[Pmwiki-users] Author shortcuts (was: Replace text on save?)

[Thomas -Balu- Walter]

On Sun, Mar 14, 2004 at 08:11:29PM -0700, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 03:36:15AM +0100, Thomas -Balu- Walter wrote:
> > is there a way to replace parts of the text when an author saves the
> > page? 
> 
> So far I've avoided adding a built-in "modify text on save" feature 
> because I think it has the potential for all sorts of nastiness and
> abuse.  I like it when the text that is saved is exactly what was
> specified.

I am not really sure what kind of abuse you are expecting here. If we
tell users that ~~~ will get replaced with their name or similar they
should expect it. What kind of nastiness are you thinking of e.g.?

[...]
> I have no idea what sorts of side effects, if any, something like
> this might generate, so YMMV.  Let us know how/if it works.

One problem I've encountered was that if I simply replace the
placeholder on preview the author might change the author-field and this
would not respect the new value of the field, because it already got replaced...
So I had create two ways - one for preview and the other one for save.

I've added this to a local copy of scripts/author.php, because I thought it
might belong there... (original file got disabled).

// for previews use $DoubleBrackets
if ($preview && $Author!='') {
    $DoubleBrackets['/^~~~/'] =  "'''{{".$AuthorGroup."/".$Author."}}''':";
    $DoubleBrackets['/~~~/']  =  "'' -- {{".$AuthorGroup."/".$Author."}}''";
} else {
    $DoubleBrackets['/^~~~\s/'] =  ""; // also remove whitespace to avoid...
    $DoubleBrackets['/~~~/']  =  "";   // having space at beginning of a line 
}

// on save replace the values
if (@$_POST['post'] && @$_POST['text']) {
    if (isset($Author) && $Author!='') {
        $_POST['text'] = preg_replace('/^~~~/m', "'''{{~$Author}}''':", $_POST['text']);
        $_POST['text'] = str_replace('~~~', "''-- {{~$Author}}''", $_POST['text']);
    } else {
        $_POST['text'] = preg_replace('/^~~~\s/m', "", $_POST['text']);
        $_POST['text'] = str_replace('~~~', "", $_POST['text']);
    }
}

I have this setup active right now on http://www.b-a-l-u.de/, feel free to test
it in the WikiSandbox.

One thing left is that this replacement can not be disabled e.g. using
something like [=~~~=]. This will work on preview, but not on save.

Another one is that the preview uses {{Profiles/Author}} while the save
replacement does {{~Author}}, but I was not able to do the second in
$DoubleBrackets :)

 -- Balu (2004-03-16)

PS: Why I am doing this? Because I know this feature from
http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/Wiki_Markup and it really makes it easier to
discuss or comment on things...