My use case: create a custom view template with a customized list of attachments (pictures only, in fact). I want to achieve this without TWiki:Plugins/FileListPlugin.

This does not work: only the default attachment table is displayed, and writing TMPL:DEFs to override the defs in attachtables does not work. Attach.pm reads (hard-coded) template attachtables.

I have a solution that involves 2 changes:

1. Pass a template attribute to META
For instance:

%META{"attachments" template="%TEMPLATE%"}%

This would need 2 lines changed in Attach.pm:

@@ -81,12 +81,13 @@
     my $showAttr = $showAll ? 'h' : '';
        my $A = ( $showAttr ) ? ':A' : '';
     my $title = $attrs->{title} || '';
+       my $tmplname = $attrs->{template} || 'attachtables';
 
        my @attachments = $meta->find( 'FILEATTACHMENT' );
     return '' unless @attachments;
 
     my $templates = $this->{session}->{templates};
-    $templates->readTemplate('attachtables');
+    $templates->readTemplate($tmplname);
 
        my $rows = '';
     my $row = $templates->expandTemplate('ATTACH:files:row'.$A);

Actually it would be easy to implement the functionality of FileListPlugin by allowing to pass topic, web, filter and format parameters to %META{"attachments"}%. Plus the view permissions check of course. But we can save that for later, but it will be important for TWiki:Codev/ImproveAttachmentHandling.

2. Make sure that attachtables are in its own file
My wrong. I have put in attachtables:

%TMPL:INCLUDE{"attach"}%

and this now causes the complete attach template to get included in the view template. Changing back is a minor change, but translation files need to be updated as well.

#: twikiplugins/PatternSkin/templates/attach.pattern.tmpl:91

Would change to

#: twikiplugins/PatternSkin/templates/attachtables.pattern.tmpl:25

Because only the references to the string locations would change, all translations would still work. But I propose that I update those references on 28 Dec.

This may sound like a feature request, but it is important to have the underlaying template structure right.

AC

4.1.0 released

KJL