custom dashlet displaying MS word press release improperly

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aatamer

Based on the Shariff ebook, I created a custom dashlet to display press releases.  I stuck a couple of MS Word documents into the space but the text displayed in the press release area is:

CF999-00482.doc
�� ࡱ �����������������>� ��� � …

The title is indeed CF999-00482, but all the question marks are not part of the document.

The dashlet that is displaying the document is below, customized a little from the ebook

<table>
<#assign l_space = companyhome.childByNamePath["Corporate/News and Announcements"]>
<#list l_space.children as doc>
<#if doc.isDocument>
<tr>
<td>
<a class="title" href="/alfresco/${doc.url}">${doc.properties.title}</a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td style="padding-left:8px">
<#if (doc.content?length > 500)>
<small>${doc.content[0..30]}…</small>
<#else>
<small>${doc.content}</small>
</#if>
</td>
</tr>
<tr><td> <HR> </td></tr>
</#if>
</#list>
</table>
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What could it be? Thanks.

aatamer

Yes, when you hit the part of the MS Word doc file outside of the icon area within My Spaces, you can get a preview of the file in plain text. That's what I need.

I am not sure what the myspaces-webscript.jsp dashlet calls, but I found the
myspaces_preview_panel.ftl which appears to be the file used in the "My Spaces" bubble up preview.

Here's the first block of code of that file:

<#assign isImage=node.isDocument && (node.mimetype = "image/gif" || node.mimetype = "image/jpeg" || node.mimetype = "image/png")>
<table width="690" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" border="0" onclick="event.cancelBubble=true;">
   <tr>
      <td>
         <div class="spacePreview">
            <#if node.isDocument && !isImage>
               <#assign c=cropContent(node.properties.content, 2048)>
               <#if c?length != 0>
                  ${c?html?replace('$', '<br>', 'rm')}<#if (c?length >= 2048)>…</#if>
               <#else>
                  Sorry, no preview currently available for this document.
               </#if>
…
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so I snipped out this section and put it into my custom FTL.  I got this error message

Error during processing of the template 'Expression cropContent is undefined on line 20, column 14 in alfresco/templates/press_releases.ftl.'. Please contact your system administrator.

According to the Alfresco Wiki, the function cropContent is part of the default model for Templatenodes.  What else needs to be done?