[pmwiki-users] hierarchical groups, revisited

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud at pobox.com
Thu May 25 16:52:47 CDT 2006


On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 10:41:51PM +0200, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
> Actually the "correct" way for going from Animal.Canine to 
> Animal.Canine.Terrier would be [[Canine/Terrier]]. Here are the 
> analogies that hint in the direction:
> Going from Animal.Canine to Animal.Feline: [[Feline]].
> Going from Animal.Canine to Animal.Feline.Housecat: [[Feline.Housecat]].
> Going from Animal.Canine to Animal.Canine.Terrier: [[Canine.Terrier]].

I don't disagree; it just seems odd/annoying to be constantly 
repeating the name "Canine" on the "index page" in order to be
able to reach the various types of canines.  I'm sure it's one
of the first things people would want to eliminate.

> However, I have abused the ./xyz terminology for a slightly different 
> purpose than what it's usually used for. So it's probably not a good syntax.
> [...]
> Not really. The difference is that it's unclear to many what's the 
> "current directory" of a file that's also a directory. I don't think 
> it's easy to avoid that problem.

I totally agree with you on these two points.  (Actually, it's very
nice to hear someone else recognize it. :-)

> We could go for a different approach: A group name is never also a page. 
> It has a fixed name (Group/HomePage, or Group/Group, or whatever). In 
> this case the subtle differences vanish.
> (The downside is that we keep that "what's the name of the home page of 
> a group?" problem. Yes, it's a problem.)

The other problem is that it presumes that authors know in advance
which pages are going to be groups, or that converting a leaf page
into a group requires a fair bit of editing and adjustment to its
contents (which seems un-wiki-like to me).

> I made a HierarchicalGroups-Proposals page. It's not a PITS issue in my 
> eyes (yet) since it's unclear what (if anything) should be changed in 
> PmWiki.

PITS is for any issue that we might want to have tracked (i.e., it's
the "issue tracking system") -- it doesn't have to be for specific 
or detailed code changes.  But I'm fine with HierarchicalGroups-Proposals.

Pm




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