[NBP web-reskin] Templating Improvement - Voices of Our Readers (for Ethan or Edie)

[Ethan Rowe]

swdidomenico at comcast.net wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi Ethan and Edie, 
> 
> 
> 
> When I navigate to Ways to Help > Voices of our Readers,  the [tempate header] and [tempate footer] code appear in the page for these urls: 
> 
> 
> 
> http://26.camp.nbp.temphost.net:9026/ic/nbp/support/voices.html 
> 
> http://28.camp.nbp.temphost.net:9028/ic/nbp/support/voices.html 
> 
> http://29.camp.nbp.temphost.net:9029/ic/nbp/support/voices.html 
> 
> http://30.camp.nbp.temphost.net:9030/ic/nbp/support/voices.html 
> 
> http://31.camp.nbp.temphost.net:9031/ic/nbp/support/voices.html 
> 

This is because I made a mistake; when I updated all those camps to
point to the new "reskin" repository and pulled in the code to provide
the [template] tag, I neglected to restart each camp's Interchange.  The
code for usertags is loaded in at startup time, so introducing a new tag
necessitates a restart.  I'm sorry that I seem to have forgotten to do
that in my mad dash to get them all updated.

In any case, it works properly for all of them now.

> It works in Camp32: 
> 
> 
> http://32.camp.nbp.temphost.net:9032/ic/nbp/support/voices.html 
> 
> 
> 
> While I have you on the line, when it comes to creating "Templates" in Interchange is there a set of commands to add a new Template to a catalog? Better yet how does does  [var HEAD] know where to get the HEAD template from? I have been going through the Interchange documentation but I have not found an answer. 

Any files in the catalogs/nbp/templates/regions directory get loaded in
with a variable name matching the filename.  So, from within your camp,
catalogs/nbp/templates/regions/HEAD corresponds to the HEAD template.

The only annoyance is that if you introduce a new template variable in
that directory, you'll need to restart Interchange for it to pick up the
new variable.  You can do that from within your camp via:
  re

("re" short for "restart")

> As I understand it we are switching from the ITL [var] tag to the [template] usertag. Is this correct? 

For this particular usage, yes.  [template] in fact uses [var] under the
hood, after determining from the environment what templates to use.

> Also during our first conference call there was talk of a "Template Engine" and a Database holding the location of the Template. Is this how it works or did I misunderstand? I read the documentation available on the ITL [var] tag - access local (catalog) and global Interchange variables. 

The "templates" are just Interchange "variables" that have a
layout/presentation purpose (you can use variables for any number of
reasons, of which layout/presentation are among the more frequent
examples).  As described above, IC loads all files from
catalogs/nbp/templates/regions into memory.  It's not really a template
"database", it's more that the directory mentioned acts like the source
for some of these template variables.  That's all.

> In order to gain some experience, I copied a template catalogs/npb/templates/regions/SUPPORT_TEMPLATE_TOP and named it SUPPORT_TEMPLATE_TOP_STEVE. Then I modified index.html to use [var SUPPORT_TEMPLATE_TOP_STEVE]. As you might have guessed, nothing happened, it did not find the template. So I take it there is a command or something to add the template to the catalog. 

Just the aforementioned restart.  :)

Thanks.

-- 
Ethan Rowe
End Point Corporation
ethan at endpoint.com