docs/skin.txt

   1 skin.txt
   2
   3 This document describes the overall architecture of MediaWiki's HTML rendering
   4 code as well as some history about the skin system. It is placed here rather
   5 than in comments in the code itself to help reduce the code size.
   6
   7 == Version 1.6 and greater ==
   8
   9 PHPTal skins doesn't exist anymore. They were replaced by SkinTemplate skins,
  10 introduced since 1.4 to remove the depedency of PHPTal.
  11
  12 A new experimental (disabled by default) callback-based template processor
  13 has been introduced to try to speed up the generation of html pages. See for
  14 example skins/disabled/MonoBookCBT.php.
  15
  16 You can find more informations at http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Skins.
  17
  18
  19 == Version 1.4 ==
  20
  21 MediaWiki still use the PHPTal skin system introduced in version 1.3 but some
  22 changes have been made to the file organisation.
  23
  24 PHP class and PHPTal templates have been moved to /skins/ (respectivly from
  25 /includes/ and /templates/). This way skin designer and end user just stick to
  26 one directory.
  27
  28 Two samples are provided to start with, one for PHPTal use (SkinPHPTal.sample)
  29 and one without (Skin.sample).
  30
  31
  32 == Version 1.3 ==
  33
  34 The following might help a bit though.
  35
  36 Firstly, there's Skin.php; this file will check various settings, and it
  37 contains a base class from which new skins can be derived.
  38
  39 Before version 1.3, each skin had its own PHP file (with a sub-class to Skin)
  40 to generate the output. The files are:
  41  * SkinCologneBlue.php
  42  * SkinNostalgia.php
  43  * SkinStandard.php
  44  * SkinWikimediaWiki.php
  45 If you want to change those skins, you have to edit these PHP files.
  46
  47 Since 1.3 a new special skin file is available: SkinPHPTal.php. It makes use of
  48 the PHPTal template engine and allows you to separate code and layout of the
  49 pages. The default 1.3 skin is MonoBook and it uses the SkinPHPTAL class.
  50
  51 To change the layout, just edit the PHPTal template (templates/xhtml_slim.pt)
  52 as well as the stylesheets (stylesheets/monobook/*).
  53
  54
  55 == pre 1.3 version ==
  56
  57 Unfortunately there isn't any documentation, and the code's in a bit of a mess
  58 right now during the transition from the old skin code to the new template-based
  59 skin code in 1.3.