i am currently modifying the skins to output true and validated xhtml 1.0 (transitional, that is). because this is quite an extensive task that affects a bunch of skins and macros (returning html code) i'd like to kinldy ask you to wait a little bit with your next check-ins, at least if skins are concerned.

btw. i'd like to modify the functions that render html output in a way that there is a set of global skins defining the html that will be called from the function with a parameter object instead "res.writing" the whole html data from within the function. is that okay with you?

update: i made a first step with the xhtml migration as well with the new way how html macros (ie. macros returning html tags) are rendered (as described inside) and already checked it into cvs. please be aware that this stuff is still in development and i cannot guarantee whether it's buggy or not (and sorry, i won't be able to continue before tuesday).

I just commited a patch to CVS to get rid of dual skin managing infrastructure in weblogs: "skinmanager" containing the skins and "skins" doing functional management on them. From now on, everything is contained and managed within the skinmgr prototype. The direct benefit is that some code becomes a bit nicer, but the real reason is to make the skin manager less dependent on its surrounding (I was playing with plugging a skinmanager at antville root level, wich is now possible with a few additional hacks, but it's also possible that somebody might want to plug it into a different application altogether.) Let me know if you encounter any problems (in your local installations - it's not on antville.org yet).

PS: An interesting experiment: update to the newest CVS version and then add

skins = mountpoint(skinmgr)

in root/type.properties. Then invoke URL /skins in your antville root. While the skinmanager itself would work, you'll get errors from the security functions and rendering functions which expect a weblog object to be around. If we can solve these errors (not just in a per-case basis by making root look like weblog, but by defining some standard modes of interaction) we'd be able to get true meaningful modularity, I think.

last night i committed a new set of updates into CVS. changes are:

• stories do not change the URL anymore whether they are part of a topic or not; story-URLs will now follow this scheme: [weblog]/stories/[story-ID]. this means that the permalink is now a *real* permalink.
• this problem is solved, which also changed the URL of comments: the new scheme is [weblog]/stories/[story-ID]/comments/[comment-ID]. this allowes unlimited nested comments (i stopped testing after > 100 levels ;-)
• every form now contains an "action"-attribute (i hope i didn't forget one), the action itself is assigned to res.data.action (accessible in skins as response.action) in the appropriate .hac-files.
• changed weblogcount-macro: by default it now only counts the public weblogs, with the optional parameter count="all" it counts all hosted weblogs.
• changed frontpage: now total number of hosted weblogs plus the number of public ones is displayed, the list of last updated weblogs only appears if there are any to show.
• there is now one "delete"-action which allows the creator of a weblog to remove it. i didn't link it somewhere, mainly because i don't know where one would expect this link (any suggestions?)