[Pmwiki-users] SHTML-like templates for PmWiki

[niall b durham]

Hey guys,

For what its worth, I recently made a new local modification for
PmWiki.  I figured I would describe it on this list in case anyone
else was interested in it or had any comments.

The gist of it is that it is a SHTML-like template system for the
PmWiki pages.  Currently, it supports a default, group-specific, or
page-specific templates (just like pgcust.php) with the more specific
template overriding the less specific (if any).

The template files contain HTML and support a few simple directives.

The SHTML file inclusion directive:

    <!--#include file="foo.inc"-->

[It doesn't support the 'virtual=' argument, though.]

It has a means to substitute in the values of PmWiki variables (any 
global variable is fair game--I don't know whether or not this is a 
good idea, but that's the current implementation):

    <!--#pmwiki var='ScriptDir'-->
    <!--#pmwiki var='HTMLHeaderFmt'-->

The page is divided into the header/footer around the PmWiki page,
using the following tag:

    <!--#pmwiki body-->

This is (obviously) nothing that couldn't be done before.  I wrote
it because I was interested in a means to easily control all the 
surrounding layout/HTML of the PmWiki pages that did not require PHP 
coding.

Just in case it isn't apparent, the template files are not editable
via the PmWiki mechanism and are off in a separate directory (not
world-writeable).  

I figured I'd offer it back to the collective in case anyone is 
interested.

Any feedback (heh, even if its just to say this is a lame idea :) 
appeciated.  Especially w/ regard to syntax.  I'm uncertain about the 
variable substitution markup.  However, something less-explicit (e.g., 
'$ScriptDir') seems too open to mis-interpretation.

Hasta,

Niall

p.s. I'm going out of town tomorrow (Sat., 14th), so if I don't reply
promptly don't take it the wrong way.
-- 
nbd3355 at sci.tamucc.edu
http://www.cbi.tamucc.edu/~durham/