alogblog's MTy plugins

Requirement

IE or Firefox/Mozilla.

The use of TAB key and other features was developed and tested only on IE and Firefox/Mozilla browsers. Adaptation into Opera and other browsers are beyond my abiliy for now.

And I couldn't develope and test it on every version IE and FF/MZ browsers. But if you use recent browser, it will work well.

Installation

Download this plugin and untar it under (mt home) folder like $ tar xvfz BTW-3.2.06.tar.gz. Then the files will be located as below:

• (mt home)/plugins/BigPAPI.pl


• (mt home)/plugins/alogblog/BigTemplateWindow.pl


• (mt home)/alt-tmpl/cms/edit_template.tmpl

Features

Seeing is believing You can here see and test some features. ( In this testing window, HTML tag inserting and Save/Rebuild features are not possible. )

• You can popup template editing window and handle the size of it as you want.
• You can use TAB key in textarea. You wanted it?
• You can control TAB feature. Pressing one TAB key, you can insert 3~8 real space characters. It was introduced for an easy use of multiply indented DIV blocks.
• You can easily change the font size in textarea by 1px.
• Wow, you can turn on and off text wrapping. In default template box, long lines are wrapped into next lines. This can be helpful in some case. But also this text wrapping might disturb you in grasping whole tag relation. From now on, you can turn it on/off.
• In sidebar, you can refer all MT template tags/global filters and insert it into current cusor position by clicking tag label you want.
• Did you installed some plugins a month ago? When adaping that tags of plugin into some template, you are suffering some confusing to remember it ? All tags of installed plugins also present in sidebar.
• Short keys. alt key + 1(1px smaller), 2(1px bigger), w(text wrapping), t(native tab feature), 3~8(space characters insertion), s(save), r(save and rebuild)

* Added new features of version 3.2.02

Fig.1 Screenshot

Fig.2 Notification of update in plugin list menu.

• Messages shown after saving or rebuilding templates are fade in and out.
• Menu position of plugins and HTML tags are moved to top and can be scrolled
• All MT templage tags show you a short description, which is from MT doc.
• Value tags and container/conditional tags are inserted differently.
• All attributes that the selected tag can have are automatically inserted.
• I added update-auto-discovery feature. If I update this plugin, then you can be notifed in your plugin list menu.

* Added new features of version 3.2.03

• Caret(cursor in textarea) position remembered. After saving or rebuilding a template, the reloaded templat editing box always positioned its caret to the top of the textarea. I felt this normal behavior is very uneasy because I want to see and re-edit that template from previously edited parts. So I always had to scroll down to previous editting lines after saving it. Version 3.2.03 remembers caret position. After saving or rebuilding it, current editing page's viewing part is kept. (See note below.)

* Added new features of version 3.2.05

Fig.3 Templates menu in BTW.

• Do you want to open multiple templates and then refer, edit those? Then just click a template name on MT's template tab menu.


• In BTW popup, do you want to open and edit other templates? Then use the sidebar templates menu on BTW. You don't need to leave this BTW to open others.

* Added new features of version 3.2.06

• By clicking an MT tag link, you could insert that tag into the temlate body. In this upgraded version, if you re-click it (only just after clicking it), the inserted tag will be disappeared. ( I tried to add complete ctrl-z undo feature in FF/MZ, but it was too difficult and delicate for me. Problem like dealing non-Latin characters in buffering is one example. So I solved undo featues by introducing re-clicking. I'm not sure it's best solution, however I think it can do minumum undo feature at least.)

Notes

1.
The default size of popup window is 800x600px for users using small monitors. So original menu labels of editing template page was shortened and help links are removed. If you are unfamiliar with the meaning of menu fields in editing template page, you can disable this plugins and use the default very very small and limited :p template editing page for some times. After that, you will be able to use it freely.

2.
I added Rebuild button. This Rebuild button only works in Index Templates as like origianl MT pre 3.2(?)
I heard someone said s/he want the old version MT's Rebuild button. I don't know why 6A removed that button. So unpredictable problem may occur even though that possbility is low.

3.
This BTW page design is absolutely for a fittable textarea to current window size. I'm neither a Javascrpt pro, nor a CSS pro and nor a Perl pro. During this template page CSS design, I had one unpredictable problem. It's when after saving or rebuilding template.

As you know, if you save or rebuild template, one more message line like "Your template changes have been saved" is shown. I couldn't deal it nicely for fittable size of textarea. As a last resort, I made that message will be hidden after 5 seconds. If you think it's too short, you can modify in edit_template.tmpl. After 5 seconds, messages are disappeared. So if you want to rebuild it after saving, you have to do in 5 seconds. Of couese, if you want rebuilding, you can click "Save and Rebuild" in first.

I think you may don't understand above explanation.

If you don't, first create a New Index Template for a test. Copy the content of other templates and paste it. And then play with that test template. Try to Save!, Save and Rebuild! then you will know it.

4.
Template file, alt-tmpl/cms/edit_template.tmpl, is not using MT interface CSS files. All CSS rules are embeded in this file. If you're not satified with my color sheme or font-family or want to add additional HTML ref. tags or whatever, please feel free to edit it. It's just like simple HTML.

5. (added in version 3.2.02)
Tool-tip tag helps are from MT doc site. And I included only first phrase of tag description. So it could be not enough for full understanding of new tags. In some case,some tag attributes are exclusive, i.e attribute A and B can't be used the same time. But this plugin didnt include that long description because it is not HELP page. It is just a tip.

6.
Works in adding all MT tags and its description and it's all attribute was very tedious, boring and stiffened my right sholder. So I couldn't test all tags and its description and attribute matching VERY carefully. Of course I did it, but only once and roughly. If you find some mismatching, please feedback to me.

7. (added in version 3.2.03)
Caret position remembering feaure works differently in IE an Firefox/Mozilla.
Both browsers keep edting parts( by scroll position). But only Firefox/Mozilla retain previous caret focus. In IE, when focusing to textarea, IE scrolls to the top of the page. So I couldn't focus to textarea in IE( of course, previous editing parts will be remembered an shown. Only no focus.) I think it's not a problem.

Credits

Thanks, Kevin Shay. His PAPI is really big. I couldn't run away from it.
Thanks, Arvind Satyanarayan. Newly added features of version 3.2.02 was advised by him.

License

Relased under the Creative Commons License.

Version History

• 3.2.06: Fixed a bug(Truncation of last character of plugin's container tag), Thanks Curtis Gale Weeks. Simple undo/redo feature added.
• 3.2.05: Fixed a bug(Creating new template caused two ones). New features added.(template menu in sidebar)
• 3.2.04: Fixed a bug(container tags of plugins was not displayed in the tag menu).
• 3.2.03: Caret postion remembered even after saving a template.
• 3.2.02: Tool tip tag help added. Value and Container tags differentiated. Smooth fade in/out message. All possible attribute added.
• 3.2.01: for MT 3.2
• 0.1 : first I finished BTW with CGI, it also worked, but only after some testing it, I knew current method is more good and safe. So this CGI version didn't see the light of the world. Rest in peace!