[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Custom entities

[Dan Scott]

2009/3/15 Duimovich, George <George.Duimovich at nrcan-rncan.gc.ca>:
>
> Any comments on support for custom entities in, say, the opac ?
>
> Could I just add a custom entity in my opac_local.dtd file or will this
> break things (i.e. does an entity have to be registered elsewhere, including
> in opac.dtd)?

Nope, just go ahead and define custom entities in your opac_local.dtd file.

> We are using a customized left sidebar menu for certain navigational items,
> and we are also using /locale/ dtd's for Evergreen entities in our bilingual
> environment. I can handle non Evergreen links already (using /locale/ aware
> includes, hardcoding links, etc.) but I was just wondering if I could manage
> some of our  external links using custom entities, and if so, any gotchas to
> look out for?

You have to use &amp; for ampersands instead of plain & - that's about
the only gotcha I can think of off the top of my head.

Oh, and this is broader than just entities, but if you end up
customizing some of the JS files, like skin/<skin-name>/js/rdetail.js,
inside a skin, you'll discover that the corresponding XML file in the
skin hardcodes a call to skin/default/js/rdetail.js - which can be
surprising the first time you make major changes to a JS file in a
skin and wonder why you don't see any changes.

A little sed can take care of that; for example, in the following we
point to the skin/skin-name/js/ directory for all JS files that would
otherwise be loaded from skin/default/js/ in page_rdetail.xml
(although you might want to use a bit more precision than this!):

sed -i -e 's/skin\/default\/js/skin\/skin-name\/js/'
/openils/var/web/opac/skin/skin-name/xml/page_rdetail.xml

> Step by step our customized opac coming along satisfactorily -- a few things
> to get used to and improve upon (like don't make /any/ xml errors, some
> minor CSS enhancements to be done for finer grain control, etc.), but I'm
> very impressed with the thinking and organization behind the OPAC layout
> pages!

Good to hear that you're making progress, George! And yep, as usual,
Bill/Mike/Jason's work excels.

-- 
Dan Scott
Laurentian University