Re: [Krang-general] RFC - Krang::Publisher->publish_context(%args);

[Peter L. <pe...@pe...>]

On Fri, 19 Nov 2004, Perrin Harkins wrote:

> On Fri, 2004-11-19 at 12:50, Peter Leonard wrote:
>> 1) Rewrite fill_template to support nested variables at depth > 1.
>
> We already pretty much decided we have to change the
> publish/fill_template stuff so that it just grabs all the data, builds a
> structure, and passes it to a single template (which can include other
> templates if it wants to).  The current system with the recursive stuff
> and things being built from the bottom up is confusing and makes us do
> lots of workarounds like the ones you're talking about here.
>
> I don't see a good reason why all the sub-elements should get to choose
> their own templates.  It makes much more sense to me to have a single
> templates handled in the top-level element.  It's the way that most
> people expect templating to work.

Two reasons why per-element templates exist:

1) It allows for customization of story layout on a per-category basis
    without having to rewrite entire templates.

2) Our users needed something that was familiar to them - in this case,
    the HTML::Template half of the Bricolage publishing engine.  Like it or
    not, this was a core issue during the design of Krang.

In this case, it sounds like the enhanced fill_template() would fit a lot 
of your needs.


>
>> The other thought was a new method call in Krang::Publisher:
>>
>>    my %context = (version => 'txt');
>>
>>    $publisher->publish_context(%context);
>>    my %pub_context = $publisher->publish_context();
>
> There would be no need for an extra stash for variables if the whole
> chunk of data was passed in to the top-level template and thus available
> to everything below it.  You could just add an extra param to the
> template in your publish() method.
>

The problem is that this only works if you use one big template, or your 
templates are populated w/ <TMPL_INCLUDE> calls.  Additionally, it 
wouldn't help when the decisions being made are outside of the context of 
the template, which was the motivator for this idea in the first place.

 	--pete