MacroPluginDev

This plugin has been merged with the new and improved AliasPlugin And I suggest using that rather than this hack -- TravisBarker - 27 Apr 2005

Explanation

who, what, why, where, when, and why again?

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Nobody seemed interested in implementing the idea I came up with on AliasPluginDev so I finally just did it myself.

the MacroPlugin is a simple hack of the AliasPlugin that changes the way the "alias" is rendered. Instead of rendering the same term that is typed into the page, but as a link to the "aliased topic" as the AliasPlugin does, the MacroPlugin actually replaces the term itself with the alias. ( which may or may not be a link to another topic) by this method the plugin becomes somewhat more flexible because the alias can be any arbitrary string.

Example:

a picture is worth a thousand words

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the term	the macro
foo	bar

The macro table above causes "foo" (as typed) to expand and become "bar" in normal topic view. "bar" can be a string.

Current Limitations

sofar it only replaces a single word with a single word, I would like suggestions on how to make it replace a single word with a string. the problem was solved changing line 59 of MacroPlugin.pm to the following:

WikiWord && $line =~ /\|\s*(?:\<nop\>)?(\w+)\s*\|\s*(?:\<nop\>)?(\S*[^|]*)\s*\|/) ||

so MacroPlugin now allows strings to replace words

Thinkinking a bit further on this line it would be just as easy to allow MacroPlugin to replace arbitrary strings with strings. this way you could match a phrase and change it to a different word or phrase of arbitrary length.

Name Change Suggestions

keeping wiki words clean

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Since this plugin is so similar to AliasPlugin, I think we might consider merging the two. By giving the user the option of "what kind of alias/macro do you want?" the plugin becomes more powerful and functional.

I would also like to hear new names suggested for this plugin because we already have a MacrosPlugin and i think it might be confusing to have both a MacroPlugin & a MacrosPlugin, I dunno, what do you think about it?

Further Development

a word of caution

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I have put off creating the MacroPlugin topic until we can discuss its future a bit further (and tested the code I hacked out of AliasPlugin 8) ).

Advantages

Because there is an up side to everything...

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• censorship and moderation in forum applications
• nicknames or abv. turn into Full names (or the other way around)
• it is simpler than MacrosPlugin (and easier to use) and more flexible than AliasPlugin.

Disadvantages

Because there is a down side to everything too...

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• unexpected expansion of macros in normal topic view if used carelessly
• can break html and other code if macro occurs within html tags.

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-- TravisBarker - 20 Mar 2005

working example MacroPlugin.pm and MacroPlugin.txt are attached below but have only been briefly tested at this point. You can visit ThetaBase:TWiki.MacroPlugin for a working demo.