Constants Namespaces in .tt files

[fu]

I'm looking for feedback on Bug 3170: Constant Namespaces in DW::Template.

Basically, right now our constants in .tt files can be found under email.*, site.*, roots.*, etc, and the more constants we have, the more likely it is that we'll accidentally have a namespace collision. So I would like to have all constants be under just the site namespace.

That is, instead of using:
email.webmaster
roots.site
site.name

We can use:
site.email.webmaster
site.root
site.name

In some cases, it's longer, but the additional clarity should be worth the extra characters. (Plus it would also make it easier to avoid mistakes -- I found several instances of dw.* in the files, which are blank, but luckily cause no issues)

( List of proposed new namespace )

I'd like to point out, in particular,
site.name = $LJ::SITENAME
site.names.short = $LJ::SITENAMESHORT
site.names.abbrev = $LJ::SITENAMEABBREV

which suffers from inconsistency/needing to be aware of the technical limitations.

An alternative:
site.name.site = $LJ::SITENAME
site.name.short = $LJ::SITENAMESHORT
site.name.abbrev = $LJ::SITENAMEABBREV

But that suffers from the problem that the most commonly used variable, site.name, becomes long/ridiculous/redundant.

Updates to "checkfriends" protocol mode

[fu]

Working on some long-overdue updates to the checkfriends protocol mode.

Changes not yet live on the site but should be for future code push, but here's the run down:

• checkfriends no longer works. Instead, use checkforupdates.


• required arguments to checkforupdates is only authentication information


• optional argument lastupdate (in "0000-00-00 00:00:00" format). This is the last update time you have, from previous calls to checkforupdates


• optional argument filter. This is the name of a content filter whose members you want to filter to.


• return value: new: 1 or 0. 1 only if you pass in a lastupdate and there are new items since then. 0 in all other cases.


• return value: interval: number of seconds before you can next check for updates. If you check before time expires, you'll get a cached value


• return value: lastupdate: time someone last updated, in "0000-00-00 00:00:00" format

It's almost exactly the same as checkfriends; the only differences from the frontend are the name change, and replacing the mask argument with a filter argument because the trustmask is no longer relevant since we split up access and subscription.

ETA: Added preliminary documentation on the wiki.

My dev resolution: work on getting rid of BML

[foxfirefey]

So, I'm going to try and post the current status of that project every month. I certainly don't think I can finish that project (at least not on my own!) but I am going to make a good dent in it.

Does anybody have any dev resolutions? Or is anyone looking to start doing dev this year and wants some mentoring?

( List of the files and their linecounts )