if only...

Drupal things I wish existed :-)

Quick idea for a Google Doc node with in-place viewing and editing

I've often wished document editing were more user-friendly in Drupal. So I came up with this very half-baked idea to embed the viewing and editing of a Google Doc in a node field.

Drupal.org wishlist

  • Follow project
  • Follow user
  • Attribute issues with module versions on both defective version and resolved version
  • Attribute issues with related module (+version) for problems of inter-module interactions
  • Email notifications (or other kind of push)
  • A required description field on the project page that explains how its functionality integrates with Drupal core and other modules
  • Commit references in issues
  • Search for code in git

Wishlist for Drupal.org

Some random observations on the usability of Drupal.org after 5 years of using it daily. I hope to expand on these in the future.

Provide automatic links between module pages and handbook pages

Documentation on Drupal.org is hard to navigate. Handbook pages are mostly disconnected from module pages, which doesn't encourage module maintainers to produce consistent documentation.

A generic filter for system commands

For the information geek, we need a generic filter that sends the text fragment to any pre-defined system command, and sets the rendered HTML output as the output of the command. Graphviz Filter is a special case of such a filter, but we really need a generic system.

I'm thinking: gnuplot, LilyPond, LaTeX, etc. All housed under one roof.

Some design issues arise: Each of these programs produces output in a variety of formats.

Using Drupal to analyze Twitter data

The Twitter dataset is an insanely valuable source of useful social networking information. That explains the huge number of Twitter-related sites that spring up, each one performing one specific analysis of Twitter data. The one I was looking at today is TwitterSheep which just creates a tagadelic-type cloud of keywords, from a user's followers' bios. Pretty neat idea, but it was frustrating that the Web application didn't let me actually see who of my followers are in which category - and make a list out of them, and email them, etc.

Modules I would love to write (given enough resources etc.)

If you are ready to sponsor the creation of these modules, or want to help with their development, please contact me! And if they exist already, do let me know :-)

  • An infinite scroll Views 3.x pager plugin. The auto-scroller would refresh the view page with the contents of the next page, as returned by the pager.

  • Exporters (based on CTools Exportables) for blocks, menus, taxonomies and other core objects.

  • Single-field editor popups (based on Popups API).

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