Talk:OBX proposals

Use a large icon-free obx to replace Status_box?

Looking at the two activity boxes in Kuku, it seems the Status_box version is unavoidably more attractive than the obx version, simply because it has less "excess ink" not conveying information. But having box-based extensibility would be nice. And we still need a work-around for the argument passing problems. So maybe Status_box could be made into a large icon-free obx? Eg,

{olpcboxtop for activity|name=Kuku}
{obx activity overview
|activity = Kuku
|icon     = Kuku.png
|status   = In Development/XO Testing
|version  = 0.1
|base     = 0.1
|source   = ...
|l10n     = ...
|contributors = ...
}
... other obxes could go here ...
{olpcboxbottom}

Just two ideas here:

• obx_activity_overview (or whatever one calls it) is a modified Status_box which generates an obx-like div (but one without the icon concept).
• olpcboxtop_for_activity calls olpcboxtop, setting the box color and header, as the test version does explicitly.

So the above code would look exactly like the current Status_box version (well, slightly wider), but when something runs afoul of mediawiki's argument passing, one could simply drop that line from obx_activity_overview, and add a separate obx for it then. Incremental just-in-time ugliness.

Another alternative might be

{olpcboxtop for activity|name=Kuku}
{obx box top}
{obx activity icon|Kuku.png}
{obx activity status|In Development/XO Testing}
{obx activity version|0.1}
{obx activity base|0.1}
{obx activity source|name=Kuku|...}
{obx activity l10n|...}
{obx activity contributors|...}
{obx box bottom}
{olpcboxbottom}

where the obx_activity_foo are basically just <tr><td><b>{1}</b></td><td>{2}</td></tr>. This makes things a little uglier and less flexible up front, in order to buy more graceful degredation (ie, one is never forced to bail out to a true obx).

Hmm, and actually, we still haven't used the "|more=}" dont close the box! concept.

So those two might be combined as {olpcboxtop for activity|name=Kuku} {obx activity overview |activity = Kuku |icon = Kuku.png |status = In Development/XO Testing |version = 0.1 |base = 0.1 |there is more=} {obx activity contributors|...} {obx box bottom} {olpcboxbottom}	Or perhaps even better, as {olpcbox for activity |name = Kuku |icon = Kuku.png ... |there are more entries=} {obx activity contributors|...} {obx box bottom} {olpcboxbottom}
and also {olpcbox for activity |name = Kuku |icon = Kuku.png ... |there are more boxes=} ... more boxes here... {olpcboxbottom}	and often {olpcbox for activity |name = Kuku |icon = Kuku.png ... } <!-- all done, no more boxes, no quoting problems to work around -->

But... While implementation should be easy, I'm not sure it's worth the user complexity cost. Ie, adding a box may require adding a "there are more boxes" argument.

Sigh. So much pain because mediawiki was poorly designed. MitchellNCharity 02:11, 9 August 2007 (EDT)

I totally agree on many things you note here! And even liked the idea of summoning the OBXes by means of a normal-template-invoking-obxes-templates... until I remembered how fragile that code ended up being (See the source code in this Sandbox experiment: http://wiki.laptop.org/index.php?title=Template:Sandbox&oldid=48378)—btw, said fragility and mess was what triggered the OBX concept originally ;)

Still, I do agree that many of the OBXes intended for the OBX-Status-Box are excessively wordy, and probably a minimalistic OBX should be worked out, probably (as you say) just text [l10n: link] and that would take much less vertical space, and be more table-like. Xavi 10:11, 9 August 2007 (EDT)

Other obx ideas

• I run sugar-jhbuild on {Ubuntu}.
• I run emulation on {qemu} on {fedora}.
• I have an XO {(B4)}.

I like them! Xavi 10:11, 9 August 2007 (EDT)