> i think that what people are REALLY telling you is that they > cannot explain > how $screen_placeholder is used. It is NOTt stated in the Turbine > documentation. there is a reference to the variable, but it > is not given > sufficient discussion for adequate understanding.
I'm not sure I agree. I just spent about half an hour browsing the docs at the URL originally given (http://jakarta.apache.org/turbine/turbine-2/fsd.html), and I think I now have a fair understanding of how $screen_placeholder is used. I read the specification at the above URL for an overview of how Turbine works, then poked around at a few links that were interesting but unrelated to $screen_placeholder, and then found the page at http://jakarta.apache.org/turbine/turbine-2/howto/velocity-site-howto.html, discussing Velocity and screens. According to the how-to, the $screen_placeholder variable is what you, the layout designer, put into the .vm (Velocity Macro) file defining your layout. The $screen_placeholder variable is used to indicate where in your layout you want the body content of your page to appear, as distinct from the navigation portion(s) of the complete page. At this point I was still a bit fuzzy on how to create the connection between the .vm file for the main body content of a particular page and the .vm file for the desired layout. Here I would agree that the documentation could use a bit of clarification. From reading the how-to, though, I concluded that if you defined a layout as .../templates/layouts/Default.vm and then had three screens defined as .../templates/screens/A.vm .../templates/screens/B.vm .../templates/screens/C.vm and then asked http://myserver.com/Turbine/templates/A.vm, you would get back the Default.vm layout, with the Velocity macro expansion of A.vm inserted into Default.vm at the point where the $screen_placeholder appears. Like I said, though, I'm a bit fuzzy on how exactly to link the layout and the screen, though I'm pretty sure it works off of common patterns in the path for each .vm file. I notice that in the Jetspeed distribution, the $screen_placeholder is used in only 2 places, under $JETSPEED_HOME/webapp/WEB-INF/templates/vm, in layouts/html/default.vm and navigations/wml/login.vm. If I modify layouts/html/default.vm, it changes the layout for all my pages, and the main body content does appear at the spot where default.vm says $screen_placeholder. The order of directory names seems to not quite match between the Turbine docs and the Jetspeed implementation, but from a quick glance at the Turbine docs I'd guess that must be a configurable setting. I got that much from reading the Turbine docs and running a couple find commands on the Jetspeed distribution. I confess I don't quite understand what the mystery about $screen_placeholder is. Am I missing something, or does your question perhaps have to do more with layouts vs. screens rather than with $screen_placeholder per se? Just guessing, since that was the part I felt shakiest about. Mark -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
