Feedback on ContributorsPlugin

-- DuckySherwood - 10 Dec 2004

Thanks Ducky for sharing this Plugin with the TWiki community.

I removed the other authors since I am not aware that we contributed to this Plugin. I also made some other edits to the Plugins topic; you can take that back into the next release if you wish.

-- PeterThoeny - 11 Dec 2004

Feature Proposal(s):

• Provide a sorted list of contributors (one row per person), and make it optional to show a list of their contributions (e.g. in the form of a list of revision-numbers)
  For example:
  -- DuckySherwood - r1.1, r1.4
  -- FranzJosefSilli - r1.3
  -- PeterThoeny - r1.2
  
• Provide additional date format(s) (e.g. the TWiki standard iso-date) for showing the date of the last contribution of a person
  For example:
  -- DuckySherwood - 12 Jan 2005
  -- FranzJosefSilli - 12 Jan 2005
  -- PeterThoeny - 11 Dec 2004

Otherwise: nice plugin, thanks!

-- FranzJosefSilli - 12 Jan 2005

Ducky's gone back to school for awhile and is not directly involved in any twiki work. She's threatened to possibly return at some point though. Anyhoo the point is, if you wait for Ducky to implement changes it's likely going to be awhile.

-- MattWilkie - 12 Jan 2005

Just a heads up, seems as though this plugin and the TocPlugin don't want to play nicely together. When Contributors is installed, TocPlugin's REF function breaks.

-- JohnBelew - 01 Feb 2005

It appears as though the zip file has all the data files contained in a ContributorsPlugin directory (which then has lib and data subdirectories), which prevents the files from installing into their desired locations if you simply unzip it from the base TWiki directory. Should the ContributorsPlugin diretory be removed from the zip file?

• yes, it should be done; i've updated the .zip -- WillNorris - 17 Apr 2005

-- MarcPerkins - 16 Apr 2005

What's the benefit of this plugin over the HistoryPlugin? Except for some formatting options, the latter seems more powerful and fits nicely into the TWiki user interface.

-- JosMaccabiani - 16 Apr 2005

The HistoryPlugin only generates a list of all revisions of a page (or information on one specific revision); this plugin is able to generate a list of all the users who have edited a page, and is able to output that list without necessarily listing all the revisions of the page.

This plugin also allows searches, and other page elements, to directly interact with the list of all page authors. For an example of why this might be useful, see my comment of April 16 in HowToGenerateListOfUserEdits.

-- MarcPerkins - 16 Apr 2005

This plugin could have the potential to replace the sometimes annoying need to sign one's own comments.

It really should be enhanced to show a alphabetically sorted list of contributors in combination with the revision number of there last contribution and showing each contributor only once.

-- FranzJosefSilli - 17 Apr 2005

I've made a few changes to the code of the plugin, and have uploaded the modified .pm file as an attachment to this thread. Here's a summary of the changes:

1) Changed the noduplicates feature so that it searches for duplicate authors, not duplicate lines of output. Now only the most recent revision for each author is shown when nodups="on".

2) I've added a "sort" argument to allow the user to sort the ouput (alphabetically) if desired. Default is off.

I'm a complete novice at perl, so I'd appreciate it if someone could take a look at the code. I've created a demo page for this new version with examples of the features at http://rirg.dnsalias.net/cgi-bin/twiki/view/Main/ContributorPlugin1dot1

-- MarcPerkins - 18 Apr 2005

Marc, your demo site looks really good... would you mind sharing the skin you are using with the TWiki community?

-- ThomasWeigert - 18 Apr 2005

Thanks I'd be happy to share, though I didn't do all that much. [I've moved the rest of this post, describing my changes, to SimplifyDefaultWeb, where it's more on-topic.]

-- MarcPerkins - 18 Apr 2005

Thanks Marc, that's exactly what I meant.

Thomas I'm shocked you don't recognise DragonSkin, cause it's in the CairoRelease. Well, it seems ClaussStrauch did not have had time to support the skin lately.

-- FranzJosefSilli - 18 Apr 2005

added .zip to CVS

-- WillNorris - 27 Jun 2005

Will - should I move my modifications (which are attached as the .gz below) into CVS?

Also, it looks like the version number in CVS is 1.1 (which is my proposed number based on my additions), whereas I think the plugin contained in the .zip (that you uploaded) is still 1.0.

-- MarcPerkins - 01 Jul 2005

yes, that would be greatly appreciated. additionally, you should attach the package on the ContributorsPlugin page proper (as a .zip file, without a version number)

-- WillNorris - 02 Jul 2005

I'm unfortunately not going to be able to move the code until mid August, due to an extended trip. Sorry!

-- MarcPerkins - 22 Jul 2005

Can anybody get the Plugin to work under Dakar?

-- PeterLohmann - 09 Feb 2006

To the Plugin maintainer: Please try to keep it compabile with Cairo and Dakar codebase. HandlingCairoDakarPluginDifferences has more.

-- PeterThoeny - 09 Feb 2006

ContributorsPluginPatch in Support web is a fix for Dakar, but it is Dakar specific. Better to use the official Func functions.

-- PeterThoeny - 28 Apr 2006

I really like this plugin, and may even try to enhance it someday. Two questions:

1. I'm trying to put ContributorsPlugin in a CommonFooter topic that can be INCLUDE'd in other pages, but the resulting page shows the Contributors for the CommonFooter rather than the page that includes CommonFooter. Is there a way to get TWiki to expand Contributors after including the file rather than before?
2. I recently upgraded to TWiki 4.0.2, and patched ContributersPlugin, but the Author is displayed differently for old vs. new changes. Any ideas about how to fix this?
   • old: ClifKussmaul
   • new: Main.'ClifKussmaul'

Many thanks!

-- ClifKussmaul - 31 May 2006

I solved the first one.

%CONTRIBUTORS{topic="%INCLUDINGTOPIC%" last="5" format="|$author|$date|$rev|$n" header="|*Author*|*Date*|*Revision*|$n"}%

-- ClifKussmaul - 01 Jun 2006

This is broken in 4.1.1 - Is there a better way to do this now, or should I look at fixing this plugin?

-- RandyMelton - 23 Feb 2007

Here is the error I'm getting:
Can't locate object method "_getHandler" via package "TWiki" at /var/www/twikidev/lib/TWiki/Store.pm line 729.
I've loked over the function calls in lib/TWiki/Plugins/ContributorsPlugin.pm comparing against TWikiFuncDotPm and I don't see anything obvious?

-- RandyMelton - 23 Feb 2007

ok it was obvious. Here is the fix I put on my system which seems to work: (note I commented out the old line)

        #my @lines = &TWiki::Store::getRevisionInfo($web, $topic, $revision);
        my @lines;
        if( $TWiki::Plugins::VERSION < 1.1 ) {
           @lines = &TWiki::Store::getRevisionInfo($web, $topic, $revision);
        } else {
           @lines = &TWiki::Func::getRevisionInfo($web, $topic, $revision);
        }

-- RandyMelton - 23 Feb 2007

Randy, thanks for the fix.

It works on my TWiki 4.1. as well so I uploaded a new version which contains your fix.

-- CarloSchulz - 27 Apr 2007

MatthiasRoeder did a small fix on the plugin topic. Don't forget to take this into SVN.

-- PeterThoeny - 31 May 2007

I haven't tested it extensively, but this plugin (file dated 27 Apr 2007 - 07:16) appears to work fine on TWiki 4.2.0.

-- MarcusLeonard - 23 May 2008