Wednesday, 19 June 2013 08:12

Gnosis Glossary Component and Plugin

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Gnosis is a Joomla! glossary package for managing list of terms, and their category, pronunciation, definition, example usage, and etymology. Terms can be added or edited in both the front end and the administration, as well as their ACL. Front end view consist of an Individual word view, Category View, Word List View, and an Edit/Add view.

The plugin is a pure CSS tooltip solution for both linking words in Joomla! articles to the component individual word views, and to show in the tooltip a set of configurable information about the term gathered from the database. The style and colors of the tooltip can also be configured.

Installing the component

Installing the gnosis package is just like installing any other Joomla! extension.

  1. Download the Gnosis package from http://www.hypermodern.org/index.php/joomla-extensions/gnosis-glossary
  2. If you wish to be cautious, backup your Joomla! database prior to install.
  3. Install through your Joomla! extension manager. For help with this please visit: http://docs.joomla.org/Installing_an_extension
  4. If you wish to use the tooltip plugin, make sure to enable gnosisplg from the plugin manager.

Getting Started

It is fairly self explanatory to add words and categories. it works a lot like Joomla!'s native articles. However if you need additional help see the below:

After installing you should create at least one category.

  1. To do this go to Components/Gnosis and this click on categories (it is highlighted in blue below).
  2. Click the New button.
  3. Fill out the form.
  4. Click Save.

This will allow your terms to have a category for which to be assigned.

Next create a new word:

  1. If you are not already there, just go to Components/Gnosis and click on the words menu (it is highlighted in the below image).
  2. Click on the New Button.
  3. Fill out the form. Only the fields word and category are required.
    1. The fields definition, example usage, and etymology are fairly self explanatory. If you wish to put everything into the definition field and not use the other fields, you can do that as well. Keep in mind though that the content plugin uses these fields to display its content. It will still work, it just may not separate the definition and etymology as you would like since it must strip HTML before display.

Thats it! You have now created a category and a word. Create as many as you like!

Component Configuration

The first time Gnosis is installed, it is necessary to visit the gnosis configuration and save that configuration.

In the beta version 1.0.0, the Gnosis component configuration looks like the image to the right.  I intend on beautifying it more later as well as offer more options. .

 

Word View Options: Options affecting the Individual Word View.visually appealing later. The following is a list of options with a description of what they do:

  • Word Page Heading: When the individual word is displayed, what would should it display as it's heading?
  • Content plugins: If you would like content plugins to be included, make sure the Allow content plugins is selected.

 

Word List View Options: Options affecting the word list view.

  • Definition Size: This is the size, in characters, of the definition field.
  • Pronunciation, Category, Created_by, Definition: To show these fields in the Word List View, simply select show, or hide, for each individual item.

 

Category View Options: Options affecting the category view.

  • Definition Size: This is the size, in characters, of the definition field.
  • Pronunciation, Category, Created_by, Definition: To show these fields in the Word List View, simply select show, or hide, for each individual item.

That is all there is to know about the Gnosis component. To add menu's to the front end to access the views, just do so like any other component; through Joomla's menu administration.

Plugin Syntax 

To link a word in an article, or content plugin enabled component, just enclose the word inside double brackets like this: [[example term]].  The word inside the brackets must be exactly as it is in the database. Here is an example using the word qualia: 

qualiaqualiaDefinition: Qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkwaːle]) is a term used in philosophy to refer to individual i...

Suppose, however, you wanted to display the plural of [[example term]]. This can be achieved by adding an argument [[Display Term|Search Term]].  Display Term is the words you wish to display, while Search Term is the exact name of the term as (case sensitive and all) inside the database. You can also, instead of using Search Term, just include the ID of the term in the database. For example: [[Example Term|110]], where 110 is the ID which can be found in the backend words view. An example using qualia with a display term argument is Display QualiaqualiaDefinition: Qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale (Latin pronunciation: [ˈkwaːle]) is a term used in philosophy to refer to individual i...

Plugin Configuration

To use the plugin, first enable it from the Joomla! plugin administration. Inside the plugin configuration various aspects about the style, color, and information to show can be tailored to your needs.

The following is a breakdown of each option and how it might be configured.

Background Color: This is the background color of the tooltip in hexadecimal. Omit the #.

Font Color: The font color of the tooltip in hexadecimal. Omit the #.

Tooltip Width: The width of the tooltip.

Border Thickness: The thickness of the border in pixels.

Border Style: solid, dashed, or dotted.

Border Color: The color of the border in hexadecimal. Omit the #.

Show the definition, example, etymology fields: Yes to show, no to hide the definition field inside the tooltip. Important to note here also is that all three of these field's HTML are stripped prior to display. Unfortunately it is the only way to make this method of pure CSS tooltip to work.

Definition, Example Usage, and Etymology Size: This sets how many characters to show for each of the respective fields inside the tooltip.

Thats It!

That is currently all there is to know about Gnosis. To view an example of the tooltip plugin at work please visit: http://www.hypermodern.org/index.php/joomla-extensions/item/15-gnosis

To see the component visit: http://www.hypermodern.org/index.php/gnosis

 

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