[pmwiki-users] Attach: Syntax and the Default Upload Quick Reference

[Neil Herber]

At 2006-02-02  06:23 PM -0700, H. Fox is rumored to have said:
>I still think the answer to the above question would change when
>$UploadPrefixFmt changes. To be specific, they might look like
>
>By-site:

......


>By-group:

.....

>By-page:

......

>   Refer to a file attached to a page in a different WikiGroup with
>
>      Attach:GroupName.PageName/filename.ext
>
>   See also the Uploads documentation.


Much snipped above.

I am not sure that this is less confusing than the current state of 
affairs. ;-)

I found the existing instructions on the upload page to be inadequate 
for my users. For one thing, they can only see the instructions on 
how to link to an attachment when uploading it - not when trying to 
link to it. Another problem is that they cannot see what is there 
until they try to upload, and then the (:attachlist:) markup reveals 
the current files.

To get around these shortcomings, I created an attachment list area 
at the bottom of all pages likely to attract attachments. The markup 
is as follows:

  !!!Files that have been attached
*%blue%note that ... 0 bytes ... indicates a folder
(:attachlist:)

!!!!!![[{$Name}?action=upload | Attach another File]]

Note that this does not say whether the files are attached to the 
page or group, but my authors don't care.

The "0 bytes" note is there because I have dropped in great piles of 
files that used to be on an FTP server. They live inside various 
folders. I  let Apache do the heavy lifting of serving these files. 
This ends up *not* looking very wiki like, but it works much better 
than the FTP server route did for me.

My users typically don't bother with the (:attach:) markup, because 
the files all appear at the bottom of the page.

This is probably not a useable approach for most people, but it 
suggests to me that "tuning" the upload message might be best left as 
a local config item.


Neil

Neil Herber
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Eton Systems, 15 Pinepoint Drive, Nepean, ON, Canada K2H 6B1
Tel: (613) 829-4668