[pmwiki-users] pagelist is creating links relative to the current group?

[Patrick R. Michaud]

On Wed, May 24, 2006 at 08:20:03PM +0000, Pico wrote:
> If that is the case, could the underlying code just assume (or supply) 
> the arbitrary page name when the author specifies the group, i.e. 
> could the entry of the markup {Group.$GroupHome} or  be interpreted as 
> {Group.XYZ$GroupHome}

Not as things exist now.  What happens is that when given something
like {<string>$PageVariable}, PmWiki first uses the MakePageName
function to convert <string> into a valid pagename (relative to
the current group, if necessary).  This is exactly the same logic
that is used for converting [[<string>]] to a pagename -- i.e.,
it looks first in the current group, and if not found there it
searches to see if there are default group pages that could be
used (as indicated by the $PagePathFmt variable).

At the moment, converting something like "Cookbook." to a pagename
results in an invalid pagename, there's nothing after the dot.

So, we could conceivably adjust the MakePageName() function to
treat a trailing dot in a name as meaning "return the group's
default page, whatever it happens to be".

Then we'd have the following situation (assume these links are
in Test.XYZ):

    [[ABC]] -- links to the first of Test.ABC, ABC.ABC, or ABC.HomePage
               if they exist.  If none of them exist, links to Test.ABC.

    [[ABC.]] -- links to ABC.ABC or ABC.HomePage if they exist, otherwise
               links to the site-configured default for the ABC group.

In other words, a trailing dot always indicates a group.  Interestingly,
this means we no longer need the {$GroupHome} page variable, since
we can always get a group's home page by using the trailing dot notation.

I think that works for me.  I have no idea what this could potentially
break in existing sites -- I suspect nothing would break, but I have
been surprised by such things before.

> But it is still confusing why I could use the format {Group.$GroupHome} (with no
> page specified) and have that work when Group.Group exists, but not work when
> only Group.HomePage exists.  What is going on?  

I think your test must've been flawed somewhere-- I haven't been able to
duplicate the results you got.

Pm