Question

I created a complete QuickMenuSkin-based skin on TWiki 4.0.5. Everything was fine until I installed TWiki 4.1.2, ever since I've been trying to find out if every skin creator now needs to create all the oops -templates, because TWiki no longer displays the default oops . For example, if I try to access the page "more topic actions", it simply displays a blank page. This was not the case before. It seems like too much of a job to figure out how to write oops , since it wasn´t necessary before (and it isn't particularly well documented either). Is this intentional behavior or is it a bug? (I have tested this behavior on two TWiki 4.1.2 setups)

Environment

-- MikkoLaakso - 15 Apr 2007

Answer

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I do not have an answer for you, I noticed the same issue with the QuickMenuSkin on TWiki 4.1.2. Unfortunately we have too many changes in the skin interface, each minor release seems to break skins.

Short term solution: Fix QuickMenuSkin for TWiki 4.1.2.

Long term solution: Develop a stable interface for skins that survives minor and major releases. It needs to be tested with a number of skins.

-- PeterThoeny - 15 Apr 2007

I posted a note in the QuickMenuSkinDev topic and created StableSkinInterface.

-- PeterThoeny - 15 Apr 2007

I created a set of templates from the basic oops, and added calls for the templates that render the page (htmldoctype, head, bodystart, main, bodyend). Now I can see oops-pages again, though I am not certain why this worked, or why did it work before. Investigating...

-- MikkoLaakso - 16 Apr 2007

I don't see this problem. Did you set the skin to:

   * Set SKIN = quickmenu,pattern

-- ArthurClemens - 16 Apr 2007

Is this needed? The QuickMenuSkin docs state to add a ?skin=quickmenu to the URL for testing.

-- PeterThoeny - 17 Apr 2007

the SKIN is set to quickmenunatedit, quickmenu , where quickmenunatedit is a QuickMenuSkin compatible version of NatEditContrib (that I crafted by editing the templates). Should I set SKIN = quickmenunatedit, quickmenu, pattern ? Tried this, but it makes the oops templates disappear again.

I will investigate. It is probably difficult to find the reason why TWiki behaves like this, without seeing my templates. I guess the only thing for me to do is to rebuild the entire skin from PatternSkin. This will probably be easier than trying to fix things with hacks and stuff...

(Another anomaly that I noticed today, was that the rename -template no longer finds the backlinks, and therefore doesn't rename them. I will post a bug report after some testing if necessary... This was template-related )

-- MikkoLaakso - 17 Apr 2007

If you set SKIN to only quickmenu, does it work?

-- RafaelAlvarez - 17 Apr 2007

Not in my case.

It works with Arthurs's workaround, but then the oops screens have the pattern look instead of the quickmenu look.

-- PeterThoeny - 17 Apr 2007

It doesn't, the pattern look appears but if you browse to another page in the skin, it

-- MikkoLaakso - 18 Apr 2007

It is just a shot into the dark, but could this have something to do with the way OOPS is defined in QuickMenuSkin twiki.quickmenu.tmpl ,

%TMPL:DEF{"oops"}%
%TMPL:P{"htmldoctype"}%
%TMPL:P{"head"}%
%TMPL:P{"bodystart"}%
%TMPL:P{"bodycontainer"}%
%TMPL:P{"bodyend"}%
%TMPL:END%

(attached the current twiki.quickmenu.tmpl )

QuickMenuSkin doesn't define an oops.quickmenu.tmpl like PatternSkin. Also, twiki.pattern.tmpl has only one line, which includes oops ?? What happened here?

If somebody would draw a TWikiDraw- drawing about the patternskin structure, it would sure help me finding that bug (and be generally useful for others as well).

-- MikkoLaakso - 19 Apr 2007

See Reference: pattern skin template INCLUDE tree.

-- ArthurClemens - 19 Apr 2007

If that where the case, then the "default" skin (use an empty SKIN setting or and empty skin parameter in the URL) would fail, as the definition in QuickMenuSkin is Copy-Pasted from twiki.tmpl

Actually, I tried all the options in the more topic actions link with the "default" skin, and everything is working as it should.

There must be something else, some place inside the QuickMenuSkin templates.

-- RafaelAlvarez - 20 Apr 2007

1. When you speak about "default", you mean the one defined in the TWikiPreferences? When I use urlparam ?skin= , nothing changes (I get my QuickMenuSkin? mod equipped page).
2. Is it possible to override a complete root template (or entry template) file somewhere (in a template)?

-- MikkoLaakso - 20 Apr 2007

Problem solved (I think). Somehow in TWiki 4.0.5, it was not necessary to define (e.g.)

%TMPL:P{"htmldoctype"}%
%TMPL:P{"head"}%
%TMPL:P{"bodystart"}%
%TMPL:P{"bodycontainer"}%
%TMPL:P{"bodyend"}% 

in the root template (in this case, twiki.quickmenu.tmpl didnt have this definition, even though it is root for all the oops-templates and almost everything else). As no templates are displayed anymore without these definitions, quickmenuskin oops-templates no longer works. The fix would be to simply add these (and remove them from view.quickmenu.tmpl to avoid duplication of the page).

-- MikkoLaakso - 22 Apr 2007

I think the %TMPL:DEF{"oops"}% (above) actually has something to do with this. I believe it is no longer possible to use this kind of definition. What I think this used to do, was that it defined the structure of oops template files - and it no longer works.

I was really ready throw the whole skin to recycle bin, before I noticed this... it seems to work so the work continues

And there the reason was, confirmed. Default oops templates (e.g. oopsmore.tmpl )in 4.0.5 call

%TMPL:P{"oops"}%

-- MikkoLaakso - 22 Apr 2007

I filed Bugs:Item3933 on behalf of Mikko. Thanks Mikko for the analysis.

-- PeterThoeny - 22 Apr 2007

• twiki.quickmenu.tmpl: twiki.quickmenu.tmpl (modified)