[Zope-CMF] News and events not always visible in topics

[Peter Shute (NUW)]

I'm using Plone and I'm having some trouble with topics.  The Plone list
didn't respond to my question so I'm asking it here because topics are a CMF
thing.

I'm finding that news and events don't always show up in topics I've
created.  It looks like they need to have some body text (or whatever you
call it) before they'll be included.  I can then delete this text, and
they'll still be included.

I don't understand how topics work.  It seems like they work off some sort
of catalog of items.  My theory is that items don't get cataloged (or
recataloged?) until they have had a change made to their body text.  Thus,
new items without this text can never be seen.  This particularly affect
events, which may not need anything in this field.

Am I barking up the wrong tree here? What do I need to do to fix it, apart
from adding and removing some body text  for everything I want to appear in
a topic?