Re: [silpa-discuss] webfonts flask extension

[Nithin Saji]

Hello everyone,

I had been working on the flask web fonts extension for some time and had a few speed bumps in between.Now the back end for the extension is in place and I had been working on the interface for the past week.I am not  entirely sure what has to be done here as I have limited UI design experience and needs some feedback.

currently the extension can 

1.give a JSON response with a list of fonts that can be filtered by language from a configurable sub domain or path

2.Serve the font files from a  configurable directory and path

3.A api which serves text for any language wrapped in JSON

3.Provide an interface  for showing the fonts.

For the interface I have made  an interface which currently only list the fonts.

https://github.com/diadara/flask-webfonts

heres' the code and an example app is included, but doesn't have any documentation

 Here is the ui I had made earlier  

http://flaskexample-diadara.rhcloud.com/Webfonts

How much of this has to be changed or retained ?

As I said earlier I have limited UI experience and I  realize that something like this may take some  time for me http://www.google.com/fonts/ 

.And also I had used Jquery and font-face css  to manipulate the fonts earlier and it was very messy. Mediawiki's jquery.webfonts is a  perfect fit for this..So what all should be packed into the extension ? 

 Also I was using the JSON apis created by me for providing font info for the new UI. I went with this  as this seemed very customizable  and doesn't require any changes tot the python code if this was to be replaced as with the case of  a jinja based template . Is this acceptable or should a jinja template be used.

I have been going back and forth with  the design and I need to make some clear cut decision before going further.     

Nithin

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 9:45 AM, Vasudev Kamath <address@hidden> wrote:

Hi Nitin,

As I said right place to discuss this will be in SILPA mailing list.
I'm currently adding it in CC while replying you can simply reply to
this list and please subscribe to the same.

On Thu, Aug 1, 2013 at 1:43 AM, Nithin Saji <address@hidden> wrote:
> I wasn't clear on the webfonts extension features. Can you elaborate on a
> few points
>
> 1.If the extension provides a full fledged interface for showcasing webfonts
> and an api for using webfonts in any site, then why can't it be a flask
> based cms dedicated for the same purpose

If you can achieve something with a simple extension why do you want
to create an entire CMS? So my first suggestion to you was see how
Flask extensions are designed what are the restrictions we can discuss
further once you have this *feasibility* study. Please provide us some
figures and we can discuss further.

If we really can't achieve this as extension then lets integrate it
into SILPA than trying to write another app for this purpose. Whole
idea in FOSS  is don't reinvent the wheel (but I will add one more
phrase "unless really required")

> rather than a flask extension which
> add certain features to an existing application ? I am asking this as in
> most use cases the app will consist only of the extension.

People who want to use API can directly use it from our site if they
want to show case fonts as part of their website why are you forcing
them to use totally different site for this purpose?

>
> 2.Since the app is supposed to handle 1000s of fonts ,I am asumming it needs
> a database backend rather than a python based one which is available now

That was just a use case I provided but whether it is 1 or 100 all we
need is a flat file recognizing the fonts in given path and have it
store in some flat file. What more we would require is language of
fonts some fonts like GNU FreeFont supports multiple languages where
as some other are specific to single language so to provide Google
font directory like interface what we would need is some text which
can be *redered* using font.

If you ask me all this can be achieved by having some predefined text
for certain languages shipped with extension and option for user to
enter texts for his choice of language which can stored as plain text.
To maximize access speed we can have index with each in form of

lang: text_filename

I think for this we can simply use serializing feature of Python.

I always tend to avoid complexity of handling database as long as we
have some good alternative.

>
> PS: I am on a very restristictive net ,no irc will arange something in the
> coming days

Also please submit your evaluation form we are running out of time.

@Santhosh can you please comment on above.



--

Vasudev Kamath
http://copyninja.info
address@hiddenfrndk.de|vasudev.homelinux.net}