[pmwiki-users] New template expression markup....

[The Editor]

For some time I've been going back and forth between the merits of
Fox's approach to storing comments directly onto a wiki page, and
ZAP's data driven approach which separates the data from the format.

The advantage of page insertions is they are fast to retrieve (no
pagelist) and easy to edit (all on one page). The advantage to data
driven comment is it is easy to edit the template and reformat
sitewide, on the fly.

A couple mornings ago the idea occurred to me (sparked by something
Hans did awhile back) that could allow both.

Basically, suppose you use Fox or ZAP to create a page like this:

[[#ID1]]
(:date: ...:)
(:author: ...:)
(:comment: ...:)
etc.

[[#ID3]]
(:date: ...:)
(:author: ...:)
(:comment: ...:)
etc.

[[#ID3]]
(:date: ...:)
(:author: ...:)
(:comment: ...:)
etc.

Easy enough to do with existing mechanisms.  Then you set either on
the same page or another a markup something like this:

(:template <datapage> <templatepage>:)

It opens the datapage, explodes the content by the anchors, inserts
the data values into the template, and then re-implodes the output and
sends it back to the page.  All the data is cleanly stored on one
page.  And the template can be instantly updated sitewide.  The best
of both worlds!

I wrote out the code this morning but haven't had a chance to test or
debut it yet.  Should be able to finish tomorrow.  Any thoughts?

Cheers,
Dan

PS. It also allows some interesting possibilities for editing. ZAP
would have to be able to handle editing of PTV's in anchored sections,
but that should not be too hard an addition. Just what would you call
it?