%META:TOPICINFO{author="vinod" date="1089576949" format="1.0" version="1.2"}%
%META:TOPICPARENT{name="WebHome"}%
---+ New Topic Addon documentation


---++ New topic without a template

	* New topic created with text, forms, attachments all at once.

---++ New topic with a template

	* Template topic text is used.
	* Document attached to template is ignored.
	* Document attached to new topic is made part of template.
	* URLPARAMs within template topic replaced.
	* TO TEST: Form variables Defined (assuming input template is designed to take these.)



---++ TODO

Allow template to drive the template creation process:
	* =newtopic= will read the template and extract the form to be displayed to user.
	* This extracted form can have form elements such as TEXT, Forms, URLPARAMs, Attachment (single).
	* New topic defined with template (but it needs to ignore the form input part.

---++ Designing new template format

Purpose: This format will have the three components in one template definition:
	* Part 1: Template form that will drive the inputs required for new topic such as =topicname=, =text=, =filename=, and in addition, any number of additional parameters.
	* Part 2: Template text for new topic, embedding the elements being read from user.
	* Part 3: Template related information display such as all the topics with this template, aggregated information tables with appropriate search or formqueries.


---++ Use Cases

---+++ Simple 'all-in-one-go' approach to submit content

To help those occassional users, design a template and get important information filled (and corresponding files) and create a topic automatically.

You might have to design a mechanism to create topic names, because end-users wouldn't know much about wiki names for topics. An automated mechanism (such as =<nop>Document1211= could be used, while also allowing users to change it if necessary. Or use javascript to deduce (and also to verify) wiki names.)

---+++ Workflows

Still under investigation: Since you can create a new topic in single click from existing topic, it might help create workflows in nice way. Also see TWiki:Plugins.WorkFlowAddOn.


---+++ Specialized areas such as Comments (for appending information)

How to add information to existing topic in "nice way" - for e.g. add it to tables, or add it to comments table? Define placeholders and allow them to be filled driven by a template.


Note: Planned capability.

