The News plugin implements a simple "Headlines" view, or summary, of a list of
news or a weblog. Add a
%NEWS%
variable in a news topic named
Xxx
to generate a headline topic named
XxxHeadlines.
Syntax Rules
One enters news as items of a bulleted list in a single source topic, most
recent first. If somewhere in the topic, the keyword
%NEWS%
appears,
then a new topic is created with the first line of the most recent news.
Ending punctuation is removed from the headlines for a sleeker look.
Recommended usage is to
%INCLUDE%
the generated topic in some panel in
a front page, and put a "More..." link in it to the source topic. The
%NEWS%
variable can be set in an HTML comment to hide it in the source
topic:
<!-- %NEWS% -->
To change the default, use the syntax
%NEWS{parameter="value" ...}%
syntax
with the following available parameters:
Parameter |
Value |
count |
The number of headlines to keep. Defaults to 5. |
pattern |
Gives a (partial) regular expression pattern to use to extract the news items. This pattern must occur at the beginning of a line in order to select a news item. The headline then becomes everything following the pattern until the end of the line. Defaults to (\t| )\*\s (i.e., a first-level bullet). |
postsep |
Appends this text to each headline. Defaults to newline |
prefix |
This text will be prepended to the generated topic. Defaults to nothing. |
presep |
Prepend each headline with this text. Defaults to <tab>*<space> |
suffix |
This text will be appended to the generated topic. Defaults to nothing. |
topic |
Name of generated headlines topic. Defaults to the name of the source topic with Headlines appended to it. |
trim |
If set to "no", trailings punctuation marks ( .,:; ) are not removed from headlines. Defaults to "yes" |
Examples
Example: Set the prefix, presep, and suffix to produce an HTML unordered (bullet) list:
%NEWS{presep="<li>" prefix="<ul>" suffix="</ul>"}%
Example: If the topic
MyCompanyNews contains:
%NEWS%
* NewsPlugin released - 18 Feb 2003.
The great news plugin has been debugged
* NewsPlugin devel started - 02 Jan 2003.
I think this is really needed,
I will try to keep it simple
Then on saving the topic
MyCompanyNewsHeadlines will contain:
* NewsPlugin released - 18 Feb 2003
* NewsPlugin devel started - 02 Jan 2003
Example: This is the same example above, except the news headlines are specified as level-2 headings:
%NEWS{pattern="---\+\+(!!)?"}%
---++ NewsPlugin released - 18 Feb 2003.
The great news plugin has been debugged
---++ NewsPlugin devel started - 02 Jan 2003.
I think this is really needed,
I will try to keep it simple
Then on saving the topic
MyCompanyNewsHeadlines will contain:
* NewsPlugin released - 18 Feb 2003
* NewsPlugin devel started - 02 Jan 2003
Plugin Settings
Plugin settings are stored as preferences variables. To reference a plugin setting write
%<plugin>_<setting>%
, i.e.
%INTERWIKIPLUGIN_SHORTDESCRIPTION%
- One line description, is shown in the TextFormattingRules topic:
- Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = %NEWS% generates a short headlines topic from a list of news
- Debug plugin: (See output in
data/debug.txt
)
Plugin Installation Instructions
Note: You do not need to install anything on the browser to use this plugin. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the plugin on the server where TWiki is running.
- Download the ZIP file from the Plugin web (see below)
- Unzip
NewsPlugin.zip
in your twiki installation directory. Content: File: | Description: |
data/TWiki/NewsPlugin.txt | Plugin topic |
data/TWiki/NewsPlugin.txt,v | Plugin topic repository |
lib/TWiki/Plugins/NewsPlugin.pm | Plugin Perl module |
data/Sandbox/NewsPluginExample.txt | Example news source topic |
data/Sandbox/NewsPluginExampleHeadlines.txt | Example generated news headlines topic |
data/Sandbox/NewsPluginExampleInclusion.txt | Example =%INCLUDE% usage of a generated headlines topic |
- Test if the installation was successful:
Plugin Info
Related Topics: TWikiPreferences,
TWikiPlugins
--
TWiki:Main/ColasNahaboo - 17 Feb 2003
--
TWiki:Main/DavidBright - 07 Feb 2006