How can I insert an editable copy of an Excerpt instead of direct link ?
Asked by Aslam Gangat:

Hi,

I have a space which contains the description of the service we deliver.

In another space I have template that generate proposal with the description of the adequate services. I then edit the description to customize it.

To do this, once the template is generated I have to go to each service and copy paste manually the description.

I tried to use the excerpt macro, which works great, but the text is not editable. Furthermore, if I later update the description of the service, the proposal will update too, which is not a desired behaviour.

So, I would like at the initialization of the template, a module or a macro that will copy the content of part of certain page and insert it in the page that is not linked with the service.

Thanks for your help,

Regards,

Aslam


Answers:
author: Steve Boydon
body: OK, what about a combination of the Scaffolding and Reporting addons, using text-data macro. I'm certain you could get it to work

Other than that it'a probably going to be a custom job.

Steve


author: Aslam Gangat
body: Writing my issue, made me think it from another angle :

Is it possible to link an excerpt to a specific version of a page ?

No need to be editable, I juste need that an update of the page will not impact the previously generated page.

Aslam


author: Milo Test
body: Why not just use a template? You can have the static block plus "example" text to be customized.

comments: author: Aslam Gangat
body: I used to include all the service in the template. But now as I have many template, and as some service appear in different template, when I updated the descrption of the service, I had to update it manually in every template.

As it can cause some error, I had to go back to manually copy paste the service once the page is generated.


author: Steve Boydon
body: Then why not have a range of excerpts maybe you could nest inside of a Live Template, then pick and choose what you need. I think your answer lies in a combination of macros, not one will do everything you need.


author: Steve Boydon
body: You are almost defeating the idea of an excerpt. The only way to maybe do this is to use multi-excerpt and have the sentence or paragraph made up of many excerpts. You then type in what you want around it.

The other option is maybe to create a page template with the many excerpts. The 'bespoke' text could be using Scaffolding (text-data)

So

Excerpt1 = "Today in "

Excerpt2 = " the director of "

Excerprt3= "said lots of words"

We then build this by

\<excerpt1\> \<scaffolding field1-text-data countryname\> \<excerpt2\> \<scaffolding field2-text-data companyname\> \<excerpt3\>

Which for each page as Scaffolding data is tied to the page it is on, could read

Page1

Today in France the director of A Company said lots of words

Page 2

Today in Italy the director of Another Company said lots of words.

It should work.

Steve

comments: author: Aslam Gangat
body: Hi Steve,

Thanks for your answer. I have thought about it using the Multi Excerpt plugin. But it does not solve my main issue, once the page is generated the description of the text must not move, it must be static.

I know it is not the purpose of the Excerpt macro, I use it to explain my issue. I think my solution must come from another macro or plugin I have not found.

To better understand here is a concrete example :

Here is a description of a service :"We write your speech"

We generate a proposal A based on this description.

We update the service :"We write your speech and we create a powerpoint"

We generate a proposal B based on this description. But the description in proposal A must have stayed the same.

I imagine a plugin that i configure in the template to import selected part. At the generation of the page, it will copy it once inside the page, and thereafter the plugin would not be useful for the page.

Regards,

Aslam


Tags: excerpt

macro