Item6299: RevCommentPlugin doesn't play nicely with users

I have a CommentPlugin template that is appending lines to a table in another topic. Every time a new line is appended, RevCommentPlugin shoves a %META:REVCOMMENT{comments="0"}% entry onto the end of the line, garbaging my table.

Unfortunately, not only doesn't RevCommentPlugin understand (and ignore) edits made by other plugins, there's no way for me to turn this off.

At the very least, if there is no revcomment, the plugin should NOT add anything to the page.

What's breaking things isn't a revcomment, it's an "empty"

   %META:REVCOMMENT{comments="0"}% 

Better, the plugin should have some way to tell if the edit script is actually presenting something onscreen for the user.

Best, there needs to be a way to Turn This Off.

A plugin that is installed globally into a template is no longer a plugin. This extension violates the Principle of Least Surprise.

-- TWiki:Main/VickiBrown - 12 Aug 2009

FYI, I found a workaround to this. My template was

%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:topiccomment}%%POS:AFTER%| [[%URLPARAM{"base_topic"}%]] | %DATE% | %WIKIUSERNAME% | %URLPARAM{"comment_text" }% | %REVINFO{topic="%URLPARAM{"base_topic"}%" "$date - $wikiusername"}% | %TMPL:END%

And now it's

%TMPL:DEF{OUTPUT:topiccomment}%%POS:BEFORE%| [[%URLPARAM{"base_topic"}%]] | %DATE% | %WIKIUSERNAME% | %URLPARAM{"comment_text" }% | %REVINFO{topic="%URLPARAM{"base_topic"}%" "$date - $wikiusername"}%  |
%TMPL:END%

Moving the %TMPL:END% to the next line solved the RevCommentPlugin problem. The other changes were necessary to make the table continue to work.

-- TWiki:Main.VickiBrown - 10 Sep 2009