[Building Sakai] wsetup.home.toolids and Home page synoptic tool order

[Zhen Qian]

Branden:

Comments inline:

On Fri, 02 Jul 2010 11:39:42 -0400, Branden Visser <branden at uwindsor.ca>
wrote:
> Hi all, I'm trying to grasp how synoptic tool ordering on a page is
> supposed to be controlled.. here are some things I'm uncertain about:
> 
> 1. Are any of the QA servers running with the wsetup.home.toolids
> properties? [1] If so, can someone copy/paste the configuration for me?
> 
I am not sure about the QA server settings.

> 2. Is the order of tools in wsetup.home.toolids supposed to affect the
> vertical order of synoptic tools when added to a page?
>

Yes. The saveFeatures function iterate through the home id list, and add
synoptic tool into Home page if parent tool is found in site, e.g. add
synoptic Schedule tool if Schedule tool is selected for the site.

> 3. Are the "layout hints" applied to a tool on a page supposed to affect
> the *vertical* order in the page? There seems to be another ordering
> mechanism that strictly over-rides this (i.e., the ordering function in
> the admin 'Sites' tool)

There are two types of layout defined int SitePage.java: single column and
double column. The layout hint value is (row, column) based. By default,
the home tool is double-column layout and synoptic tools would appear in
the right column (column index=1). 

Admin users can use the Sites tool to control page layout and order of the
tools in Home page. For example, he can change the Home tool to be single
column. However, if a parent tool is dropped and re-added (e.g.
Announcement tool), the corresponding synoptic tool is added back according
to the default layout, i.e. the Home page becomes double-column layout now,
with the synoptic Announcement tool at the top of the right column. I am
not sure whether this is a bug or not.

HTH,

- Zhen