BackTalkBook - Contents: Edit contained objects.

Summary

BackTalk is a documentation annotation, editing, and production system for book-like content.

A BackTalk Book is a container for BackTalk Documents which provides:

Description A BackTalk Book is an Object Manager, and provides all the standard facilities of a standard Zope folder object as a result.

In addition to the standard Folder behavior, a BackTalk Book has a Printable tab which allows you to produce a PDF rendering of the BackTalk documents within the Book.

When a BackTalk Book is created, six subobjects are created within it by default:

backtalk_css
a DTML method containing the CSS stylesheet used by the web view.
backtalk_html_footer
a DTML method containing the footer for the web view.
backtalk_html_header
a DTML method containing the header for the web view.
backtalk_js
a DTML method containing various JavaScript functions used within the web view.
backtalk_navbar
a DTML method containing the navigation bar for the web view.
BackTalkMailHost
a Zope MailHost object used to provide email facilities for comment notification.

Additional Features

A Book's documents can be edited via WebDAV and FTP as well as through the Zope Management Interface.

A BackTalk Book is equipped with a "PUT_factory" that intercepts all FTP and WebDAV requests to PUT a file of type "text/plain" or "text/html" as a BackTalk Document. This allows you to create new BackTalk Documents within a BackTalk Book by uploading them via a FTP or WebDAV client.

Images and other types are left unmolested when PUT into a BackTalk Book.

NOTE After adding a BackTalk Book, to make use of the email facilities that BackTalk provides, you will need to first configure the BackTalkMailHost object that is automatically added to the Book. This is a standard Zope MailHost object.

To reset the current "default" subobjects created when you added a book, you can call the convenience method "resetPersistentObs" on the book object through the web.

To get "pretty" tables of contents in both printable and web views, give each of the Book's Documents a title property, which will be used instead of the Document id when showing the Document as part of the Book.

Properties

A BackTalk Book defines the following properties, available via the Properties tab:

title
The Book's title, used in the titlebar when rendering the default web view.
summary
a summary of the Book's contents (currently unused).
permit_comments
if this property is checked, documents within the book will display a comment offer link underneath each paragraph. If this property is not checked, documents will not display a comment offer link underneath each paragraph. Note that setting this property has no effect on whether existing comments will be displayed, it just controls whether new comments are allowed.
documents
an ordered list of Documents within the book used by the table of contents view and the web navigation bar. Specify the ordering of your documents by placing each Document's "id" on a separate line in this property field. If you leave this element blank, documents will be ordered in "natural" alphabetical order.
catalog_name
if this field is used, when a Document contained in this Book is saved, the Document will attempt to acquire a ZCatalog object by catalog_name in order to index itself. If this field is not used, documents in the book will not attempt to catalog themselves.
comment_email_addresses
a list of email addresses to which notices of new comments to any contained Document will be sent. If this property is empty, no notices will be sent.
comment_mail_from_address
email notices of new comments will be sent with this From address.
header
a field in which text or HTML can be placed that renders above the titlebar in the web view of the Book.
create_titlepage
this specifies whether a title page will be created in the printable rendering of the Book.
create_bookmarks
this specifies whether PDF Bookmarks will be created in the printable rendering of the Book.
create_toc
this specifies whether a Table of Contents will be created in the printable rendering of the Book.
suppress_comments_in_output
this specifies whether the printable rendering of the Book will disinclude comment paragraphs.
titlepage_header
this is the first element on the printable titlepage.
titlepage_author
this is the second element on the printable titlepage.
titlepage_center
this is the third element on the printable titlepage.
titlepage_bottom
this is the fourth element on the printable titlepage.
save_to
specify browser to save printable version to your browser or specify local to save printable version within the Book object.
printable_filename
the filename for the printable rendering of the Book.