mac:there are lots of ways that the community can get involved at this stage
[9:20pm] ian_mac:first of all, as Ron mentioned, they can report bugs, provide patches, help test, write unit and system tests
[9:20pm] Gemclip:by article or groups when editing mostly. For example I have a client that has diffrent departments and we want to limit the ablity to edit and publish on specific pages depending on the level
[9:20pm] ian_mac:write docs
[9:20pm] JulioPontes:
[9:21pm] ian_mac:the other thing that we are really trying to achieve
[9:21pm] severdia:Yeah, there's really no limit to the range of stuff people can take part in.
[9:21pm] ian_mac:and strive toward
[9:21pm] ian_mac:is to have a more regular release cycle
[9:21pm] ian_mac:and IMO, one key to this will be that we contine to innovate during the stabilization process
[9:21pm] ian_mac:one major example of this is comments
[9:22pm] ian_mac:it is our hope that at some point while 1.6 is going stable somebody (or some people) will be able to pick that up and get it to the point where it is stable
[9:22pm] ian_mac:then once 1.6 is stable
[9:22pm] ian_mac:we can merge comments into trunk
[9:22pm] ian_mac:and it will be ready for 1.7
[9:22pm] severdia:@Gemclip.. of course. You can do that. Do you understand how the Groups and Levels are set up in 1.6?
[9:22pm] ian_mac:so in the same way we'd like to see this happen with other things that shold be shifting for 1.7
[9:23pm] ian_mac:at some point we have to figure out a vision for what 1.7 is going to be
[9:24pm] Gemclip:severdia: no sorry I haven't looked at 1.6 yet
[9:24pm] ian_mac:once we establish that then it will be easier for potential contributers to pictre what sort of features will be top of list for inclsion in core
[9:25pm] ian_mac:does that answer your question JulioPontes?
[9:25pm] JulioPontes:yes
[9:25pm] JulioPontes:Is there any idea of JED, something like having a code validator as phpUnderControl to take greater control and security of future extensions that will be available?
[9:26pm] severdia:@Gemclip... your users are in groups (of course). Your levels define access and you match up groups to levels to create customized access.
[9:26pm] severdia:(in a nutshell)
[9:26pm] ian_mac:JulioPontes: you're talking about validation of extensions available for JED?
[9:26pm] JulioPontes:yes
[9:27pm] ian_mac:I don't think anybody has taken a real deep look at that
[9:27pm] ian_mac:though IMO if somebody built such a tool that worked well
[9:27pm] severdia:I don't think the JED is considering doing something like that.
[9:27pm] ian_mac:it wold be something we'd seriously consider implementing
[9:27pm] Gemclip:severdia: how fine grained is the access control? By article? page?
[9:27pm] ian_mac:so long as it didn't involve a lot of extra work
[9:28pm] severdia:There was some discussion of it a long way back, but I think they didn't want to do it. Don't recall the reason though.
[9:28pm] severdia:@Gemclip It's by article, category, menu item, module, etc. It's just about everywhere.
[9:29pm] Gemclip:Nice that was IMO the biggest problem I came by using joomla
[9:29pm] severdia:You are not alone.
[9:31pm] Gemclip:what would you say is the single most important change in 1.6?
[9:31pm] severdia:Definitely the ACL
[9:33pm] Gemclip:how bad will the compatibility problems be with templates? is there going to be a legacy mode for 1.5.x.x?
[9:33pm] severdia:Templates and extensions will need to be tweaked to work in 1.6...mainly because of the ACL
[9:34pm] severdia:If the extension is already native 1.5, then it will be pretty straightforward. If not, it will likely require a total rewrite.
[9:34pm] ian_mac:though templates either way wil lbe pretty simple
[9:35pm] severdia:Yeah.
[9:35pm] ian_mac:not a lot has changed except markup
[9:35pm] severdia:And there's an example "learning" template called Atomic included in 1.6
[9:35pm] ian_mac:reports are it's kind of amateurish
[9:35pm] ian_mac:bt it works
[9:35pm] ian_mac:
[9:35pm] severdia:ha
[9:35pm] ian_mac:(I kid)
[9:35pm] severdia:It's not amateurish.. it's "simple"
[9:36pm] severdia:Don't forget, the guy who created that also created Joomla.org.
[9:37pm] severdia:The "internationally acclaimed" Joomla.org I should say.
[9:38pm] severdia:Anyhow.. I digress.
[9:38pm] ian_mac:he
[9:38pm] ian_mac:nothing but respect for Mr. Template
[9:39pm] severdia:Ian, the next time we meet in person, you owe me a drink...
[9:39pm] ian_mac:he
[9:39pm] ian_mac:okay
[9:39pm] ian_mac:didn't I buy all your drinks last time?  
[9:39pm] severdia:So, Ian, what's the single most important change in 1.6?
[9:40pm] ian_mac:probably ACL I guess
[9:40pm] ian_mac:though
[9:40pm] ian_mac:there are lots of other cool features too
[9:40pm] ian_mac:the extension updater
[9:40pm] ian_mac:will be cool
[9:40pm] ian_mac:the nested categories
[9:40pm] ian_mac:I suspect a working uploader will be a popular feature
[9:41pm] severdia:Speaking of templates, the Template Manager is greatly improved. And the addition of Template Styles is great.
[9:41pm] ian_mac:I think there's been a lot of niggling fixes
[9:42pm] ian_mac:the module exception feature will probably be welcome by many
[9:42pm] severdia:You can now edit all your template files in the TM, including all the CSS files and error pages.
[9:43pm] JulioPontes:on 1.6 we will can add our own JDoc renderers whitout put on libraries\joomla\document\renderer ? like JDocumentRenderer::addIncludePath()
[9:43pm] ian_mac:that will probably come back to bite us in the ass severdia TBH
[9:43pm] severdia:Editing associated files?
[9:44pm] ian_mac:editing templates
[9:44pm] ian_mac:and making that better
[9:44pm] ian_mac:b/c more and more people will edit core templates
[9:44pm] ian_mac:instead of creating new ones first
[9:44pm] ian_mac:and they will get overwritten when people update
[9:44pm] severdia:Possibly. But they do that now anyhow. How many MilkyWay bastards out there have you seen?
[9:45pm] ian_mac:maybe we can lock the core templates
[9:45pm] ian_mac:probably too late to do that
[9:45pm] severdia:Naw...let them play.
[9:47pm] ian_mac:JulioPontes: I don't know
[9:47pm] ian_mac:I don't recall that specifically being added
[9:49pm] severdia:We should also mention there are huge improvements to language support in Joomla 1.6
[9:50pm] ian_mac:yes, apparently there are
[9:50pm] ian_mac:I don't know the ins and outs
[9:50pm] ian_mac:something about a language switcher
[9:51pm] severdia:Yeah, I know a bit, but it's really Christophe, JM and a number of others hammering away at that.
[9:51pm] ian_mac:English still works, so,
[9:51pm] severdia:We'll also have a native English speaker proof the language files before GM.
[9:51pm] ian_mac:GM?
[9:51pm] severdia:Er.. um..
[9:52pm] ian_mac:GA?
[9:52pm] severdia:An old skool reference to "final release" called Gold Master.
[9:52pm] severdia:It was from the days when software was distributed on small shiny discs called CDs
[9:53pm] severdia:There was a Gold Master that was created and sent to the distribution house for duplication.
[9:53pm] ian_mac:ahh okay
[9:53pm] severdia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_master
[9:53pm] jools:Title: Golden master - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (at en.wikipedia.org)
[9:54pm] ian_mac:I didn't know we were going all acronym happy
[9:55pm] ian_mac:no release is final
[9:55pm] ian_mac:shouldn't we be forward thinking and not hail back to antiquated terminology?
[9:55pm] severdia:*sigh*
[9:57pm] severdia:So are there any other questions?
[9:58pm] •severdia hears crickets chirping.
[9:59pm] ian_mac:ok
[9:59pm] ian_mac:I'm out
[9:59pm] ian_mac:have fun all
[10:00pm] severdia:OK.. thanks for participating....
[10:01pm] severdia:Goodnight everyone! (or wherever you are)