[pmwiki-users] hierarchical groups, revisited

[Joachim Durchholz]

Brehmer, Daniel schrieb:
>  
> On Thursday, May 25, 2006 at 2:53 PM, Patrick R. Michaud wrote:
>> On Thu, May 25, 2006 at 10:41:51PM +0200, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
>>> Actually the "correct" way for going from Animal.Canine to 
>>> Animal.Canine.Terrier would be [[Canine/Terrier]]. Here are the 
>>> analogies that hint in the direction:
>>> Going from Animal.Canine to Animal.Feline: [[Feline]].
>>> Going from Animal.Canine to Animal.Feline.Housecat: 
>> [[Feline.Housecat]].
>>> Going from Animal.Canine to Animal.Canine.Terrier: 
>> [[Canine.Terrier]].
>>
>> I don't disagree; it just seems odd/annoying to be constantly 
>> repeating the name "Canine" on the "index page" in order to be
>> able to reach the various types of canines.  I'm sure it's one
>> of the first things people would want to eliminate.
> 
> I agree that this is odd/annoying because it does not match the way 
> we typically move through a directory structure. It seems that the
> only way to make this work is if all pages are equivalent, just like
> folders in a directory structure. How do I change from the directory
> /Animal/Canine to /Animal/Feline? -- cd ../Feline not just Feline!
> Thus:
> 
> Absolute link:   [[/Animal/Canine]]
> Link to parent:  [[..]]
> Link to sibling: [[../Feline]]
> Link to child:   [[Bulldog]]

Hmm... I agree with the theory, but it seems unnatural to link to a 
sibling by "going up a level" first.

Seems like the problem is that people have totally different 
expectations depending on whether they think "I'm inside a directory" 
(they expect ../Feline) or "I'm inside a file" (then they expect just 
Feline).

Maybe we should simply invent a totally new relative path syntax, simply 
to make sure that people don't assume filesystem semantics and get 
subtly wrong ideas.
E.g.
Sibling:    [[Feline]] (special case)
Nephew:     [[Feline/Cat]]
Child:      [[*/Bulldog]] (* for "here". Put in something better.)
Grandchild: [[*/Bulldog/Fifi]]
Parent:     [[..]] (ends up in "Animal")
Uncle:      [[../Mineral]]
Cousin:     [[../Mineral/Granite]]
Absolute:   [[/Animal/Canine]]

Justification:
1. Common cases should be simple. The standard case is linking to a 
sibling, so this should have "no syntax", just the page/group name.
2. Relative links that go to subpages are the next less frequent case 
(probably common uses: trails, and group pages that are introductions 
with explicit subpage mentions). That's why the subpage syntax should be 
simple.
3. Actually I still think that ./Bulldog would be just fine. It means 
(literally) "start 'here', then decend down into Bulldog". We could make 
the difference between Bulldog and ./Bulldog a FAQ (the first is a 
sibling, the second is a subpage).
Unless I'm mistaken, that's the only place where filesystem and 
hierarchical-page intuitions diverge anyway, so this can indeed be 
handled via a FAQ. Or even simpler, by expanding the line on the editing 
tips section of the edit form:
References: [[sibling page]], [[./subpage]], [[http://www.example.com]], 
[[another page | link text]], [[#anchor]]

Oh, I just note that the [[another page | link text]] thing should be
[[link | link text]] BTW.

> Or, from above:
> Going from Animal.Canine to Animal.Feline: [[..Feline]]
> Going from Animal.Canine to Animal.Feline.Housecat: [[..Feline.Housecat]]
> Going from Animal.Canine to Animal.Canine.Terrier: [[Terrier]].

Just-dots syntax, eh? Interesting approach, but we'd need the full 
spectrum of cases to judge how well it stands up:

Sibling:    [[Feline]] (special case)
Nephew:     [[Feline.Cat]] (ah, I'm already different here)
Child:      [[.Bulldog]]
Grandchild: [[.Bulldog.Fifi]]
Parent:     [[..]] (ends up in "Animal")
Uncle:      [[..Mineral]]
Cousin:     [[..Mineral.Granite]]
Absolute:   Oops. [[Animal.Canine]] already has a meaning.
             [[.Animal.Canine]], too.

For Absolute, we need to invent something rather arbitrary.
Maybe [[/Animal.Canine]] or [[:Animal.Canine]].
Either way, links will look ugly.
That's not too much of a concern for editing, but it makes the links 
less useful for direct unformatted display.

Yet another possibility: reserve the group name "Start" to mean "Root of 
the group hierarchy", so absolute links are simply relative links from 
"Start". This gives us absolute links like [[Start.Animal.Canine]].
I'm a bit reluctant to take such a common word from the group namespace, 
but it does give us nice breadcrumb trail formatting options.

As Patrick said: to be useful, a proposal *should* include the full 
array of possibilities. (I'm going to add a template on the HG-Proposals 
page today. Have to return to paid work for now.)

Regards,
Jo