Long post, mostly thinking aloud but I’d like reassurance I am on the right track.
The background for this enquiry is designing a family of multi column templates, in my template family, I would like the ability to change layouts to experiment with look and feel, say double column to single column and back again, each column is a TV wrapped in appropriate DIVs.
I expect that if I have 2 templates each with 2 TVs, say TV1 and TV2 that switching a document between the templates will preserve the values of the TVs across switches. (’Switching’ means switch template and save the document)
Now if TV1 can be acccessed by template T1 but not by template T2 then switching from T1 to T2 will result in the loss of the content of TV1 and switching back to T1 cannot restore the old value. Correct?
If the above is correct then to design a family of templates I need to decide the maximum number of text columns in the most complex document (say 6 for a full width row followed by a double column row followed a triple column row). These would be TVs C1, C2 ... C6. NB1 To avoid data loss each TV must be accessible by all templates. NB2 To preserve content visibility each template must include each TV so that content is shown even if the layout and order might not be sensible.
Finally I would hope that referring to a TV without any content has no effect on the rendered page.
Does this all make sense?
Ed
MODX Staff
