[Pmwiki-users] File upload feature discussion

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at sci.tamucc.edu
Mon Nov 18 15:39:38 CST 2002


On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Davis, James C. wrote:

> >From my perspective redundancy is an issue, especially if files are attached
> to individual pages. Imagine a banner that is included on every page in a
> group. If a group has 100 pages in it that's 100 copies of the same file.
> It's a waste of disk space in my opinion. Also, I just personally can't
> stand data redundancy. I think this was drilled into my head in my DBMS
> classes. :)

I agree that redundancy is bad, but it's not something that PmWiki can
(or should) prevent.  What is better is to come up with mechanisms that
encourage the right behaviors at the user interface level.

> I actually often wish there was a "list all groups" or "list all pages in a
> group" function. For me, searching is not always the primary method of
> finding the information I want, and often browsing a list of pages is often
> more useful. I guess maybe it's the case when you're not completely sure
> what you're looking for. I would think there are others out there that think
> this way as well, or maybe I'm just crazy (quite possible).

I'm open for suggestions about how this ought to work.  I'm wanting to
avoid overloading the query string too much, however, or creating lots of
special-purpose "Handle*" functions.  I'd rather have a markup that means
"generate list of XXX" here.

> The problem I see with not associating files with a page is name collisions.
> This would undoubtedly cause mass chaos on a large wiki system. 

Agreed, which seems to argue towards the attach-to-page model for file
uploads.  I guess I haven't heard anyone arguing for the "throw everything
in a common pool" model yet, so we might as well assume the page
attachments model is the way we'll head.  If anyone feels differently,
now's a good time to speak up before we get too committed to the other
path.

Pm





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