webgen users - Sep 2008 - Blogging/news support

Hi everyone,

We''ve been using webgen since 0.4 in our Inquisitor project website
(http://www.inquisitor.ru/), and now we''re opting to upgrade to 0.5.x.
New features and redesign of 0.5 looks very promising, but I''d like to
ask several questions on blogging/news support in 0.5.x.

As far as I understand, the main tag that would be used for various
slices in blogging/news support is {menu} tag. What I lack now is
features such as:

1. Display a list of links to news items, filtered by some sort of
property (i.e. not only "in_menu = true", but also filtered by some
sort of metainfo). I.e. I want to display a list of news items,
filtered by year/month/date.

2. Display something else besides just a title for this list of items,
for example - a date or first paragraph of an entry.

3. Sort output of menu tag by some sort of property (for example, but
created title)

4. Limit the output of menu tag by number of items displayed (i.e.
"display only first 10 news items")

Is there some work going about this one? If not, may be I can create
and send you a modified version of menu tag that would implement these
features?

-- 
WBR, Mikhail Yakshin

Hi,

Am Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:48:30 +0400
schrieb "Mikhail Yakshin" <greycat.na.kor at
gmail.com>:
> As far as I understand, the main tag that would be used for various
> slices in blogging/news support is {menu} tag. What I lack now is
> features such as:
> 
> 1. Display a list of links to news items, filtered by some sort of
> property (i.e. not only "in_menu = true", but also filtered by
some
> sort of metainfo). I.e. I want to display a list of news items,
> filtered by year/month/date.
> 
> 2. Display something else besides just a title for this list of items,
> for example - a date or first paragraph of an entry.
> 
> 3. Sort output of menu tag by some sort of property (for example, but
> created title)
> 
> 4. Limit the output of menu tag by number of items displayed (i.e.
> "display only first 10 news items")
> 
> Is there some work going about this one? If not, may be I can create
> and send you a modified version of menu tag that would implement these
> features?
It is currently not clear/I have not given it enough though what tags
will be used for the blogging support. The menu tag is normally only
used for displaying a menu. What you have in mind would justify a
completely new tag, for displaying blog entries. The biggest problem I
see with using a tag for this is the lack of customizability (is this
word ;) ?). I think most people would like to customize how suche
entries appear. This would be point 2.

I have thought about using a blog entry abstract template which could
be used for displaying one entry in a list of blog entries. Originally,
I had planned to unveil blogging support at the end of September but I
can''t make this deadline due to lack of time.

Concerning filtering/sorting of entries: there are currently several
different methods used for filtering/sorting entries for menus,
sitemaps and the feed generator. I will implement one method for
finding/filtering certain nodes using various methods (kind of nodes,
in menu or not, matches/doesn''t match a particular set of path
patterns, ...). This should account for points 1., 3. and 4.

I appreciate any thoughts on the blogging support and how it should be
done in webgen (also see the news posting titled ''Blog
support'')!

-- Thomas