ProcessWire Weekly #78

Latest core updates: ProcessWire 2.6.23, the second release candidate for 2.7

As explained by Ryan in the latest processwire.com blog post, there's at least one more release candidate before the stable ProcessWire 2.7 can be released. RC2 is out already, and in addition to various minor tweaks and fixes, this version also introduces a bunch of upgrades to our translation tools.

Improvements for the translations tools

The most noteworthy update this week was aimed at improving the translation tools and introduces the following new features:

• Less clutter in the translation interface
  Displaying additional notes only if they have been specified and not repeating the translatable text pointlessly means that the translation tool now has a cleaner and less cluttered interface, which in turn means more content on each screen.
• Ability to hide terms already translated
  With a separate checkbox in the translation tool you can hide all the terms you've already translated, making the tool a lot more streamlined in certain use cases.
• Ability to specify terms that don't need a translation
  Supplying an equals sign ("=") as a translation lets the system know that a term doesn't need a separate translation for current language. This way translations are easier to manage, as such terms no longer turn up as "untranslated".
• Addition of a new lang-edit permission
  By adding the lang-edit permission via the permissions view ("Install predefined optional permissions") and applying it to specific roles (optionally combined with the page-edit-lang permissions for more fine-grained control) you can allow non-superusers to access the language settings and the translation tools.

Moving on to a more permissive licensing model

Another thing Ryan has explained in detail in his post is the planned license change from GPLv2 to MPL 2.0. The key points are as follows:

• There will be a license change for ProcessWire 3.x, and the same change is likely to be applied to either ProcessWire 2.7, or another version released soon after it.
• The license change is all about being more open, and being more obvious about it. The new license is going to be more permissive than our existing one.
• In addition to being a content management system, ProcessWire is also a framework, and this switch is part of our plan to be recognized as a serious contender in that genre.
• We've always supported releasing sites, site profiles, and modules under any non-GPL license, but that hasn't been obvious to all users, and switching to a more permissive license should help clear some unintended confusion.

For most users, the license change won't actually change anything at all. For anyone interested in developing larger applications using ProcessWire as a starting point, this will open new doors, and it will also give some users peace of mind when it comes to differing interpretations of our previous license.

Hopefully we'll be seeing a stable 2.7 release next week, but until then, feel free to keep testing the development branch. For more details about the translation tool updates and the license change, don't forget to check out Ryan's latest blog post!

New module: Textformatter Page Images by Christoph Thelen

Textformatter Page Images, the latest module from Christoph Thelen, adds support for embedding images into textarea content using a simple tag syntax. Originally a fork of the Textformatter Image Tags module with just a few minor modifications, by now this module includes a bunch of unique features of its own.

Textformatter Page Images turns simple tags into embedded images: [[images]] would output the first image from a field called "images", [[3,align_right]] would output the third image found from the first image field of the page and apply class "align_right" to it, and so on.

In case you're looking for a solution that allows embedding images into text fields using tag syntax rather than enabling a full-fledged RTE, this module is worth checking out. Thanks to Christoph for sharing it with us!

New module: Template Engine Jade by Diktus Dreibholz

Template Engine Jade, a new module by Diktus Dreibholz, adds support for the Jade templating language to the Template Engine Factory module. Behind the scenes the module makes use of a fork of the Jade.php project, which is a PHP port of the Jade templating language, originally designed to work with node.js.

If all that sounds a bit complicated, don't worry: you don't really have to worry about it at all. The whole point of Template Engine Factory, and specific Template Engines built on top of it, is abstracting and automating these things, so you can focus on building awesome stuff instead of worrying about setting up the development environment.

All you need to do to get started with Jade is installing the two modules mentioned above: Template Engine Factory and Template Engine Jade. Enable Jade from the settings of Template Engine Factory, and you're good to go. Check out the Template Engine Factory modules page for more instructions.

Thanks to Diktus for sharing this module with us – it's always good to have more options, and Jade looks like an interesting solution as far as template languages go!

Site of the week: CSDC Systems

CSDC Systems is a Toronto-based software company providing various enterprise-grade process automation solutions for governments, universities, courts, and large businesses around the globe.

With over 26 years in the business, it's not much of a surprise that they've made some name for themselves – though in this case we're mostly interested in their new website, designed and built by Pigtail Pundits, and introduced in a recent forum post.

To begin with, the company was in need of a new site to replace their existing Drupal-based site, which – according to Unni Krishnan of the Pigtail Pundits – was "difficult to update", design-wise outdated, and had what he describes as "maintenance issues".

The new site is powered by ProcessWire, makes use of the responsive Foundation front-end framework, includes a bunch of Pro modules (such as ProCache and FormBuilder) and, according to both testing tools and some hands-on testing, feels blazing fast. The design is simple, clean, uncluttered, and has a very professional feel to it too.

For more details check out the forum post, which manages to introduce both the background and the outcome of the project: objectives of the project, challenges the team had to face, technology they ended up implementing, and the results they got out of it. Sounds like this must've been one interesting project, to say the least!

Stay tuned for our next issue

That's it for the 78th issue of ProcessWire Weekly. We'll be back with more news, updates, and content Saturday, 14th of November. As always, ProcessWire newsletter subscribers will get our updates a few days later.

Thanks for staying with us, once again. Hope you've had a great and productive week, and don't forget to check out the ProcessWire forums for more interesting topics. Until next week, happy hacking with ProcessWire!