on 2/28/01 4:20 AM, Emiliano at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> We will allways welcome contributions of snippets or examples for the
> manual.
> Getting either of these to do something useful without knowing anything
> about
> PHP is likely to be stretching Midgards' abilities, though. Personally,
> I think Midgard is an enabling technology. It may not be a end-user tool
> for everyone.
This is kind of sad to hear Emile. Maybe something like what you just said
should be added to the about midgard page so folks who are not programmers
will not be mesmerized into using midgard.
>
>> If I may presume to give advice on the type of code needed for navigation, I
>> would like to suggest creating separate code for the following standard
>> navigation:
>>
>> 1. web site code which displays an index of:
>> a. all pages
>> 1. sub pages
>> b. all topics
>> 1. sub topics
>> c. all articles
>> 1. individual articles
>> a. include the ability to add field information
>> 1. ie; author name, address, from person record
>> d. forward, back, & top links for pages, topics, & articles
>
> These are all doable in essence. The issue is presentation. I can
> certainly
> create php functions which return all pages, or all topics, etc. but
> there
> is no clean way of blending that with your own custom layout.
I tend to disagree. If the basic php functions to return pages, topics, etc.
were commented, so a user could understand them, then not only could the
user use them to start creating a basic dynamic web site, but they would
also be learning the basics of building a dynamic web site using midgard.
Emile, I'm not talking about the be all custom layout for a web site. I'm
saying that if there was standard code for navigation available in the
midgard distribution, that it would be a great help for users that are just
starting out to use midgard. Even with the user interface nadmin has, a set
of standard navigation snippets will still be needed for most of the web
developers currently on the internet to use midgard applications.
>> in the nadmin manual. This was great, but not enough. I wanted for my
>> fullindex.htm to not only show all the articles in the topic, but also
>> display the sub topics and the articles within the sub topics. So I started
>> looking and modifying the news snippet code.
>>
>> I've included a part of the news snippet which I copied to a <[news]> style
>> that I modified to get all articles, including articles from sub topics in
>> my fullindex.htm. By changing mgd_list_topic_articles to
>> mgd_list_topic_articles_all I was able to generate a listing of all
>> articles, including sub articles.
>
> If you want all the articles, mgd_list_topic_articles_all will do the
> job. If you want
> all the articles outlined by topic, it will take recursive calls to
> mgd_list_topic
> to get that done.
>
>> This is great, but what I really wanted to do was to get only a listing of
>> all sub topics.
>
> See above.
I did, and I'm sorry but I don't understand. Maybe you could show me in the
following code?
case "fullindex":
case "fullindex.htm":
if (substr($uri,-1,1) != "/") { $uri .= "/"; }
?><[fullindex_header]><?
$articleobject =
mgd_list_topic_articles_all($pageobject->display_topic);
if ($articleobject) {
while ($articleobject->fetch()) {
$article = mgd_get_article($articleobject->id);
// do a publish date check!!!
if ( mgd_is_article_online($article->calstart,$article->caldays)) {
$article->uri = $uri.$article->name.".html";
?><[fullindex_item]><?
}
$i++;
}
}
?><[fullindex_footer]><?
break;
>
>> I spent the better part of a day looking through manuals and
>> code, which by the way had little or no comments for users to understand. So
>> now I am at a dead end. I have no idea how to get my news page to
>> dynamically display sub topics or even topics without going through a long
>> learning curve. It seems that I am going to have to learn php AND midgard
>> before I can develop a simple dynamic web site using midgard and nadmin :-(
>
> The manual does need work; in fact, right now it ought to be one of the
> most thankful
> things to work on, there being so much room for improvement :/ We'll get
> there
> eventually, but in the meantime volunteers of any technical skill level
> are welcomed
> to help out. As I have mentioned a long while ago, not being extremely
> well-versed
> in C and/or PHP is an actual plus when writing user documentation (with
> aid from the
> developers of course).
I would be happy to help work on the manual, and intend to do so as I work
through the steep learning curve. This is why my initial request from the
midgard community is to create a standard set of navigation tools. This
would not only help the web developer get started, but it would also help
them get an understanding of how midgard works.
I believe that if the manual had more examples that were properly commented,
it would be extremely helpful to the average web developer. I really can't
stress enough the importance of giving the user community (non programmers)
enough information to help them help themselves.
Thank you for your efforts Emile! I know there is a lot on your shoulders,
and you have always been there for us when we get stuck!
enrique
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