NewFeatures: Chronological entries

This is a log of new features of note in DWiki.


Template expansion via #{...} now removes a final newline if such a final newline is present. (It doesn't remove more than one newline.)

The final newline is really an implementation artifact of files; it's there because lines end with newlines, not because people consider it to be part of the file's real content. Deleting it thus brings template expansion closer to inserting people's idea of the file's contents into place.

It also means that we avoid having templates introduce whitespace into undesired places. For example:

[There's more starting at %{blog::seemore}#{blog/rangemore}]

and blog/rangemore of:

or %{range::moreclip}

doesn't introduce a gap between the end of %{range::moreclip}'s output and the ']' in what the browser displays. (See how we didn't think of blog/rangemore as actually having a newline at the end as part of it?)

If {{RecentChanges}} is invoked in a {{Striped:...}} context, it now names the links to the pages by the name of the page instead of the page's full path. This turns out to be much less annoying if many (or even some) of the changes are deep in a hierarchy.

Rational: you asked for a compact display so you're going to get it.

All wikitext macros and template renderer functions now have Python docstrings. This is because there is a new macro, {{DocAll}}, that spits out a list of macros or renderers and their docstrings, thereby creating a one-stop shop for a list of them all and documentation for them.

Formatting and TemplateSyntax have been changed to use this, thereby killing several birds and a fix-me with one somewhat extended stone.

In the process of writing docstrings, I fixed several irritating limitations and renamed a few renderers.

ChrisSiebenmann likes this approach best because it keeps the documentation closely attached to the function, thereby serving as a clear visual reminder that a) change the function, update the documentation that's right there in front of him and b) write a new function, write a docstring to go with it.

Directories can now be displayed as a 'blog', which treats all file descendants of the directory as if they were blog entries and attempts to be somewhat intelligent about how much to show and how to navigate things, supporting navigation by page date or Nth to Mth most recent pages.

ChrisSiebenmann doesn't believe this makes BlogDir obsolete. BlogDir is an excellent view for ChangeLog style situations, which is exactly what NewFeatures uses it for; however, it makes a bad way of displaying a true blog-style environment because of eventual information overload. BlogView is designed to deal with that by trimming what gets displayed and providing time-based and range-based navigation.

Read more »

Default directory views, mentioned before in DefaultDirViews, are now inherited from parent directories if the child specifies no particular desire about the whole thing.

This is convenient for setting an entire hierarchy to a BlogView (qv).

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