[Pmwiki-users] More on WikiTrail

John Rankin john.rankin at affinity.co.nz
Tue Nov 5 16:26:54 CST 2002


(Just joined the list) I like the idea of listing the stops in a vertical =
column, showing the current stop and the trail name. Look forward to =
seeing it. What happens if a page is on 2 trails or is this disallowed?

Pushing my luck: would it be useful if on the page specifying the list of =
stops the author could choose to show (say) the first sentence / 15 words =
of fame or whatever from the stop page? If so, is the * or # mark-up =
appropriate or would (say) T:stop (following the faq convention) converted =
to :stop:text be more suitable? Are there other reasons why a page might =
need to know it's laying a trail? This would also allow the trail to be =
used to create a simple news headlines page. Or have I started to mix my =
metaphors?

I can't help feeling that ideally, the chosen mark-up would ensure a trail =
knows its pages *and* a page knows its trail.
--=20
John Rankin

On Wednesday, 6 November 2002 9:50 AM, Patrick R. Michaud <pmichaud at sci.=
tamucc.edu> wrote:
On Tue, 5 Nov 2002, Isabelle Michaud wrote:

> Thanks, Scott!
>=20
> I don't like the way the trails look.  I think the current page should
> be part of the trail too, so that users can visualize where they are
> on the trail in relationship to the rest.  What is the purpose of trails?=
  =20
> To facilitate navigation?  To create structure? =20

Trails are useful when there's a natural and/or logical sequence of pages
to be followed; e.g., like pages in a manual, chapters in a book, or
(as is commonly done on many news sites) articles that span multiple
web pages.  Managing the previous/next links between pairs of pages is
often a pain, so it's nice if the underlying system has a mechanism to
automatically create the correct links for the author.

As far as the markup/rendering is concerned, since WikiTrail is being
implemented as an add-on module it'd be fairly easy for a wiki
administrator to change the markup and/or rendering to something they
like better.  I'm basically asking what the best "reasonable default"=20
should be.

> Just an idea: why not
> have "trails" in a left margin (the web standard), and top to bottom=20
> instead of left to right?  That way the links would look like on the=20
> trail's "home page".  It could be like a copy of the original bullet
> list on every page.  Just thinking out loud...

This is cool too.  It's quite possible to configure PmWiki to do something=20
like this, but normally I think of things like headers, footers, menus,=20
margins, etc.  to be outside of the "wiki" portions of the page and so=20
they're best handled extraneously by other scripts.  However, I can
see that it would be *very* useful to come up with some generic
add-on routines that could create "you are here" menus using WikiTrails.
Maybe I'll code up an example just to see what's possible--stay tuned.  :-)=


Pm


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