Module development and code questions

I've checked in a new contrib field for the flexinode module to handle the upload of Mp3 files (available in CVS). It builds on the functionality of the file field by doing the following additional tasks:
1) reads ID3 tag information and stores it in the flexinode for output (playing time, track name, bitrate, artist etc.)
2) creates an m3u file that references the mp3.
3) creates a download link and a streaming link when the node is displayed. The download link simply points to the mp3. The streaming link loads the m3u which in turn points to the mp3. This allows the music to start playing before the entire mp3 has been downloaded. It also makes it a slight bit harder for people to simply copy your mp3.

The filed is dependent on external libraries that you will have to install if you have the mp3 field in your flexinode directory. Here are the installation instructions with the external libs:

The mp3 field is dependent on the getid3 project from Sourceforge:
http://getid3.sourceforge.net/

download the scripts and put them in modules/flexinode/getid3
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=55859&package_id=6...

get the helper applications (for Windows) and put them in modules/flexinode/helperapps
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=55859&package_id=1...

place the field_mp3.inc file in the flexinode directory.

Here is a list of things that still need to get done:

I've looked around and I've seen all that people have said in regards to PHPbb. First things first, in my opinion it is far superior to the Drupal forum. The look and feal of the Drupal forum is just not condusive to communication. I get in and look at posts and it just looks so confusing, no order. Even if you like the feel of Drupal, PHPbb has many more features mainly because it is JUST a forum, where Drupal is more of a CMS. I'll admit that I really like the way that Drupal itself looks great, far easier to use than PHPnuke, and I like that it isn't bloated.

The flexinode README states "Alternately, you can override the theme_flexinode_* functions to change
the look of all fields of a certain type.". Is there a code example available for doing this in xtemplate?

thanks,

Robert Douglass

---------------
visit me at http://www.robshouse.net

I've updated my CVS installment to include the flexinode field_file.inc commit http://drupal.org/cvs?commit=5205 from Bèr / JonBob, but still cannot upload files. The file gets transferred to the temp folder but never makes it to the files folder. Are other people having success with this?

-Robert Douglass
----------------
visit me at http://www.robshouse.net

Anyone out there succeeded in tweaking the contact module?

I'm trying to take out the email addresses and replace that with a prvaite message link.

(am a newbie, so apologies in advance if that is a stupid question).

Am also trying to tweak the search page. Anyone know how to exclude fields in the search page/form?

Jason

Hello Drupal community,

please, could you consider/criticize?

Yesterday, I have finished with synchronization bugs in i18n module, and today morning there came to me an idea on how to build true multi-language support in Drupal. It is a fresh idea, may be stupid.

shortly spoken - we can translate queries, not tables

You see, the approach of i18n module is to translate tables prepending language code. What worries me, is the number of things it affects. For example, menus module - i18n makes an array of $db_prefix and this produces PHP notice and this produces error in menus module; the i18n module synchronization had some bugs itself see - http://drupal.org/node/view/10708 and you may find probably more bugs here, at Drupal's.

And again, what is probably worse, is the approach of i18n module - we are duplicating objects. Instead of having one document with language versions, we are having two or more versions of tables that should contain the same objects. But this is true only at the beginning, later, the objects will start to live their own life making synchronization difficult.

my point is this - we do not need to create different tables for different languages, we need only some content to be translated and therefore we can manage to alter queries before they are executed.

instead of

cz_node
=======
nid | type | title | story | score | created ...
------------------------------------------------
1   | story| můj-X | tady..| 5245  | 101245

en_node
=======
nid | type | title | story | score | created ...
------------------------------------------------
1   | story| myX   | text  | 1255  | 101245

we could have

node
=======
nid | type | title | cz_title | story | cz_story  | score | created ...
------------------------------------------------
1   | story| myX   | můj-X    | text  | tady...   |1255   | 101245

Doing this we will keep our objects un-duplicated, they will share the same administrative data and they will be updated properly. User can choose what he/she wants to translate -(exactly, what columns of the table should be translated) and for other modules? The other modules will be totally unaware that something was changed - nothing changes for them.

Consider this query - it creates new vocabulary:

INSERT INTO vocabulary (name, nodes, description, multiple, 
required, hierarchy, relations, weight, vid) VALUES ('New vocabulary', 
'page', '', '0', '1', '2', '0', '0', '88')

before it is issued (that means - somewhere before _db_query() ) it may be altered to this

INSERT INTO vocabulary (name, nodes, en_description, multiple, 
required, hierarchy, relations, weight, vid) VALUES ('New vocabulary', 
'page', '', '0', '1', '2', '0', '0', '88')

Do you see "en_description"? Only one column needs to be translated - not the whole table, we can change original query, we do not need to make separate tables. Of course, the colums must exist, but this would be task for administrative part of module - in administration stage, when user enables multi-language versions of something, the columns will be created created automatically and their names stored.

the problem is: