[pmwiki-users] Wikipaths (was: PData support for pagelisting images)

[Dominique Faure]

On 9/7/06, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 07, 2006 at 01:22:33PM -0700, Martin Fick wrote:
> > Speaking of radical, did you have any thoughts
> > about my proposal for what I am now thinking
> > of as "wikipaths", the idea of defining a more
> > generalized lookup grammar instead of just
> > defining {$:tex}?
> >
> > ie.:  {{page$section(index)...}}
> >
> > where section migh be: *,#,!,:,::[,(:directive:)
> > and more.
> >
> > I have begun coding a small recipe, I'm sure
> > you could code one much quicker though.  Is
> > it something that you think would be too
> > complicated?  If so, to design or for authors
> > to understand?
>
> I think it's a bit on the complicated side, and
> PmWikiPhilosophy #3 is gnawing at me with it.  With the {$:var}
> markup, I can already see ways in which I can use it right away
> (and there are many others who are clamoring for it as well).
> With a more complicated markup, I'm less certain.
>
> However, based on what you've written and what J. Meijer
> has written (and I've had very little time to read them in
> detail), at the moment I'm mentally toying with generalized
> forms like:
>
>     {(function args)Group.PageName#section$[:?]var}
>
> Examples:
>
>     {$Name}                     name of current page
>     {(spaced)$Group}            group of current page, spaced
>     {OtherPage$PageUrl}         url of OtherPage
>
>     {$:XYZ}                     XYZ: field in current page
>     {OtherPage$:Name}           Name: field in OtherPage
>     {(toupper)OtherPage$:Name}  Name: field in OtherPage, all uppercase
>
>     {OtherPage#section}         short form of (:include OtherPage#section:)
>
>     {OtherPage#section$:var}    Var: field defined in OtherPage#section
>
>     {(date %m/%d/%y)$Now}       current date as mm/dd/yy
>     {(date %H:%M)$Now}          current time as HH:MM
>     {(date %Y-%b-%d)$Name}      convert pagename like 20060907 to "2006-Sep-07"
>     {(date "%B %y")$Group}      convert group like 200609 to "September 2006"
>
>     {$?var}                     value of "var" from query string
>
> I don't have any plans to try to grab values out of things such
> as (:directives:) embedded in other pages; I think that's just waaay
> too confusing.
>
> However, all of the fancier forms are purely conjectural at this stage.
> And I want to be careful not to completely consume the use of the
> single braces strictly for page variable markups; they are valuable
> bracketing characters (we don't have many of those around), and so
> we should leave some forms open so that other recipes can use the
> braces to mean other things.  This is why I like keeping the
> dollar sign present in each of the above (and why I'm not
> too fond yet of {OtherPage#section} as an include shortcut).
>

I don't see fundamental differences (aside from a prefixed notation)
with what I designed in P(age)V(ariable)E(xtensions). IMHO, I would
really prefer what you suggested in your last comment about PVE, ie
using more classic function calls as in:

date('%m/%d/%y' {$Now})

or even;

toupper(namespaced({$Group}))

Dom