[pmwiki-users] Feature request: Action lists in skins

[Joachim Durchholz]

Radu wrote:
> At 11:34 AM 4/5/2005, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> 
>> How about naming them "ActionList" and "ActionListBrief"?
> 
> IMHO, those pages can contain more than lists and actions. Since
> skins deal (ideally) with layout and not function, I'd have to cast a
> vote in favor of naming the pages by location.
 >
 > And in order to have them sorted in the same place,
> * in the browser for making sure they're there or
> * in (:pagelist:) directives for editing purposes (no more hunting for 
>   them up and down a list)
> , I agree with
> 
> PageTop
> PageBottom
> PageLeft
> PageRight
 >
> where "Page" (my favorite cos it's descriptive), could also be "Bar"
> or "Menu"

I'd vote for "Bar". They are bars all right, and it's more compatible 
with the standard "SideBar" naming.
That would leave us with TopBar, SideBar/LeftBar, RightBar - something 
that I can live with.

However, it doesn't solve the issue with the action list. Not all skins 
will want to have all four bars, and many (in fact: most) layouts don't 
place the menu in one of the bars.

I've been toying with the idea of recommending additional InnerTopBar 
and InnerBottomBar... but I smell the stench of overcomplication here.

> Of course, Sidebar stays for backwards comp and could very well 
> (:redirect:) silently either of these pages

Is there a way to make the "Redirected from" page disappear? I haven't 
seen one (short of disabling the message for the entire site).

However, the wikipage include syntax offers a way to enumerate several 
pages, and PmWiki will display whichever page it finds. The PmWiki 
template, for example, says

   <!--wiki:$Group.SideBar Main.SideBar-->

with the intention of pulling in a group-specific sidebar and, failing 
that, pulling in the main sidebar of the site. This can be extended to

   <!--wiki:$Group.LeftBar $Group.SideBar Main.LeftBar Main.SideBar-->

It's also nice in that it allows people with a side bar to migrate to a 
skin with both a left and a right bar. They wouldn't have to rename 
their SideBars. Also, if a skin offers just a right bar, it can 
similarly adopt the side bar for the right side.

> However, all these remarks are about skins. I don't see why they would 
> affect the core pmwiki.

It wouldn't, which is an advantage.

 > How much overhead (time and memory used) and
> bandwidth are added by including 4-6 pages on each served page, anyway?

Guessing the effects of such a change in advance is always tricky business.

But you can do a very simple experiment: simply create a test page that 
includes other pages. (The included pages should contain what a typical 
bar would contain, since processing the page contents is probably more 
effort than file inclusion itself.) Switch off the skin and let PmWiki 
server the test page, check how long it takes. Then switch the skin back 
on and let PmWiki serve the same page, but remove the bars beforehand.

This should give you a very rough estimate of the overheads.

My personal expectation would be that the overhead for inclusion itself 
is negligible. The real overhead would come from wiki admins including 
all sorts of content in the bars, since that's so easy. Overhead would 
be generated, but due to mental reasons, not technical ones :-)

Regards,
Jo