[Pmwiki-users] Re: can pmwiki handle hierarchical content?

Robert P. J. Day rpjday
Mon Oct 18 14:10:26 CDT 2004


On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 18, 2004 at 01:52:34PM -0400, Stefan Candea wrote:
> > > Let's suppose that I'm in the page Linux.Hardware.  Now I want to
> > > link to the page Linux.Hardware.SoundCards.  What markup do I use to do
> > > this?
> >
> > However, if groups are not pages as directories are not files
> > then the above can never happen.
>
> True, but this restriction would mean that we have to know in advance
> if a particular page name is going to refer to a "directory/group"
> or "file/pagecontent".  I.e., if Linux.Hardware starts out as a simple page
> containing a list of popular hardware, and someone later decides that it
> needs to be refactored into Linux.Hardware.SoundCards, Linux.Hardware.Printers,
> etc., then there are a *lot* of links that have to be rewritten to make
> this happen.

ok, i didn't quite mean to start this kind of brouhaha.  oh, hell, yes
i did. :-)

my thoughts so far:

1) i like the *fundamental* names Group and Page.  names like Sheet
and Topic are just not intuitive and, as far as i've read, people have
already settled on referring to "pages" of a wiki.

2) i'm easy on the choice between

  a) Group, Page
  b) GroupName, PageName

however, i think you really have to be consistent.  using Group and
PageName is, i think, a bad idea.  for brevity, i'd go with the
shorter forms.  in no time at all, people will get used to it.  but
i'll be happy with either of a) or b).

3) i think it's clear that Group should refer to (naturally) the
group, while Page should refer *only* to the final page name for a
very simple reason.  if a page is moved from one group to another
(absolutely something that should be supported), then the page name
shouldn't change.  referring to the example above, the page name would
be just "SoundCards", which is exactly what it should be, regardless
of what group it's in.

it's exactly analogous to a file being moved from one directory to
another -- it's actual name doesn't change, but its location in the
entire structure clearly does.  i think the analogy with a wiki page
makes perfect sense.


  finally, let me toss out one more idea.  in order to support
multi-level groups (and, no, i'm not arguing for their inclusion, just
saying "if"), you have to decide how you'd define the Group and Page
part of a page's full name.  and i think it would be pretty obvious --
if you have a page whose full name is A.B.C.D, then the group name
would be "A.B.C" while the page name would be "D".  it's exactly
analogous to the way "dirname" and "basename" work with respect to
full filenames.  so, even in a multi-level group structure, if it ever
comes along, Group and Page will still be clearly defined, and you
don't have to change anything right this instant to at least allow for
the possibility some time down the road.

  thoughts?




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