= Design

Design is a Rails plugin that helps you to set different, custom designs for
your Rails application, or event letting your users do so.

== On what we mean by 'design'

By 'design', we mean a set of elements that are taken together to built
your application's visual identity. In this plugin, you'll work with the 
following elements:

* *template* - definition of the how much boxes the visual identity will have, together with their sizes and positions.
* *theme* - CSS definition for fonts, colors, backgrounds and 
* *icon_theme* - set of icons to be used as action buttons in your application.

== Declaring and using usign in controllers

(the settings names are fictional)

 class MyController < ActionController::Base

   box1 = Design::Box.new(:number => 1)
   box1.blocks << Design::Block.new(:position => 1) do
     "Welcome to my website!"
   end

   box2 = Design::Box.new(:number => 2)
   box2.blocks << Design::MainBlock.new(:position => 1)

   box3 = Design::Box.new(:number => 3)
   box3.blocks << Design::Block.new(:position => 1) do
     "This in my footer"
   end
   
   design :fixed => {
     :template => 'header_main_footer',
     :theme => 'green_fields',
     :icon_theme => 'discrete',
     :boxes => [ box1, box2, box3 ]
   }
 end

Design will then know that your design has three boxes, each one with a block inside it. To use Design as your layout
generator, you just add something like this in aplicattion's layout:

 <%= design_display(yield) %>

The argument do +design_display_boxes()+ is the content you want to be the main
content. Almost always you'll want to pass +yield+ (the resulting content for
the current action) there, but you can pass anything you want.

== Generating the migration file

This plugin needs the definition of some database tables. To create this table run the command

  ./script/generate design_migration


This command will generate the migration file needed by plugin.

Run this migration to create the database with the command:

  rake db:migrate

== Controller subclassing and design

Designs are inherited through the inheritance tree. This way you can for
example declare the use of a design in ApplicationController and let the other
controllers abstract that fact that they are using design.

== Storing design information in ActiveRecord models: +acts_as_design+

You can also use ActiveRecord objects 


== Creating a Block

The blocks must to be created on a folder with the name of the block inside the folder 'app/design_blocks' by default.

Imagine we wanna create a block that keep all your favorite links.

To do that we do the steps:
  - mkdir 'app/design_root' #FIXME the plugin can create this folder on instalation
  - ./script/generate design_block favorite_links. This will generate the block favorite_links on folder
    'app/design_blocks'.
  - Change the template generated. Everything it's fine now ;)


Notes: You can change the design_blocks root folder on your environment config file ' config/environment.rb' adding the
line.

  DesignConfiguration.design_blocks_root= 'folder_of_design_blocks_root'


== Suggestions, Bug reports and Patches

Send them to leandronunes@gmail.com and terceiro@colivre.coop.br

== License

design - a web design composer and editor plugin for Rails
Copyright (C) 2007 Colivre <http://www.colivre.coop.br>

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Please see the file +COPYING+ (distributed together with the plugin) for
the full terms of distribution.