New Helloworld extension for developers

[schulle4u]

A lot of work has been done recently to unify coding and documentation standards across Datenstrom Yellow and it's extensions. To have an always up-to-date coding/documentation template for new extensions and omit copying old styles and mistakes over and over from my other extensions, I've created an example extension named helloworld.

The repository contains an example shortcut which shows animated text. Shortcuts probably are the most used case when creating new extensions and they are easy to understand for new users. This project however should not be considered as a replacement for the API documentation. The repository also contains a documentation template which you can use to write down all relevant information about your extension. Following this template you also should be able to use the publish command. I'll try to keep this up-to-date with latest coding and documentation standards used in the published extensions.

Is something missing in this template you would like to see? Just let me know. I've primarily created this for my own purposes, but maybe this can be useful for other developers too.

Steffen

[markseuffert]

Thank you Steffen, great idea.

About coding/documentation standards. In the beginning we were embedded software developers/designers and pretended that every programming language is like C. It's surprising how far you can get with an optimistic tunnel view. As for the current standard, we threw the old one overboard and started looking for a new one. One that's common among web developers/designers. Ideally we would have taken something established, but we use many programming languages in Datenstrom Yellow and every programming language does its own stylistic thing. So not without doubts and hesitation, I defined a middle ground and applied it to all programming languages. The new standard is a mix of K&R, JavaScript, CSS and Python. There are only four spaces, double quotes, Unix line endings and braces that open on the same line.

To sum it up, which standard we use is not that important, but that we all use a common one.

[schulle4u]

Task automation is great to have. On the other hand it is good to make a code review every now and then, perhaps this can reveal small mistakes. Common tasks such as converting tabstops to spaces in all extensions easily can be done using simple search/replace functions e.g. in text editors such as Notepad++ or even using the command line. In more complex extensions I personally like to have an eye on every individual file.

[markseuffert]

There's a new documentation standard called "marzipan edition", as discussed in #807. If anyone is looking for an example, the helloworld extension should be up-to-date with latest coding and documentation standards.