Struggling with output formatting on linked pages.

[artfulrobot]

I know a reasonable amount about the output formatting basics. But I keep finding it behaving unreliably so I'm looking to enhance my understanding, or find fixes.

Example:

• A template ('basic page') contains a Page Table Next (ptn) field.
• One of the templates in use in the ptn field has a repeater field.
• I'm rendering with Latte and I wish vars holding Page[Array] objects exposed to my templates to have of(TRUE)

Let's say $thePage holds the basic page in question.

There's 2 overarching contexts, front and back end. On admin screens pages default to of(FALSE) on front end, of(TRUE)

This is already a bit of a problem that need workaround, since Page Table Next renders the front end output in the back end.

But the question is, after $thePage->of($bool) what is the output formatting state of:

• $thePage->ptn->first ?
• $thePage->ptn->first->repeaterField->... ?

It's not reliably $bool. I've sometimes tried to bolster the reliability by also calling $wire->pages->of($bool). But I still find it's not always as expected.

In the case of linked pages, as above, how does an instantiated page object know whether its output formatting should be on or off? Where is it inherited from? None of the following appear reliably correct (I could be wrong, there's a lot of combos)

• It could be from $thePage Page object.
• It could be from $pages.
• It could be from the back/front end context. (worst case, since then you have to explicitly call of() on every page you reference which makes a real mess of templating, requiring a temporary variable to store the page so you can make the call before using a property)
• It could be to do with one of the first two options at the time the referenced page is loaded, which would account for the unreliability in the case that rendering involves a process where of() is called in turn with FALSE and TRUE...

Can anyone help? I guess ideally what I'm after is $thePage->setOutputFormattingOnSelfAndAllReferencedPages($bool). 

(Aside: yes, I'm aware of using $thePage->getFormatted() and getUnformatted() but if you have to rely on these you can't use more convenient formats like ->each() or ->get() etc.)

Edited Friday at 09:15 AM by artfulrobot