Comment Plugin

<--

   PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS TOPIC

   It is automatically generated from the subversion repository, and any changes
   you make will simply be overwritten the next time a release is generated.

   Instead, you could check your fix in, raise a bug in the Bugs web, or mail thge author.
-->

Comment Plugin lets users quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.

WARNING: TWiki-4 only. If you want to use this plugin with an earlier version of TWiki, please use revision 31 of the zip.

Features

Inserts an edit box into the page that allows users to type in and save comments. Comments can be made

• in different formats (as defined by a template),
• in both forward and reverse chronological order,
• signed or unsigned, dated or undated (as defined by a template),
• in other topics, or other positions within the current topic.

Syntax Rules

Write the command %COMMENT{ attributes }% anywhere in a TWiki topic. %COMMENT% is also legal.

The following attributes are recognized (see also additional attributes):

Positioning the comment

Location relative to %COMMENT tag

%COMMENT{type="below"}%

Location relative to a TWiki anchor

%COMMENT{type="above" target="%MAINWEB%.PersonalRemarks#InsertHere"}%

Location relative to an arbitrary text string

%COMMENT{type="above" location="Flights of Fancy"}%

Warning of course, if a user's comment contains the string "Flights of Fancy" they may and up changing the location for the next comment! Also, if you use a tag in the location, then you've just inserted another tag in the page that contains the %COMMENT! So be very careful how you specify the RE for location. Note that the RE is matched using perl "multiple line" mode, so ^ and $ match the start of a line and the end of a line respectively.

I look forward to someone leveraging this feature to create - for example - threaded conversations using %COMMENT.

If you specify an anchor and a location, the anchor will be ignored.

Default templates

A set of default comment templates are shipped with the plugin. These are:

Your local installation may add more template types as well - see Customisation, below.

Customisation

• familiarity with HTML forms
• some familiarity with the TWiki templating language.

To define a comment type, you have to provide two simple template definitions in the template file; one for the prompt box, and one for the generated output. If we have a template type "mytype", these are named PROMPT:mytype and OUTPUT:mytype respectively. See comments.tmpl in the templates directory for examples.

The plugin picks up these template definitions from a standard TWiki template file, templates/comments.tmpl. This allows different templates to be defined for different TWiki skins.

Defining custom templates

This allows for several levels of customisation:

1. To override all default templates, everywhere, change comments.tmpl to include a different topic (this customisation will be lost next time you upgrade, though).
2. To add site-wide local template customisations, add them to UserCommentsTemplate? (create if it does not exist yet). You can redefine the standard templates here if you want, and your definitions will override the standard definitions.
3. To override templates on a web-by-web basis, add a topic UserCommentsTemplate to the web (this will replace TWiki.UserCommentsTemplate)
4. To override templates for a specific skin, add them to TWiki.UserComments<Skin>Template (where <Skin> is the name of the skin with the first letter capitalised, e.g. Pattern)

Templates are picked up by following the standard TWiki rules for locating template files. Note that you can use %TMPL:INCLUDE to include other files of templates.

Note that from TWiki release 4.1.0 leading and trailing whitespace is no longer stripped. This means that when you upgrade to TWiki 4.1.X you may need to remove the first line break in your custom comment templates. See TWikiReleaseNotes04x01 for more information.

Customisation example

%TMPL:DEF{PROMPT:myComment}%%TMPL:P{promptbox}%%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:myComment}%%TMPL:P{outputoneliner}%%POS:TOP%
%TMPL:END%

Call your custom comment with:

%COMMENT{type="myComment"}%

The PROMPT template

Only the input fields of the form need be defined. The plugin automatically generates the <form> and </form> tags, unless you specify noform="on", in which case you have to provide them yourself. Note that you must define a "submit" button if you want the form to work!

Providing attribute values

<textarea rows=%rows|3% cols="%cols|50%" value="%tval|Rubbish%">

%COMMENT{type="example" cols="75"}%

<textarea rows="3" cols="75" value="Rubbish">

Special variables

EXPERT Note that when a comment is saved, the TWiki save script is invoked on the target topic, with a number of parameters provided by the comment form. Normally the CommentPlugin will provide these fields in the form, but experts can also provide the fields themselves in order to get finer control over what is submitted, or you might want to define your own HTML forms that do comment submission. The parameters that the CommentPlugin recognises are as follows:

<form method="post" action="%SCRIPTURL{save}%/%WEB%/%TOPIC%">
<input type="submit" value="I Approve" />
<input type="hidden" name="comment_action" value="save" />
<input type="hidden" name="comment_type" value="bottom" />
<input type="hidden" name="comment" value="I Approve" />
</form>

The OUTPUT template

There are also four position tags that are used to indicate where the comment should be placed, relative to the location defined in the %COMMENT tag:

All the usual TWikiVariables that can be used in a topic template can also be used in an OUTPUT template. See TWikiVariables for details.

Settings

<-- required for compatibility 

 

 

 Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Allows users to quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.
 
 
 Name of file in the 'templates' directory that contains the comment templates. The default 'comments.tmpl' automatically includes user templates from CommentPluginTemplate 

 Set TEMPLATES = comments
 
 
 Default template type (if not present, defaults to "below") 

 Set DEFAULT_TYPE = above
 
 
-->

Plugin Installation Instructions

• This plugin is pre-installed in most TWiki releases. However if you need to upgrade the plugin for any reason:
• Download the archive file from the Plugin web (see below)
• Unpack the archive in your twiki installation directory.
  • You may need to correct file permissions
• Run CommentPlugin_installer to automatically check and install other modules that this module depends on, and enable the plugin.
• Alternatively,
  • Manually resolve the dependencies listed below. None
• Use configure to enable the plugin

Plugin Info

Plugin Author:	TWiki:Main.DavidWeller, TWiki:Main.PeterMasiar, TWiki:Main.CrawfordCurrie http://www.c-dot.co.uk
Copyright:	© 2004, TWiki:Main.CrawfordCurrie © 2004-2007 TWiki:TWiki.TWikiContributor
License:	GPL (GNU General Public License)
Plugin Version:	12750 (04 Feb 2007)
Change History:	<-- specify latest version first -->
12750	Item3510 added a note about the changed template spec in TWiki 4.1.0. Code remains unchanged
11358	Item2802 moved SHORTDESCRIPTION to .pm. Coded up TWiki:main.PankajPant's suggestions as nopost and remove. Added default text for the %COMMENT as requested by TWiki:Main.AndyGlew
11118	Item2322 removed span tag around oneliner bullet output
8788	Item1465 Item1577: reverted 8433 to fix inclusion of correct user templates
8787	Item1573 renamed standard templates topic to avoid naming clash on Windows, where filenames are case-insensitive
8433	Item1465 Fix 'TWiki.' to 'TWiki.'; also fixed include 'UserComments' to 'UserCommentsTemplate' (at least that is what the doc suggests)
7427	Item845 removed duplicate date in default comments; stick with server time
7251	Item810 fix for user template inclusion; reorganised templates to make customisation easier
5906	Item143 apache warning from comment plugin when CommentsTmpl.txt not found
5519	CommentPluginOnAnchorsBroken: incorporated JacobEisinger's fix
5518	CommentPluginOnAnchorsBroken: incorporated OlivierBerger's fix
5455	On Niels Kodslo's prompting, removed the global recursion prevention that I believe is no longer needed.
5280	Removed templates, and some minor fixes
5250	Removed newlines from prompt box
4902	Changed to use viewauth. Moved templates into user topics.
4901	Added templates in user webs support
4897	Fixes for disabling during preview; re-enabled old legacy parameters
4889	Chopped down from PeterMasiar version, removing several parameters, savecomment script, changing way templates are done. Major rewrite, atcherly.
4882	Update from PeterMasiar's 2.0 version, plus documentation and small code improvements.
4745	06 Mar 2002 initial commit
Perl Version:	>= 5.6.1
Plugin Home:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPlugin
Feedback:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPluginDev

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences, TWikiPlugins

Comment Plugin

<--

   PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS TOPIC

   It is automatically generated from the subversion repository, and any changes
   you make will simply be overwritten the next time a release is generated.

   Instead, you could check your fix in, raise a bug in the Bugs web, or mail thge author.
-->

Comment Plugin lets users quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.

WARNING: TWiki-4 only. If you want to use this plugin with an earlier version of TWiki, please use revision 31 of the zip.

Features

Inserts an edit box into the page that allows users to type in and save comments. Comments can be made

• in different formats (as defined by a template),
• in both forward and reverse chronological order,
• signed or unsigned, dated or undated (as defined by a template),
• in other topics, or other positions within the current topic.

Syntax Rules

Write the command %COMMENT{ attributes }% anywhere in a TWiki topic. %COMMENT% is also legal.

The following attributes are recognized (see also additional attributes):

Positioning the comment

Location relative to %COMMENT tag

%COMMENT{type="below"}%

Location relative to a TWiki anchor

%COMMENT{type="above" target="%MAINWEB%.PersonalRemarks#InsertHere"}%

Location relative to an arbitrary text string

%COMMENT{type="above" location="Flights of Fancy"}%

Warning of course, if a user's comment contains the string "Flights of Fancy" they may and up changing the location for the next comment! Also, if you use a tag in the location, then you've just inserted another tag in the page that contains the %COMMENT! So be very careful how you specify the RE for location. Note that the RE is matched using perl "multiple line" mode, so ^ and $ match the start of a line and the end of a line respectively.

I look forward to someone leveraging this feature to create - for example - threaded conversations using %COMMENT.

If you specify an anchor and a location, the anchor will be ignored.

Default templates

A set of default comment templates are shipped with the plugin. These are:

Your local installation may add more template types as well - see Customisation, below.

Customisation

• familiarity with HTML forms
• some familiarity with the TWiki templating language.

To define a comment type, you have to provide two simple template definitions in the template file; one for the prompt box, and one for the generated output. If we have a template type "mytype", these are named PROMPT:mytype and OUTPUT:mytype respectively. See comments.tmpl in the templates directory for examples.

The plugin picks up these template definitions from a standard TWiki template file, templates/comments.tmpl. This allows different templates to be defined for different TWiki skins.

Defining custom templates

This allows for several levels of customisation:

1. To override all default templates, everywhere, change comments.tmpl to include a different topic (this customisation will be lost next time you upgrade, though).
2. To add site-wide local template customisations, add them to UserCommentsTemplate? (create if it does not exist yet). You can redefine the standard templates here if you want, and your definitions will override the standard definitions.
3. To override templates on a web-by-web basis, add a topic UserCommentsTemplate to the web (this will replace TWiki.UserCommentsTemplate)
4. To override templates for a specific skin, add them to TWiki.UserComments<Skin>Template (where <Skin> is the name of the skin with the first letter capitalised, e.g. Pattern)

Templates are picked up by following the standard TWiki rules for locating template files. Note that you can use %TMPL:INCLUDE to include other files of templates.

Customisation example

%TMPL:DEF{PROMPT:myComment}%%TMPL:P{promptbox}%%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:myComment}%%TMPL:P{outputoneliner}%%POS:TOP%
%TMPL:END%

Call your custom comment with:

%COMMENT{type="myComment"}%

The PROMPT template

Only the input fields of the form need be defined. The plugin automatically generates the <form> and </form> tags, unless you specify noform="on", in which case you have to provide them yourself. Note that you must define a "submit" button if you want the form to work!

Providing attribute values

<textarea rows=%rows|3% cols="%cols|50%" value="%tval|Rubbish%">

%COMMENT{type="example" cols="75"}%

<textarea rows="3" cols="75" value="Rubbish">

Special variables

EXPERT Note that when a comment is saved, the TWiki save script is invoked on the target topic, with a number of parameters provided by the comment form. Normally the CommentPlugin will provide these fields in the form, but experts can also provide the fields themselves in order to get finer control over what is submitted, or you might want to define your own HTML forms that do comment submission. The parameters that the CommentPlugin recognises are as follows:

<form method="post" action="%SCRIPTURL{save}%/%WEB%/%TOPIC%">
<input type="submit" value="I Approve" />
<input type="hidden" name="comment_action" value="save" />
<input type="hidden" name="comment_type" value="bottom" />
<input type="hidden" name="comment" value="I Approve" />
</form>

The OUTPUT template

There are also four position tags that are used to indicate where the comment should be placed, relative to the location defined in the %COMMENT tag:

All the usual TWikiVariables that can be used in a topic template can also be used in an OUTPUT template. See TWikiVariables for details.

Settings

<-- required for compatibility 

 

 

 Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Allows users to quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.
 
 
 Name of file in the 'templates' directory that contains the comment templates. The default 'comments.tmpl' automatically includes user templates from CommentPluginTemplate 

 Set TEMPLATES = comments
 
 
 Default template type (if not present, defaults to "below") 

 Set DEFAULT_TYPE = above
 
 
-->

Plugin Installation Instructions

• This plugin is pre-installed in most TWiki releases. However if you need to upgrade the plugin for any reason:
• Download the archive file from the Plugin web (see below)
• Unpack the archive in your twiki installation directory.
  • You may need to correct file permissions
• Run CommentPlugin_installer to automatically check and install other modules that this module depends on, and enable the plugin.
• Alternatively,
  • Manually resolve the dependencies listed below. None
• Use configure to enable the plugin

Plugin Info

5519	CommentPluginOnAnchorsBroken: incorporated JacobEisinger's fix
5518	CommentPluginOnAnchorsBroken: incorporated OlivierBerger's fix
5455	On Niels Kodslo's prompting, removed the global recursion prevention that I believe is no longer needed.
5280	Removed templates, and some minor fixes
5250	Removed newlines from prompt box
4902	Changed to use viewauth. Moved templates into user topics.
4901	Added templates in user webs support
4897	Fixes for disabling during preview; re-enabled old legacy parameters
4889	Chopped down from PeterMasiar version, removing several parameters, savecomment script, changing way templates are done. Major rewrite, atcherly.
4882	Update from PeterMasiar's 2.0 version, plus documentation and small code improvements.
4745	06 Mar 2002 initial commit
Perl Version:	>= 5.6.1
Plugin Home:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPlugin
Feedback:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPluginDev

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences, TWikiPlugins

Comment Plugin

<--

   PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS TOPIC

   It is automatically generated from the subversion repository, and any changes
   you make will simply be overwritten the next time a release is generated.

   Instead, you could check your fix in, raise a bug in the Bugs web, or mail thge author.
-->

• in different formats (as defined by a template),
• in both forward and reverse chronological order,
• signed or unsigned, dated or undated (as defined by a template),
• in other topics, or other positions within the current topic.

%COMMENT{type="below"}%

%COMMENT{type="above" target="%MAINWEB%.PersonalRemarks#InsertHere"}%

%COMMENT{type="above" location="Flights of Fancy"}%

Warning of course, if a user's comment contains the string "Flights of Fancy" they may and up changing the location for the next comment! Also, if you use a tag in the location, then you've just inserted another tag in the page that contains the %COMMENT! So be very careful how you specify the RE for location. Note that the RE is matched using perl "multiple line" mode, so ^ and $ match the start of a line and the end of a line respectively.

I look forward to someone leveraging this feature to create - for example - threaded conversations using %COMMENT.

If you specify an anchor and a location, the anchor will be ignored.

A set of default comment templates are shipped with the plugin. These are:

Your local installation may add more template types as well - see Customisation, below.

• some familiarity with the TWiki templating language.

To define a comment type, you have to provide two simple template definitions in the template file; one for the prompt box, and one for the generated output. If we have a template type "mytype", these are named PROMPT:mytype and OUTPUT:mytype respectively. See comments.tmpl in the templates directory for examples.

<textarea rows=%rows|3% cols="%cols|50%" value="%tval|Rubbish%">

%COMMENT{type="example" cols="75"}%

<textarea rows="3" cols="75" value="Rubbish">

All the usual TWikiVariables that can be used in a topic template can also be used in an OUTPUT template. See TWikiVariables for details.

• This plugin is pre-installed in most TWiki releases. However if you need to upgrade the plugin for any reason:

Perl Version:	>= 5.6.1
Plugin Home:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPlugin
Feedback:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPluginDev

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences, TWikiPlugins

Comment Plugin

<--

   PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS TOPIC

   It is automatically generated from the subversion repository, and any changes
   you make will simply be overwritten the next time a release is generated.

   Instead, you could check your fix in, raise a bug in the Bugs web, or mail thge author.
-->

WARNING: TWiki-4 only. If you want to use this plugin with an earlier version of TWiki, please see here

Features

Inserts an edit box into the page that allows users to type in and save comments. Comments can be made

• in different formats (as defined by a template),
• in both forward and reverse chronological order,
• signed or unsigned, dated or undated (as defined by a template),
• in other topics, or other positions within the current topic.

Syntax Rules

Write the command %COMMENT{ attributes }% anywhere in a TWiki topic. %COMMENT% is also legal.

The following attributes are recognised

Positioning the comment

Location relative to %COMMENT tag

%COMMENT{type="below"}%

Location relative to a TWiki anchor

%COMMENT{type="above" target="%MAINWEB%.PersonalRemarks#InsertHere"}%

Location relative to an arbitrary text string

%COMMENT{type="above" location="Flights of Fancy"}%

Warning of course, if a user's comment contains the string "Flights of Fancy" they may and up changing the location for the next comment! Also, if you use a tag in the location, then you've just inserted another tag in the page that contains the %COMMENT! So be very careful how you specify the RE for location. Note that the RE is matched using perl "multiple line" mode, so ^ and $ match the start of a line and the end of a line respectively.

I look forward to someone leveraging this feature to create - for example - threaded conversations using %COMMENT.

If you specify an anchor and a location, the anchor will be ignored.

Default templates

A set of default comment templates are shipped with the plugin. These are:

Your local installation may add more template types as well - see Customisation, below.

Customisation

• familiarity with HTML forms,
• some familiarity with the TWiki templating language.

To define a comment type, you have to provide two simple template definitions in the template file; one for the prompt box, and one for the generated output. If we have a template type "mytype", these are named PROMPT:mytype and OUTPUT:mytype respectively. See comments.tmpl in the templates directory for examples.

The plugin picks up these template definitions from a standard TWiki template file, templates/comments.tmpl. This allows different templates to be defined for different TWiki skins. By default, this template includes the topic CommentPluginTemplate, which contains all the shipped standard templates and in turn includes TWiki.UserCommentsTemplate. This allows for several levels of customisation:

1. To override all default templates, everywhere, change comments.tmpl to include a different topic (this customisation will be lost next time you upgrade, though).
2. To add site-wide local template customisations, add them to TWiki.UserCommentsTemplate. You can redefine the standard templates here if you want, and your definitions will override the standard definitions.
3. To override templates on a web-by-web basis, add a topic UserCommentsTemplate to the web (this will replace TWiki.UserCommentsTemplate)
4. To override templates for a specific skin, add them to TWiki.UserComments<Skin>Template (where <Skin> is the name of the skin with the first letter capitalised, e.g. Pattern)

Templates are picked up by following the standard TWiki rules for locating template files. Note that you can use %TMPL:INCLUDE to include other files of templates.

The PROMPT template

Only the input fields of the form need be defined. The plugin automatically generates the >form< and &gt:/form< tags, unless you specify noform="on", in which case you have to provide them yourself. Note that you must define a "submit" button if you want the form to work!

If an attribute is given to the %COMMENT tag that is not one of the standard attributes, then that attribute is taken as the name of a parameter to be expanded in the PROMPT template. Expressions in the template of the form %param|default% (e.g. %rows|3%, %button|Push me%) are expanded to the values given in the %COMMENT. For example, if the PROMPT template 'example' contains:

<textarea rows=%rows|3% cols="%cols|50%" value="%tval|Rubbish%">

%COMMENT{type="example" cols="75"}%

<textarea rows="3" cols="75" value="Rubbish">

As well as support for all the usual TWiki variables in templates, the following special variables are supported in the PROMPT definition:

The OUTPUT template

There are also four position tags that are used to indicate where the comment should be placed, relative to the location defined in the %COMMENT tag:

All the usual TWikiVariables that can be used in a topic template can also be used in an OUTPUT template. See TWikiVariables for details.

Settings

• Description:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Allows users to quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.
• Name of file in the 'templates' directory that contains the comment templates. The default 'comments.tmpl' automatically includes user templates from CommentsTmpl?
  • Set TEMPLATES = comments
• default template type (if not present, defaults to "below")
  • Set DEFAULT_TYPE = below

Plugin Installation Instructions

• This plugin is pre-installed in most TWiki releases. However if you need to upgrade the plugin for any reason:
  • Download the archive file from the Plugin web (see below)
  • Unpack the archive in your twiki installation directory.
  • You may need to correct file permissions.
  • Run CommentPlugin_installer to automatically check and install other modules that this module depends on. You can also do this step manually. Dependencies: None
  • Visit configure in your TWiki installation, and enable the plugin in the {Plugins} section.

Plugin Info

Plugin Author:	TWiki:Main.DavidWeller, TWiki:Main.PeterMasiar, TWiki:Main.CrawfordCurrie http://www.c-dot.co.uk
Change History:

8788	Item1465 Item1577: reverted 8433 to fix inclusion of correct user templates
8787	Item1573 renamed standard templates topic to avoid naming clash on Windows, where filenames are case-insensitive
8433	Item1465 Fix 'TWiki.' to '%TWIKIEB%.'; also fixed include 'UserComments' to 'UserCommentsTemplate' (at least that is what the doc suggests)
7427	Item845 removed duplicate date in default comments; stick with server time
7251	Item810 fix for user template inclusion; reorganised templates to make customisation easier
5906	Item143 apache warning from comment plugin when CommentsTmpl?.txt not foudn
5519	CommentPluginOnAnchorsBroken?: incorporated JacobEisinger?'s fix
5518	CommentPluginOnAnchorsBroken?: incorporated OlivierBerger?'s fix
5455	On Niels Kodslo's prompting, removed the global recursion prevention that I believe is no longer needed.
5280	Removed templates, and some minor fixes
5250	Removed newlines from prompt box
4902	Changed to use viewauth. Moved templates into user topics.
4901	Added templates in user webs support
4897	Fixes for disabling during preview; re-enabled old legacy parameters
4889	Chopped down from PeterMasiar? version, removing several parameters, savecomment script, changing way templates are done. Major rewrite, atcherly.
4882	Update from PeterMasiar?'s 2.0 version, plus documentation and small code improvements.
4745	06Mar 2002 initial commit
Perl Version:	>= 5.6.1
Plugin Home:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPlugin
Feedback:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPluginDev

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences, TWikiPlugins

Comment Plugin

<--

   PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS TOPIC

   It is automatically generated from the subversion repository, and any changes
   you make will simply be overwritten the next time a release is generated.

   Instead, you could check your fix in, raise a bug in the Bugs web, or mail thge author.
-->

WARNING: TWiki-4 only. If you want to use this plugin with an earlier version of TWiki, please see here

Features

Inserts an edit box into the page that allows users to type in and save comments. Comments can be made

• in different formats (as defined by a template),
• in both forward and reverse chronological order,
• signed or unsigned, dated or undated (as defined by a template),
• in other topics, or other positions within the current topic.

Syntax Rules

Write the command %COMMENT{ attributes }% anywhere in a TWiki topic. %COMMENT% is also legal.

The following attributes are recognised

Positioning the comment

Location relative to %COMMENT tag

%COMMENT{type="below"}%

Location relative to a TWiki anchor

%COMMENT{type="above" target="%MAINWEB%.PersonalRemarks#InsertHere"}%

Location relative to an arbitrary text string

%COMMENT{type="above" location="Flights of Fancy"}%

Warning of course, if a user's comment contains the string "Flights of Fancy" they may and up changing the location for the next comment! Also, if you use a tag in the location, then you've just inserted another tag in the page that contains the %COMMENT! So be very careful how you specify the RE for location. Note that the RE is matched using perl "multiple line" mode, so ^ and $ match the start of a line and the end of a line respectively.

I look forward to someone leveraging this feature to create - for example - threaded conversations using %COMMENT.

If you specify an anchor and a location, the anchor will be ignored.

Default templates

A set of default comment templates are shipped with the plugin. These are:

Your local installation may add more template types as well - see Customisation, below.

Customisation

• familiarity with HTML forms,
• some familiarity with the TWiki templating language.

To define a comment type, you have to provide two simple template definitions in the template file; one for the prompt box, and one for the generated output. If we have a template type "mytype", these are named PROMPT:mytype and OUTPUT:mytype respectively. See comments.tmpl in the templates directory for examples.

The plugin picks up these template definitions from a standard TWiki template file, templates/comments.tmpl. This allows different templates to be defined for different TWiki skins. By default, this template includes the topic CommentPluginTemplate, which contains all the shipped standard templates and in turn includes TWiki.UserCommentsTemplate. This allows for several levels of customisation:

1. To override all default templates, everywhere, change comments.tmpl to include a different topic (this customisation will be lost next time you upgrade, though).
2. To add site-wide local template customisations, add them to TWiki.UserCommentsTemplate. You can redefine the standard templates here if you want, and your definitions will override the standard definitions.
3. To override templates on a web-by-web basis, add a topic UserCommentsTemplate to the web (this will replace TWiki.UserCommentsTemplate)
4. To override templates for a specific skin, add them to TWiki.UserComments<Skin>Template (where <Skin> is the name of the skin with the first letter capitalised, e.g. Pattern)

Templates are picked up by following the standard TWiki rules for locating template files. Note that you can use %TMPL:INCLUDE to include other files of templates.

The PROMPT template

Only the input fields of the form need be defined. The plugin automatically generates the >form< and &gt:/form< tags, unless you specify noform="on", in which case you have to provide them yourself. Note that you must define a "submit" button if you want the form to work!

If an attribute is given to the %COMMENT tag that is not one of the standard attributes, then that attribute is taken as the name of a parameter to be expanded in the PROMPT template. Expressions in the template of the form %param|default% (e.g. %rows|3%, %button|Push me%) are expanded to the values given in the %COMMENT. For example, if the PROMPT template 'example' contains:

<textarea rows=%rows|3% cols="%cols|50%" value="%tval|Rubbish%">

%COMMENT{type="example" cols="75"}%

<textarea rows="3" cols="75" value="Rubbish">

As well as support for all the usual TWiki variables in templates, the following special variables are supported in the PROMPT definition:

The OUTPUT template

There are also four position tags that are used to indicate where the comment should be placed, relative to the location defined in the %COMMENT tag:

All the usual TWikiVariables that can be used in a topic template can also be used in an OUTPUT template. See TWikiVariables for details.

Settings

• Description:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Allows users to quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.
• Name of file in the 'templates' directory that contains the comment templates. The default 'comments.tmpl' automatically includes user templates from CommentsTmpl?
  • Set TEMPLATES = comments
• default template type (if not present, defaults to "below")
  • Set DEFAULT_TYPE = below

Plugin Installation Instructions

• This plugin is pre-installed in most TWiki releases. However if you need to upgrade the plugin for any reason:
  • Download the archive file from the Plugin web (see below)
  • Unpack the archive in your twiki installation directory.
  • You may need to correct file permissions.
  • Run CommentPlugin_installer to automatically check and install other modules that this module depends on. You can also do this step manually. Dependencies: None
  • Visit configure in your TWiki installation, and enable the plugin in the {Plugins} section.

Plugin Info

Plugin Author:	TWiki:Main.DavidWeller, TWiki:Main.PeterMasiar, TWiki:Main.CrawfordCurrie http://www.c-dot.co.uk
Change History:
8788	Item1465 Item1577: reverted 8433 to fix inclusion of correct user templates
8787	Item1573 renamed standard templates topic to avoid naming clash on Windows, where filenames are case-insensitive
8433	Item1465 Fix 'TWiki.' to '%TWIKIEB%.'; also fixed include 'UserComments' to 'UserCommentsTemplate' (at least that is what the doc suggests)
7427	Item845 removed duplicate date in default comments; stick with server time
7251	Item810 fix for user template inclusion; reorganised templates to make customisation easier
5906	Item143 apache warning from comment plugin when CommentsTmpl?.txt not foudn
5519	CommentPluginOnAnchorsBroken?: incorporated JacobEisinger?'s fix
5518	CommentPluginOnAnchorsBroken?: incorporated OlivierBerger?'s fix
5455	On Niels Kodslo's prompting, removed the global recursion prevention that I believe is no longer needed.
5280	Removed templates, and some minor fixes
5250	Removed newlines from prompt box
4902	Changed to use viewauth. Moved templates into user topics.
4901	Added templates in user webs support
4897	Fixes for disabling during preview; re-enabled old legacy parameters
4889	Chopped down from PeterMasiar? version, removing several parameters, savecomment script, changing way templates are done. Major rewrite, atcherly.
4882	Update from PeterMasiar?'s 2.0 version, plus documentation and small code improvements.
4745	06Mar 2002 initial commit
Perl Version:	>= 5.6.1
Plugin Home:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPlugin
Feedback:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPluginDev

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences, TWikiPlugins

Comment Plugin

Features

Inserts an edit box into the page that allows users to type in and save comments. Comments can be made

• in different formats (as defined by a template),
• in both forward and reverse chronological order,
• signed or unsigned, dated or undated (as defined by a template),
• in other topics, or other positions within the current topic.

Syntax Rules

Write the command %COMMENT{ attributes }% anywhere in a TWiki topic. %COMMENT% is also legal.

The following attributes are recognised

Positioning the comment

Location relative to %COMMENT tag

%COMMENT{type="below"}%

Location relative to a TWiki anchor

%COMMENT{type="above" target="%MAINWEB%.PersonalRemarks#InsertHere"}%

Location relative to an arbitrary text string

%COMMENT{type="above" location="Flights of Fancy"}%

Warning of course, if a user's comment contains the string "Flights of Fancy" they may and up changing the location for the next comment! Also, if you use a tag in the location, then you've just inserted another tag in the page that contains the %COMMENT! So be very careful how you specify the RE for location. Note that the RE is matched using perl "multiple line" mode, so ^ and $ match the start of a line and the end of a line respectively.

I look forward to someone leveraging this feature to create - for example - threaded conversations using %COMMENT.

If you specify an anchor and a location, the anchor will be ignored.

Default templates

A set of default comment templates are shipped with the plugin. These are:

Your local installation may add more template types as well - see Customisation, below.

Customisation

• familiarity with HTML forms,
• some familiarity with the TWiki templating language.

To define a comment type, you have to provide two simple template definitions in the template file; one for the prompt box, and one for the generated output. If we have a template type "mytype", these are named PROMPT:mytype and OUTPUT:mytype respectively. See comments.tmpl in the templates directory for examples.

The PROMPT template

Only the input fields of the form need be defined. The plugin automatically generates the >form< and &gt:/form< tags, unless you specify noform="on", in which case you have to provide them yourself. Note that you must define a "submit" button if you want the form to work!

If an attribute is given to the %COMMENT tag that is not one of the standard attributes, then that attribute is taken as the name of a parameter to be expanded in the PROMPT template. Expressions in the template of the form %param|default% (e.g. %rows|3%, %button|Push me%) are expanded to the values given in the %COMMENT. For example, if the PROMPT template 'example' contains:

<textarea rows=%rows|3% cols="%cols|50%" value="%tval|Rubbish%">

%COMMENT{type="example" cols="75"}%

<textarea rows="3" cols="75" value="Rubbish">

As well as support for all the usual TWiki variables in templates, the following special variables are supported in the PROMPT definition:

The OUTPUT template

There are also four position tags that are used to indicate where the comment should be placed, relative to the location defined in the %COMMENT tag:

All the usual TWikiVariables that can be used in a topic template can also be used in an OUTPUT template. See TWikiVariables for details.

Settings

• Description:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Allows users to quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.
• Name of file in the 'templates' directory that contains the comment templates. The default 'comments.tmpl' automatically includes user templates from CommentsTmpl?
  • Set TEMPLATES = comments
• default template type (if not present, defaults to "below")
  • Set DEFAULT_TYPE = below

Plugin Installation Instructions

• This plugin is pre-installed in most TWiki releases. However if you need to upgrade the plugin for any reason:

Plugin Info

Plugin Author:

TWiki:Main.DavidWeller, TWiki:Main.PeterMasiar, TWiki:Main.CrawfordCurrie http://www.c-dot.co.uk

Perl Version:	>= 5.6.1
Plugin Home:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPlugin
Feedback:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPluginDev

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences, TWikiPlugins

Comment Plugin

This plugin allows users to quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.

( Discussion in TWiki:Plugins/CommentPluginDev )

Features

Inserts an edit box into the page that allows users to type in and save comments. Comments can be made

• in different formats (as defined by a template),
• in both forward and reverse chronological order,
• signed or unsigned, dated or undated (as defined by a template),
• in other topics, or other positions within the current topic.

Syntax Rules

Write the command %COMMENT{ attributes }% anywhere in a TWiki topic. %COMMENT% is also legal.

The following attributes are recognised

Positioning the comment

Location relative to %COMMENT tag

%COMMENT{type="below"}%

Location relative to a TWiki anchor

%COMMENT{type="above" target="%MAINWEB%.PersonalRemarks#InsertHere"}%

Location relative to an arbitrary text string

%COMMENT{type="above" location="Flights of Fancy"}%

Warning of course, if a user's comment contains the string "Flights of Fancy" they may and up changing the location for the next comment! Also, if you use a tag in the location, then you've just inserted another tag in the page that contains the %COMMENT! So be very careful how you specify the RE for location. Note that the RE is matched using perl "multiple line" mode, so ^ and $ match the start of a line and the end of a line respectively.

Default templates

Customisation

• familiarity with HTML forms,
• some familiarity with the TWiki templating language.

The PROMPT template

<textarea rows=%rows|3% cols="%cols|50%" value="%tval|Rubbish%">

As well as support for all the usual TWiki variables in templates, the following special variables are supported in the PROMPT definition:

The OUTPUT template

There are also four position tags that are used to indicate where the comment should be placed, relative to the location defined in the %COMMENT tag:

Settings

• Description:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Allows users to quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.

• • Set TEMPLATES = comments
• default template type (if not present, defaults to "below")

Plugin Installation Instructions

Plugin Info

Plugin Home:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPlugin
Feedback:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPluginDev

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences, TWikiPlugins

Comment Plugin

This plugin allows users to quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.

( Discussion in TWiki:Plugins/CommentPluginDev )

Features

Inserts an edit box into the page that allows users to type in and save comments. Comments can be made

• in different formats (as defined by a template),
• in both forward and reverse chronological order,
• signed or unsigned, dated or undated (as defined by a template),
• in other topics, or other positions within the current topic.

Syntax Rules

Write the command %COMMENT{ attributes }% anywhere in a TWiki topic. %COMMENT% is also legal.

The following attributes are recognised

Positioning the comment

Location relative to %COMMENT tag

%COMMENT{type="below"}%

Location relative to a TWiki anchor

%COMMENT{type="above" target="%MAINWEB%.PersonalRemarks#InsertHere"}%

Location relative to an arbitrary text string

%COMMENT{type="above" location="Flights of Fancy"}%

Warning of course, if a user's comment contains the string "Flights of Fancy" they may and up changing the location for the next comment! Also, if you use a tag in the location, then you've just inserted another tag in the page that contains the %COMMENT! So be very careful how you specify the RE for location. Note that the RE is matched using perl "multiple line" mode, so ^ and $ match the start of a line and the end of a line respectively.

If you specify an anchor and a location, the anchor will be ignored.

Default templates

Your local installation may add more template types as well - see Customisation, below.

Customisation

• familiarity with HTML forms,
• some familiarity with the TWiki templating language.

The plugin picks up its templates from a standard TWiki template file, named "comments". This allows different templates to be defined for different TWiki skins. This template file may include other template files, or may include a topic from a user web (this is an extension to the normal handling of %TMPL:INCLUDE described in the documentation). The shipped plugin defines default templates in comments.tmpl and then includes the topic CommentsTmpl?. If you want to define your own templates, add them to UserTemplates?. Note that you can use %TMPL:INCLUDE in this file to include other files of templates. Note also that if you want to override any of the default templates shipped with the plugin, you can simply do so by defining them in UserTemplates?, and they will replace the installed versions.

To define a comment type, you have to provide two simple template definitions in the template file; one for the prompt box, and one for the generated output. If we have a template type "mytype", these are named PROMPT:mytype and OUTPUT:mytype respectively. See comments.tmpl in the templates directory for examples.

The PROMPT template

Only the input fields of the form need be defined. The plugin automatically generates the >form< and &gt:/form< tags. Note that you must define a "submit" button if you want the form to work!

If an attribute is given to the %COMMENT tag that is not one of the standard attributes, then that attribute is taken as the name of a parameter to be expanded in the PROMPT template. Expressions in the template of the form %param|default% (e.g. %rows|3%, %button|Push me%) are expanded to the values given in the %COMMENT. For example, if the PROMPT template 'example' contains:

<textarea rows=%rows|3% cols="%cols|50%" value="%tval|Rubbish%">

%COMMENT{type="example" rows="5" cols="20"}%

<textarea rows=5 cols="20" value="Rubbish">

As well as support for all the usual TWiki variables in templates, the following special variables are supported in the PROMPT definition:

The OUTPUT template

There are also four position tags that are used to indicate where the comment should be placed, relative to the location defined in the %COMMENT tag:

Important Note regarding Locks

The plugin checks if the page is locked for edit. When a locked page is displayed in 'view' mode, comment input is automatically disabled.

Note that if the page was read long time ago, it's possible that page was locked by another user after it was read, and the lock is still outstanding. In this case, comments cannot be saved, and you will be redirected to a "topic is locked" page. You then have two options:

• Cancel - throw away your comment and return to viewing the page.
• Back - WARNING some browsers might requery the page and lose your comments - so test how your browser behaves before using the Back button.

To help avoid edit conflict, a reminder to refresh the page before entering comments is the default text for a %COMMENT. When the target page is known to be locked, the PROMPT form is automatically disabled.

Settings

• Description:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Allows users to quickly post comments to a page without an edit/preview/save cycle.
• templates; includes user templates from CommentsTmpl?
  • Set TEMPLATES = comments
• default template type (if not present, defaults to "below")
  • Set DEFAULT_TYPE = above

Plugin Installation Instructions

TWiki:Plugins/SharedCode

TWiki:Plugins/SharedCode

• Download the ZIP file from the Plugin web (see below)
• Unzip CommentPlugin.zip in your twiki installation directory. Content:

  File:	Description:
  data/TWiki/CommentPlugin.txt	Plugin doc page (this page)
  data/TWiki/CommentsTmpl.txt	Example user templates
  templates/comments.tmpl	Master comment templates
  lib/TWiki/Plugins/CommentPlugin.pm	Plugin Perl module
  lib/TWiki/Plugins/CommentPlugin/Comment.pm	Plugin Perl module
  lib/TWiki/Plugins/CommentPlugin/Templates.pm	Plugin Perl module
  lib/TWiki/Plugins/CommentPlugin/test.zip	Tests
  lib/TWiki/Plugins/CommentPlugin/build.pl	Build file

• The Plugin depends on the viewauth script to authenticate the user. As described in TWikiAccessControl, copy the view script to viewauth (or better, create a symbolic link) and add viewauth to the list of authenticated scripts in the .htaccess file.

If installed correctly, you should see a %COMMENT edit box below here.

<--/commentPlugin-->

Plugin Info

Plugin Author:	v1.0 TWiki:Main/DavidWeller v2.0 TWiki:Main/PeterMasiar v3.0 TWiki:Main/CrawfordCurrie
Plugin Version:	3.0
Change History:	<-- Most recent first --> 3.003 11 Apr 2004: Minor line termination problem fixed, and "security" hyphen on standard comment removed and replaced with a bulleted list.
	3.002 6 April 2004: Applied patches (thanks Peter Thoeny) for multiple comment adding, BOTTOM and TOP inside meta-data, and moved example to Sandbox.
	3.001 13 March 2004: Modified to use viewauth save technique (safer), add nonotify parameter, move templates fully into topics, with a hook for site-specifics, support %COMMENT%, internationalisation fixes
	3.000 18 Feb 2004: TWiki:Main/CrawfordCurrie rewrote for standard templates and other user requests. Recognition to Patrice Fournier and Sam Abrams for terrific testing and patch support.
	7 Feb 2004: TWiki:Main/CrawfordCurrie rewrote this page and CommentTemplates? in an effort to make the plugin more user friendly. Added {TIME} variable. Also updated CVS.
	23 Sep 2003 TWiki:Main/PeterMasiar: 80% rewrite/refactor, adding templates
	15 July 2003: TWiki:Main/PeterMasiar added "reminder" parameter and feature to pass comments to oopslockedcomments.tmpl template to copy-paste later
	5 March 2002 Bug fixes, TWiki:Main/JonLambert created oopslockedcomments.tmpl template
	24 Feb 2002 added a few more user requests, made "English" text configurable
	4 Dec 2001: 1.01 release, changed name to CommentPlugin, added $button var, changed textarea WRAP setting to "soft"
	30 Nov 2001: Initial version
Dependencies:
Perl Version:	5.0
Plugin Home:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPlugin
Feedback:	TWiki:Plugins/CommentPluginDev

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences, TWikiPlugins

-- TWiki:Main/DavidWeller - 05 Mar 2002
-- TWiki:Main/PeterMasiar - 15 Jul 2003, 23 Sep 2003
-- TWiki:Main/CrawfordCurrie - 21 May 2004