[Freeswitch-docs] New Channel Variables Section

[Ryan Harris]

On 02/06/2018 10:09 AM, Bote Man wrote:

> I was fooled by the innocuous "Click to expand" at the bottom, then I clicked it to reveal this huge table of variables that I expected to be listed elsewhere. Maybe keep that revealed by default so it's obvious?

Busted! Honestly, I'm not a fan of that table. mod_dptools: info spits
out a mix of event headers and channel variables. The first variable
described in that table isn't actually available as a channel variable
(or I'm misunderstanding). I think it could be misleading. At least - it
was for me when I first started experimenting with FreeSWITCH.

> There's also a pair of macros that allow you to define a block on one page to be included on another. You might consider using them to include the Catalog at the top on the parent page. I think the name is "include" but you have to be careful which one defines the block to be included and which one actually plops it onto the target page.

The page tree macro is kind of the same concept as the include. But I
researched the includes and found out there is more to them than what
the macro GUI lets on. So I'm going to work with it some more.

> My general rule of thumb is not to make people have to go on a 3-state hunt to find information. I'm actually a proponent of large pages containing related information. Hitting Control-F and searching within the page buffer is quick and easy. Hunting down pages containing only one paragraph just to figure out what one variable does always irritated me on the old wiki and a lot of people agreed.

Yes - I'd like to find a way to do that without having a big giant page
that has to be edited. Actually...

> Also, beware creating multiple databases that present the same information in different ways. The old wiki got out of sync when somebody would edit a definition in one place, while the other table listing the same thing went untouched. Then they became out of sync. 
>
> I'm just speaking in generalities here, it's just that offhand I think there might 5 different pages that have been developed to list Variables so it's getting confusing for me :-)

I *think* we can stop this from happening with some page include magic.
Confluence let's use define a page tree that doesn't exist in the main
page tree. That means we can have a separate page tree with all the
variables, but not worry about making the main tree unwieldy. THEN we
can have different pages as we see fit. We just use the include page
macro to include the variable pages where we want. My understanding is
that when the page changes, they will be updated wherever they're included.

We can set up the workflow so that we have to use the individual
variable page and then make sure pages in the main tree are maintained
as only includes of those variable pages.

I'll make a prototype to see if this is workable.