[Slashcode-development] Modify the "Read More" link?

[Ralph D. <ra...@ma...>]

I'm an experienced programmer, fairly adept with PHP, moderately so 
with MySQL, but I have done very little with Perl, and had never 
touched mod_perl or CPAN until a few days ago.

Nevertheless, I installed Slash earlier this week on FreeBSD 4.7 and 
it seems to be working very nicely! My compliments to the team for 
making it amazingly easy to get started. The installation was 
essentially painless. I fiddled around a bit with the Apache 
configuration and with getting the daemon started, but I never felt 
confused or overwhelmed. I still can't quite believe the code that 
runs Slashdot is working on my computer.

Anyway...

I've modified a few templates, with the expected results and no problems.

Now, however, I want to make another modest layout change but can't 
seem to figure out how to do it. It sounds so easy that I'm 
embarrassed to admit I'm stumped.

I just want to move the "Read More" link. Instead of having the user 
click on a text link,

(Read More... | 10 of 22 comments)

I would prefer an icon right in the body of the story.

The templates involved are 121, 169, and 88. (Aside: where do the 
numbers come from?)

The "Read More" link is generated in template 169 by

[% links.join(' | ') %]

and I understand that the vertical bar is being specified as a 
separator between the generated links. Yet I can't seem to get any 
deeper than this to find the code for a simple link to the story page.

I tried to follow the call to links.join by grepping for "sub links" 
in the templates directory, but did not find anything. Is it a method 
call? I do see

links = arrayref of links

but that does not illuminate anything for me right now.

I know I will figure this out eventually but I'm wimping out and 
asking for help. I do intend to learn my way around the system and I 
just want a little hint.

If I've missed some relevant and maybe obvious piece of 
documentation, let me know and I will go away and happily study it. I 
bought the O'Reilly Slash book and it's been quite useful.

Thank you in advance.

Regards,

Ralph