Hello--first, fantastic module. I replied to another post--but that had already been closed, so I'm creating a new issue to keep it clean.

I really like the flexibility of the zones and how you can change their display for each individual node. Very nice.

The one trouble I'm having is that I always use contemplate (content templates) for basic content type theming--it is just really convenient to customize the teaser/body content in the browser rather than having to upload new template files to the server. I tried to use contemplate with composite layout, and as you mentioned--this doesn't really work because both modules use the same hook.

The result was that contemplate actually controlled the layout regardless of what zones I had used in composite layout. Since the body of the node is available to place inside a zone, is there any chance that the content template formatted body could be the value that is placed in the zone?

It occurred to me that this "might" be similar to the way in which an image (uploaded as a file) gives formatting options (i.e. URL Path, Square Image, large image with link... etc.) that perhaps the "node" body when added to the zone could have "use contemplate formatted" or "use default" as options?

I really like that you can include various custom fields of the node in various zones too, but since there isn't much template-based control of "how" those elements are displayed it might be valuable to allow either access to the contemplate module, or perhaps providing a text box on the zone(s) page that could serve as a php-formatting template. Where each zone could then potentially have it's own display "template" that, if used would format that particular zone's content...

What do you think?

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bengtan’s picture

bengtan commented
Status: Active » Closed (won't fix)

> The result was that contemplate actually controlled the layout regardless of what zones I had used in composite layout. Since the body of the node is available to place inside a zone, is there any chance that the content template formatted body could be the value that is placed in the zone?

Theoretically, I think a submodule could be created that allows Composite Layout to manipulate fields created by Content Template. Practically, I don't think this will work because the order in which Composite Layout and Content Template operates on a node can't be relied on.

> It occurred to me that this "might" be similar to the way in which an image (uploaded as a file) gives formatting options (i.e. URL Path, Square Image, large image with link... etc.)

Uh, not really. Those formatters are provided by the CCK field modules. Composite Layout doesn't know anything about these formatting options. It relies on CCK for the options and for rendering.

> it might be valuable to allow either access to the contemplate module, or perhaps providing a text box on the zone(s) page that could serve as a php-formatting template.

Same answer as the preceding point. It's all delegated to CCK.

As a general note, I would suggest that you move away from Content Template. There is actually no need for it anymore with CCK 2.x. Everything Content Template does can be done in a much more cleaner way with node templates.