[pmwiki-devel] Maintaining a drawing register - background

[christian.ridderstrom at gmail.com]

On Wed, 29 Nov 2006, Kathryn Andersen wrote:

> > 	Allow users to allocate unique drawing identifiers for drawings.
> > 
> > where an identifier will be of the form <series>-<number>, e.g. 'SP-0230' 
> > and 'SMX-232'. The series in these two examples are 'SP-' and 'SMX-' 

> That sounds to me like it would be most easily implemented by having a 
> "Drawings" group, with one page per drawing, where the page-name of the 
> drawing is its drawing-identifier.

Yes, I was thinking this as well. I'm not sure if I should put different 
series in different groups though. So I've got two alternatives:

	Drawings-SP/
		SP-030
		SP-031
	Drawings-SMX
		SMX-0123
		SMX-0124

v.s.

	Drawings/
		SP-030
		SP-031
		SMX-0123
		SMX-0124

I looked some more at WikiForms and it just uses a five-digit number for 
the id.

> > * Allocation of unique drawing identifiers in different series
> 
> Well, I'm not sure about automatic allocation of drawing identifiers,
> not sure out-of-the-box PmWiki can do that.

It does however create a new page with a number that is the one plus the 
maximum of previous numbers. Maybe I can modify it to use an identifier of 
the form SP-nnnnn instead.

It does get extra tricky since I would like different series. Maybe this 
is a reason to stick with different series in different groups though.

> > * Possible to list all drawings
> 
> (:pagelist group=Drawings name=-Drawings list=normal fmt=#yourformat:)

> > * Possible to list all drawings in a series
> 
> (:pagelist group=Drawings name=SP-* fmt=#yourformat:)

For just listing drawings in a series, I think WikiForms already has the 
directive (:wikilist:) for this purpose. However, for drawings in 
different groups I probably have to go with a custom version of 
(:pagelist:)

> > * For each drawing, the following information should be associated
> > ** Each drawing has a unique identifier
> > ** Each drawing has a revision number
> > ** Each drawing has a status (e.g. in progress, finalized or obsolete)
> > ** Each drawing has a location, i.e. where it is stored electronically.
> > ** Each drawing has a title
> > ** Each drawing has a description. (optional)
> 
> Looking at the WikiForms recipe, because it stores its data in
> definition lists, then you might be able to take advantage of this by
> using PmWiki version 2.2-beta, and access these as page-text variables.
> 
> This means that you could make your own pagelist format (in 
> Site.LocalTemplates) to make your pagelists display all the information 
> associated with a drawing (or maybe just a subset of it).

Thanks, I'm looking closer at this and I will keep this list informed 
about the results. Unfortunatlye my wiki is closed, so I'm not sure how I 
can show you what I did afterwards. Possibly I can talk to John (the 
author of WikiForms etc) about putting up a demo at his site.

Best regards
/Christian

-- 
Christian Ridderström, +46-8-768 39 44               http://www.md.kth.se/~chr