Plugins under the hood

• All plugin modules that exist in the lib/TWiki/Plugins directory are activated automatically unless disabled by the DISABLEDPLUGINS preferences variable in TWikiPreferences. You can optionally list the installed plugins in the INSTALLEDPLUGINS preferences variable. This is useful to define the sequence of plugin execution, or to specify other webs then the TWiki web for the plugin topics. Settings in TWikiPreferences:
  • Set INSTALLEDPLUGINS = DefaultPlugin, ...
  • Set DISABLEDPLUGINS = EmptyPlugin, ...

• The %ACTIVATEDPLUGINS% variable shows all currently activated plugins. This variable is shown in TWikiPreferences for debug reasons.

• Search order for plugin topics: Full web.topicname name is used if specified in INSTALLEDPLUGINS, then the TWiki web is searched, then the current web.

• Plugin specific settings are done in individual plugin topics. Two settings are standard for each plugin:
  • One line description, used to form the bullets describing the plugins in the TextFormattingRules topic:
    • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Blah blah.
  • Debug plugin, output can be seen in data/debug.txt: (Se to 0 or 1)
    • Set DEBUG = 0
  • The settings can be retrieved as preferences variables like %<pluginname>_<var>%, i.e. %DEFAULTPLUGIN_SHORTDESCRIPTION% shows the description of the DefaultPlugin.

• The %PLUGINDESCRIPTIONS% variable shows a bullet list with descriptions of all currently activated plugins. This variable is based on %<plugin>_SHORTDESCRIPTION% preferences variables of individual topics and is shown in TextFormattingRules.

-- PeterThoeny - 14 Jul 2001