[pmwiki-users] IGNORE previous message Re: pagelist template brainstorming

[Martin Fick]

<embarrased>

I'm sorry, please disregard that previous unfinished
old babbling draft message that I accidentally hit the
SEND button on!  ...My brain was fried while
organizing my inbox.

</embarrased>

-Martin


--- Martin Fick <mogulguy at yahoo.com> wrote:

> --- "Patrick R. Michaud" <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> > There's also a bit more to it than this... I'm
> > running into possibilities for using pagelist-like
> > templates on things other than pagelists, such as
> > attachlist (but there are others).  So,
> > part of me thinks we may be better of sticking
> with
> > the simple (:first:)/(:each:)/(:last:) approach
> > instead of trying to explain (:pagelist-first:)
> vs.
> > (:attachlist-first:) vs. (:whatever-first:), etc. 
> > In other words, the directives may make sense in
> > contexts other than pagelists, even if we don't
> > know what those contexts are yet.
> 
> Yes, I have been thinking the same thing for a while
> and even have some other applications myself.  I
> think
> that the more we can make templating like a generic
> form of list processing the better.  Even if the
> code
> is not always shared, but the terminolgy is it would
> be an advantage.
> 
> But, along the lines of sharing code... it would be
> nice if certain directives/markups could simply
> return
> lists that other directives/markups could then
> process
> or that could simply be displayed.  To give an
> example, I would like to be able to enhance both the
> HttpVariables recipe and Wikipaths to output lists
> that could than be processed by the same directives.
>  
> 
> Imagine the example of a DB query that returns a
> table
> with columns X Y and Z.
> 
> (:select X, Y, Z from TableA :)
> 
> If simply left as is would end up displaying as a
> table, but if enclosed in list templating directive
> could be templated just like a pagelist could.
> 
> (:list fmt=#template:)
> (:select X, Y, Z from TableA :)
> (:endlist:)
> 
> In the template, certain variables would then be
> available for each row and one could make a table
> like
> this:
> 
> [[#template]]
> (:first:)
> ||'''X'''||'''Y'''||'''Z'''||
> (:each:)
> || %blue%{=$X}%% || %red%{=$Y}%% || %green%{=$Z}%%
> ||
> [[#templateend]]
> 
> So how could this be made to happen?  I was thinking
> that if lists returned XML (over desinged?) or some
> other special markup delineating cells and rows. 
> This
> markup can then be easily parsed by the list markup
> and applied to templates, something like this:
> 
> <record num=1 class=db><el name='X' class=db> valX1
> </el><el name='Y' class=db> valY1 </el><el name='Z'
> class=db> valZ1 </el></record>
> <record num=2 class=db><el name='X' class=db> valX2
> </el><el name='Y' class=db> valY2 </el><el name='Z'
> class=db> valZ1 </el></record>
> ...
> 
> Along with this there wold be some default rule that
> would turn this markup into something presentable in
> case the list was not templated.  This default rule
> could even be class dependent so that individual
> recipes could specify their default markup.  A
> simple
> default might be to turn it into a table or in the
> case of pagelist, an unordered list.



 
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