2011/4/4 MZMcBride <z(a)mzmcbride.com>om>:
Brion Vibber wrote:
I'm
not a real MediaWiki developer, so it may be a silly question: How
hard it is to convert a gadget into an extension? If it's not too
hard, wouldn't it be better to redo useful gadgets as extensions?
Unless i miss something very basic, this will make them easier to
maintain, install, update and localize.
In principle, making an extension based on an existing Gadget should be
pretty straightforward, especially with ResourceLoader taking care of more
of the details of JS & CSS fetching.
Might be fun to whip up a how-to guide and post it on the tech blog...
That seems like a bit of a regression, though. The Gadgets extension was
implemented as a way for local admins to easily hook into
Special:Preferences so that typical users could enable certain pieces of
JavaScript without needing to edit any pages.
By creating separate extensions for individual JavaScript gadgets, you hit
some interesting benefits/detriments:
Benefits:
* extensions can easily be enabled globally
* extensions have great localization support
* extensions have sane review processes in place
* extensions can implement functionality when JavaScript isn't available
Detriments:
* extensions usually take one forever to get enabled (this is a huge point)
The benefit of great localization support is also a huge point, and
hugely positive. It's worth the resources to fix the hard, long and
frustrating review processes that cause extensions to wait for years
in the line to be enabled to get the benefit of localization. It's
true that extensions take forever to get enabled, and this is, indeed,
a huge point - and it must be fixed. I suppose that it requires
resources; well, the Foundation must prioritize this much-needed
evolutionary change higher than big revolutionary projects. It's not
even a matter of "globalization", "language equality" etc. - it's
something that's just plain useful for the Big English Wikipedia, too.
--
Amir Elisha Aharoni · אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
http://aharoni.wordpress.com
"We're living in pieces,
I want to live in peace." - T. Moore