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This is a README-file for all interested in the templating system used by Koha.
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It contains guidelines ans descriptions, please feel free to make comments and contributions to this file.
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1. Introduction
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The advantage of a templating-system is the separation of code and design.
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It is much easier to read the html and get an imagination of what it will look like without having it shattered by declarations and functions.
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And it is also nicer being able to alter some functions without worrying about the webdesign.
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On the other hand templating stands in contradiction on scripting the procedural way, it forces obect-oriented programming.
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With templates Koha can be made fully skinnable, we speak of themes, and can support different languages.
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2. How does it work
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The short version: Instead of printing html from your script you only define some template-parameters.
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You design your html-page without code in it and where you need to insert data generated by the script you can pass this data from the template-parameters via special tags.
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Indeed there is a little more to know.
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I recomend reading the documentation to the HTML::Template-module.
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You ca obtain it from http://www.perldoc.com/cpan/HTML/Template.html
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3. How is it implemented in Koha
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Koha uses templates to handle different themes and languages.
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There is a CVS-module for the design-files: koha-tmpl.
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It contains two directories for the opac- and the intranet-templates: opac-tmpl and intranet-tmpl.
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Each of this directories reflects the available themes and their languages.
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The default theme is "default" and the default language is "en" (we use the 2letter-abbreviations, en => english, fr => french, de => german and so on).
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If you for example want to write a template for the opac part of the "custommade"-theme in polish it has to go in koha-tmpl/opac-tmpl/custommade/pl/template.tmpl.
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The template-files will not reside in your webtree, if you want to use a image you have to put this in your webtree, which is organized the same way as the templatetree (koha-html/opac-html/custommade/pl/images/image.gif).
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If you have files (either templates or files in the webspace) which are the same for all themes or languages use the "all"-directory. For example the "background.jpg"-image, which is the same for all languages within a theme should go in koha-html/(intranet|opac)-html/custommade/all/images/background.jpg).
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4. How to use it
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Simply add an entry to the systempreferences: name=theme, value=nameoftheme.
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If you want your users be able to override your theme-settings enter name=allowthemeoverride value=customtheme1,customtheme2,... (names of themes you want to be allowed) to the preferences.
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For the language you normally don't have to enter anything, the preferences of the user's browser will be used.
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If anything is wrong you can specify a languageorder with the following entry: name=languageorder value=en,fr,de,es (or whatever comma-separated languages you want)
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If you want to specify a directory for the templates you can do so in koha.conf with 'templatedirectory=younameit'.
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5. Rules and hints
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5.1 for the templates
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-use absolut paths, relative paths in html-tags would be relative to the script's position and relative paths in <TMPL_INCLUDE> would be relative to the template.
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-you don't have to make templates for everything in your custom-theme or language. if you omit a template in a language the template of next available language is used (languages are tried in the order of the user's browser-settings).
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if there is no template in the specified language in a theme a different language will be chosen and NOT a different theme.
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if you omit a template in all languages the template of the default-theme will be used.
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-include comments with useful information such as the template's location, this simplifies debugging
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-use the same name for the template and the script (with different extensions of course)
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5.2 for the scripts
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-use meaningfull english (abbreviations) as parameter-names
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-if you fetch a list of data, pass it completely and let the designer decide which data to use.
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-working with arrays and loops is always better, even if you have only three similar rows.
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-don't let the script generate html and pass the output to the template
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6. Templating stuff in Koha
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This section is to describe scripts, modules and functions within them to handle with themes, languages and other templating stuff.
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If you write something which matches this, please add a brief description here (e.g. function calls and return values).
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-function %path = pathtotemplate(%hash) in C4::Output
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Takes a hash with the following keys:
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-template: the name of the template-file (e.g. 'mytemplate.tmpl')
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-type: 'opac', 'intranet', 'none' or something you specify, decides which directory to lookup, defaults to intranet
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-'opac': /somedirs/opac-tmpl/theme/language/template.tmpl
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-'interanet': /somedirs/intranet-tmpl/theme/language/template.tmpl
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-'none': /somedirs/theme/language/template.tmpl
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-'my own words': /somedirs/my own words/theme/language/template.tmpl
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somedirs is 1. the path-parameter if specified 2. the templatedirectory in koha.conf, 3. the includes + '/templates', 4. the includes
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-theme: you can manually set a theme (e.g. 'customtheme') only if 'allowthemeoverride' in systempreferences is set
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-language: you can manually set a language (e.g. 'es')
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-path: you can manually set the path to search for templates (e.g. '/usr/koha/sometesttemplates')
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You only need to pass the last three parameters if you want to override the preferences for some reasons
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Returns:
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- $path{'path'}: the complete+absolute path of the template (e.g. '/somedirs.../opac-tmpl/customtheme/es/mytemplate.tmpl')
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- $path{'fondlanguage'}: '1' if the requested template was available in the requested language
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- $path{'fondtheme'}: '1' if the requested template was available in the requested theme
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7. Links
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Do you have good links for the templater?
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The HTML::Template documentation: http://www.perldoc.com/cpan/HTML/Template.html
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Comments to dnmeid@gmx.de
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Dorian |