NewFeatures: Chronological entries

A DWiki RedirectFile can now point to absolute URLs as well as local DWiki pages. Absolute URLs are written like they would be in [[...]]; either http:// or <...>.

DWiki now supports generating links to URLs on the wiki's web server that are outside the DWiki itself. These are written as links in the format <...> and have to happen inside [[...]]. For example:

See [[the root of this web server|</>]].

generates a link to the DWiki's web server's root, which is all but certain to be outside the DWiki space if you're running DWiki as a CGI-BIN.

DWiki now remembers the name and URL for links that you write with [[...|...]] and thereafter allows you to omit one side of the |, at which point it will fill in the remembered values. This means that if you want to link to Google a lot in your document, you only have to write (eg) the URL once, and can thereafter refer to Google much more compactly.

This does collide a little bit with using [[...|]] to write totally unstyled text: it only comes out unstyled if it's not already been used as the name of a link.

For now I will live with that.

The RecentChanges DWikiText macro now accepts additional arguments that are the list of directories to restrict the listing to, or with a dash at the front, directories to exclude from the listing. If you combine both, both criteria must match: in an included directory and not excluded.

This lets a RecentChanges listing exclude areas that churn too much or are otherwise less interesting to list. (Perhaps, for example, a blog sub-hierarchy in a DWiki.)

If there is a common directory prefix that scanning is limited to, the scan is efficient: only that directory and lower is looked at at all.

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.