There are a lot of modules that make up a forum in Drupal. Advanced Forum attempts to make it easier for users by allowing many of those modules to have their stuff show up in the author section of the forum posts. It does this by making use of the preprocess system built into core of Drupal 6 (and backported into Drupal 5). For those not familiar with the preprocess system, it's a wonderful thing. For any template file on your site, any module out there can add variables to it just by implementing the preprocess hook. In this case, I'm dealing with the "author pane" template which is used by both Advanced Forum and Advanced Profile Kit. So all those modules out there only need to implement one preprocess hook and, viola, both modules get their goods.
In theory, it's an excellent way for one module to add their stuff to another. In practice, it failed miserably. Two months ago, I filed issues in seven queues (and an eighth added a bit later) giving them the hook code in a file they only needed to drop into their directory and commit. I did everything but push the button for them. All they needed to do was add this hook and their users could get their stuff into the their forum posts and profiles with no effort. I expected the maintainers would be happy I made it so easy for them.
Instead, I was mostly ignored. Two of the modules weren't interested because they're an API, though one of them finally consented that the module implementing the hook should be the one holding the code, API or not. The other offered to put it in one of their sub modules, which I was fine with, but then they never followed through. I realize everyone is busy and wasn't expecting instant results but it's been two months of users being confused, trying to understand how to get the data from these other modules to show up in their forums. Two months of me telling them they need to add the file manually because the maintainers haven't done it yet.
Finally, I had enough. Because this needs to work with both Advanced Forum and Advanced Profile Kit, pulling the hooks back into AF wasn't an option. This would make APK dependent on AF, which was unacceptable. Trying to put them in both modules would result in namespace collisions and, even if I if tested around that, tons of duplicated code. So, grudgingly, I decided the only way out of this was to create a third module.
Enter Author Pane. This module exists just to be a dependency of AF & APK and hold the code the other maintainers wouldn't touch. It seems silly to create a module to implement hooks on behalf of other modules but it was the best I could come up with. As of the next releases I do, both AF and APK will depend on this module. It seems strange to be sad about releasing a new module, but it's a sad situation. I'm very disappointed that it came to this. So many people give lip service to wanting better forums and better profiles with Drupal and, when I try to make it easier, I'm met with silence and outright resistance. What ever happened to cooperation?
