[TYPO3] General problems with plugin usage in a draft workspace

[Marius Shekow]

Hi there,

when I started to use TYPO3 I was very keen on using other workspaces to 
prepare a whole structure of a page (several pages at once) and to 
publish them at once (once they are all done). However, since I've spend 
a lot of time of working with the system, I discovered that this is in 
fact just a illusion. I will explain, why:

I've found out that I usually have problems setting up pages that 
contain plugins in a draft workspace I created, as well as using the 
plugins later (creating new content which is parsed/rendered by the 
plugins).

When I try to create pages that contain new plugins I often run into 
problems. I can name a few examples here:
- ce_gallery: I get massive PHP errors, the gallery won't show anything
- tt_news: requires to setup all the references to other pages (such as 
the "news detail page"). Even when the steps are done absolutely 
correctly, the backlink from detail view to the list view of the news 
wouldn't work, regardless of what I try.

Once I do exactly the same steps (for ce_gallery or tt_news) but doing 
so in the LIVE workspace, everything will be working fine. Fow now my 
workaround is to create the new pages in the LIVE workspace, but to hide 
them. The FE preview will them show to me anyway.

The other annoying thing is the fact that using the plugins, i.e. 
creating content for/with them often doesn't work as expected when I do 
so in a draft workspace. Here are examples:
- tt_news: assigned categories won't be shown in the FE, and once I 
publish the news record to the LIVE workspace the category selection is 
completely lost, and I have to set it again
- dam (to be more precise: dam_ttcontent): I was keen on using the 
feature to only reference media files (thus using the new "image" field 
of the form that will cause the images to be referenced instead of being 
copied). Referenced images will not show when doing the preview in the 
draft workspace.

So, what is my question? My question is NOT specific to plugin tt_news, 
ce_gallery or dam. I am sure there are many more plugins where things 
won't work correctly. What I am interested in: do you know what exactly 
is going wrong in these scenarios? Is it the fault of the 
workspace-plugin? Or do the developers of the used plugins such as 
tt_news have to make them workspace-compliant, which they didn't do 
properly and thus I get all these misbehaviours ?

Greetings,
Marius