NewsPlugin v1.5

The News plugin implements a simple "Headlines" view, or summary, of a list of news or a weblog. Add a %NEWS% variable in a news topic named Xxx to generate a headline topic named XxxHeadlines.

Syntax Rules

One enters news as items of a bulleted list in a single source topic, most recent first. If somewhere in the topic, the keyword %NEWS% appears, then a new topic is created with the first line of the most recent news. Ending punctuation is removed from the headlines for a sleeker look.

Recommended usage is to %INCLUDE% the generated topic in some panel in a front page, and put a "More..." link in it to the source topic. The %NEWS% variable can be set in an HTML comment to hide it in the source topic:

<!-- %NEWS% -->

To change the default, use the syntax %NEWS{parameter="value" ...}% syntax with the following available parameters:

Parameter	Value
postsep	Appends this text to each headline. Defaults to newline
pattern	Gives a (partial) regular expression pattern to use to extract the news items. This pattern must occur at the beginning of a line in order to select a news item. The headline then becomes everything following the pattern until the end of the line. Defaults to (\t|   )\*\s (i.e., a first-level bullet).
trim	If set to "no", trailings punctuation marks ( .,:; ) are not removed from headlines. Defaults to "yes"
topic	Name of generated headlines topic. Defaults to the name of the source topic with Headlines appended to it.
presep	Prepend each headline with this text. Defaults to <tab>*<space>
count	The number of headlines to keep. Defaults to 5.
suffix	This text will be appended to the generated topic. Defaults to nothing.
prefix	This text will be prepended to the generated topic. Defaults to nothing.

Examples

Example: Set the prefix, presep, and suffix to produce an HTML unordered (bullet) list: %NEWS{presep="<li>" prefix="<ul>" suffix="</ul>"}%

Example: If the topic MyCompanyNews contains:

%NEWS%
 * NewsPlugin released - 18 Feb 2003.
   The great news plugin has been debugged
 * NewsPlugin devel started - 02 Jan 2003.
   I think this is really needed, 
   I will try to keep it simple

 * NewsPlugin released - 18 Feb 2003
 * NewsPlugin devel started - 02 Jan 2003

Example: This is the same example above, except the news headlines are specified as level-2 headings:

%NEWS{pattern="---\+\+(!!)?"}%
---++ NewsPlugin released - 18 Feb 2003.
The great news plugin has been debugged
---++ NewsPlugin devel started - 02 Jan 2003.
I think this is really needed, 
I will try to keep it simple

 * NewsPlugin released - 18 Feb 2003
 * NewsPlugin devel started - 02 Jan 2003

Plugin Settings

Plugin settings are stored as preferences variables. To reference a plugin setting write %<plugin>_<setting>%, i.e. %INTERWIKIPLUGIN_SHORTDESCRIPTION%

• One line description, is shown in the TextFormattingRules topic:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = %NEWS% generates a short headlines topic from a list of news

• Debug plugin: (See output in data/debug.txt)
  • Set DEBUG = 0

Plugin Installation Instructions

Note: You do not need to install anything on the browser to use this plugin. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the plugin on the server where TWiki is running.

• Download the ZIP file from the Plugin web (see below)
• Unzip NewsPlugin.zip in your twiki installation directory. Content:

  File:	Description:
  data/TWiki/NewsPlugin.txt	Plugin topic
  data/TWiki/NewsPlugin.txt,v	Plugin topic repository
  lib/TWiki/Plugins/NewsPlugin.pm	Plugin Perl module
  data/Sandbox/NewsPluginExample.txt	Example news source topic
  data/Sandbox/NewsPluginExampleHeadlines.txt	Example generated news headlines topic
  data/Sandbox/NewsPluginExampleInclusion.txt	Example =%INCLUDE% usage of a generated headlines topic

• Test if the installation was successful:
  • see NewsPluginExample

Plugin Info

Related Topics: TWikiPreferences, TWikiPlugins

-- TWiki:Main/ColasNahaboo - 17 Feb 2003
-- TWiki:Main/DavidBright - 07 Feb 2006