NAME

Bric::AssetEditing - The creation of elements and putting them together into assets

VERSION

$Revision: 1.2 $

DATE

$Date: 2001/09/17 16:19:43 $

BACKGROUND

This document describes the creation of elements and their uses in the creation of Business Data.

Elements

Elements are a definition of what the Business Data can be. Elements define data fields and sub elements that they can contain. It also defines rules about the data. The elements do not afect the layout, but provide sets of rules that the templates and Business data conform to.

Business Data

When creating the story, the Busines Data is the values that relate to the fields. So if an element contains a field teaser, the Business Data might be "Aren't Clowns Lovely?".

More About Elements

The first place one starts when making a new story is with an Element. An element defines the structure of a story. It lists the data points available to those creating a story. There are two types of root element, media and story, and there are sub elements that can be apart of other elements. So if a story element is created, it can contain page elements, which can contain paragraph attributes. The Story Element is a top level element. While the Page element is a sub element. The Page element contains PAragrah attributes.

Element

A sub element of Media types, Story types, or other elements.

Story

An element that reperesents the top level story. This can contain other elements.

Media

An element the represents the top level media. This can contain other media elemnets.

More Element Types

An element type is a flag that will alter the behaviour of the element.

Page

This element will repersent a single page on final publish.

Fixed

This element will represent a fixed url page. A fixed url page does not have the coverdate or slug in the url string. It is used for pages like covers.

Related Story

This element is used to link to other story objects.

Related Media

This element is user to link media objects to this story.

Elements from element types

So to create the frame work of a story or media asset, create an element based upon either a story or media element type. Associate the output channels that the element will be sent through. Templates will need to be created for each of the output channels.

An Output Channel is a group of formatting assets that can deliver the same content in a different format. Examples might be a WAP version or an email version of stories.

See Templates.pod for more formatting info.

Data Elements on Elements

Each Element can contain any number of Data Elements. These are fields that can be set on the element. The admin interface provides ways of setting the input of these elements. Select Menus, text, date fields can all be set here.

Rules for Data Elements

Required

If selected this field must be present in all story or media assets. It will automaticly be created when an asset is called up for editing.

Repeatable

If selected this field will be allowed to exist any number of times. It will also be allowed to be bulk edited.

Elements in Elements

Elenents can also contain other non-story/media elements. These can then contain other elements to what ever level of complexity is needed.

Story Editing

Fields on creation

When a new story is created these are the fields that can be entered.

Additional fields on Edit Screen

Media Editing

This is the area where files can be uploaded and properties can be set on them. Media elements can hold Data Elements and other Elements in te same way that Stories can.

File Uploading

The file that represnets the media object is uploaded here.

Asset Versioning

Everytime an asset is checked out and then checked back in, a new version is created. It has the same id as the previous asset verion.

Viewing Past versions

The Profle screen has a section where, if there is a previous version, one can go back and view them.

Reverting to Past Versions

If an asset is checked out, one can revert the data to a previous versions data. The revert will overwrite all the data in the current version and replace it with the previous versions data. It will keep the save version id, and any versions that existed inbetween the reverted versions will still be available

POD ERRORS

Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:

Around line 134:

You forgot a '=back' before '=head2'

Around line 138:

'=item' outside of any '=over'

Around line 172:

You forgot a '=back' before '=head2'

Around line 174:

'=item' outside of any '=over'

Around line 237:

=back without =over