2009/8/21 Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>:
> I'd like to set up an Advocacy TODO page. So, first thing, I'd like to
> be able to re-use the TODO list template; how do I create a new page
> which uses those templates (assume no Mediawiki internals knowledge).
There's really nothing to it. Those templates will work on any page,
there are no special requirements or configurations needed.
The commitfest templates were a bit of a special case -- getting the
layout working the way we wanted required some sorcery. The Todo is a
lot more straightforward.
I have created a basic todo page at
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Advocacy_Todo, with an example
TodoItem. Feel free to replace it with genuine items, using the
TodoItem templates just as you would on the dev Todo.
Feel free to change the wording in the intro paragraph, and if you
don't like the section headings or the TOC, just delete/change them.
>
> Second, I'd like to extend the template (this is less important), to
> support adding a list of people "claiming" a TODO item. Each claim
> should include a message link. I think this would be valuable for the
> hacking TODO as well.
>
I'm not sure how valuable it would be to complicate the TodoItem
templates the way you describe. The template includes a free-text
entry area after the short name for the item, and that's where we have
(so far) been keeping links to relevant messages and commentary.
There's nothing stopping you from putting e.g. "Claimed by Josh Berkus
(see {{messageLink|...}})" in there, and adding parameters for this to
the template is unlikely to save you a significant number of
keystrokes.
The real value of templates is in factoring out the wiki formatting
and layout stuff, but I don't think a "claimed by" list really
warrants its own special layout. In particular, I wouldn't want to
try to put the todo items into a table, since tables were what made
the CF templates so fragile and stopped the per-section edit links
from working.
Cheers,
BJ