[pmwiki-users] Blog proposal

[Hans]

some more feedback to Pm's blog proposal, archived here:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.wiki.pmwiki.user/20510/

I explored a bit more in detail how a blog can be constructed in
pmwiki with the tools we got now, especially combining use of
the power of page variables and pagelists. Results you can see here on
my site: http://softflow.co.uk/design/Blog/Blog

This features several lists, for recent posts, blog categories and
monthly archives, as I've seen on blog sites. It also allows comments,
which are stored on separate pages but included in the blog pages.
Plus the blog pages names can carry a date as part of their
names, created semi-automatically using newpageboxplus.

Now reflecting on Pm's proposal and my attempts:

> * A blog is simply a WikiTrail, along with some special markups
>  to post, organize, and display blog entries.

To me there is a lot more to it. A blog contains usually a number of
lists, not just one blog trail page. Each new blog page should be able
to be added as link to several trail pages. - In addition setting up a
wiki blog needs to be highly customisable. I would be most happy if
pmwiki supplies the basic tools for this, but leaves the
implementation to skin designers who can integrate blogging function
with good layout design, and may allow for easy user customisations.

- But back to the trail pages:

What we need is a general method to allow a page to add itself as a
link in a specified format to a number of trail pages. It should not
be limited to one blogtrail page. For instance in my blog setup each
blog page is listed on

1. Recent Posts
2. Categories, i.e a blog category page, if the blog page carries one
   (or more)
3. Archive of the month (or some other time-interval specific page)

I used pagelist markup for each of these, but it would be much better
if each list is populated over time when new pages are created, to
serve as wiki trail pages. Then blog pages can carry trail markup to
link from one to the next. So we can have a trail wandering through
recent posts, a trail through a past month (archive), a trail through
a blog category. The only existing mechanism to do something similar
is used for RecentChanges pages. Recent Changes is populated over time
with every page change. $RecentChangesFmt allows to output each page
addition in a certain format.

It would be nifty if the method used for creating Recent Changes pages
would become a specific case in a more general method of automatic
addition to certain trail pages on demand. I will call these
auto-trail pages. — Questions arising:

1. How would it be determined to what auto-trail page a page-link gets
   added?
2. Can a page-link be added to a specific location on the trail page,
   at a specific marker?
3. Can the trail page determine the format of each page-link addition
   to its growing list?

My comments to these:

1. An array for auto-populating trail pages and their rule-to-add
   attributes would be nice. A page-link will be added according to
   * a general rule to add it (like Recent Changes for all pages)
   * a specific rule to add it if it matches a pattern (is part of a
     group, for instance)
   * a specific markup in the page to instruct addition to a specific
     auto-trail page (like Pm’ suggestion to use a (:blog:) markup to add
     the page to a blog trail)
   * An attribute to add it according to time: at creation time or when
     the page gets modified.
2. The auto-trail page can carry a markup which specifies the position
   of page additions, i.e. the top of the list it creates
3. This markup can include any formatting instructions, ideally
   somehow similar to pagelist using templates for formatting.

Any comments?

-- 
Best regards,
 Hans