First and foremost, I am a coder of display. So that means my focus is XHTML and CSS with a little bit of PHP knowledge tossed in. On top of that, I am rather persistent on sticking to the standards set forth by the W3C and try to follow them as much as possible. Moreso than that, I like my XHTML output readable.
The readability of the code was the first thing that got me started on making a new base theme for pingVision and the Drupal community. Much of the code output by the CMS was on a single line. This includes lists, nested divs and various other parts. It made finding left open elements and missing tags a chore. A lot of times I ended up pasting the code into my handy text-editor of choice, entering line breaks and indenting things properly. It was a severe waste of time and slowed down the process.
I will not claim Hunchbaque is perfectly to my liking yet. Since as I am a novice at PHP, there are certain things I have not yet learned to do within the Drupal template system. Some of the menus are still on single lines, but I have a feeling I will be able to isolate those in time. The other thing that I am not quite happy about is that a lot of blocks are not indented in respect to the main page.tpl.php code. This is only a minor annoyance. The labels on the closing tags will help work around this for now without indenting all the other tpl files.
I will admit, I am a fan of Textpattern. I actually still use it in my free time and on small sites. One thing I always have loved about a fresh install of the system is the default look. It is straight black and white with very minimal styling. It is a blank canvas and is begging to be painted on. I don't need a theme that has a lot of styling and color on it. It will just be tossed aside so it does not get in the way. I want a clean slate to start with. A basic framework with a simple CSS starting point is the best way to go since all sites should be seen as individual and fresh.
On my first few themes, I was getting really frustrated with the core Drupal CSS. I found with all the base style overrides I was doing, the stylesheets were getting very bloated. I decided it was best for them to go as well. The only default install file left is admin.css. That one made the cut since what it does is very minimal in the grand scheme of the site. All the tidbits from the removed styles that are actually needed are then transferred to the theme's style.css. So instead of having to override them, you can overwrite them.
Future updates to Hunchbaque will be coming soon. It will grow as I learn new things about the theme engine and also as pingVision uses it as a base for more projects. As Drupal 6 gets closer, it will also be modified to take advantage of the changes that will come with that release. It is a project that will never really be "done". It will just continue to evolve along with my needs and experience.
Also, since this is my first contribution, I will be hightlighting my experiences in a later article. It is my hope that it will encourage others to contribute to the community.
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