[theme-reviewers] Question about ob_start and ob_get_clean (Vicky Arulsingam)

[Otto]

On Sat, Jul 2, 2011 at 7:30 PM, Darren Slatten <darrenslatten at gmail.com> wrote:
>> The user can do that anyway, and in a much more sane way. If the plugin
>> is hooked into wp_head, then it's using an action hook to do it.
>> Modifying the output is simply a matter of removing the plugin's hook
>> using remove_action and then adding its own hook using add_action.
>
> I already addressed this.

Could you please do so again? I must have missed it, because you're
still saying that your worse solution is somehow not worse.

When you start advocating output buffering, then you're kind of
automatically doing-it-wrong, from my point of view. I'm trying to
understand why you want to make it so strange and complicated instead
of using the simpler solutions, but for the life of me, I'm just not
seeing it.


>> remove_action alone, without an alternate function add, would work for
>> most of these cases.
>
> Most, but not all. What is your argument here...that we should prevent
> themes from giving admins the ability to achieve GREAT because WordPress
> core already provides GOOD?

Good *enough*, yes. And output buffering is not "great", it's "worse".
I would go so far as to say that it's "mindbogglingly insane", but you
might mistake my sarcasm for passive aggression. :P

Seriously, you're advocating using heavy duty string replacement and
regexp and similar functions to remove things, instead of what I see
as simply "turning that bit off". I don't understand your reasoning or
logic. It makes zero sense to me.

> Again, wishful thinking isn't a valid reason for rejecting themes that
> cater to real-world problems.

I don't doubt that your problems are "real-world". I simply reject
your solutions as being the incorrect ones.

> According to the WP stats, the number of sites using WordPress versions
> 2.7 and older represents 9.4% of all WordPress users. You're saying that
> any plugin that attempts to maintain backwards compatibility with those
> (millions of) sites by hooking a jQuery reference directly to wp_head
> (instead of using wp_enqueue_script) should be banned from the plugin
> directory?

"Delisted", not "banned". If the plugin wants to update, then it could
come back.

We don't need to be catering to older and insecure WordPress
installations. We don't need to be providing users with reasons not to
upgrade.

-Otto