Feature Proposal: Add DESCRIPTION setting to group topics

Motivation

Make group settings more transparent.

Description and Documentation

Small usability thingy: Add a

• Set DESCRIPTION = XYZ group, with access to all FOO and BAR content

Imported groups from LDAP do not have a description; the description field will simply be empty for LDAP groups.

For testing I replacing %GROUPS% with this SEARCH on a TWiki installation:

%SEARCH{
  "* Set GROUP ="
  topic="*Group"
  nonoise="on"
  format="| <b>[[$topic]]</b> %BR% <span style=\"font-size: 80%; color: gray\"> $pattern(.*?\* Set DESCRIPTION = ?([^\n\r]*).*) </span> | $pattern(.*?\* Set GROUP = ?([^\n\r]*).*) |"
}%

This results in the following screenshot of groups with description:

-- TWiki:Main/PeterThoeny - 23 Jun 2007

Impact

Implementation

-- Contributors: PeterThoeny - 16 Sep 2007

Discussion

Duplicating the usability suggestion from Bugs:Item4287 to here; it was unfortunately discarded...

-- PeterThoeny - 16 Sep 2007

It would probably be simpler code if its not group specific.

By adding something like %META::TOPICSUMMARY{}% for all and any topic which defaults to the first 50 char of the topic (or whatever $summary uses) we could coalesce all the format="" parameters in TML, and thus do some clever stuff.

-- TWiki:Main.SvenDowideit - 23 Jun 2007

The first x chars would not be a good solution for this case, it should be one sentence, similar to what we have with the plugin short-description.

-- TWiki:Main.PeterThoeny - 24 Jun 2007

For my usecase (no LDAP), I can use the SEARCH instead of the GROUPS to get the desired result.

-- TWiki:Main.PeterThoeny - 24 Jun 2007

i fear you misunderstand - the first x would only be the default. in your Groups topics you can intentionally SET that value to your description.

point being, its a useful concept for more than just Groups.

-- TWiki:Main.SvenDowideit - 24 Jun 2007

Ah, yes, good point.

-- TWiki:Main.PeterThoeny - 24 Jun 2007

seems odd to be 'Waiting for feedback' on a topic, when its not been created - I'm guessing that while its an interesting idea, no-one's needing it right now?

-- SvenDowideit - 03 Sep 2007

Why not have a TWikiForm instead of all these GROUP and DESCRIPTION variables.

-- TWiki:Main.MichaelDaum - 03 Sep 2007

I've added the rather relevant discussion from the Bug Item, as I don't think this should be limited to Groups. I also agree with Micha, its structured data - so it belongs in the Meta, and can then be brought out using templates.

-- SvenDowideit - 16 Sep 2007