skins: the "custom" dir will disappear and may disorient users

[muxator]

There is the possibility that some Etherpad users rely on using the static/custom directory for solving specific problems:

For example, in #2526, @lpagliari gave the advice:

I've added the following code to my src/static/custom/pad.js, which also solves the issue:

The work on skins (#3475) will break these use cases (quick one-off editing of static/custom/pad.js).

In its current state, a user on 1.8 would need to either:

• edit skins/no-skin/pad.js. git diff would then be non empty. I personally like this because the modification would be explicit, but people not proficient with version control could end up being disoriented.
• create a new skin copying skins/no-skin, performing all the modifications he wants, and edit settings.json, putting a new value in skinName

I hope this is acceptable, as allowing yet another level of customization would probably be too much.
But if we think this is going to cause big annoyances, a fix will be needed before releasing 1.8 (eventually just in the documentation / release notes).

RFC welcome.

[seballot]

Hi !

As I already expressed here, I think we should keep the old custom folder. But I also understand your arguments about not having too much levels of customization :)

From a user perspective, what I would like to do is

1. Choose a theme from a list of themes (I don't want to know how those theme works)
2. If I want to changes small things to fit my needs, editing a custom file is easy understandable

From a developer perspective, if I want to developp a new theme, or fix some issue with an existing theme, I can contribute with a PR

I think what you are proposing is acceptable, the only inconvenient is that in both cases we could not get the updates from the theme. If I have locally customize a theme to fit my need, then upgrading my version of etherpad could (respectively to your two options)

1. Overwrite my customization if I am not careful or if I don't know so much about git
2. Not affect my customization because I am using an old version copied locally

[muxator]

v1.7.5 was released on 2019-01-26 and includes the work done on Colibris.

The release had to be made immediately in order to start working on #3540 early in the development cycle, since that line of work will touch a lot of files.

Closing this issue. The changelog includes some upgrade notes that instruct about how to upgrade to 1.7.5 in presence of custom scripts.