What does the Transformations/Transform Content menu item do?

There is an edit menu item called Transformations or Transform Content depending upon which skin you are using. The purpose of this Transformations or Tranform Content menu item is to allow you to attach a Dekiscript function to HTML elements (mostly <pre> elements). The content of these elements is then sent to the extension function for tranformation. Content transforms include: syntax highlighting, graphviz graph scripts, mathematical expressions, silverlight, spoiler text, etc.

How are "content transforms" different from regular DekiScript functions? Each content transform is a function, but not each function is a transform. The function has to explicitly declare itself to be a content transform and identify to which HTML elements it's applicable.

You must  already have encoded the content to be transformed in a <pre></pre> element. Select the content to be transformed and you will see a dropdown box listing the available transformations in the installation of MindTouch Deki that you are using.  Choose the transformation you wish to use, select it and the content will be transformed according to the function which was selected.  Selecting "Transformations" or "Transform Content" for items which are not in <pre></pre> elements will result in the display of "No Transformations" in the drop down box and no transformation will be performed.

Creating a new content transform is as easy as registering a new extension in the Services Management Console of the Control Panel.

Here is an example using some php code:

Highlighting the php code in the <pre></pre> section, select Transformations and choose syntax.Php results in the following:

<?php
/**
 * Smarty plugin
 * @package Smarty
 * @subpackage plugins
 */

/**
 * Get seconds and microseconds
 * @return double
 */
function smarty_core_get_microtime($params, &$smarty)
{
    $mtime = microtime();
    $mtime = explode(" ", $mtime);
    $mtime = (double)($mtime[1]) + (double)($mtime[0]);
    return ($mtime);
}

/* vim: set expandtab: */

?>