For THEME Designers: Helping Patchers Out

[ninetydegrees]

Here are a few things you can do to help developers patching themes. If you have the time and energy to do any of them, please consider it. Otherwise, don't worry, 'k?

-- Alphabetizing themes when your submit them seems like a tiny detail but actually makes editing our giant spreadsheet (currently at over 1,000 lines) ten times easier.

-- Keeping code lines alphabetized and removing any empty ones such as set blahblahblah = ""; makes patching much easier and faster.

-- Making sure you have set color_page_text as black may not be the default for everybody.

-- Keeping the # symbol before any color code. This one is pretty unexpected and very easy to miss so pretty please?

-- Using #000 for black and #fff for white instead of the full hexadecimal code. This works for #333, #666, etc.

-- Setting apart code lines which aren't color settings or things which won't end up in the theme such as module settings is very helpful too.

-- Sorting colors into categories -- page, header & footer / entry and comment / module -- would be most helpful, even if it's just by adding blank lines between section.
Besides testing, reformatting themes to sort settings into categories and adding proper headers is what takes patchers most time.
Here's a good example of what a color-only theme look like and here's another one with one with fonts, images and custom CSS.

Also, we've had about 200 new submissions since August. What have you been eating?! *is stunned*

Comments

[timeasmymeasure]

I've noticed that not a lot of submissions have been claimed for patching in the last few weeks and I was wondering if y'all (general DW patchers/developers/those who understand bugzilla's processes ;p) would prefer we ease up on submitting to dreamscapes for a while. Of course if that's not the case, I certainly plan to keep on submitting, I do this for the love of it, after all; I'm just checking to be sure :)

[ninetydegrees]

As far as I'm concerned, go ahead but be aware that it may be quite a while before they get patched unless other people start working on this.

[timeasmymeasure]

Ah, I get it. Do you know if there are any of those patching tutorials going around?

[ninetydegrees]

There are but could you tell me which OS are you on so that I point you in the right direction?

[timeasmymeasure]

Windows 7, and thanks for this :)

[ninetydegrees]

Same as me then. Have you ever done any dev work before? Because there are two tutorials, one for the style patching itself and one for setting everything up on a Windows OS.

[timeasmymeasure]

Not yet :)

[ninetydegrees]

Ok so this is the guide I wrote for Windows newbies: Newbie Guide for Windows People Working on Minor Bugs.

I don't know what time it is in your part of the world and when you plan on doing this but I'm available on GoogleTalk if you need me or just want me to be there if you have questions (or you can comment here or PM me if you prefer) and I know there are always people on the #dreamwidth IRC channel willing to help.

[timeasmymeasure]

Thank you for all your help :)

[timeasmymeasure]

Hey, could you please direct me to the styles patching tutorial; in dire need over here, :P

Thanks for all the help so far!

[ninetydegrees]

Here you go: http://wiki.dwscoalition.org/notes/Newbie_Guide_for_People_Patching_Styles