%SECTION1% Introduction to Plugins

TWikiPlugins add functionality to the core TWiki code. A number of the more interesting plugins are available on this AgWiki. They should all be listed in the TextFormattingRules page, with links to the plugin's own help page.

%SECTION1% The Calendar plugin

The CalendarPlugin interprets markup like this:

%CALENDAR{month="11" year="2002"}%

and renders it like this:

Additionally, if the page contains a list like this:

• 21 Dec - The Winter Sunstead
• 24 Dec - Remember to hang out stockings
• 25 Dec - Xmas day!

then any calendar of that month will include the listed items. (The list can be anywhere in the document. It can be placed in a comment so that the list is not itself rendered. The format of list entries must be exactly as shown, including the hyphens.)

%CALENDAR{month="12" year="2002" showweekdayheaders="1"}%

%SECTION2% Caveat (bug!)

Calendars are not correctly rendered during previewing. Specifically, days which should be highlighted are not.

%SECTION1% The Chart plugin

Consider the following table.

Wouldn't it look good as a graph? With the ChartPlugin^? it's no easier said than done.

%CHART{ type="line" name="gday" table="gday" data="R1:C2..R5:C2" xaxis="R1:C1..R5:C1" yaxis="on" }%

%CHART{ type="line" name="gday" table="gday" data="R1:C2..R5:C2" xaxis="R1:C1..R5:C1" yaxis="on" }%

%SECTION1% The Interwiki plugin

The InterwikiPlugin permits easy references to other TWiki sites, as defined in the InterWikis page. For example, Avo:Avo/ContactSheet renders as Avo:Avo/ContactSheet, and links to the specified page on the AVO TWiki.

%SECTION1% The Smilies plugin

The SmiliesPlugin is everybody's favourite.

With this plugin, :-) is rendered as provided there are no other characters abutting the smilie. See the SmiliesPlugin page for the other ludicrous smilies that are available.

Fortunately, I use a Gecko-based browser (currently Phoenix, but sometimes Galeon or even Mozilla itself) with images set to animate once. So feel free to use the animated smilies: I won't come after you. (Coming soon: flashing text!)

%SECTION1% The Table plugin

The TablePlugin affords extra control over tables. For example, here's a plain TWiki table.

Now here's the same table prefixed by

%TABLE{ sort="on" databg="#FCC" tableborder="0" cellpadding="5" }%

Notice that, as well as the cosmetic changes, each column heading can now be clicked to sort the table by that column (click again to reverse the sort).

%SECTION1% The Toc plugin

The TocPlugin (Table of Contents) was responsible for generating the section numbers on this page. For example,

%SECTION2% Example of generated section number

renders like this.

%SECTION2% Example of generated section number

The 2 in SECTION2 indicates that this is a second-level heading (which has a three part number... go figure).

And having done all that, creating a Contents table for the page is as easy as

%CONTENTS%

%CONTENTS%

This plugin can do other clever things too: see TocPluginHelp for a full description.

-- TimGoodwin - 13 Nov 2002