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#1 2010-11-17 07:07:29

hcgtv
Plugin Author
From: Key Largo, Florida
Registered: 2005-11-29
Posts: 2,722
Website

[contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

Open Source is about scratching an itch.

Over the course of the last couple of months, I’ve been toying with the idea of having access to the Tag Reference from the Textpattern admin side. Quick access to the attributes of a tag, while you’re in the middle of coding a form.

Before I addressed that itch, there was the question of where to store tag information. Yes we have the tags in the wiki, but I was looking for a different solution. Something lighter, where I could have fine grained control of the output. After some thought, I decided on giving Textpattern a try. Hey, why not, it was done before.

A couple of weeks of studying the tags, how they were presented at the wiki and how would they translate into a Textpattern site, and I gave TxP the nod. To keep things simple, I kept the default look, just widened it a bit. Long story short, Textpattern proved it can do anything with tags. Though I didn’t need a plugin, I did dip into some PHP to get category counts on a category_list, Stef to the rescue.

The final tally:

  • Categories – 7
  • Tags (articles) – 150
  • Examples (comments) – 253

Ooh, a little to the right: TXP Tags – Textpattern Tags

Last edited by hcgtv (2016-09-08 16:01:44)

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#2 2010-11-17 08:36:40

skualito
Member
Registered: 2010-10-14
Posts: 24

Re: [contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

Hi,
It’s a great project, well done! I like the way it’s organised, that gives a good overview, and the details are quickly accessed.
Though I find the readability of the listings overwhelming, it’s hard to distinguish between each tags and their description (but that’s maybe just me).
txptag.org is now bookmarked, great resource, thanks for all the work.

Last edited by skualito (2010-11-17 08:52:06)

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#3 2010-11-17 09:12:17

Bloke
Developer
From: Leeds, UK
Registered: 2006-01-29
Posts: 11,250
Website GitHub

Re: [contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice. Great work, Bert. Bookmarked.


The smd plugin menagerie — for when you need one more gribble of power from Textpattern. Bleeding-edge code available on GitHub.

Txp Builders – finely-crafted code, design and Txp

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#4 2010-11-17 09:40:01

wet
Developer Emeritus
From: Schoerfling, Austria
Registered: 2005-06-06
Posts: 3,323
Website Mastodon

Re: [contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

BTW: In yesterdays dev chat we agreed to add phpdoc to the source. This might tune in nicely with the attribute information you collected if we’d find a method of annotating the source.

How do you represent the txp:tags grammar in your database to build the overview list?

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#5 2010-11-17 15:44:02

hcgtv
Plugin Author
From: Key Largo, Florida
Registered: 2005-11-29
Posts: 2,722
Website

Re: [contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

skualito wrote:

Though I find the readability of the listings overwhelming, it’s hard to distinguish between each tags and their description (but that’s maybe just me).

I’ve tried different ways to represent the list, border around the excerpt, underlines, etc. I never found any method I liked, so I just left it plain. I’m open to suggestions, if anyone has an idea.

Bloke wrote:

Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice.

Thanks, I may need to pick your brain when I get around to writing a plugin to display this info on the backend.

wet wrote:

BTW: In yesterdays dev chat we agreed to add phpdoc to the source.

That’s good news to the guy who runs PHPCrossRef ;)

How do you represent the txp:tags grammar in your database to build the overview list?

The tags are of course articles, but I needed to employ some custom fields:

  • Release: active, future – when I started the site, 4.3.0 wasn’t out so we had Future tags to deal with.
  • Sort-by: the tag name without the underscore, MySQL was sorting the underscores a bit weird.
  • Tag-type: single, container or sing/cont.
  • Attributes: the number of attributes a tag has.
  • Group-by: this is the top level sort, used to group like tags together. category, comment, if, image, etc.

The excerpt is used to print a short one line description of said tag. Still working the on the verbiage there, Returns, Displays, Produces all kind of mean the same. So I’ll work towards having a consistent verb to describe what the plugin does.

The site is still a work in progress, now that all the data is in, I can go about massaging to taste. I’ll work on expanding the descriptions and adding more examples where needed.

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#6 2010-11-17 18:32:29

PascalL
Member
From: Switzerland
Registered: 2009-03-09
Posts: 132
Website

Re: [contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

Bert, your idea is excellent and it’s nice to see Textpattern can be very well served by himself.
However, I must admit I don’t get why you list them with a fake xml tags format. Does it serve any purpose ? IMO, it could be very confusing to new users who try to understand how txp tags work!
all the best
Pascal

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#7 2010-11-17 19:05:32

hcgtv
Plugin Author
From: Key Largo, Florida
Registered: 2005-11-29
Posts: 2,722
Website

Re: [contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

PascalL wrote:

However, I must admit I don’t get why you list them with a fake xml tags format. Does it serve any purpose ? IMO, it could be very confusing to new users who try to understand how txp tags work!

Hey Pascal, I debated how to display tags with meaningful information. As I entered tags into the site, and analyzed the content, I thought a visual cue as to how tags are laid out would serve visitors well. Even though as you point out, that there’s no tag=” “, attributes=” “ or examples=” “ real life tag attributes.

I do admit that the site is more geared to experienced users who want to get to the information quickly. Once click away from the attributes of a tag, which is what I was aiming for. New users still have the wiki, that serves them well.

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#8 2010-11-17 22:43:29

skualito
Member
Registered: 2010-10-14
Posts: 24

Re: [contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

Playing a bit with firebug, I ended with something like that for the list (well, I didn’t try too hard):
screenshot
What do you think?

ps: (how) Is it possible to embed images on the forum? I tried the textile tag () but it doesn’t seem to work. I recall having seen some posts with pictures in them…

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#9 2010-11-17 23:09:03

hcgtv
Plugin Author
From: Key Largo, Florida
Registered: 2005-11-29
Posts: 2,722
Website

Re: [contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

skualito wrote:

Playing a bit with firebug, I ended with something like that for the list (well, I didn’t try too hard):
screenshot
What do you think?

I had something similar using the color from the comments preview to wrap the tags, but I ended up just leaving it with a white background. I know there’s room for improvement in the display of the site, it’s just that I’m not very good with colors.

If you have something I could try out, I’ll play with it on my local dev site.

(how) Is it possible to embed images on the forum? I tried the textile tag () but it doesn’t seem to work. I recall having seen some posts with pictures in them…

This:

!http://txptag.org/images/2.gif!

Produces:

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#10 2010-11-18 05:36:17

wet
Developer Emeritus
From: Schoerfling, Austria
Registered: 2005-06-06
Posts: 3,323
Website Mastodon

Re: [contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

hcgtv wrote:

This. !http://txptag.org/images/2.gif! Produces …

…for users with enough karma. We do not allow image posting below a certain threshold for obvious reasons.

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#11 2010-11-18 15:22:20

hcgtv
Plugin Author
From: Key Largo, Florida
Registered: 2005-11-29
Posts: 2,722
Website

Re: [contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

wet wrote:

We do not allow image posting below a certain threshold for obvious reasons.

Whatever conditions and/or measures that are in place on this forum should be in the Rules.

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#12 2010-11-18 16:10:12

skualito
Member
Registered: 2010-10-14
Posts: 24

Re: [contrib] TXP Tags - Textpattern Tags

hcgtv wrote:

I had something similar using the color from the comments preview to wrap the tags, but I ended up just leaving it with a white background. I know there’s room for improvement in the display of the site, it’s just that I’m not very good with colors.
If you have something I could try out, I’ll play with it on my local dev site.

I must admit that I’m not very talented myself when it comes to presentation, colors, etc. I easily spot what could be (probably) improved when I look at something, but hardly can come up with an improvement of my own. So, apart from the little changes I made to the css (like on the screenshot), there’s not so much I’m able to propose.

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