[wp-hackers] Idea: Rename the Excerpt to something accurate

[Stephanie Leary]

On Sun, 1 Mar 2009 14:08:06 +0000, Peter Westwood
<peter.westwood at ftwr.co.uk> wrote:
> On 28 Feb 2009, at 23:42, Lynne Pope wrote:
>> I'm all for improved functionality.
>>
>> Over the years the key things my clients have wanted from  
>> the_excerpt are:
>> 1. control over length (both characters and words);
>> 2. HTML formatting (achievable only if formatting filters are  
>> removed now);
>> 3. control over the "more" - few like the [...] but not everyone  
>> knows how
>> to write a function to change this.
> 
> This is in general available at present by unhooking filters and  
> replacing wp_trim_excerpt.
> 
> It could be improved if the_excerpt took some arguments and I am sure  
> a patch that improved this would get favourable attention ;-)

Indeed! We just had a thread about this in January, although the typo in
the subject ("filter the_exceprt") makes it hard to find in a search of the
archives.  

Such a patch is beyond my skill (and time, at the moment) but I'd really
love to see the_excerpt take some arguments to make it more flexible.

Stephanie Leary