DeepaMehta 3 Type Editor Plugin

The DM3 Type Editor plugin allows interactive creation and modification of topic types. You can e.g. create a topic type "Book" along with its fields "Title", "Author", "Abstract", "Publication Date". Once the "Book" topic type is defined you can create books and search for books (type-based searching is provided by the optional DM3 Typing plugin).

Fields carries different types of data. There are 4 field types: Text, Styled Text (backed by a WYSIWYG editor), Date (backed by a datepicker widget), and Relation. The latter is special: a Relation field carries a relation to another topic. In the book example the "Author" field could carry a relation to a Person topic.

When the Type Editor plugin is installed you can also modify the topic types that already exist on your DeepaMehta 3 installation. These include the core topic types (like Note) as well as the topic types provided by other plugins (like Person and Institution as provided by DM3 Contact plugin).

Requirements

• A DeepaMehta 3 installation
  http://github.com/jri/deepamehta3

• Other DeepaMehta 3 plugins:

  • DM3 Icons
    http://github.com/jri/dm3-icons
    The DM3 Icons plugin let you attatch an icon to a topic type by means of an iconpicker widget.

  • DM3 Typing (optional install)
    http://github.com/jri/dm3-typing
    The DM3 Typing plugin provides a type-based search.

Installation

1. Go to your DeepaMehta 3 installation directory: cd deepamehta3

2. Download the DM3 Type Editor plugin: couchapp vendor install git://github.com/jri/dm3-typeeditor.git

3. Activate the plugin by adding one line to DeepaMehta's _attachments/javascript/plugins.js: add_plugin("vendor/dm3-typeeditor/script/dm3_typeeditor.js")

4. Copy additional stuff: cp -r vendor/dm3-typeeditor/views/dm3-typeeditor_topictypes views

5. Install the other DeepaMehta plugins (see Requirements) as described on the respective pages.

6. Upload changes to CouchDB: couchapp push http://localhost:5984/deepamehta3-db

7. Check if installation was successful: visit DeepaMehta 3 in your webbrowser (resp. press reload):
   http://localhost:5984/deepamehta3-db/_design/deepamehta3/index.html
   If you see the Topic Type entry in the type menu (next to the Create button) everything is OK.

Usage Hints

• Create a new topic type by choosing Topic Type from the Create menu and click the Create button. (A topic type is itself a topic and is represented on the canvas.) Enter a name for the topic type.

• Add a field by clicking the Add Field button. Name the field and choose its type. Four field types are available: Text, Styled Text, Date, and Relation. Depending on the field type set further field options, e.g. for Relation fields choose the related topic type.

• Remove a field by clicking the "Minus" button next to the field.

• When you're done with the type definition, click the Save button. The newly created type now appears in the Create menu -- ready for creating topics of that type.

• Delete a topic type by revealing it, and then delete it (just like any other topic).

• Note: When you change a topic type definition, e.g. by renaming it, or by adding/removing fields, or even when you delete the topic type, all this doesn't affect existing topics of that type.

Updating

1. Go to your DeepaMehta 3 installation directory: cd deepamehta3

2. Update DeepaMehta 3 Type Editor Plugin: couchapp vendor update dm3-typeeditor

3. Copy additional stuff: cp -r vendor/dm3-typeeditor/views/dm3-typeeditor_topictypes views

4. Upload changes to CouchDB: couchapp push http://localhost:5984/deepamehta3-db

Version History

v0.3 -- Mar 6, 2010

• Basic functionality
• Compatible with DeepaMehta 3 v0.3

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Jörg Richter
Mar 6, 2010