Generalise the use Template Toolkit plugins

Generalise the use Template Toolkit plugins

Decision

This discussion reached a consensus of "use it on a volunteer basis", but also "encourage the use of plugins". For bug 4078, the RM (paul) has asked to have a plugin version of this -nice- feature, as it's really a perfect candidate for plugins

Introduction

Chris_c recently has added a plugin to manage the display of dates into Koha (see http://wiki.koha-community.org/wiki/Coding_Guidelines#Displaying_dates), that is very interesting.

Do we want to generalise this mechanism ? When do we want to use it ?

For example, the patch for bug http://bugs.koha-community.org/bugzilla3/show_bug.cgi?id=4078 could nicely use this mechanism

Possible solutions

<<PP: i'm not really happy with the following chapters I wrote, but can't find a better organisation, feel free to update !>>

Use is as much as possible

It means we define a strict rule saying "every display that could be done through a plugin must", and any patch not respecting this rule would be discarded.

For example, we could have a plugin to display "patron basic information", from borrowernumber.

Everytime we must display a patron firstname-surname-category-zipcode-phone, we use this plugin.

Pros

• highly consistent : if we want, in my example, add the number expiry date, just change the plugin, and the expiry date will appear everywhere !

Use it on a volunteer basis

It means patch submitters could use this plugin system, but it won't be mandatory