First Impressions

[jsoo]

Sam: finally getting a chance to have a closer look at Escher. For now
just a new notes from the install process and a few general
impressions.

In php.ini the directives for PDO drivers I have look a bit different
than what you suggest in INSTALL.txt. I already had the appropriate
drivers enabled but it took me a few minutes to realize this and then
simply check phpinfo() to make sure they were enabled. Might want to
add a note to that effect to INSTALL.txt.

I first tried using an sqlite3 db. I couldn't get past step 2 by
checking the "ignore error" option, so just switched to MySQL instead.
(This was in OmniWeb and that might have been the cause; as you'll see
below I had other issues with it also; haven't yet tried this in
another browser.)

The first time I logged in OmniWeb crashed. No problem on second
attempt.

Impressions from my quick look: I love the role-based access settings.
Ditto that you can create new tags directly in the admin interface.

EditArea is doing odd things in OmniWeb -- all colored text has a gray
'shadow'. It works fine in Safari. I haven't used EditArea much but
hadn't seen this before.

Browsing images via a text dropdown is obviously not ideal...

On a quick look the Radiant-style page manager looks good. I'm
wondering about large numbers of articles and options for sorting/
listing them.

I can see it's going to take me a while to come to grips with the
relationships between pages, templates/snippets/etc., and URLs.

[Art Age Software]

> In php.ini the directives for PDO drivers I have look a bit different
> than what you suggest in INSTALL.txt. I already had the appropriate
> drivers enabled but it took me a few minutes to realize this and then
> simply check phpinfo() to make sure they were enabled. Might want to
> add a note to that effect to INSTALL.txt.

What platform are you running Escher on? Windows?

> I first tried using an sqlite3 db. I couldn't get past step 2 by
> checking the "ignore error" option, so just switched to MySQL instead.
> (This was in OmniWeb and that might have been the cause; as you'll see
> below I had other issues with it also; haven't yet tried this in
> another browser.)

Don't think this would be a browser issue. More likely a platform issue.

> The first time I logged in OmniWeb crashed. No problem on second
> attempt.

Could be a fluke, or maybe a jquery issue? I don't run OmniWeb and
have not tested on it.

> EditArea is doing odd things in OmniWeb -- all colored text has a gray
> 'shadow'. It works fine in Safari. I haven't used EditArea much but
> hadn't seen this before.

Again, I don't use OmniWeb, but happy to accept patches to improve
Escher's behavior under it. EditArea is just a plugin. Easily replaced
with another syntax hilighter if you have one that works better in
OmniWeb.

> Browsing images via a text dropdown is obviously not ideal...

Great opportunity for a plugin here. Also, the admin UI is far from
polished. A lot of improvements to be made there. I consider the
Escher internals (the "Engine") to be far more "production-ready" than
the admin UI.

> On a quick look the Radiant-style page manager looks good. I'm
> wondering about large numbers of articles and options for sorting/
> listing them.

Yes, I think an alternative UI for navigating and searching large
lists of child pages (eg. blog posts) is in order.

> I can see it's going to take me a while to come to grips with the
> relationships between pages, templates/snippets/etc., and URLs.

Quick mapping from Txp to Escher:

Txp Page -> Escher Template
Txp Form -> Escher Snippet
Txp Section -> Escher Parent Page
Txp Article -> Escher Page Part

URLs mapping is very straight-forward. Follow a page's hierarchy from
the root page through all the page's ancestors down to the target
page. Concatenate all these pages' slugs, separated by a forward
slash, and you have that page's URL. Think of the page hierarchy as
the directory hierarchy of a static web site.

The nice thing about this approach is you can have any URL structure
you like, and you are not limited to a single flat set of "sections"
at the top level as in Textpattern. Every page that has child pages is
a "section" in effect. And any page can choose its template. You are
not limited to section-based templating as in Textpattern.

[jsoo]

On Nov 28, 1:35 pm, Art Age Software <artag...@gmail.com> wrote:
> What platform are you running Escher on? Windows?

No, Mac. My php.ini doesn't have any extensions of the format
pdo_sqlite.so as you show in INSTALL.txt. To be honest I can't
remember if I'm using the default PHP build that comes with Mac OS X.6
or not, but I'm pretty sure it is the default. Again, all the
necessary pdo drivers were enabled by default. You point this out in
INSTALL.txt; my first instinct to check that they were enabled was to
look at my php.ini file, so all I'm suggesting is an additional note
to the effect "if you aren't sure if the appropriate PDO drivers are
enabled, you can run phpinfo() to check".

>
> > I first tried using an sqlite3 db. I couldn't get past step 2 by
>

> Don't think this would be a browser issue. More likely a platform issue.
>

Tried again; it's permissions. Initially I hadn't made the db web-
writable. Stupid, I know, but then again Escher was so good about
catching other permissions issues.

> > The first time I logged in OmniWeb crashed. No problem on second
> > attempt.
>
> Could be a fluke, or maybe a jquery issue? I don't run OmniWeb and
> have not tested on it.

Sure, could be a fluke -- I'll pay more attention if it happens again.

> EditArea is just a plugin. Easily replaced
> with another syntax hilighter if you have one that works better in
> OmniWeb.

The little bit I've looked at EditArea outside Escher I did not see
this issue. Not a high priority; just logging stuff FYI.

> Quick mapping from Txp to Escher:

Thanks; I had missed the metadata area on my first cursory look, and
so didn't see the "slug" setting. All in all the URL mapping and the
page/template/snippet system looks great; also the ability to add
metadata types and parts to pages.

[Art Age Software]

> No, Mac. My php.ini doesn't have any extensions of the format
> pdo_sqlite.so as you show in INSTALL.txt. To be honest I can't
> remember if I'm using the default PHP build that comes with Mac OS X.6
> or not, but I'm pretty sure it is the default. Again, all the
> necessary pdo drivers were enabled by default. You point this out in
> INSTALL.txt; my first instinct to check that they were enabled was to
> look at my php.ini file, so all I'm suggesting is an additional note
> to the effect "if you aren't sure if the appropriate PDO drivers are
> enabled, you can run phpinfo() to check".

Hmm. I'm on a Mac too. Strange it would be different. Can you send me
the relevant lines from your PHP config so I can see what it looks
like? BTW, Escher will detect of the PDO drivers are not installed and
will warn the user in that case.

> Tried again; it's permissions. Initially I hadn't made the db web-
> writable. Stupid, I know, but then again Escher was so good about
> catching other permissions issues.

Strange, Escher does check for a writable db directory. It should have
complained (and does so on my install).

[jsoo]

On Nov 28, 4:50 pm, Art Age Software <artag...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hmm. I'm on a Mac too. Strange it would be different. Can you send me
> the relevant lines from your PHP config so I can see what it looks
> like? BTW, Escher will detect of the PDO drivers are not installed and
> will warn the user in that case.

Will do.

> Strange, Escher does check for a writable db directory. It should have
> complained (and does so on my install).

I mean I failed to make the sqlite file itself web-writable. Escher
did the db directory permissions check correctly.

[Art Age Software]

> I mean I failed to make the sqlite file itself web-writable. Escher
> did the db directory permissions check correctly.

Oh. No need to create the file ahead of time. Escher should create it
for you as long as you have a writable directory.

[jsoo]

On Nov 28, 11:51 am, jsoo <croqu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> EditArea is doing odd things in OmniWeb -- all colored text has a gray
> 'shadow'. It works fine in Safari. I haven't used EditArea much but
> hadn't seen this before.

This is akin to a known EditArea issue with Safari, since corrected:

<http://sourceforge.net/projects/editarea/forums/forum/556920/topic/
3818864>

I resolved it by setting OmniWeb's per-site preferences to spoof as
Safari 4 for my Escher site. (Oddly, this didn't work when spoofing as
Safari 5, even though Safari 5 itself works fine.)

Also, I found it very easy to give et: tags their own highlight color.
I have simply hacked EditArea's html.js for now.