Question

I would like to force the form to be at the beginning of the Topic instead of the end. I found this question on the TWiki support site, but it was asked 5 years ago and the answer isn't intuitive enough for me (being a beginner).

Here is the link to that question... FormAtTheBeginningOfTopic

So Peter says to use the %META{"form"}% variable in the view / edit templates and skins."

Can anyone expand upon this for me? I'm not sure what do with this...

Thanks in advance

REB

Environment

-- RyanBauerle - 14 Sep 2007

Answer

If you answer a question - or someone answered one of your questions - please remember to edit the page and set the status to answered. The status selector is below the edit box.

If you are using TWiki's default skin (pattern skin), have a look at TWiki06x01.PatternSkinCustomization, especially at the section I want to place the form at the top. The topic, when read from its beginning, describes how to proceed, but if you're in for a quick hack, simply use an editor to change templates/view.pattern.tmpl and templates/edit.pattern.tmpl as described in that section. This needs to be repeated every time you upgrade, so in the long run reading the topic from the beginning might pay off

-- HaraldJoerg - 14 Sep 2007

So from that article, it says that I can simply type the following in the topic template, but when I do so it just shows up as text and the form stays at the bottom...what am I missing?

%TMPL:INCLUDE{"view"}%
%TMPL:DEF{"formattop"}%%TMPL:P{"form"}%%TMPL:END%

-- RyanBauerle - 14 Sep 2007

Ok, so figured out that I can simply put %META{"form"}% wherever I want the form to appear, but then it appears at the bottom also. Is it possible to only have the form appear where I put the %META{"form"}% ?

-- RyanBauerle - 14 Sep 2007

If you are using pattern skin, you must also void the default location (formatbottom):

%TMPL:INCLUDE{"view"}%
%TMPL:DEF{"form"}%%META{"form"}%%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{"formattop"}%%TMPL:P{"form"}%%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{"formatbottom"}%%TMPL:END%

-- ArthurClemens - 14 Sep 2007

Ok, so I was able to use the pattern skin, but that presented a couple more problems.

1. The form now goes too far to the top...I want it to be just below a bolded heading (ie. --++Server Information)

2. How do I get all links to use the new skin. I know I can append ?cover=skinname to the URL, but this can't be the solution...

Thanks

Ryan

-- RyanBauerle - 18 Sep 2007

A topic text is just one block, TEXT in a template. To have a heading above the form requires you to write a custom template:

• use a webform with a page title field, or use a variable, for instance Set PAGE_TITLE = Server Information. And extract the value from formfield or variable in the template
• have the %META{"form"}% below that to render the form
• have %TEXT% below that

Examples, and how to set the skin variable is all in PatternSkinCustomization.

-- ArthurClemens - 18 Sep 2007

Thanks for all your help!

-- RyanBauerle - 18 Sep 2007

I would like a little clarification on this answer, if you don't mind. I have a page called TicketTemplate, which contains a TicketForm that I would like to be displayed at the top (and not the bottom). I ONLY want the form on the top for topics that use this template.

If I type the following code into the edit box for TicketTemplate:

%TMPL:INCLUDE{"view"}%
%TMPL:DEF{"form"}%%META{"form"}%%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{"formattop"}%%TMPL:P{"form"}%%TMPL:END%
%TMPL:DEF{"formatbottom"}%%TMPL:END%

...then the TMPL:DEF and TMPL:END tags just appear as text. What am I doing wrong?

Thanks.

-- KevinCraft - 14 Dec 2007

See TWiki.HowToMoveTheFormToTheTopOfThePage

-- VickiBrown - 05 Mar 2008