[pmwiki-users] hierarchical groups, revisited

[Jon Haupt]

> > In other words, we have these pages:
> >
> >     Animal
> >     Animal.Canine
> >     Animal.Canine.Terrier
> >     Animal.Canine.Bulldog
> >

I had been thinking that the above is like a ladder, and the problem
is knowing which rung you are looking at.  One way to avoid this
problem is to assign different markers for different "rungs" in a way
similar to Ranganathan's colon classification[1].

It wouldn't be as difficult for the wiki engine to figure out which
rung you were on if a certain marker always meant a certain "rung".

[[/Animal~Canine`Terrier]]
[[~Canine]]
[[`Terrier]]
[[/Animal`Terrier]]

All of these would provide the wiki with enough information to provide
you with something.  There is still the potential problem of there
being pages with the same name at the same "rung" but I think this
would be an easier problem to fix.

Another fascinating thing to consider is that colon classification is
a faceted classification scheme instead of a hierarchical one.  A
different way to approach the problem of wanting additional levels of
hierarchy is to consider employing more categorical "hierarchy".  In
essence the above example is doing just that, as applying a different
marker to a different "rung" is essentially categorizing it.
Categories offer the beginning of this story, but I think there is
more to be offered.  I'm not sure exactly what's there to be
implemented, but I think page attributes and XML are probably
involved.

Jon

[1] - http://www-dimat.unipv.it/biblio/isko/doc/colon.htm