[xwiki-devs] [Proposal] Provide UI extension points in the current set of templates

Hi, in 4.x we introduced UI Extensions (UIX) and "Extension Points", it allows applications to come and plug their bits of UI where it is possible [1]. 5.x is a good time to provide a list of useful Extension Points (UIXP) in our velocity templates, allowing applications to plug themselves in, for example : the header, before the content, the footer, etc. To allow this I can think of 2 strategies: == 1) Manually add UIXPs == Actions: * Discuss where are the common places where applications would like to plug (in our opinion) * Make a lengthy list * Vote it * Introduce an API call (services.uix.getExtensions()) for each item in the list * Commit it Pros: * We can carefully build the UI API Cons: * We can't think of everything * Long process * Overridden templates won't display the extensions == 2) Instrument our templating mechanism with UIXPs == Actions: * Modify the #template macro so that it create UIXPs before and after the parseTemplate call. Calling #template.vm would create the following UIXP: ** platform.template.global.before (or: platform.template.global.above, platform.template.global.top) ** platform.template.global.after (or: platform.template.global.below, platform.template.global.bottom) * Commit it Pros: * A lot of available UIXPs * We've worked on our template architecture for a long time, UIXP would benefit from that * Quick process Cons: * It'd make our current template architecture an API ... but since templates can be overridden in skins, it already is one. * A lot of API calls (but tests with YourKit shows that it doesn't impact performance) Note: 2) doesn't exclude 1), we'd probably still need to introduce UIXP within templates, but we'd have way less UIX API calls with this method. WDYT ? I guess it's quite obvious that my opinion is biased, I've started playing with 2) and it's quite cool :) [1] http://extensions.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Extension/UIExtension+Module Thanks, JV.