[pmwiki-users] Re: Re: Dynamic wiki trails - passing along the name of the trail page

[Radu]

Just my vote here:

1. linking trails with URI-encoded actions is ugly
2. making an automatic markup appear on all 'trailed' pages is tough to 
clean in case of mistakes
3. automatic markup doesn't allow people to choose where on the page they 
want to place the <<||>> links

All in all, if the main issue here is usability (teaching authors how to 
trail), one may just simplify the markup; <<|Trail|>> is expressive but a 
tad long and prone to misspelling.

So here's (yet another :) alternative:
* add a directive around the trail on any page, e.g. (:trail MyTrail:) 
(:notrail:)
* have authors place small markup in trail pages, e.g. <|> at the spots 
they want a prev/next linkset
* all first list element links marked as trail elements expand to 
<TrailPage> (mark), where mark is a link that calls link?action=marktrail 
or something, which:
** looks for the special small markup <|> and replaces it with the correct 
linkset
** (optional, maybe an admin setting) if the <|> is not found, just place 
the linkset at the top/bottom of the page

Advantages:
-light on the authors
-no more misspelled or forgotten trail names
-can have more than one trail per page
-can have the trail as a trail page
-linksets are hard-coded, so can be modified if needed

Disadvantages:
-requires some extra clicks
-linksets are hard-coded, so can be modified by mistake

Comments?


Cheers,
Radu
(www.monicsoft.net)