Textpattern CMS

#1 2008-06-20 02:18:53

jm

Plugin Author

From: Missoula, MT

Registered: 2005-11-27

Posts: 1,746

Website

Remove templating preferences

The admin templating prefs have been bugging me for awhile – I don’t see the point in having templating logic in preferences. For new users, it makes some of TXP seem magical and inflexible, which causes confusion. For me, it makes more sense to keep all templating within the presentation tab.

These are the prefs that I think should be removed:

• Date format. Posted already has a format attr
• Archive date format. format attr
• Auto-append comments. <txp:output_form form="comments_display"/>
• Popup comments. should be an attribute for comments_invite, or just manually coded (?parentid=<txp:article_id/>)
• Present comments as a numbered list. wraptag attr
• Prevent widowed words in article titles – no_widow attr
• Never show email address – comment_name needs a no_email attr

Last edited by jm (2008-06-20 02:20:23)

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#2 2008-06-20 07:39:55

Bloke

Developer

From: Leeds, UK

Registered: 2006-01-29

Posts: 11,448

Website GitHub

Re: Remove templating preferences

Some good ideas there jm, some of the prefs do seem mighty confusing for new folk. Here’s my take, fwiw.

jm wrote:

• Date format. Posted already has a format attr
• Archive date format. format attr

Yes but it’s useful to be able to set a date format for biffers like me who always forget the strftime hieroglyphics and/or use many Posted tags in different places with the same format. Heh, perhaps there’s never a need for more than one Posted tag and my designs should be simpler!

• Auto-append comments. <txp:output_form form="comments_display"/>

This is only annoying insofar as 95% of the time I don’t need comments for ‘corporate-looking’ sites. Having it opt-in rather than opt-out would make more sense for me, but I can’t speak for others. Should this be considered along with stuart’s disabled after thread, and the branding exercise? Default comments says “blog” to me rather than “cms”.

• Popup comments. should be an attribute for comments_invite, or just manually coded (?parentid=<txp:article_id/>)

Meh, never even spotted that option. Is there a point to it? It should probably be an attribute instead of a pref if there’s very little take-up of the option.

• Present comments as a numbered list. wraptag attr

Yes, lose it. More often than not plugins or commenting templates suggest turning this off anyway.

• Prevent widowed words in article titles – no_widow attr

Not sure. A global setting is handy for multiple <title /> tags in different sections instead of having to always remember to add it. I’m also generally not a fan of ‘negative logic’ options (yeah yeah, don’t look at my plugins ;-). See the next point.

• Never show email address – comment_name needs a no_email attr

This always grated with me. Changing the terminology in the latest release to “Hide e-mail address” was a great idea. I always had to stop and think “Hmm, never show my e-mail address, so I need to say ‘yes’ to have something turned off”. Bleurgh. Having a no_email attribute would go back to that backwards way of working imo. Perhaps show_email with a default of “no” (or ‘0’) would be better?

If nothing else, having the ability to override the globals is a positive step so I’d welcome any extra attributes. At least then we can opt to “turn off” features on a tag-by-tag basis instead of spending an hour scratching our heads wondering why a comment isn’t displaying how we expected, only to find it’s an admin pref preventing it from doing so.

Last edited by Bloke (2008-06-20 07:45:56)

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