[Pmwiki-users] Group and Namespace

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud
Mon Sep 13 18:52:55 CDT 2004


On Tue, Sep 14, 2004 at 01:04:21AM +0200, Pierre ROUZEAU wrote:
> 
>    in the process.
>    The  Group entity is interesting for me to organise my data and having
>    differentiated  menus,  but  a  lot  (in  fact  the  wide majority) of
>    WikiWords are shared between the groups.

This is no problem in PmWiki:  It's easy to create a group where the
WikiWords are shared--read on.

>    I want different menus for chapters A/, B/, C/; each menu referring to
>    the pages of the given chapter.
>    Though, it is imperative that the namespace be common to chapter A/ B/
>    and C/, those things being heavily interlinked, the organisation being
>    only representative of a schedule.
>    I see two solutions :
>    1/  That multiple groups share namespace, or simply that there is only
>    a unique namespace on all the Wiki. How to do that ?

You can use the $WikiWordPagePathFmt variable to specify the set of
groups where WikiWords are searched.  By default this is set as

   $WikiWordPagePathFmt =  array('$Group.$1','$1,$1');

which says to look for a page in the current group, and next in a group
with the same name as the page.  You can set this variable in config.php
to specify any set of groups you wish, thus

   $WikiWordPagePathFmt = array('$Group.$1', 'A.$1', 'B.$1', 'C.$1', '$1.$1');

says to look first in the current group, then in group A, then group B,
then group C, and finally in a group with the same name as the page.

>    On a general matter, I don't really understand the obligation to limit
>    namespace  to  a  Group. It can be interesting to have local namespace
>    for things like :
>    [...]
>    So  local  namespace  makes  sense,  but the occurrence of conflicting
>    WikiWords may be very low compared to unique WikiWords on a full site,
>    even for a very wide site.

The purpose of separate groups was to make it easier to use a single
wiki to keep track of multiple independent projects and not have to
worry about name collisions.  For example, at my University we had
different committees using the wiki, but ran into problems when separate
committees both wanted a page called "MeetingMinutes" or "September13Notes".

>    Even  with the existing isolated namespaces, when creating a new page,
>    some  options  shall  be  proposed  to  the user alongside the editing
>    window:
>    1/ This WikiWord already exist in this OtherGroup, Link to it
>    2/ Search the Wiki for similar Words
>    3/ This is an user, link to the Profiles group

This is too confusing to new authors.  Many times authors don't know 
(or need to know) that there are other WikiGroups on the same
Wiki or that the separate groups are in any way connected.

Pm




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