EXT: Abile Personal Notes¶

Table of Contents¶

EXT: Abile Personal Notes 1

Introduction 1

What does it do? 1

Screenshots 1

Users manual 3

FAQ 3

Adminstration 3

FAQ 3

Configuration 3

FAQ 4

Reference 4

Tutorial 5

Known problems 5

To-Do list 5

Changelog 5

Introduction¶

Users manual¶

• The extension is meant to be used in an intranet environment. Your visitors must be authenticated before accessing this extension as it references a frontend user entity. Otherwise, the notes will be accessible to everyones (not tested but should behave much like a combinaison of a small wiki-guestbook).
• Frontend users can search, read and edit their notes. From the backend, a permission system may allow the sharing of notes. Also, a note may be tagged as “active”
• The extension is made of two frontend plugins.
• The “Abile Personal Notes” plugin is the central piece. By default, the extension looks like divided in two main parts. The top section provide a listing of notes. The bottom section may vary depending on the context and is related to a specific note. After cliking on a note title in the top section, an information screen will be displayed in the bottom section. This is also the default behavior when you arrive on a page holding this extension. In the latter case, the last updated note is displayed. From the information screen, more information are displayed and you can choose to edit or delete a note if you have the correct permissions.
• The “Abile Active Notes” plugin provides a listing of the last updated active notes.

Adminstration¶

• The notes are stored as a note elements inside a page. You could for exemple create a “Notes” page and set it as a System Folder. Once you insert the frontend plugin into one of your site page, you just reference the later System Folder.
• When you create a note from the backend, you'll be ask for the title, the content, the read permissions and the write permissions. The title and the content fields are self explanatory. The read permissions and the write permissions must point to existing frontend users. If more than one frontend users is assigned to a note, then this note will be shared across those users.

Configuration¶

• Installing the Abile Notes extension should be an easy task. From the extension manager, go to “Import extensions from online repository” and enter the key “abile_notes”. The extension will be registered as a frontend plugin. To insert it in a page content, create a new content in the page you want the extension to be, create a new content, select its type to “External plugin” and select the plugin as “Abile Notes”. Next is to define the page in which the notes will be stored. Set the “Startingpoint” to this page.

• You can insert the extension from your template Tsconfig. This method present the advantage of having the extension available on every single page. To do so, the minimum required is to set the notesPid property to the page storing your note. The is achieve with the follogin code:

  #my page id is 49:
  plugin.tx_abilenotes_pi1 {
    notesPid = 49
  }
  lib.rightColumn < plugin.tx_abilenotes_pi1
  

• You may control the display of the extension. This is achieved by overwriting the default TSconfig properties, overwriting the stylesheet or unseting the current one, and providing your own templates. Exemples of how you can overwrite the Tsconfig are presented in the Reference page.

• Default Stylesheet:

  The default stylesheet is located in the files “ext_typoscript_setup.txt”. You can unset the stylesheet and set your own with the follogin code in your TSconfig:

  #unset the stylesheet
  plugin.tx_abilenotes_pi1._CSS_DEFAULT_STYLE >
  #set personal stylesheet
  page.includeCSS {
    file1 = path/to/my/style.css
  }
  

• Templates

  The extension makes use of the Smarty template engine. This is a geat way to seprate the logic from the display. Furthermore, it aims at helping you to develop your very own templates. In order to so so, you must configure the location of the directory were you will prepare the templates. This is achieve through the “templatesDir” property. In this directory, you must create to new directories called “templates” and “templates_c”. In the new “templates” directory, you must insert the three templates “editScreen.tpl”, “listScreen.tpl” and “viewScreen.tpl”. The “templates_c” directory is used by Smarty as a cache folder and must be writable. You'll find the default templates at the root of the Abile Notes extension.

#my page id is 49:
plugin.tx_abilenotes_pi1 {
  notesPid = 49
}
lib.rightColumn < plugin.tx_abilenotes_pi1

plugin.tx_abilenotes_pi1{
 #top screen is the list, bottom screen is the note details
 allInOnePage = 1
 #number of results to display
 listView.results_at_a_time = 4
 #number of pages to browse from
 listView.maxPages = 5
 #the indexed fields to search from
 listView.searchFieldList = content,title
 #the database columns ordering the list
 listView.orderByList = tstamp,title
 #location of the template and template_c  Smarty templates
 templatesDir =
}

Tutorial¶

The extension should be intuitive and easy enough to use. There are not so many possible actions.

Known problems¶

Please give us a maximum of feedback (good and bad). Also, we encourage you to provide us new translations.

To-Do list¶

• Translate the extension in as many language as possible
• Correct the spelling and the grammar.
• Provide a new property to determine wether or not a new user should have edit permissions by default as it is now the case.
• Add the possiblility to assign others others or groups from the front end to enable notes sharing.
• Allows categorisation of message.

Changelog¶

• October 29 2004: orgininal posting.
• November 15 2004: correct a few bug, add “active” functionnalities and plugin.

EXT: Abile Personal Notes - 5