[pmwiki-users] Automatic Category Pages (WAS: Planning for 2.2.0)

[Martin Fick]

--- Crisses <crisses at kinhost.org> wrote:
> >>> 9.  It will be possible for administrators and
> recipes to define
> >>> "virtual" pages; i.e., pages that always appear
> to exist even
> >>> if they haven't been created yet.  This will
> avoid problems of
> >>> links to non-existent category pages, etc.
> >>

...
> I don't think "touch Category.NewPage" is that much
> of a problem --  
> though I'm sure that when PmWiki creates a page it
> does a little more  
> than just that.

While I don't really care if this makes into the core
since I can easily add it myself, :)  I think that
some good examples might at least help you understand
why this feature is valuable and maybe even make you
want to take advantage of it yourself!

Categories are but one example of a need for this.  On
my site I have several uses for it.  Using for
example, my Category RockyMountainNationalPark.  I
have a Category page that uses a special pagelist in
the Category GroupFooter which recognizes my Photos
group and provides a thumbnail to the pages in that
group:
http://www.theficks.name/Category/RockyMountainNationalPark

But then, I have a CategoryInOne group which also has
a pagelist in the GroupFooter which uses a different
format which includes almost the entire contents of
each page in the correspondingly named Category:
http://www.theficks.name/CategoryInOne/RockyMountainNationalPark
These are virtual pages, they do not exist, but yet I
want to link to them since they render just fine and
provide a neat way to see my photos.

So the solution of "touching the Category page" or
even automatically adding Category pages wouldn't help
me recreate this.

Another similar example is, I have a group called
Index which has trails on it which render as
thumbnails of photos:
http://www.theficks.name/Index/Ireland2002?action=source
(I used the action=source option on this link since
this page automatically redirects to a prettier page.)
But then I also have a special AllInOne group which
again simply has a GroupHeader with a pagelist
including most of all the pages on the Index trail
with the same name:
http://www.theficks.name/AllInOne/Ireland2002
These again are virtual pages, they do not exist, but
yet I want to link to them since they also render just
fine.

The general theme here is: mirroring another group
with a different format.

I hope this helps illustrate why some people want
this,

-Martin


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