
The 'news' page type was originally designed to display simple news items
extracted from the articles module. It can be used in general to:

- Display a list of items from the articles module.
- Limit the items by one or more categories.
- Limit the items by one or more publication types.
- Provide a pager that does not leave the current page.
- Provide a search mechanism to select the items.
- Apply a mandatory category, to restrict the items.
- Use custom templates for each publication type.
- Use a custom template for displaying the list.

All this happens within a single page.

DD items serve the following purposes:

- Intro page text when no particular item is selected, i.e. no user selection parameters ('intro_text')
- Header when one or more summaries are selected by the user ('list_text')
- Header when a single item detail is selected ('item_text')
- List the fields that go through transform hooks ()

How the templates work
======================

* The default wrapper page is page-news.xt

This controls the whole page, dealing with the loop over the items.
In the theme, this can be overridden as page-news[-name].xt , with a name being used if
a more specific template is required (i.e. different wrapper templates for different
pages). For example, alternative wrapper templates may display the summary as a list or
as a table, rathern than as a series of divs.

* The default summary template for an item is article-summary.xt

This displays a summary of a single item, and assumes there will be fields for 'title',
'summary' and 'body'. If the body field is not empty, then a 'read me' link will be
provided to the item display.

For a specific publication type, the template article-summary-{pubtypename}.xt can be used
in the theme. 

* The default display template for an item is article-display.xt

For a specific publication type, the template article-display-{pubtypename}.xt can be used
in the theme. 

For both the summary and display templates, the prefix 'article' is hard-coded in the wrapper
template (page-news.xt). Alternative templates to page-news.xt may use a different prefix,
and so offer a completely different set of summary and display templates.

Settings
========

Various settings, such as the default number of items per page, come from the articles
publication type settings. If multiple publication types are listed for a page, then
articles global settings are used instead.

Archives
========

The archive mode is triggered with the parameter 'archive'.

If set to 'YYYY' then just articles for that year are displayed.
If set to 'YYYY-MM' then articles for that month are displayed.
The 'YYYY-MM-DD' format is supported too, but there will be no links on the archive map
with a resolution anything less than a month.
Any other value, e.g. 'show' will trigger the archive map, and limit articles to the
current year and month.
The '-' can be left out.

