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Feature Proposal: Remove old skins from develop

Motivation

They probably don't work, won't be updated, and won't be needed anyway. Tired of them taking up space.

-- Contributors: MeredithLesly

Impact and Available Solutions

Just do an svn del of the offending skins.

Implementation

Email to Skin authors

To all addressed on the To: line,

Some time ago, Peter recently retired (obsoleted) some skins that do not have a Skin Table with the standard screenshot, e.g. the skins that did not show up properly in the SkinPackage directory on TWiki.org and in the SkinBrowser. The purpose of this was to help new users decide how best to develop a look and feel best suited to their needs and which skins are a good starting point for further development. This recognises that many skins look great but have become harder to maintain with TWiki's growth.

We want to push forward the skin management and ease the skin creation by rationalizing the skins in the EdinburghRelease (which we expect to be release in about 12 months). For that, we need to measure the impact in the existing skin to find a solution that allows both to push forward while not leaving people relying on old skin in the limbo.

So, if you feel that:

  1. ) your priorities have changed and you are unlikely to further work on your skin, or
  2. ) your skin should not be the basis for further work by others, or
  3. ) PatternSkin or NatSkin usefully contain enough of the flexibility you would have needed such that your look would actually best be served today as a just a theme (set of CSS files) sitting on top of one of those.

Then please take the time to consider whether your skin should also be obsoleted, and if you think so, mark it as such. If you do desire to continue updating your skin, please state your intentions in

http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Codev/RemoveOldSkinsFromDevelop

In 5 months, we'll remove from the Edinburh (DEVELOP) branch all the obsolete skins and all the skins whose authors don't manifest their intention to continue with it's development. These skins will still be available in the TWiki04 branch in case any of you reconsider you decision and want to upgrade your skin.

Two months after the release of Edinburh, all skins that don't work well and are not active (no commits during the Edinburg development) will be removed from the repository (both the Edinburg branch and the DEVELOP branch).

We thank you for your past efforts and hope you appreciate that for TWiki to move as fast as possible we need a rationalised and simplified skin system.

Best Regards,

<insert signature>

Discussion

-- MeredithLesly - 07 Apr 2006

My view is that most of TWiki's skins have disintegrated to dust.

Yes, delete them.

-- MartinCleaver - 07 Apr 2006

IIRC, an email was sent to Skin authors asking them to upgrade. I propose that we sent another email, and set a deadline (5 months in the future should be enough) before deleting the skins from the DEVELOP branch, but leave them in the TWiki04 branch.

The same should be done to every plugin that don't work for TWiki04 in 5 months or so.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 07 Apr 2006

The problem is that the message sent out was not very clear. The combination of MartinCleaver's message and Peter's 'correction' was open to interpretation.

I agree that we need to send another email, and this time without an immediate follow up. So better to compose it here so others can leave their feedback.

-- ArthurClemens - 07 Apr 2006

Any that have confirmed no interest can be deleted straight away.

-- MartinCleaver - 08 Apr 2006

RationalisedTWikiSkins has that thread

-- MartinCleaver - 08 Apr 2006

Following ArthurClemens proposal, I put a first draft for the email to be sent to skin authors (see above).

Please, comment and fix as you see fit.

Also, we need to decide who will send the email.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 08 Apr 2006

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Topic revision: r8 - 2006-04-08 - MeredithLesly
 
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