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Development discussion for RackPlannerPlugin

-- DanielRohde - 04 Sep 2006

Can you please add a bit more descriptive background in the plugin topic? I was staring at it for a while before I finally realised it is for planning computer racks, and not for planning S&M dungeons as I had initially hoped

I'm sure IT managers people will find this very useful!

-- CrawfordCurrie - 05 Sep 2006

Thanks Daniel for sharing this plugin with the community; certainly useful for ISPs and IT folks!

How about measuring and documenting the PluginBenchmarks numbers?

-- PeterThoeny - 06 Sep 2006

Thanks for documenting the benchmark numbers.

I shortened the SHORTDESCRIPTION (no need to state "this plugin ..."). Feel free to take this into the next release.

-- PeterThoeny - 10 Sep 2006

I'm finding that the rack unit numbers don't line up with the row entries. Is there a way around this?

-- SteveWray - 17 Oct 2006

Hi Steve, I don't know what you mean. Can you give me an example (screenshot)? Maybe the font/icon sizes or line breaks in entries can produce this problem. Please try out the fontsize and/or iconsize attributes, e.g. %RACKPLANNER{fontsize="70%" iconsize="70%"}%.

-- DanielRohde - 18 Oct 2006

I mean that the unit numbers in the U column are not on the same line as the text for the row describing that rack unit; the unit numbers are slightly smaller. fontsize affects the font for the unit numbers as well as the text in the row; I did try that and the problem merely scales with it. Not sure how to post a screenshot on here. There are no line breaks in any of the entries. I get the same problem with the example given on the main RackPlanner page. Its not dependent on the web browser (same in firefox and konqueror).

-- SteveWray - 18 Oct 2006

Ok I figured out how to put up an attachment, that wasn't so hard This is a shot from the bottom of the rack diagram. Note how the unit numbers are not on the same line as the rack unit entries? The first unit number is level with the rack unit row but its slightly smaller; the discrepancy builds up as you go down the rack.

-- SteveWray - 18 Oct 2006

Thanx Steve, I've tried to fix this problem. Please check out the latest BETA release:

svn co http://svn.twiki.org/svn/twiki/branches/TWikiRelease04x00/twikiplugins/RackPlannerPlugin

-- DanielRohde - 19 Oct 2006

That fixed it, thanks very much!

-- SteveWray - 24 Oct 2006

Another thing I've come up against is the colors... I'm finding that if I make a clickable link for the device name, the link text itself comes out as a rather dull grey which gets lost against almost any color I could put it against! Is there a way to override the link text color?

-- SteveWray - 24 Oct 2006

Hi Steve, you found a bug. I've fixed this link color bug in SVN. Please check out the new BETA release.

-- DanielRohde - 24 Oct 2006

I'm not seeing any change, it looks pretty much the same. I've tried shift-refresh and modifying the existing colors but there is no difference in what I see.

-- SteveWray - 24 Oct 2006

Hi Steve, do you use mod_perl and forgot to restart Apache? I use a stylesheet to define the font color of a link ( <a style="color:..."). Nevertheless I published a new BETA release to SVN that uses a style and a font tag.

-- DanielRohde - 25 Oct 2006

I updated my svn working copy just now, restarted apache and it looks a lot better. It does just make them black though... I've found that setting devicebgcolor and devicefgcolor does work on the links but not on plain text (ie not a clickable link). What would be great would be a way to set this on a unit by unit basis just as I can set the color of the background.

-- SteveWray - 25 Oct 2006

Hi Steve, the published release fixes color and text size bugs. I tested all variants (plain text, WikiWords, ...) with colors / text sizes. Hopefully all bugs are fixed related to this color/size problems.

-- DanielRohde - 26 Oct 2006

Thanks, I can confirm that this works heaps better now, thanks!

-- SteveWray - 26 Oct 2006

Hi Daniel. I'm not sure what should appear but using the displayowner="on" within the %RACKPLANNER{...}% doesn't seem to produce anything

-- PatrickTuite - 14 Nov 2006

Hi Patrick, you found a bug. Please checkout the latest revision from SVN.

-- DanielRohde - 15 Nov 2006

Hi Daniel. I've been toying with the idea of modifying your plugin so it can handle blade pc's in a magazine as well. It would basically just be to turn the output from your plugin 90 degrees counter clockwise. I guess I could use the plugin as it is but it would feel strange to see the boards horizontally since they are vertical in reality. Would you mind such an adaption to the plugin? (I haven't looked much at the code yet so I might fail miserably since I'm a lousy coder)

-- OlofStockhaus - 26 Feb 2007

Hi Olof. Thank you for your feature request. I will implement a horizontal view of a complete 'rack' and I will add a feature that allows to visualize a blade center within a vertical 19'' rack.

-- DanielRohde - 27 Feb 2007

Hi again. I've published a new revision to SVN (Rev >=12988) that allows you to set the dir attribute to leftright or rightleft, e.g. %RACKPLANNER{dir="rightleft"}%

-- DanielRohde - 27 Feb 2007

Hi. Thanks for the quick update, it works like a charm. The only problem I have with it is that the text is still horizontal (It becomes VERY wide as it is now).

I guess the way around that would be to use the addToHEAD function to include a new css file containing a style with vertical text.

I found an example of how to define such styles here and here.

-- OlofStockhaus - 27 Feb 2007

Hi Olof. The CSS style works only with IE5.5/6/7. I will try to implement a vertical text rendering (linebreaks after a letter). Another way is to use short names and put all other information into the notes or "conected to" fields.

-- DanielRohde - 28 Feb 2007

Hi Olof. The new revision (SVN Rev >=13008) allows a textdir="topdown", e.g: %RACKPLANNER{dir="leftright" textdir="topdown"}%

-- DanielRohde - 01 Mar 2007

Thanks a lot, now it looks much better.

-- OlofStockhaus - 07 Mar 2007

I am using the Rackplanner with the Quick Menu Skin. The ToolTips for the leftmost rack are placed off the left edge of the page, and the "tooltipfixleft" property does not seem to work. That property seems to work in Pattern Skin, and the left side menu bar provides space for the tooltip anyway. Is this something that can be fixed?

-- ChuckDubuque - 25 Oct 2007

Hi Chuck, I am using an old Quick Menu Skin and I'm using on my Main.TWikiPreferences following setting: * Set RACKPLANNERPLUGIN_TOOLTIPFIXLEFT = 8

Are you really sure that a %RACKPLANNER{tooltipfixleft="8"} does not fix your problem?

If you say that the tooltips of lefmost rack are placed off the left edge where are the tooltips of the other racks?

What a version of QuickMenuSkin do you use?

-- DanielRohde - 29 Oct 2007

I forgot to put the "8" in quotes in the %RACKPLANNER% command. It works. Thanks.

-- ChuckDubuque - 01 Nov 2007

RackPlannerPlugin dont work with EditRowPlugin.

-- VictorKasatkin - 24 Sep 2008

TWiki:Main.SphanShewale changed the package files. This files are incomplete. Workaround: checkout the latest revision (r16417) from SVN .

-- DanielRohde - 10 Dec 2008