TODO:
+ The contact.module was broken; a new patch for contact.module is needed.
+ Documentation is needed.
+ The most important modules need to be updated ASAP.
- Converted the Bluemarine theme from XTemplate to PHPTemplate.
- Moved the the Pushbutton theme and the Xtemplate engine to the contributions repository.
Drupal's existing caching mechanism doesn't perform well on highly dynamic websites in which the cache is flushed frequently. One example is a site that is under attack by a spambot that is posting spam comments every few seconds, causing all cached pages to be flushed every few seconds. Loose caching immediately flushes the cache only for specific users who have modified cached data (whether or not they are logged in), delaying the flushing of data for other users by several minutes.
(I rewrote the help text a bit and made minor changes to the code comments.)
There are 5 main functions that modules may now utilize to handle images:
* image_get_info() - this function checks a file. If it exists and is a valid image file, it will return an array containing things like the pixel dimensions of the image, plus the 'type' and common extension.
* image_scale - resizes a given image to fit within a given width / height dimensions, while maintaining aspect ratio (not distorting the image). This function can be used to generate thumbnails, or ensure a maximum resolution, etc.
* image_resize - similar to image_scale (but will not respect aspect ratio - may well distort the image).
* image_rotate - rotate an image by X degrees
* image_crop - crops an image to a given rectangle (defined as top-left x/y coordinates plus a width & height of the rectangle).
Contribution modules will now be able to rely on these base manipulation functions to offer additional functionality (such as image nodes, photo galleries, advanced image manipulation, etc).
* Less logic in theme code.
* Encourages use of the menu system.
* Easier to find where a title or breadcrumb comes from in other people's code because there are less places to look. Look in menu and then grep for the appropriate set function. Looking for calls to theme_page() is hard because there are too many of them.
* Very slightly more efficient.
Steven Wittens
Dries Buytaert