Apparently in an attempt to protect against newlines or other characters messing up TWiki tables when formfield values are extracted using META{formfield...}, the value stored in the formfield is altered (newlines are replaced by <br />, vertical bars are replaced by their code, etc.).

However, when using these fields in a context where these characters are not causing problems, this rewriting results in that bullet lists or tables in form fields are not rendered correctly.

Suggestion: add an option to META{formfield...}, say raw, which does not do this protective rewriting, as in this patch:

*** /e/www/twiki-dakar-4.0.2/lib/TWiki/Render.pm~   Sat Jul  1 22:06:05 2006
--- /e/www/twiki-dakar-4.0.2/lib/TWiki/Render.pm   Sun Jul  2 22:06:16 2006
***************
*** 216,225 ****
      my $text = '';
      my $name = $attrs->{name};
      $text = renderFormFieldArg( $meta, $name ) if( $name );
!     # change any new line character sequences to <br />
!     $text =~ s/\r?\n/ <br \/> /gos;
!     # escape "|" to HTML entity
!     $text =~ s/\|/\&\#124;/gos;
      return $text;
  }
  
--- 216,228 ----
      my $text = '';
      my $name = $attrs->{name};
      $text = renderFormFieldArg( $meta, $name ) if( $name );
! ### TW: Add "raw" option
!     unless ( $attrs->{raw} ) {
!       # change any new line character sequences to <br />
!       $text =~ s/\r?\n/ <br \/> /gos;
!       # escape "|" to HTML entity
!       $text =~ s/\|/\&\#124;/gos;
!     }
      return $text;
  }
  

VarSEARCH has newline parameter that can be set to \n or %BR% or any other string depending on circumstances.

While there is nothing wrong with a raw parameter imho, perhaps just adding newline and verticalbar parameters to both META and SEARCH instead would be more versatile (at the same time keeping them feature-aligned)? These are the two chars causing the most trouble (though for XML purposes &, <, > and " comes nearly as close :-)).

(The newline parameter to SEARCH is implemented, but doc is missing, see Item2565).

-- SP

Any other opinions on this?

-- SP

OK. Good idea. I have implemented this and am testing... --TW

Updated doco and checked in.

--TW

There was a link to this from TWiki:Codev.WhatIsIn04x01. I see that there is a simple solution and I see no objections and nothing to discuss at release meetings. I just mark it as done in TWiki:Codev.WhatIsIn04x01.

-- KJL

Headline update for Rel note

KJL

4.1.0 released

KJL