POTM for June: chx

I'm going to bend the rules a bit for June. Technically POTM is for open source projects, not people. But this month I've decided to go ahead and declare Karoly "chx" Negyesi, Drupal developer, as my open source "project" of the month. :-)

Who is chx? You may know him as the original head of the Drupal security team. He's also done some work with Drupal's internationalization system, what with being Hungarian working on an English-primary CMS.

Lately, though, chx has become "The Menu Guy". That is, he's completely rewritten the Menu system for Drupal 6, and it is a dramatic improvement. Faster, more efficient, more readable, and even documented. In fact, chx wrote the documentation before the code. Why don't more developers (myself included) do that? That also opened the doors for my main Drupal 6 contribution, page callback files.

If that wasn't enough, he then locked himself in a Chicago suburb with Drupal's Jeff Eaton for a week to rewrite, again, Drupal's Form API. The "FAP 3" system is cleaner than its predecessors and adds still more functionality, the most significant of which, I believe, is robust support for dynamic Ajax forms. Yummy.

There is also a running gag in the Drupal world that "chx cannot be distracted". I'll let him explain where that joke comes from, but I will present further evidence, from last spring's OSCMS 2007 / DrupalCon Sunnyvale conference. Not even his inflatable effigy can be distracted!

chx recently posted a blog entry with a ChipIn link, so I've decided to send this month's donation his way. Congratulations, chx. You're now a project. :-)