My system now has locked pages, which means I can and do lock Web and Site preference pages (as it could be when group permissions appear). However, if someone wants to make a new variable, they have no way to set the default except in their own personal preferences.

To remedy this, I propose extending the variable syntax so it includes an optional colon followed by a default color:

%COLOR:Blue%

This is easy to do in handleCommonTags (in wiki.pm ). Right after the check for existing preferences (and before the tests for fixed tag names) I put:

 $text =~ s/%[^:\s]+:([^%\s]+)%/\1/go; 

I had originally thought to modify getPrefsValue but it doesn't look like anyone calls that with user input -- it is always with something the program wants to look up. Still easy enough to do, although not strictly necessary:

 sub getPrefsValue { my ( $theKey ) = @_; my $x;  my $theDefault; ( $theKey, $theDefault )= ($theKey =~ /([^:]+):?(.*)/);  for( $x = 0; $x < @prefsKeys; $x++ ) { if( $prefsKeys[$x] eq $theKey ) {	return $prefsValues[$x]; } }  return $theDefault;  } 

Note white space is not allowed in the variable name, but it is in the default.

NOT COMPLETELY TESTED

Well, I see at least one place where this is breaking:

 <A HREF="%SCRIPTURLPATH%/search%SCRIPTSUFFIX%/%WEB%/?scope=topic&regex=on&search=.*"> Topic index</A>: List up all %WIKITOOLNAME%.%WEB% topics in alphabetical order. 

This is mismatching. No time to figure it out now, but should be easy enough. Looks like the last % in WEB is matching with the colon after the link. Probably should just move my expression down below all matches so it has the lowest priority.

-- AlWilliams - 22 Sep 2000

Seems to be OK if you move it to the end. I wonder if I should have made the matching stingy...

 $text =~ s/%[^:\s]+?:([^%\s]+?)%/\1/go; 

My Perl is pretty rusty, so I'll leave it to you experts if that's better or worse (it is -- at least -- untested). Seems like as long as it can't match the % or : it will be stingy anyway?

-- AlWilliams - 22 Sep 2000

TopicClassification:

FeatureBrainstorming