Forms Explained
From Textbook
Textpattern forms are predefined portions of text, Textpattern tags, and/or XHTML, which collectively define how content should be formatted and displayed. Textpattern forms are easily created in the Forms panel. Forms are used by the tags that call them, via the form or listform attributes (see Attributes Cross-reference). Once understood, the flexibility allowed by forms in Textpattern provide endless possibilities of customization.
An Example
<txp:article form="single" listform="default" />
This snippet dictates that the article should be displayed with the "default" form when the section is displaying a list of articles, but will use the "Single" form when displaying the individual article. You may modify this Form to your own liking, or keep this one and simply create a new one of your own.
The default contents of "single":
<h3 class="entry-title"><txp:permlink><txp:title /></txp:permlink></h3> <p class="published"><txp:posted /></p> <div class="entry-content"> <txp:body /> </div>
As you can see, this Article form is composed of four different tags: title, permlink, posted and body. If this form was used to output an article, it would result in something like the following (X)HTML:
<h3 class="entry-title"><a href="http://your-website.com/article/my-article-title" title="Permanent link to this article">My Article Title</a></h3> <p class="published">3 May 2005</p> <div class="entry-content"> <p>The full body of the article text.</p> </div>
